The Life of Thomas Cook

Front matter

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Preface

In the preparation of this volume I have been much helped by Mrs. Thomas Cook, who has placed at my disposal her late husband’s correspondence and much other material which she thought might be of service. I may add that it was only at Mrs. Cook’s urgent request that I undertook the affecting duty of writing this memoir. For various reasons which I need not here relate, I did not consider that I had all the qualifications necessary for compiling the story of God’s dealings with so eminent a servant of His as was the subject of this sketch. On the other hand, I could not deny that very intimate and long continued friendship with Mr. Cook had given me some fitness for the task which I was desired to discharge. However, the work is now done to the best of my ability, and I can only hope that it may please God to use what I have written to further the interests of that cause which lay so near to the heart of the sainted minister whose career I have ventured to describe.

Perhaps I should add that in writing the account of Mr. Cook’s evangelistic tours in Norway, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, I have made much use of the records that he himself published of those remarkable events. It seemed desirable

6 PREFACE that inasmuch as this purports to be a life of the evangelist and not merely a narrative of his later ministry the whole of his public work should, as far as was possible, be brought under review.

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Contents

INTRODUCTORY - - : EARLY LIFE AND CONVERSION - - A FISHER OF MEN—HIS FIRST SERVICE —HIS FIRST MISSION—A PENTE- COSTAL BLESSING - - 2 THOMAS COOK’S EXPERIENCE - - A LAY EVANGELIST—IN THE HALIFAX AND BRADFORD DISTRICT - - CONNEXIONAL EVANGELIST — SUM- MARY OF RESULTS - - DOMESTIC JOYS AND SORROWS—AP- PRECIATION BY REV. J. WHITEHEAD CLEGG—MISSION TOUR IN NORWAY EVANGELISTIC TOUR IN SOUTH AFRICA MISSION TOUR IN AUSTRALASIA AND CEYLON—HOME AGAIN - - THE GOSPEL CAR MOVEMENT - - THE SOUTHPORT CONVENTION FOR THE PROMOTION OF HOLINESS—REMIN- ISCENCES BY REV. ISAAC E. PAGE— CEASES TO BE A CONNEXIONAL EVANGELIST - - - THE ‘ JOYFUL NEWS’ MISSION - CLIFF COLLEGE TRAINING HOME AND MISSION - - - -

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CONTENTS

Chapter I Early Life And Conversion To God

Tuomas Cook was born in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, on August 20, 1859. Soon after his birth his, parents removed some little distance from the town, as his father was made foreman of some iron-works in the vicinity. The father was a capable man, and could turn his hand to almost anything; and it was from him that Thomas inherited a similar faculty of general usefulness. He sent his sons to a school in an adjacent country place, and provided them with a donkey on which they used to ride thither in turns, to the amusement of the other scholars. The future evangelist was as full of mischief in those days as he was of goodness in later days; the child being father of the man. During this period, there being no Wesleyan chapel in the neighbourhood, Thomas Cook’s parents attended the services of the Church of England, Thomas and one of his brothers becoming members ’ of the choir. Like Spurgeon, Thomas Cook often made use of his own experience in his sermons, and in one preached not long before his death, he alluded to these early days, and said he used then to sit down sometimes, and think about eternity ‘until his head reeled, and he wished he had never 15 been born. Eternity was in his heart in the days of his youth as certainly as in subsequent years. Of Saul of Tarsus God said, ‘ He is a vessel of election, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel.’ Hence Ananias told Saul, ‘The God of our fathers hath had thee in hand, to know His will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from His mouth.’ Saul, however, was not the last man God had ‘in hand’ for this purpose. He had Thomas Cook ‘in hand’ also, and ordered his steps accordingly. By the guidance of Providence Thomas Cook’s family went to live in Middlesbrough, in the course of a short time, and joined the congregation of the South Bank Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. Had Thomas Cook remained a Churchman he might have been a respectable chorister, but he would never have been the soul-saving evangelist we know him tohave been. To fit him for this life-work Methodist preaching was necessary, as also was the Methodist class-meeting. He was soon impressed by the preaching of the Word, a sermon of the late Rev. James Nance, on the voice of harpers harping with their harps, which he heard when only seven years of age, deeply influencing him, and contributing towards his conversion. Late in life he acknowledged the blessing he had received in his childhood from the ministry of James Nance. In modern days it has become the custom in not a few churches to withdraw the scholars from public worship before the sermon is begun. A more unwise procedure can scarcely be conceived. Sir W. R. Nicoll has exerted his influence of late to the utmost to prevent the continuance of this ‘horrible and dreadful ’

EARLY LIFE 7 innovation, and he has truly remarked that the sermons which impress a child most are not those which are addressed to children, but to the congregation, children being wiser than they are supposed to be, and more appreciative of that truest eloquence of the heart. When the preacher sees the children being withdrawn Sir W. R. Nicoll advises him to call them back, saying, “ Come, ye children, hearken unto me ; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.’

Thomas Cook joined the Sunday school, and was deeply impressed with the Christian life of his teacher, who happened to be a railway porter, and to whom, perhaps, more than to any other one person save his praying mother, he considered that he owed his soul. This godly railway porter reminds us of Newman’s sermon on ‘ The World’s Benefactors.’ In that well-known discourse the great preacher contends that some of the greatest benefactors the world has had have been unknown, as St. Andrew, whose history suggested the thought to Newman, was in comparison with most of the other Apostles. ‘ Who was the first cultivator of corn?’ asks the preacher. We do not know; nor do we know the name of the humble man who by his winsome life allured Thomas Cook to brighter worlds, and showed him the way wherein to walk. To the class of Christians represented by this useful Sunday-school teacher we may apply Paul’s words ‘ Those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary.’

The circumstances of Thomas Cook’s conversion are briefly these: In 1875, when he was sixteen years of age, some special meetings for prayer were held in the circuit as a preparation for Children’s

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Sunday. These were followed by a series of evangelistic services, conducted by local preachers, at one of which Thomas Cook decided for God, and received the forgiveness of sins. This was on November 2, 1875. I have elsewhere stated that Thomas Cook was the only convert of that Mission as far as was known. Thomas Cook himself was my informant, and he never corrected the statement. After his death, however, I was informed by a good Methodist class-leader, who was present at that memorable service, and remembers it distinctly, that there were three conversions on the evening in question; Thomas Cook’s being one, and that the name of one of the other two is still on my informant’s class-book. That being so, it would seem that Thomas Cook’s memory misled him, though it is surprising that the correction was not made during his lifetime. It is, of course, immaterial whether one or more were converted to God that evening; what is important is, Thomas Cook was converted ; and the question we have to decide is this: Was his conversion exceptional ? or is it necessary that every one should repent and turn again, that his sins may be blotted out, that ‘so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord’? Wesley said at first that he was not converted till;May, 1738. But he had then been a communicant of the Church of England for twenty-seven years; he had founded the nucleus of the Methodist Society at Oxford; he had visited the prisons with great regularity, and relieved the poor at the cost of extraordinary self-denial, and also spent some time in direct missionary work. If, therefore, all men were as

CONVERSION 19 he was prior to 1738, would not the millennium be nigh at hand? Asis well known, Wesley afterwards modified his view, and in a footnote said he was not sure of this, namely, that he was not converted before 1738. But even then he seemed to hesitate to say that he was sure that he was converted before that memorable day in May, 1738. Wesley’s biographers have been much perplexed with this incident. In recent days the late Rev. Dr. Rigg, and the late Rev. Richard Green, and the Rev. Dr. Fitchett, of Australia, have all dealt with the problem in their respective Lives of the Founder of Methodism. In the Spectator newspaper there appeared in due course two suggestive articles based on the Lives of Wesley, by Richard Green and Dr. Fitchett, in which the writer or writers took the two biographers to task because they adhere to the view that Wesley’s conversion did not take place till 1738. The Christian journalist admits that it is too late to contradict the reality of the phenomena of conversion, which he declares is an experience calculated to transform the life of the individual to whom it is given. But he is surprised to find a sober-minded man of to-day, i.e. Dr. Fitchett, regarding conversion as an essential, indeed as the essential feature of the Christian life.

I do not wish to draw a comparison between Wesley and Thomas Cook; much less to treat their experience as identical. But they both underwent a striking change which they described as conversion ; the one when he was in his thirtysixth year, andthe other when he was in his seventeenth year, and both of them were remarkably owned of God in the salvation of their fellows, and were accustomed to trace their usefulness to the blessing which they received when they were consciously saved.

It is certain that, no matter when Wesley was converted, there would have been no Evangelical Revival in the eighteenth century, so far as he was concerned, had it not been for the change he experienced in 1738. Nor would this book ever have been written had not Thomas Cook experienced a somewhat similar change. We must not fence the tables too rigorously, nor break the bruised reed, nor quench the dimly-burning wick. Conversions may be gradual or sudden; both kinds must be appreciated ; but the change itself must be insisted upon. Dr. Rigg described Wesley’s conversion in 1738 as his ‘ evangelical conversion,’ and the phrase was well chosen. An evangelical conversion led to an evangelical revival; without the former the latter would have been impossible. The Rev. R. C. Gillie has lately published a little book with the arresting title Evangelicalism: Has it a future? Jf it has not, the occupation of Methodism is gone. Mr. Gillie writes: ‘Take the experience of instantaneous conversion. It is an undoubted fact. It happens to-day. It is often an abiding revolution, a final reversal of character. But it easily becomes an obstacle to others when narrated, and a bitter disappointment to oneself when experienced, if we forget that we are dealing with endlessly varied and variable human nature.’ This caution must never be forgotten.

In the Primitive Methodist Chapel at Colchester

CONVERSION 21 there is a tablet on the wall which commemorates the fact that near that spot Charles Haddon Spurgeon passed from death to life. The great preacher never ceased to refer to that auspicious moment when he ‘looked,’ and was saved, his conversion leading to the conversion of many thousands, his children in the gospel being scattered throughout the world. In a room connected with the Wesleyan Chapel, Broad Street, Nottingham, there is another memorial stone which records the fact that in that room William Booth, the Founder of the Salvation Army, was converted to God. The Salvation Army is good proof that he was converted, and the great event took place on the spot indicated by the tablet. It is noteworthy that some kind of monument has been put up on Methodist property to commemorate a conversion. The gospel has its victories more renowned than those of war. And that the gospel won a great victory when that particular conversion was effected was seen after many long years, when William Booth’s body was carried to its burial through the streets of London, and the traffic was suspended, and all business came to a standstill whilst the funeral procession marched to its destination. It will become us as Methodists to ask whether we are aiming at conversions such as General Booth’s and Thomas Cook’s, or whether we are settled on our lees and suffering from what Professor George Adam Smith has described as ‘the putrescence of respectability,’ on which, he says, a great sermon could be preached.

News has reached this country of a sermon preached in New York by the Rev. Dr. J. H. Jowett, in which he alluded to Methodism, and asked with evident respect and sympathy whether, having begun in the Spirit, Methodism was now ‘ perfected in the flesh.’ One wonders how it has come about that so generous and wise an outsider as Dr. Jowett has conceived that suspicion. Inside our Church, it would seem, somewhat similar misgivings have arisen. Thus, for example, the Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, in a most edifying biography he has published of William Owen—a Shropshire miner who was converted ‘under the old Act’ in 1841, and led three society classes during forty years, never being absent from one of them during that period save on three occasions—remarks that when that useful Methodist layman came to the close of life, he was disturbed by certain portents of impending change, the meaning of which was somewhat hidden from him. And, furthermore, in Lord Wolverhampton’s Life we read that when he was putting off his armour he had serious thoughts about present-day Methodism, and wished to warn his fellow-religionists against certain tendencies which he thought he had discovered, and which seemed to him to bode no good to the Church he loved so well. The friendly critics we have named were evidently a little afraid lest Methodism should lose the dew of its youth, as, alas, so many Churches have done ; and the question that we are concerned to ask is this, Is there any real ground for this fear? If the righteous smite us, it shall be a kindness ; if he reproves us, it shall be as oil upon the head ; and we should not refuse it. Our services have been shortened, with a view to conciliate modern taste; we have almost given up singing

CONVERSION 23 in our public services the grand old hymns which have been justly described as ‘ theology on fire,’ for which a Churchman like Canon Simpson, of St. Paul’s, expresses great enthusiasm; but the result is not encouraging. When our fathers “began in the Spirit,’ they sang, for example, this inspiring ode : Jesu’s tremendous name Puts all our foes to flight: Jesus, the meek, the angry Lamb, A Lion is in fight.

By all hell’s host withstood, We all hell’s host o’erthrow ; And conquering them, through Jesu’s blood, We still to conquer go.

If we have not been as triumphant in recent years as former generations were in the days of Peter McOwan, Samuel Romilly Hall, Thomas Vasey, John Rattenbury, and others who might be named, is it because we have not been as militant as they were ? Happily there are signs of returning spiritual prosperity in our midst. Not a few discerning spirits amongst us are convinced that they have heard the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, and they are, consequently, bestirring themselves and inciting their brethren to do the same. God is enduing His ministers with righteousness, and making His chosen people joyful. The Plymouth Conference of 1913 was a season of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. Its President is nothing if not a tireless evangelist, and he has called his Church to ‘ Fervent, definite, aggressive evangelism’; and proposes, during his year of office, to visit many of the districts for the purpose of conducting evangelistic services in the circuits connected with them. There is some reason to hope that the time to favour Zion, yea, the set time, will soon come; and that God, even our own God, will bless us. ‘To teach religion,’ says Carlyle, ‘the first thing necessary is to find a man who has religion.” Thomas Cook taught religion, to some purpose, as we hope to show; and he had religion, as we have already seen. While we continue the story let us remember that ‘the river of God is full of water’; and that if we believe on Christ, from us also there shall flow rivers of living water.

Chapter II A Fisher Of Men

SOME time after his conversion, but before he began his life-work, Thomas Cook had a dream to which ever afterwards he attached importance. He dreamt that he was standing by a lake crowded with fish, and that he was casting in the nets, and enclosing a multitude of fish, while a voice said to him, ‘I will make you a fisher of men.’ He regarded this as an authentication of the call he believed he had received from God. We may account for the dream as we will, but it is certain that the same Lord who made Simon and his partners, James and John, fishers of men, made Thomas Cook also a fisher of men. ‘ Fishers of men!’ We ought to realize the dignity and sacredness of the calling. The Son of Man Himself came to seek and to save lost men. He did not come to seek renown or wealth, or secular power, but to seek men. And surely he is like his Master who does not fish for markets nor for fame, but for men. ‘A man,’ says Carlyle, ‘even professing, and never so languidly making still some endeavour, to save the souls of men: contrast him with a man professing to do little but shoot the partridges of men.’ No sooner was Thomas Cook converted than he began to commend his Saviour to others, 25

The late General Booth said, ‘ My conversion made me in a moment a preacher of the gospel.’ Thomas Cook’s conversion had the same effect upon him, and in truth we ought to ask ourselves whether every conversion ought not to have a like effect. This would seem to be the beliet of the mission Churches in Uganda and Korea, where, as we are told, the rule is that before any convert shall be admitted into membership with the Church he shall prove his fitness for the position by bringing with him some individual whom he himself has been the means of leading to Christ. ‘Saved to save,’ is the motto to be kept in mind by every convert. Thomas Cook at this time resolved to let no day pass without speaking to some one person at least, concerning his salvation. He also joined another youth who was like-minded, in conducting open-air services. The class-meeting was a great help to Thomas Cook at this time. His leader advised him about his reading, and gave him such help as he could with the mental difficulties that perplexed him. He also invited him to join a Mission Band which was at work in the neighbourhood. Commissioner Railton, of the Salvation Army, was a member of that band, and a candidate for the Wesleyan ministry; his candidature, however, was not endo1sed by the circuit quarterly-meeting, much to the grief of the other members of the organization. Thomas Cook was in the habit of saying in after-life that some of the most consistent and spiritually-minded men he had ever met belonged to that band, and for his connexion with it he was always thankful. If the truth must be told, Thomas Cook was rather inclined to join

A FISHER OF MEN 27 the Salvation Army about that time, for reasons which are obvious ; but the pillar of cloud led him in another direction, greatly to the advantage of his own Church.

He spent about two years as a member of this Mission Band, and during that time no Sunday passed without some souls being saved at the services in which the band took part. It was also Thomas Cook’s custom to spend each Sunday morning in the slums of the town, with a blind local preacher, seeking, like the angels who hastened Lot out of Sodom, to persuade the people who lived there, and who in many cases made the slums _ what they were, to amend their ways and their doings.

William Morley Punshon

About the time of which we are writing, the late Dr. Punshon visited Middlesbrough, and in the course of an address which he gave, he appealed to the young men who were present, to offer for the Christian ministry. Thomas Cook was there, and the orator’s thrilling words went home to his heart. There and then he lifted up his heart to God in prayer and offered himself for the work if it pleased Him to accept the offering. No fire fell from heaven in proof that the sacrifice was accepted, but Thomas Cook received an inward assurance that it was so, and henceforth he regarded himself as separated unto the work of the ministry. Meanwhile he became a pupil teacher in a day school, and in that situation, with the quick understanding that always marked him, he acquired much information which stood him in good stead in the arduous work to which he soon afterwards dedicated his life. He then became a local preacher.

It is, however, singular that although he had been a mission preacher for two years, and had shown great zeal, especially in the streets, where he preached continually, no one asked him to offer for the plan, neither did any one mention his name at the Local Preachers’ Meeting. It may be worth while to notice this, especially as we remember that when he first offered for the Wesleyan ministry his offer was declined. But ‘He that hath the key of David,’ and openeth, so that none shall shut, set before this youth ‘a door opened’ ; and the result was seen in the blessed work he subsequently did for God.

My times be in Thy hand !

Perfect the cup as planned !

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.

Thomas Cook took the unusual course of asking a local preacher to introduce his name to the Local Preachers’ Meeting. The reply he got was that young men did not take the first step themselves, but waited for the call of the Church to come to them. But this young man was conscious that his eye was single ; he was full of zeal for souls which he felt must find vent, and he firmly believed that he was called of God to preach His Word. Under these circumstances he did not scruple to set the ball rolling himself.

Joseph did the same when he was in prison; he asked the butler to speak to Pharaoh for him, and bring him out of that house. Iam not prepared to deny that Joseph would have been still more

HIS FIRST SERVICE 29 worthy of a place in that chapter which has been called ‘the Westminster Abbey of the New Testament,’ than he was if he had refrained from any attempt to force the hand of Providence, but his precipitance, if such it was, is one of those touches of nature which show that the best of men are but men at the best, so difficult is it to ‘ stand still and see the salvation of God.’ Had Joseph kept his peace no doubt sooner or later the prison door would have been opened for him; perhaps sooner, for the butler forgot Joseph for two years. And had Thomas Cook held his peace we feel sure that the door would have opened of its own accord. Our strength sometimes is to ‘sit still,’ but it is the most difficult thing we are called to do. ‘He that believeth shall not make a fuss,’ as Dr. G. A. Smith suggests that passage may be rendered.

HIS FIRST SERVICE

The first service Thomas Cook conducted as a local preacher was a strange one. The congregation consisted of five persons, one being brought by the preacher himself; the chapel-keeper and his wife made two more, and two boys completed the assembly. The two boys, however, withdrew before the young preacher had finished his sermon, not being interested in the discourse, and little thinking that thirty-five years later their premature retirement would be reported to posterity. In December, 1878, he was received as a fully accredited local preacher, after being examined in the usual manner by the superintendent minister.

During this period Thomas Cook went through a course of reading, including some Methodist works, which kindled within him a strong desire for the blessing of entire sanctification, and consequently affected his entire future ministry. During the two years Thomas Cook spent as a local preacher, he being then in his teens, his work was much blessed of God. He diffused his services over several denominations, including the Salvation Army, and he rarely preached without gathering some fruit unto life eternal. The names of three hundred inquirers were taken during this period at his various services.

‘A son in the gospel,’ wrote James Smetham, in 1861, ‘must be a pleasant relationship’; what must it have been to have sustained this relationship to three hundred persons, and that before attaining one’s majority! ‘Henceforth thou shalt catch men.’ Men are to be caught (i.e. ‘taken alive,’ R.V. m.) and caught by men. Happy;is the man who is permitted to catch them, though he catches nothing else. Six months after Thomas Cook’s death I saw on his grave in the churchyard at Calver a faded wreath, ‘a tribute from a converted drunkard and gambler.’ There was no more attached to the card, and no one knew who brought it. But how beautiful to have such a memento placed on one’s grave! A soul saved from death, and a multitude of sins hidden! And to think of three hundred souls saved by a local preacher during the first two years he was on the plan! About this time he spent a Sunday with the late Mr. Joshua Dawson, at Darlington, and conducted services for the Salvation Army, with the result that he saw two hundred believers seeking purity of heart, and fourteen penitents seeking pardon.

HIS FIRST MISSION 31

HIS FIRST MISSION

During his Christmas holidays in 1879, Thomas Cook held his first mission, at Espland Hill, near Appleby. Amongst the converts were two old men, aged seventy-nine and eighty. They both endured ‘ to the end,’ which owing to their advanced age, soon came, and they were ‘ saved.’

‘ Despairing of no man,’ said our Lord; no, not even of one who has spent nearly fourscore years in sin and who has one foot in the grave. ‘ With God all things are possible’; so said the Saviour speaking of conversions. The Rev. Eric S. Waterhouse, M.A., writes thus in his The Psychology of the Christian Life: ‘I have an authenticated record of a man, just deceased at the age of ninetyseven, who showed no religious interest whatever, though living an upright life, till the age of eightytwo. After that he experienced a gradual change, marked by no crisis, and became attached to a Church—and subsequently a Sunday-school superintendent!’ ‘Very dry’ bones may live. ‘God is able to raise up, even from the dead.’

Shortly after this mission, Thomas Cook held several remarkable services in Newcastle-on-Tyne. He addressed some thousands of persons on this occasion, and witnessed such extraordinary manifestations of divine power that he was reminded of the occurrences that took place under the preaching of the Wesleys. The young evangelist was naturally much impressed by these events, as Moses was impressed when he saw the bush burning, and yet not consumed. Some years afterwards he saw similar displays of supernatural influences when he was preaching to the Kaffirs, through an interpreter, in South Africa. During the course of the recent Welsh Revival, many were led to say, ‘We have seen strange things to-day.’ These things, however, should not surprise men who know their Bibles. When the Spirit is poured out from on high, wonders are shown in the heaven above, and signs on the earth beneath. The day of Pentecost was not the last ‘ great and notable day ’ of the Lord.

A PENTECOSTAL BLESSING

When Thomas Cook’s work on earth was done, and we had committed his body to the ground, one of his brethren stepped forward, the Rev. C. W. Andrews, B.A., and took the opportunity of saying that the departed evangelist had been a faithful witness to the great doctrine of Entire Sanctification, and he added that he wished on that solemn occasion to emphasize that aspect of Thomas Cook’s blessed ministry. We trust it may be useful to explain how he came to preach this truth, and to lead so many of his brother ministers and others into the sabbath of God’s love.