Let me begin with two anecdotes to do with the man the Daily Telegraph dubbed at the time of his death ‘The Archbishop of the Free Churches’ and who was also known as "The Christian Cosmopolitan", "The ubiquitous Dr Meyer" and, perhaps less kindly, "The evangelical opportunist".
The first is my own. I had no Christian background but was converted as a young teenager in the 1970s. Our church ran camps for young people, proper under canvas camps, and when I attended my first one I bought a book from the bookstall. I am unsure whether I still have it but it was a green paperback called Paul, Servant of Christ by F B Meyer. It was the first Christian book I read. I did not know who Meyer was and I am sure I did not realise the book was seventy years old and the author had been dead more than 40 years, or if I did, I guess I thought living writers were hard to come by.
Meyer was the author of some 75 books or more and they still appear to sell well. Spurgeon said of his writings, they are “Exceedingly good, not only spiritual, but also thoughtful, fresh, suggestive and thoroughly practical.” His author page on Amazon UK offers sixty titles and many of his works are also available online. The Evangelical Library catalogue lists some 96 titles by Meyer, including some duplicates.
For the other anecdote, we go back to Meyer's own life time. My father-in-law Geoff Thomas's grandfather ran a draper's shop in Dowlais Top, Merthyr. One day, some time around 1906, he was looking through his shop window when who should he see but F B Meyer. Meyer was known by many as “St Francis with a Bradshaw”. Bradshaw had let him down this time, perhaps, as he had arrived for his engagement a couple of hours early. However, he was invited into Mr Thomas's home to sit for half an hour. He took an interest in the twin babies there, one of whom went on to become a preacher and the other the father of a preacher. A week later, a signed photograph arrived along with his grateful thanks. That is still around somewhere I understand.
This gives us an idea of the status of preachers in those days and this one in particular. Indeed, on a trip to America in 1898 he spent a long time talking to President William McKinley (1843-1901) and opened in prayer at the Senate in Washington. He was once described in the New York Observer as a man of international fame whose services are constantly sought by churches over the wide and increasing empire of Christendom.
My attention was drawn to Meyer more recently when I noticed that in his teenage years he sat under the ministry of William Brock (1807-1875) at Bloomsbury Baptist, the Meyer family being members of the church at that time.
Written sources
For many years the standard biography of Meyer was the one by his contemporary and fellow Baptist W Y Fullerton (1857-1932), published soon after Meyer's death. There was also an earlier work in 1902 by a friend of Meyer's, journalist Jennie Street, and an inferior 1929 work by Philip I Roberts published under the pseudonym A Chester Mann.
Meyer himself wrote at least two autobiographical works The Bells of Is: or voices of human need and sorrow (1894) and Reveries and realities: or Life and work in London (1896).
In 1955 a thesis was produced on Meyer's preaching by R E Nielson and in more recent years all this has been supplemented by two analytical and reflective pieces: the academic work by Ian M Randall Spirituality and Social Change: The Contribution of F B Meyer (2004) and Bob Holman's If I had a hundred lives … (2007). It is on these latter two works that I have relied.
Life
Meyer was born into a Christian family in 1847 in Clapham. He had cultured German roots on his father's side and, on his mother's side, a poetry writing Quaker grandmother. His parents lived first in Wandsworth, then in a large house on Clapham Common. In 1855 one of his three sisters became ill and it was decided that the family would move to Brighton. There Meyer attended a public school, Brighton College. Both the bullying there and the later return to London in reduced circumstances when his father ran into financial difficulties contributed to making Meyer the man he was.
When he finished school, Meyer began to work for a tea merchant. Meanwhile, he appears to have taken full advantage of the cultural and spiritual opportunities London afforded at the time. For example, hearing Mozart's twelfth mass at Southwark Cathedral and hearing Spurgeon explain that you do not have to know when you are born again as long as you know it has happened at some point, something Meyer found a great help at the time. After some spiritual struggles, he was baptised by immersion in 1864 at New Park Road Chapel, Brixton.
Meyer felt a strong call to the ministry early on. His father recommended that he work in secular employment first, which he did before spending three years studying theology under Joseph Angus (1816-1902) at the premier Baptist establishment of the time Regent's Park College, then still in London. He gained a London BA while there. It was in this time that Meyer wrote to Spurgeon about establishing a Baptist cause in Richmond, West London. Through their efforts and those of others, what is now Duke Street Chapel was commenced.
As we shall see, Meyer served in several churches and served the wider church in various ways before his death in 1929.
In February, 1871, he married Jeannie Jones of Birkenhead. She was described as a woman of "fascinating personality, creative imagination and undeviating will". They had one child, Hilda, who grew up to be Mrs Tatam. She would die only a month before her father in the same Bournemouth care home. It is sometimes suggested that Meyer's home life was a difficult one. Bob Holman gives the circumstantial evidence for this but concludes that the evidence is inconclusive and it was Jeannie's ill health that kept her from fuller involvement in his work, not anything else.
Meyer seemed able to combine a certain ascetic spirituality with a highly efficient managerial approach to organisation, every hour of the day being employed in some useful way. It is said that if he was in a committee and it became overlong he would take out his case and proceed to write letters. Another anecdote tells of a celebration in his honour that was beginning to become rather religious in tone. He broke in on that by asking which horse had won the Derby that day.
Ian Randall sums him up as “reflective and gentlemanly, yet forceful and unconventional”. While traditional in many ways, he was always seeking fresh challenges and new ways of doing things. His priority was authentic spiritual experience rather than doctrinal rigour but he believed in serious study and kept up with changes in theological opinion. Though he idealised communion with God in the midst of unspoiled nature he ministered nearly always in urban settings. He was very much a Baptist but also an evangelical bridge builder, eager to be in an evangelical fellowship as wide as possible. “He brought together, in a way that was true of none of his contemporaries, the dimensions of spirituality and social change”.
Multi-faceted life
Meyer served in a series of pastorates, being at his two London churches for two separate periods. One thing that stands out about him is his multi-dimensional ministry. The book by Randall deals with him under some six major headings. I think it is helpful for us to adopt these headings and see him through these perspectives, adding just one more, Meyer as preacher. So we will begin with him as pastor and evangelist, then look more briefly at his preaching, his theology, his being a Baptist and a Keswick holiness teacher, and, finally, his socio-political activity and his involvement in the advent testimony movement.
Meyer as pastor and evangelist
Randall suggests that there was always a tension in Meyer between his role as a pastor and Bible teacher and as an evangelist. He was acutely aware of how difficult it is to reach ordinary unchurched people and was always eager to find ways of doing so.
Pembroke Baptist Chapel in Liverpool (1870, 1871)
Meyer could have gone straight into a pastorate from college but chose to take up the opportunity to work alongside the well known preacher C M Birrell (1811-1880) at Pembroke Baptist Chapel, Liverpool. He would have imbibed there the expository method of preaching and much else. He also realised he wanted to be much more free in his style than his cultured and stiff mentor.
Priory Street Baptist Church in York (1872-1874)
After two years in Liverpool, Birrell fell ill and the church not wanting Meyer to replace him, his time there came to an end. He moved next to Priory Street Baptist Church, York, where there were difficulties at first that he was able to overcome to some extent. Perhaps the most important thing in York was his first encounter with the American evangelist D L Moody (1837-1899), in 1873. It was through Moody that he later made his many trips to America. The preachers became lifelong friends. Moody's ideas of making meetings interesting and less formal very much chimed in with his own.
Victoria Road Church in Leicester (1874–1878)
Despite undoubted progress in York, Meyer soon moved on to Victoria Road, Leicester. The ostensible reason was his wife's health but there were clearly tensions in York. Similar tensions are evident in Victoria Road. Early on, for example, he gave a Moody style invitation at the end of a meeting and more than eighty showed interest. One of the deacons was not happy, though, saying Meyer had turned the place into a gospel shop! Although Meyer was again successful, taking the membership from 164 to 249, there were difficulties. The church was happy to start a down town mission hall but Meyer really wanted to turn the church itself into a mission hall. After just four years he resigned.
Melbourne Hall in Leicester (1878/80-1888)
Melbourne Hall has been described as Meyer's abiding monument. After Victoria Road, Meyer received calls from various churches but was persuaded to try something new in Leicester itself. Some 77 people (46 of them Meyer converts from Victoria Road) formed the initial church. They met first in the museum, then Victoria Road's mission hall but eventually had Melbourne Hall (named for the road it was on) built on the edge of the city. Built to look like a public hall rather than a church, all the seats were free (not always the case in those days). By 1833, Melbourne Hall was the largest church in Leicester and by the time Meyer left, the largest Baptist Church outside London and Bristol.
Randall says Meyer now saw himself as an evangelistic director rather than as a regular minister. His day began early at a lodging house for men he had set up and continued at Leicester prison. There was open air work, work to reach the drunken and destitute, and many special meetings of various sorts. Meyer did not neglect pastoral needs but appointed elders to deal with this. With such success it is surprising that he should have left. Again there were health issues – his 13 year old daughter this time. He too was under some pressure. Meyer always liked a new challenge and a call to London was something he found impossible to resist.
Regent's Park Chapel in London (1888–1892)
The London call came from the ailing Regent's Park Chapel, an affluent church previously pastored by the well known William Landels (1823-1899) and then the less successful David Davies (1849-1926). The match was possible because the church like Meyer was looking for a fresh approach. Among negotiated demands were all upstairs seats to be free, weekly communion, freedom for wider ministry and exemption from regular pastoral visiting and the scope to conduct meetings as he saw fit.
Again he was successful, with a net increase of 300 in just four years. In 1891 he made his first visit to Moody in America. Moody would gladly have seen him become an evangelist State side but that was not to be. His next move would be only about four miles.
Christ Church in London (1892–1907)
The non-denominational church Christ Church, Lambeth, opened in 1876 was the successor to Surrey Chapel, pastored first by Rowland Hill (1784-1833) then James Sherman (1796-1862). Its pastor C Newman Hall (1816-1902) was due to retire in 1892, and invited Meyer to leave wealthy church-going North London and come south to a non-denominational situation in an obviously needy area. Meyer's question to his people at Regent's Park was “Shall I devote the remaining years of my manhood to the service of a section of the Church of Christ, or accept a position that is equally in touch with all sections of Evangelical Christians?” They were not sure but, after careful consideration, he decided to take on the role in September of that year. He had successfully negotiated similar demands to those made on Regents Park plus the installation of a baptistery in the lower hall. For their part, Christ Church insisted on a liturgy and that he preach in his BA gown. H G Turner, who had formerly worked for Lambeth Council, became his full time secretary.
Christ Church was conceived of as a Non-conformist Cathedral but when Meyer arrived numbers attending were down to about a hundred. In 1892 Spurgeon died, of course, and the ensuing difficulties at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, less than a mile away, attracted a considerable number of former members. It was more than that, though. Meyer was able to mobilise people by a powerful combination of delegation and leadership. He worked on Sunday Schools, a weekly Brotherhood for working men, women's meetings, etc, and was able to stimulate growth. In four years, membership reached a thousand. On Sunday evenings, all 2,500 seats were soon taken. In Meyer's first spell at Christ Church there were 1500 baptisms.
New members came from a variety of backgrounds, about a third, Randall suggests, were working class. Meyer himself, he suggests, was the bridge between the classes. Meyer feared that the membership was not localised enough and he had the same battles as at his previous churches over making services less formal.
In his autobiography, Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) says of his mother, an actress, separated from her drunken husband, Chaplin's father, that after mental difficulties
She regularly attended Christ Church in the Westminster Bridge Road, and every Sunday I was made to sit through Bach's organ music and to listen with aching impatience to the Reverend F B Meyer's fervent and dramatic voice echoing down the nave like shuffling feet. His orations must have been appealing, for occasionally I would catch Mother quietly wiping away a tear, which slightly embarrassed me.
By 1901, Meyer was again both exhausted and looking for a new challenge. Two years later, he had the church services more or less as he wanted them but two years later, again he was eager for further change. Finally, in 1907, he began a two year period as a roving ambassador, the American Presbyterian A T Pierson (1837-1911) taking care of the church in his absence.
Regent's Park Chapel in London again (1909–1915)
After two years of itinerancy, including trips to South Africa and a seven month tour with his wife, taking in Turkey, Bulgaria, China and Japan on behalf of the Keswick movement, Meyer began to flag for a moment and Regents Park took the opportunity to invite him back. We should say first that Meyer had travelled to India in 1898, 1899 but it was in South Africa that he spent several days with Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948). This was arranged through Gandhi's first biographer, Baptist minister Joseph Doke (1861-1913). There was mutual appreciation but whether they entirely understood each other is open to question.
The return to Regents Park was encouraged not only by the church but by Baptist Union secretary J H Shakespeare (1857-1928), who could see great potential for Meyer within the denomination. We will say more about this. Meyer at this point seemed to want to be more like a traditional minister but in 1910 he was away in the USA on a previously arranged trip and soon had an assistant and five new elders appointed in order to free himself up for more evangelistic work. Although Meyer was successful in this second Regents Park stint, it was less so than previously.
The combination of working for the Baptist Union and the church culminated in him fainting in the pulpit towards the end of 1913, aged 66, and the appointment of his friend F C Spurr (1862-1942) as co-pastor. Meyer was advised to cut down on outside engagements but seems to have done the opposite. Although Spurr was virtually pastor by this point the church was rather surprised in March 1915 to learn in the press that he had accepted a call back to Christ Church. The large debt there and their falling numbers were too hard for Meyer to resist.
Christ Church in London again (1915–1921)
This final pastorate lasted from May 1915 until 1921. He actually retired at the end of 1920 at the age of 73, aware of the need to make way for a younger man. Again, Meyer had not made the same impact at Christchurch as he had the first time but he was able to help the church clear its debt and turn things around more generally.
Final years (1921-1929)
The last few years of his life were spent ministering in England and making trips to the USA and other lands. He visited America nearly twenty times altogether, mostly in connection with the Christian Endeavour movement. Besides China, India and South Africa, he also visited Australia, Bulgaria, Burma, Estonia, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, Syria and the West Indies. He always had a great interest in mission and worked with Pierson to promote it at home. He wrote the biography of Cecil Robertson (1884-1913) a gifted medical missionary to China, converted through Meyer and sent out from his church. Robertson worked with the BMS. Meyer himself was more a supporter of CIM, RBMU (leading that mission for a short spell in the twenties) and similar cross-denominational missions. From 1893-1896 he headed up the South London Missionary Training College, responsible for preparing some 40 overseas missionaries. For one year, in 1923, he was first principal of All Nations Christian College. He also worked hard for the Evangelical Alliance, the YMCA and similar cross-denominational groups at home.
Meyer's preaching
David Larsen writes of Meyer and his preaching that he did not have the great intellectual depth of G Campbell Morgan (1863-1945) nor the brilliant eloquence of J H Jowett (1863-1923), but had “a tireless expenditure of energy and a love affair with Scripture”. He followed Birrell in being a systematic expository preacher but warned against going over points from the previous sermon or anything that would stop each sermon standing independently on its own.
Larsen says that he “had a clear voice that conveyed tender compassion.” His occasionally military style was redeemed by a Quaker softness and sweetness. He was known for the brevity of his public prayers. His illustrations were graphic and luminous.
Hugh Sinclair wrote
His preaching is expressive of his personality, suggesting spiritual fastidiousness and a sweet, sun-washed serenity of soul. So simple and intimate is his utterance that many hearers will scarcely divine the art that conceals art, but the practised will soon realise with what consummate ease and subtle mastery of effect he handles speech and thought, and how enchantingly he plays upon an instrument whose limitations are known and accepted by him.
Perhaps the best compliment Meyer's preaching ever received was Spurgeon's observation that “Meyer preaches as a man who has seen God face to face.”
Meyer's theology
Theologically, Randall suggests some dependency on the Romantic movement. Meyer certainly liked his Wordsworth but is more likely to have gained his emphasis on experimental Christianity from mentors like Brock and Birrell, whose student days were spent in Edinburgh alongside men such as M'Cheyne and the Bonar brothers. We have mentioned his Quaker grandmother and that was an influence too. He was a fan of Puritan writers such as Baxter but supplemented this with Madame Guyon and other mystical writers.
Meyer's basic theology was a low sort of Calvinism (he once ventured the view that all have their names in the Book of Life until blotted out at some point). He wanted to see Scripture accurately expounded but with a devotional and practical bent. With this there soon came a Keswick view of holiness, which we shall say more about in a moment, and a belief in the filling of the Holy Spirit for service as a subsequent experience in the Christian life.
He was a Baptist, of course, although he was keen to be broad in his evangelicalism. He did much to promote Baptist views but did not see baptism as a church ordinance – hence his preference for putting the baptistery in a hall not in the main sanctuary. Meyer was no fundamentalist and he did show some signs of a mediating spirit towards liberalism. Randall generously says that “Meyer was a conservative evangelical, but his vision transcended narrow theological boundaries.”
Meyer and the Baptists
Another tension Meyer felt, as so many do, was that between being a denominational Baptist and a mere Christian. This is partly what lay behind his to-ing and fro-ing between Regents Park Baptist Church and the non-denominational Christ Church.
Meyer's first Baptist influence was Brock. This helped draw him in a Baptist direction, leading to his studying at Regents Park College, a Baptist institution. He then served under C M Birrell, a Baptist again, in Liverpool. It was the influence of D L Moody in York that led, however, to a more interdenominational outlook. This culminated to some extent in the formation of Melbourne Hall which Meyer wanted to be characterised by “an absence of any marked Denominationalism”. Nevertheless, quite early on, it joined the local Baptist association. Keswick, dominated by Anglicans, was another impetus to cross denominational connections, of course. Though always an undenominational Baptist, he spent half his ministry in Christ Church, a non-denominational church.
In 1892, Meyer served as President of the LBA and in 1906 he became president of the Baptist Union. This came about with the backing of The Baptist Times and J H Shakespeare, who had sat under Meyer's ministry in Victoria Road years before. In his presidential year he “undertook a punishing schedule of visitation and evangelism in Baptist churches” usually with Shakespeare. He later put in great efforts over a six year period from 1909 raising £250,000 for what was called the sustentation fund, an attempt to supplement the often poor stipends of Baptist ministers. They managed even to get David Lloyd George (1863-1945) to speak at events twice.
Before all this, Meyer had been National President of the Free Church Council and its secretary from 1910-1914. Further back again, in 1897, he had started The Free Churchman. His commitments to the Baptist denomination slowly but surely began to dominate, however.
One sad thing to note here is that when the Baptist Union came to its great crisis when Spurgeon resigned from the BU, in October 1887, Meyer was unable to support him. Meyer's attitude is summed up in his plea “The Baptist Union is a glorious engine for good, let us not wreck it”. While having great sympathy with Spurgeon and his concerns he made conciliation his greater concern and did all he could to avoid division.
Meyer and the holiness movement
We do not have time to go into Meyer's commitment to the Keswick holiness movement, save to say that it was a very big element in his theology and activity. To those of us who have read the anti-Keswick writings of Jim Packer and others, it may seem strange that Meyer was so enthusiastic about it. It is important to keep in mind that what Meyer was chiefly rejecting was Wesleyan holiness and its tendency to perfectionism and the Pentecostal movement that began to raise its head from the turn of the century.
Meyer was, unsurprisingly, very interested in the Welsh revival of 1904 and interacted with the leading players. A newspaper once suggested that Meyer claimed to be the impetus for the revival but that grew out of a misunderstanding and was never Meyer's view. He did feel able to promote the revival and help it but none of his efforts seem to have had that much impact. His confidence that the revival would spread to England was sadly misplaced.
Meyer and his socio-political activity
An important element in the F B Meyer is his socio-political involvement, which was integral to his thinking and took up much of his time. He has been accused of being a Christian socialist as although at first, like other nonconformists, he supported the Liberals, he went on to align himself to some extent with the Labour Party. However, Meyer never saw politics as the answer. Rather, it was his evangelistic zeal led him into a concern for the needy.
That concern showed itself at various points, chiefly in his prison work in Leicester, which saw him even launch a firewood business so that ex-prisoners could find employment; his temperance work, which earned him the opprobrium of publicans and others; and his work for social purity, as it was called, which included both a political agenda and genuine work seeking to help prostitutes, and that saw between seven and eight hundred brothels closed down in the Lambeth area between 1895 and 1907. There was also his work with the Free Church Council and his strong stand against the Education Act, which saw him taken to court for non-payment of rates. During the Great War he was able to support the government, speaking of “the clearest, cleanest and most Christian war” and yet also seek to protect conscientious objectors.
Meyer and the advent testimony movement
In his last twenty years, Meyer threw himself into the work of the Advent Testimony Movement, which was a result of the increasingly popular pre-millennial view of the Second Coming. This element in his story is in keeping with most of what went went before, although there is some evidence that his promotion of the social gospel did begin to wane.
*
In 1907 the Congregationalist R F Horton (1855-1934) called Meyer “the most loved and honoured nonconformist in the country”. That view probably continued until the time of Meyer's death 22 years later.
Bob Holman speaks of Meyer as an ordinary man in many ways but a gentleman and a man of God who used his talents faithfully.
A few days before his death, Meyer wrote to a friend: “I have just heard, to my great surprise, that I have but a few days to live. It may be that before this reaches you, I shall have entered the palace. Don’t trouble to write. We shall meet in the morning.” As he lived so he died, looking to the Lord.
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