THE IMPERIAL MAGAZINE.

JULY, 1833.

MEMOIR OF THE LATE REV. GEORGE BURDER.

(With a Portrait.)

THE personal history of the late Rev. George Burder is so intimately connected with the modern history and recent proceedings of a large body of Protestant Dissenters, that, if the narrative of his own individual career had not been sufficient to confer interest upon the handsome volume which his respected son has published concerning him, the defect would have been amply supplied by the incidental mention of collateral subjects. The contents are, for the most part, autobiographical; a circumstance to which we owe the preservation of many pleasing facts, both with relation to the subject of the memoir himself, and to some of his distinguished contemporaries; and, what was wanting in the personal narrative of Mr. Burder, has been supplied by a judicious selection from his numerous letters.

The Rev. GEORGE BURDER was born in London, in 1752, the year in which the style was altered, on the 25th of May, which, by the alteration, became the fifth of June. His great-grandfather had eighteen children, all of whom lived to be married! That descendant of this patriarch, of whom we speak, received his education in two schools, near Hatton-garden; at one of which he learned Latin, attained to be the head boy, and spoke Latin orations at the annual exhibitions. On leaving school, he was placed with an artist. His mother, who was converted under the preaching of Whitfield, died when he was only ten years old. Speaking of her burial in Bunhill-fields, he charged his children and theirs, to repair or renew her grave-stone when necessary. His mother's death, and the visits which he made to her tomb, inspired his mind with serious thoughts. Even then, like many others, he had a glimpse of his future destination as a minister; and, on the tenth anniversary of his birth-day, retiring from his father's counsels to the chamber in which he was born, while praying "for the first time," he experienced the second birth. Such, at least, was his own conclusion. Subsequent wanderings shook his confidence; and, writing on the subject about the beginning of the present century, he says, "To this hour, I cannot decide." At the age of fifteen, however, his mind had so decidedly taken a serious bias, that he kept, though not with much regularity, a sort of journal, in which he occasionally recorded his religious reflections. Some of these occur on the anniversaries of his birth-day, a

*For the present memoir we are indebted to a work, of which the following is the title," Memoir of the Rev. George Burder, Author of 'Village Sermons,' and Secretary to the London Missionary Society. By Henry Foster Burder, D.D. 8vo. pp. 420. Westley and Davis, London. 1833." This will account for the frequent references to Dr. Burder's authority, in the course of the narrative; which being avowedly derived from his excellent memoir, naturally assumes somewhat of the shape of a review.

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season at which he seems to have made a point of examining himself strictly as to his improvement of the past. The associates of his profession, and the theatres, appear to have been a snare to him; but he was kept from gross vices.

In his seventeenth year, he narrowly escaped death by the fall of a house, in a street leading out of the Strand, just after he had passed it; and in the following year he had another escape from death by drowning. About this time he heard Mr. Whitfield preach his last two sermons, at Tottenham-court-road and the Tabernacle severally. He wrote them in short-hand, and printed the latter of the two. On the news of Mr. Whitfield's death, he reprinted this sermon, accompanied by the other. Both are in Mr. Gurney's volume. Mr. Burder, therefore, preserved to us the last sermon which Mr. Whitfield preached in this country.

In 1770, Mr. Burder's father took a second wife; she was a maiden lady of fifty-two, of the Foster family by her mother's side, and inherited their property. In 1772, Mr. Burder heard Captain Scott, whose preaching impressed him deeply. "From about this time," he remarks, “I became much more fond of that sort of preaching which was then termed the Methodistical. I found it much more useful to me than any other. My judgment was before informed; but I found my heart affected by this preaching." His experience, however, fluctuated. Visiting Shropshire, where his step-mother's estates lay, he heard the celebrated Mr. Fletcher, and "was surprised with the energy and vivacity of his preaching," and "was much pleased with the spirituality of his conversation." During this journey he received those impressions of the spiritual claims of the English peasantry, which, in their maturity, gave birth to the "Village Sermons." In 1775, when twenty-three years old, he first beheld the sea; his sensations, as he was an artist and of ripe age, may be better conceived than described; his own brief comment is, "That noble object!" In this year he was admitted, for the first time, to the Lord's supper, at the Tabernacle. Early in the following year, the Evangelical Society was formed, of which he became a subscriber and director, beginning at the same time, also, to study Greek and Hebrew. He seems now to have dedicated himself to the work of the ministry; and he took a journey into Shropshire, in the expectation that an opportunity might occur of doing good in this way. He was not disappointed: after having broken the ice by praying at a meeting in the house of Mr. Fletcher, who "took him by the hand into his study, speaking to him in an encouraging way,"* he made "his first attempt," by addressing a few words, one Sabbath evening, to the family with whom he was sojourning.

He renewed the attempt before a larger audience, in the house of one of his father's tenants. On another occasion, the house in which he was to have preached being too small for the audience, he took his station under an old oak on Bromstone Heath. Of this circumstance, he writes in February, 1802, "Thus I began my ministerial career in the Methodistical way, which I have never seen reason to regret. I believe it is the best way

* He relates the following interesting circumstance, which took place at Mr. Fletcher's on the occasion referred to :-" Mr. F. obliged Mr. Owen unexpectedly to preach again in the afternoon, which reluctlantly he did from the parable of the Sower. Being unprepared, he was much dejected afterwards when he came into the house. Mr. F. in his lively way, said, 'Come, come, never mind; it will do you good. It will make you humble. Come, let us harrow the word by prayer.' So we kneeled down, and he prayed for a blessing on the sermon."

still. I rejoice that I began at first to go without the camp, bearing his reproach;" nor is it unworthy of notice, (although Dr. Burder modestly apologizes for mentioning the circumstance,) that the ink with which his son recorded the fact, was contained in a stand composed of part of that memorable tree. Returning to London, he preached his first sermon in the metropolis for Mr. Clayton, "then in Lady Huntingdon's Connexion," at the temporary place in Mulberry-gardens. His sermons now became frequent; but he was exercised by his own misgivings, which, together with his father's objections to entering the ministry except by the way of a Dissenting Academy, gave him much uneasiness. He was, besides, unresolved, whether "to take his lot with the Dissenters or not." "I had found," he says, abundantly more of the power of God with the evangelical clergymen, and with the Calvinistic Methodists; besides which, the formality, stiffness, and apparent pride and self-importance that I saw, or thought I saw, among some of the academicians, disgusted me." But, though inclined to enter the Church, he could not swallow the dogma of baptismal regeneration, the consideration of which, and of the office of burial, with some other articles, finally made him a Dissenter; "and," he adds, "I have since had sufficient ground to conclude that I determined rightly."

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He took a second journey into Shropshire, in June, 1777, where a clergyman, preaching at HIM, "charged the Methodists with being enemies to diligence and moral duties !" and said, that "the Devil was the teacher of Methodists!" So obnoxious were those diligent, moral, and godly men, to the lazy, immoral, and ungodly clergy, who then abounded in the Church! The denunciations of the clergyman were followed out by the violence of the people, from which "Mr. Burder and his friends escaped, but with the hazard of their lives." These things he related to his father, who (his fears, probably, coalescing with his formal objections) "disapproved of his preaching, and questioned his call to the work." His stay in Shropshire was prolonged by an unexpected request to preach a club-sermon. The rule was, to give the parson of the parish half-a-guinea, and the clerk five shillings, on these occasions; and, as the Methodist parson, it was known, recognised the principle implied in that divine command, "Freely ye have received, freely give," he was applied to, and willingly obeyed the call.

At length he received an invitation to become minister of a chapel building at Ulverstone, in Lancashire; to which place, "entirely laying aside his business as an artist," he repaired. When he applied for his license to preach, before the magistrates, the bench, consisting of two clergymen, a colonel, and the recorder, the reading of the articles was waived; the recorder observing (in allusion to the clerical justices) that he dare say, he (Mr. Burder) was a better friend to them (the articles) than many who wore a black gown, and ate the bread of the Church!"

His ministrations were divided between Lancaster and Ulverstone, and the surrounding villages. Here it may be remarked, that Dr. Burder's volume contains not the least evidence to shew either in what department of art his venerable father was, in early life, a student, or what degree of proficiency he attained.

Captain Scott wrote to him, regretting that he had not been earlier informed of his intention to devote himself to the ministry, as "he should have been happy to have had him as a co-partner;" and the prejudices of his father against the " irregular" mode of his entrance into the ministry, yielded before the evidence of his success. Describing to a friend the usual topics of his discourses, he observes, "I am told by judicious people, that

few, even of gospel ministers, level their discourses to their auditories, or insist enough on the way in which a sinner must become a saint. These fundamentals are taken for granted too much: hence some that have heard preaching for years, tell me, that they never understood these things before." Entertaining these views, it is not surprising that his ministry was made a blessing to his hearers, of which numerous instances are related.

In passing through Oxford, on his return from London to Lancashire, in 1778, he prayed in the rooms of two students, which, becoming known, "was reckoned more scandalous than an event which took place a few days before," when, in consequence of the presentation, by Sir W. W. W of a two-gallon punch-bowl to the gentlemen of Jesus (!) College, "many were intoxicated."

On reaching Lancashire, he renewed his labours within, and also "without the camp," with great zeal and activity. The clergyman of the parish, on one occasion, going by with a hammer in his hand, to mend his gate, stopped to expostulate with him; but, finding that there were scriptural precedents for out-of-door preaching, "the parson departed to mend his gate, and I (says Mr. Burder) mounted the chair, hoping to mend the people."

On the 29th of Oct., '1778, Mr. Burder was ordained pastor of the church at Lancaster, from which he had received a unanimous call; but he still continued his itinerant and open-air labours. In December of the same year, he received from his father an account of the institution, under the name of the New English Academy, of that seminary which long after flourished under the name of Hoxton Academy, and which now exists under that of Highbury College. Of this institution, Mr. Burder's father was one of the projectors; and his son and biographer was one of the tutors for more than twenty years. The instructions were at first confined to English grammar and divinity; and the original subscribers included "both Dissenters and Methodists.'

In Lancashire, besides Mr. Romaine, he met with several clergymen, of a better spirit than the Shropshire gentleman before alluded to; to one of whom he wrote the following whimsical anecdote ::

"A curious circumstance may be recorded. It may be said of him-which can rarely said of any preacher-he once converted his whole congregation.

He

"It was thus :—a man in the neighbourhood came many miles to hear him, having heard he was an uncommon preacher; but he came in the afternoon, when scarcely any attended. I think the bell had been rung, but not a soul appeared, except this stranger. Mr. H. desired him to sit down with him inside the rails of the communion-table. conversed with him, read and explained some of the articles and prayers, and the man's eyes were opened. Sometime after this he came to hear me at Lancaster, a distance of ten miles from his habitation."

It had reached his father's ears that he was not satisfied with the views of the great Dr. Owen on church government, and entertained the design of publishing some strictures on them. The good old gentleman, on this occasion, gave him the following excellent advice :-" You are a thousand times more likely to bring severe reflections on yourself, than to fix one mistake on him. Pray think a thousand times before you publish once. If you are inclined to pen your meditations on that subject, keep them by you review, revise them shew them to the most judicious of your ministerial connexions; but by no means think of the press." Horace himself could not have given wiser counsel. Mr. Burder was better engaged than

in an unequal contest with "the prince of divines:" in the year 1779,* he rode 2,500 miles, and preached 254 times, besides occasional exhortations, &c.

In 1781, however, he ventured into print, in the unobtrusive form of a tract, entitled "The Good Old Way," the object of which was to prove from Scripture, and also from the Articles and Liturgy of the Church, the fall of man. This, like all Mr. Burder's publications, has had an immense circulation its early sale was unwittingly assisted by some churchwardens, who, misinterpreting the title, gave a considerable number away at the church-doors, thinking that it was against the Methodists!

Mr. Burder occasionally went to Preston, where the preaching-house was over a cock-pit, occupied by some players. Contrary to previous arrangement, the players commenced their performance during divine service above. The play was interrupted by the singing, when Romeo, with a drawn sword, came up to expostulate. Cedant arma toga was pleaded in vain; and Romeo triumphed. Anon we find Mr. Burder preaching in Wales, where, contrary to the present practice, "the people sang so loud that they shook the pulpit." On his return from this excursion, he found Mr. Wesley in Lancaster of whom he says, "He is concise; very logical, and regular; yet not formal. He illustrates almost every particular with an anecdote. He keeps up great attention. He preaches much of love." Anecdotes are not numerous in Mr. Wesley's printed sermons, which, however, have every other attribute here mentioned.

On Aug. 31, 1781, Mr. Burder was united in marriage with Miss Harrison, of Newcastle-under-Lyne, of whom (Sept. 1839) he speaks as "a valuable and excellent wife," and " an excellent mother." They were congratulated by his father in a letter which Dr. Burder justly styles "beautiful," as the following glowing eulogium of the institution of marriage will evince :

"The good providence of God has now crowned your wishes, fulfilled your desires, and brought you into the closest, and sweetest, and most endearing relation known among men, a relation prior to, and the great basis of, all our relations-a relation constituted in innocency, which can be said of no other-a relation which Jesus honoured, not only with his divine presence, but with his divine power; at which he wrought his first miraclea relation pronounced honourable by an inspired apostle, and, once more,-a relation which is dignified with being a type, if I may so call it, of that great and important union there is between Christ and his church ;-all which considerations are so many and important arguments and motives to all who have entered on that dear union, to preserve its purity, honour, and happiness."

Then follow some very admirable remarks on the conduct of husband and wife to each other. "No doubt," says the writer, "there is some degree of authority allowed to the man; but it ever requires great wisdom to use it." The change in his domestic affairs did not cause any relaxation in Mr. Burder's efforts to promote the salvation of men; and he was, with others, instrumental in raising many churches, and building many chapels, in the north-western part of the kingdom. Circumstances forbidding him, at one time, to gratify his wish to visit the metropolis, he justly said, "Happiness has many country-houses-at least as many as town-houses."

*This year he observed the fast, appointed in commemoration of the American war: "I fasted," says he, "till afternoon but it made me very ill; and I learned that it was not my duty to fast."