A prince in Israel: or, Sketches of the life of John Ridgway

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Preface

This volume should have appeared some time ago. The delay is but •in a slight degree attributable to the author. When requested to prepare it there was little human probability -^at he would ever be able even to commence the taoJc.' His was then only in the first stage of recovery firom an illness which had threatened to be fa£at, aud which still held him prostrate and helpless. Even under favourable cii*- cumstances several months must elapse before the first step could be taken, in ftdfilment of the request ; while a full half year from the death of Mr. Ridgway had expired before the request was made. The favoiirable circumstances were graciously given. A shattered health was gradually built up again, if not to robustness, yet to a moderate working capability ; in recollection of which the author desires thus formally to acknowledge the tender mercy of Gk)d, and at tlie same time never to forget the vows that

VI PREFACE.

were spoken by him when he was in trouble. Still, recovery was sufficiently protracted to make much mental application perilous, and labour of almost any kind biirdensome : while the strength slowly gained was wanted for duties which claimed, and therefore received, the first attention. Delay was thus inevitable. But this delay has not been without advantage. Though it may have somewhat injured the circulation desired for the work, it has certainly tended in some degi'ee to its greater completeness.

Of the work itself the author may not speak, save to remark, that he has sought, by means of such information as he possessed, to preserve for general instruction the memory of one of those, of whom the number is happily increasing in every Christian denomination, who, raised by successful commercial enterprise to a position of wealth and social influence, employ their advantages, not as luxuries to be appropriated in selfish gratification, but as talents to be used in the common interests of humanity and religion. The life of such a one, if written with any due share of appreciation and fidelity, must have something to say which all may hear with profit, though most to say to those who are in circumstances of worldly prosperity similar to his own. To these then especially the

PREFACE. VU

work is commended, though not as furnishing a perfect model for their imitation ; for who, whatever his character, can pretend to this height of perfection 1 but as indicating, in more than one respect, and particularly in those respects which are highest, the line of conduct they would do well to pursue.

" The leaders of industry," says a great living sage, "are the captains of the world." To this class of commanders Mr. Ridgway belonged, and he accepted the command, or at least finally held it, with no narrow and selfish views of its duties and responsibilities. The object of his leading was not primarily to make a fortune, or to found a femily. It was not even to develop a particular branch of trade, or to give employment and means of subsistence to numbers of individuals dependent on his enterprise and skill, praiseworthy as unquestionably this latter object would have been. It was rather, by means of accumulating resources and gi^eater public and private influence, to further those higher interests of man and society, to which material advantages should ever be held subservient; to gain, in fact, both power and position, that from some high vantage ground, and in a sense eminently moral and religious, as well as social and political, he might the more effectually serve his

VUl PREFACE.

generation according to the will of God, and tlien peacefully fall on sleep. And tliis object he accomplished, and accomplished it so as to have, if not in any one great exploit, or in a plurality of such, yet in the multitude and manifold variety of his labours — ^persevered in to the close of a long life — much wherewith to meet the demand with which the great Napoleon is said to have challenged the capacity or desert of any one who was commended to him for employment or reward — "What has he done ?" It is for this reason that the present memoir is written ; and for the further reason, related to this, that the commemoration of such a life as Mr. Ridgway lived may tend to form to a similar and even higher excellence many other lives.

The memoir is necessarily, to ^ome extent, denominational. The author, however, persuades himself that it will not in any restrictive, much less in any uncharitable sense, be found sectarian.

To several friends his acknowledgments are due for suggestions, letters, &c.; but to one in particular — Ml'. William Scott, of Barlaston — whose friendship he values as one of the peculiar blessings of his life.

Contents

CHAPTEEI.

EMINENT MEN CENTRES OP HISTORIC INTEREST.

The Man and the Occasion — ^Luther — ^Wesley— Methodism Rich in Biography — Christianity in Earnest — John Eidgway, a Prince in Israel Page 3

Chapter I. Chapter I

EMINENT MEN CENTRES OF HISTORIC INTEREST.

History, it is said, is philosophy teaching by example. But the example must be that of individual men, if the philosophy is that of human thought and motive. Biography, then, is the proper sphere of this — ^is certainly that department of history in which the particular instruction most abounds. This takes us upward to the very springs of action, and downward in their after flow, as the springs widen into streams. It reveals the play and counter-play of the several &culties, according to their native tendencies, in the struggle after inward or outward good; the silent growth of the mind under the culture it receives, and its subsequent outgrowth into the particular habits and pursuits which definitely attest its character. True of biography in

B 2

4 THE MAN AND

general, this is especially true of the biographies of remarkable men. History, indeed, is yery much made up of such biographies; if not formally, yet virtually and in fact : while there are many remarkable men of whom history, as well from its ordinary plan as from the necessity of selection imposed upon it, can take but little account.

This applies to written history. In actual history no one is lost, — no single individual counts for nothing. The impression he makes may be slight, scarcely perceptible — a mere ripple on the surface, appearing soon to subside — but it is, nevertheless, real, and may possibly swell, though we see it not, in wave upon wave for ever. A man must have an influence proportioned to the sum of his being, to the power he possesses and actively puts forth. Where this power is great, the influence also will be great ; and hence the reason for the statement sometimes made, that the history of society is the history of its great men.

This seems to imply that society takes its mould from these ; that the activities and general complexion of society at particular periods are very much determined by one or more superior minds which rule over it with a kingly sway. But there is another theory, the opposite of this, which makes such minds, at least in what they accom-

THE OCCASION.

plish, the product — ^if I may so speak — of the generation to which they belong. The truth is, no exclusive theory can be established, while each of these views may be maintained on the special ground chosen by its advocates, with a force of reasoning to which there can hardly be any reply. The occasion makes the man, it is said; but it may be also said that the man makes the occasion. The former saying, if taken absolutely, would go far to destroy human freedom ; the latter, if considered alone, would do much to exclude the idea of a presiding Providence and a definite plan. Each gives but the half of a whole, and both together are required to express one complete truth.

There is, in the general play of kindred forces, a reciprocal operation. We have impression and rebound, action and reaction. Circumstances do much for a man ; but he is a poor specimen of his race who is only just what circumstances make him. He resigns his personality, and becomes himself a circumstance. While no one is independent of outward conditions, while outward conditions have considerable effect upon us, no one becomes really great who has not first the greatness in himself. A truly great man gathers up into the substance of his own character whatever will give him nurture or stimulus, and then b LUTHER.

becomes a centre from which to radiate the heat and reflect the light which he himself has received. He attracts to himself the elements and influences that are at work about him, blindly struggling towards an end that is felt rather than seen ; gives them in his own purpose a direction, and in his own speech a language ; and thereby operates with mighty impression upon masses that come to acknowledge him as chief.

But then he has the power to do this — ^the capacity to receive, the will to execute — or the work could not be done. The like achievement would be impossible to a man of less original capability. Luther, no doubt, had been anticipated and prepared for, in what had occurred before him. The age was ripe for his appearance ; Christendom waited for him. He came into possession of a rich inheritance of circumstances favourable to the work he was to do. But it was a Luther for whom the preparation was made. No other could have answered the call of the times, or have been the interpreter of the needs of the Church. One such as he was required to make his own the position that was to be occupied, to turn to adequate account the opportunities that were fast accumulating, to execute the high commission which Providence was plainly giving to some one. So, at a later period, the same state of

WE8LBY. 7

things appealed in the very same language to many good men at the same time ; the like circumstances were ready to mould them to heroic stature, and to inspire them with more than heroic ardour ; but it was reserved for Wesley — ^because, in fact, Wesley was in himself the most fitting instrument for this — ^to become the leader of a movement which, while rousing from its torpor the religious life of a whole nation, was destined to result in one of the most stupendous organizations for the diffusion of Christianity which the Church of Christ has ever known.

Now, it is the achievements of such men that famish the material of history. Sometimes, indeed, of men inferior to these, even though history should not mention their names; while, again, it is the lives of such that abound in the example by which philosophy is said to be taught. There is hardly any exercise more useful than the study of these. They make the past live before us. They bring us into the presence of men of whom the world was not worthy. They reveal to us their inner and their outer life ; make us companions of their course, observers of what they think and do. They show the power of thought, the force of will, the supremacy of conscience. They illustrate the beauty and blessedness of holy living, the positive advantage in the long run,

8 METHODISM RICH IN BIOGRAPHY.

notwithstanding the apparent confusion of things, of all that our higher judgments pronounce to be true and good. They indicate the laws of human progress, marking step by step the onward march of civilization and religion ; teach us what, by the utmost stretch of his capacity, is possible to man, and what, though not at the time possible, it is, nevertheless, noble to aim at.

Methodism is richer in nothing than in its biographies. It has now lived long enough to have many of these. Great names are not wanting to it — ^names which the world will not willingly let die. Great memories are a part of the inheritance it transmits to its children. Literature and scholarship are both worthily^ represented in its history ; especially considering the comparative recency of its origin, and the work which, by distinct preference, it has set it«elf to do. In the article of literature, indeed, even this qualification need not be made, particularly if the view be confined to that class of writings whose object it is to foster the growth of personal piety and zeal, and to preserve and to spread the faith which was once delivered to the saints. So of the power — than which there are few higher powers — of organization and government ; the power which combines individual elements into one orderly mass, and makes them as

CHRISTIANITY IN EARNEST. 9

a single agency — "moving altogether when it moves at all" — for the accomplishment of some great and definite purpose. Few communities can compare with Methodism in examples of this power, the great and definite purpose in its case being the fiirtherance of the Gospel both at home and abroad.

But, as indeed the last remark implies, Methodism is distinctively, as it is professedly, an aggressive form of Christianity. A high authority has pronounced it "Christianity in earnest.'* It came into existence when there was pressing need of it, else it had not been ; a need then but little recognised, though now universally acknowledged. It was raised up to reanimate a dying creed, and make it the symbol of a living faith ; to trim and rekindle the lamps that were growing dim in the sanctuary, that the way into the Holiest might not be missed ; to carry their light abroad, beyond the precincts of the sanctuary, even though, as in the case of Gideon's army, in " empty pitchers," that the multitudes of our countrymen who sat in the region and shadow of death might at least catch one ray of it ; to make religion, where it was professed, but only too little known, a thing of life and power — a joy, in fact, to millions, dead, living, or yet to be bom. Its memories, therefore, are for the most part those of sainted piety and of minis-

10 JOHN RIDGWAY,

terial efficiency ; of faith before which moimtains disappeared ; of zeal that many waters could not quench ; of love that wept to see others weep, and dried its tears in drying theirs. Its biographies are those of Christian men, of men made Christian through its means ; not seldom of men in humble life, whom, nevertheless, God will reckon among the choicest of His jewels, in that day when He shall make them up ; sometimes of men who, by the native force of their character, and the sancti£cation of the Holy Spirit, have pressed their way upward and onward through a crowd of obstructions, until, as ministers of the Gospel, they have shone like stars in the right hand of the Son of God ; often of men who, under it8 shadow and fostering nurture, have risen to affluence, to high positions, to commanding influence, to great usefulness in almost every department of human labour.

It is one of this last description, and one occupying a foremost place in the class to which he belonged, whose history and character we have now to sketch. Our sketch may fail to present him as he really was, but it will serve to vivify the recollections of those who knew him, and it may be to profit, if not by instruction, yet by stimulus, those who knew him not. It must in detail be less complete than we could wish: partly

A PRINCE IN ISRAEL. 11

because such a life as his leaves little for the biographer but a series of public and private acts of similar kind, which^ though it were noble to perform, it would be tedious or ostentatious to repeat ; partly because this little is rendered still less for our purpose by the absence of memoranda which he alone could have famished, but which he was ever too busy to make ; and partly, again, because many facts and incidents which in other men's lives would be deemed remarkable, were in his scarcely observed, or with only the impression of the passing moment, seeing they were not exceptional or peculiar, but fell harmoniously in with a life of which the whole key was above the common pitch. But whatever the deficiency of our portrait — ^however it may fail in breadth or minuteness, in likeness or in finish — it will assuredly be the portrait of one who was thought of while living, and will long be remembered, now dead, as a Prince in Israel.

CHAPTER n.

Chapter II. Natural Endowments And Home Inpluences

John Ridgway was bom at Hanley, Staffordshire Potteries, on the 1st of February, 1786. He died there, at Cauldon Place, nearly seventy-five years after. He thus survived the ordinary term of human life, coming close upon the period when man's strength is said to be labour and sorrow. Labour and sorrow it might have been to him, had he been spared till then; but there was less in his case to foreshadow this experience than in the case of most who live as long as he. In him life was vigorous to the last — so vigorous, that it might almost be said of him, as was said of Moses, whose death, like his own, was but just a retirement from labour, '^his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated."

'* Whom the gods love die young," was a saying

16 EARLY AND LATE DEATHS.

of the ancient heathen. The sentiment is pleasing, and not without a certain element of truth. We have the same feeling ourselves, when a child of rare endowment, of strange wisdom and sweetness, is taken away from us. Not seldom, also, in view of the evils that are thereby avoided and of the blessedness that is thereby insured, we speak of it as a happy thing for children to die young. And happy it certainly lA, since the covenant of redeeming mercy has made it so : for of such is the kingdom of heaven. But it is far more happy to live long and well, to live laboriously and usefully, to achieve much for oneself and still more for others, thus to become, in the language of the prophet, " an old man that hath filled his days " ; and then, like fruit full grown and ripe, to fall without violence into the hands of the great husbandman, when in due season he comes to gather and to garner. So lived and so died John Eidgway.

A character like his is no accident, nor is it of human fabrication merely. No character is, though in some there is iufinitely more of purpose and of training than in others. Nor is it wholly a growth, unless by growth be meant the development under wise and patient nurture of that which has great original capability. So considered, it is a growth ; and this, perhaps, gives us the correctest view of it. It is like a plant of noble stock, or

NATURAL GIFTS, 17

rather germ of the rarer sort, which, because cultivated by a skilful hand and with watchful tenderness, shoots steadily up into leafy luxuriance and solid strength of stem and branch, and, when the time comes, rewards the care bestowed upon it by a plentiful crop of goodly fruit. Character in general, indeed, as well as that character which claims attention by its special excellence, depends much upon the same conditions ; first upon what is natural to man, and then upon the kind of education he receives.

In both these Mr. Ridgway was singularly favoured. What he had from nature was, if not of the best, yet very high in the comparison with ordinary endowments. He had a strong physical constitution ; marked in feature, and, in matured life, massive in build. Inheriting this at birth, he never lost it : so that he knew little of sickness, and not much more of fatigue. His perpetual health kept him perpetually cheerful, ever able to work, and evef delighting in work. Life in him was nothing feeble, nothing sluggish, but of tidal strength and freshness, coursing with deep and rapid current through all the channels where life could circulate or throb.

His mind was not unsuited to its dwellingplace. There was, in fact, an admirable fitness and adjustment in the two ; the one corresponding to

c

18 RELATION OF MIND TO BODY.

the otlier, as if on some principle of pre-established harmony. It may be that this is always the case, or with only rare exceptions, that the body is a fitting instrument,, as also a fitting expression of the mind: so that if one were skilled in such mysteries, were keen-sighted enough to decipher the language of material signs, it would be easy — far more easy than by observing certain prominences and depressions on the skull — to arrive at some probable judgment concerning man's natural character by means of outward form and feature. It cannot be but that the mind has much to do with the moulding of the body, as it has certainly much to do with its use and destiny; not, however, as the embryo of it, nor as identical with the principle which we call life, but still as something vital and penetrative — a force ever present and ever operative, refining or debasing, exalting or humbling, as its own nature may be. In this respect we claim for Mr. Ridgway nothing very extraordinary. Intellectually considered, his powers were not of the highest order : they were yet such as gave him no great difficulty in mastering what he was wishful to understand. Sagacity, shrewdness, humour, wit, with an ardent temperament, great good-nature, and an instinct that turned everything to some practical account — ^these were among hi& most

A CHRISTIAN HOME. 19

observable characteristics ; and these were purely natural. Whatever that quality may be which we denominate " common sense," which we claim as a specially distinctive feature of the English mind, and which no training will effectually give, he possessed in a high degree. Power he had, whatever is meant by that term ; and this apart from the mere influence of acquired position. It was power innate and personal, becoming in effect the power of mind over mind, and of one mind over many minds. Probably this power was the property of no faculty in particular, but was the result of the whole sum of his faculties, which, while there was nothing very remarkable in any one, were in their general substance and combination a much more than common endowment.

With superior natural gifts, he had, to begin with, a happy home and a thoroughly Christian education. These are peculiar advantages, in the absence of which the highest gifts may be the heaviest misfortunes. A happy home is the nursery of the sweetest charities ; a Christian education is the means to the noblest virtues. "Whose are the fathers," says the apostle, in giving an inventory of the great and distinguishing privileges of the ancient Jews ; from which a learned writer thus beautifully discourses : " Nobility is commonly held in the highest esteem. But a true

c 2

JiO TKUE NOBILITY.

nobiKty consists not in having descended from a line of kings, but in having for our fathers and grandfathers those who were the children of God ; in being so traiaed and nurtured at home, that piety is taken in with our mother's milk ; and in receiving from our parents the blessing assured in the Divine promise, *I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.'"* So Cowper sweetly sings —

" My boast is not that I deduce my birtli From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth ; But higher far my proud pretensions rise, — The son of parents pass'd into the skies. "

Mr. Ridgway belonged to what is called a good family, though it is difficult with certainty to trace its genealogy far backward.t He was the eldest

+ I have before me several documents, apparently preserved with great care, which seem to have been drawn up and collected with a view to connect the family, in one line of descent, with a family which began to be of some consequence as early as the time of Edward the Fourth. This family was settled in Devonshire, ** in the neighbourhood of Tor Abbey, in the church of which there are several monuments (of the family), and near it a large extent of ground, still called Ridgway plains.'' Some of the members served in important civil

THE RIDGWAY FAMILY. 21

son of Job Ridgway, one of the eminent potters who acquired reputation and wealth towards the close of the last and the beginning of the present century. Of the father, we learn something from his own pen, and something more from the pen of his son, whose joint contributions were published in a short memoir soon after his death. In this memoir we are told that the grandfather "possessed a very good estate;*' but, being thoughtless and dissipated, soon involved himself in trouble, and in the end was compelled to work for a living. This also was the necessity of Job, and at a very early period; but with this difference of result, that by working he redeemed the fortunes of his family, in becoming a successful and comparatively wealthy manufacturer.

This result was doubtless aided by a character greatly different from that of his father ; different, at least, from his twenty-first year, for at that

eapaeities, and even won distinction. Of these was John Ridgway, Member of Parliament for Exeter in the reign of Mary, of whom one of the said monuments reports, that he was '* a man of good and liberal education, well versed in transacting affairs, and deserving well of his country for his fidelity to Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, and Queen Mary." Another, Thomas Ridgway, was knighted; and a third was ennobled, though the title afterwards became extinct. One branch of the family removed into Cheshire some time during the seventeenth century ; and it was with this that Mr. Bidgway was connected, if connected with the family at alL

22 CONVERSION OF FATHER.

time lie became openly and decidedly a follower of Christ. His conversion was marked and complete, shedding the influence of grace on his whole subsequent life. He had previously known the bitterness of sin — in many a struggle with the lust of his own heart, in many a conflict with the enticements of the world; but now his pain rose to agony, and his agony, like the darkness that precedes the dawn, was the virtual harbinger of most heavenly peace. While at prayer, as he himself tells us, his soul " entered into rest ; " and his language was, " Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul." He did declare, and the declaration resulted, in a few months, in the conversion of about twenty-five others. His religious life partook of the energy that was natural to him, and this was sufficient to carry him into any enterprise which wisdom or piety could suggest or justify. The force of his regenerated character soon made itself felt on all about him — ^in the church, at the manufactory, pre-eminently at home, everywhere — appearing ever in new forms of activity, as new relations were entered into, or as new duties, or a more extended sphere of them, arose out of more prosperous circumstances. With a loving remembrance of his virtues, the son, dwelling on each with a fond minuteness of detail, tells what he was and what

HIS EXEMPLARY CHARACTER. 23

he did in almost every private and public relation ; how that, as a member of civil society, he loved Ms country, and withheld his hand from nothing that he coiJd do to promote the common good ; how that, as a worshipper in the house of God, he was always, whoever might officiate, and whatever the state of the weather, among the first and most regular there, giving also to those in his employment the same opportunity to attend the week-night service as he himself enjoyed ; how that, as one engaged occasionally in the ministry of the Gospel, he had an intimate acquaintance with Divine truth, and so proclaimed it that few in the like circumstances were rendered so great a blessing as he ; how that, in yet another office, that of classleader, his efficiency was such that the church was greatly enlarged by his exertions ; how that, finally, and more particularly for our purpose, having himaelf "a singular depth and clearness of religious experience, and a close communion with God through the Spirit," he sought, as the head of a family, like Abraham, to "command his children and his household after him," took a peculiar delight in reading the Word of God, or in hearing it read, and had so sacred a regard to morning and evening devotion, that not a single omission of family prayer at these times was ever known to have taken place.