I will begin with an apology for those of you who came hoping to hear about Sarah Edwards. I fear I'm getting a reputation that, at least when it comes to the Cary Conference, I never speak on the assigned topic, and you'll probably be wondering what kind of perverse individual I am. Various things do transpire during the course of the assignment of a topic and the actual preparation of it. And while I did start out thinking, yes, Sarah Edwards, it has gone through a number of configurations since then. For a few weeks, it was going to be William Cooper, and then more laterally, Thomas Cranmer. And it is Samuel Pierce. I've been working on all of these figures in this past year. And Pierce, in many respects, has gripped my mind. Some of you may have heard items from Pierce's life before. But I suspect that probably few of you have heard a detailed study of Samuel Pierce. The passage that was read earlier was very appropriate, especially that first verse, 1 Peter 1.22, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren, love one another earnestly from the heart. Andrew Fuller, who wrote Pierce's memoirs and biography after his death at the age of 33, said if there was one characteristic that dominated the life of Samuel Peirce, it was holy love. And he develops this at some length in his concluding section of his biography of Samuel Peirce. Peirce's dates are 1766 to 1799. He died at the age of 33. He is one of those men like others more well-known, David Brainerd, who died before he was 30, or Joseph Aline, who also died before he was 30, or Robert Murray McShane, who also died before he was 30, or Jim Elliott, who also died before he was 30. One of these men whose life and ministry captures the imagination of a generation. And who are you? profound impact upon his contemporaries, far profounder than one would expect for one so young in years at the time of his death. But God, it would appear that from time to time does this in the history of the church. Individuals whose, it's almost as if 30 to 40 years of Christian living is packed into 10 or 12 brief years. Scarcely known today, Samuel Pierce was in his own day very well known for the anointing that attended his preaching, and what we want to think about today, the depth of his spirituality. In what follows immediately, I'm going to quote from a man named William Jay, whose ministry spanned the first 50 or so years of the 19th century in the town called Bath, in those days a very important holiday resort for the upper class in England. William Jay knew Pierce as a young man, and he could say this, when I have endeavoured to form an image of our Lord as a preacher, Pierce as oftener presented himself to my mind than any other I have been acquainted with. He had, he says, a mildness and a tenderness in his style of preaching, and a peculiar unction. When Jay wrote those words, it was many years after the death of Pierce. But he said he could still see in his mind's eye Pierce as a preacher and the impression he made upon his hearers. And Jay has this comment also about the last time he saw Pierce alive. What a savor does communion with such a man leave upon the spirit. It's an incredible remark to make in terms of friendship, similar to that remark that again was made about Robert Murray with Shane on one occasion, that being with him made you afraid to sin. Two other writers, and this is all by way of introduction, two other writers, David Bogue and James Bennett, two nonconformists or ministers outside of the Church of England who wrote a history of the various bodies outside of the Church of England, had similar remarks about Pierce. When he preached, they said, quote, the most careless were attentive. The most prejudiced became favorable. The coldest felt, in spite of themselves, that they began to kindle. But it was when he prayed in public, they said, that Pierce's spiritual ardor was most apparent. Many would say after it, we scarcely seem to pray before. It was not uncommon in probably the 30 to 40 years after Pierce's death, when his memory was still well known and still fragrant, it was not uncommon for writers to describe him as the Seraphic Pierce. Well, something then of his life, we're going to look at his formative years, and then something of his ministry in Birmingham, where he was for ten years, his marriage, and then one aspect of his spirituality, in particular his passion for the salvation of the lost. He was the youngest of two sons. and was born in Plymouth on July the 20th, 1766. That is in Devon, way down in the west country of England. Born into a devout Baptist home at least back two or three generations, his mother died when he was very young, when he was but an infant, and so he was raised by his father and his grandfather. In fact, he lived with his grandfather until the age of eight or nine. This is a somewhat unusual arrangement But you may recall that Spurgeon had a similar sort of experience in his early years. In Spurgeon's case, it had to do with the number of children that were eventually born in the home. In Pierce's case, I'm not sure why it was that he went to live with his grandfather. His grandfather lived in a little village called Tammerton Folly, just outside Plymouth. And so he was raised in a godly home. His father was well known for his Christian walk in Plymouth. and was a deacon, actually, in the Baptist church at that time. He was also nourished in his early years by the Baptist community in Plymouth. This is one of the oldest Baptist communities in Britain. Its origins went all the way back into the 1650s, so almost all the way back to the beginning of what we would describe today as Calvinistic Baptist witness in England. Something of the character of those Baptists in their early years is found in the person of one of their earliest ministers, a man named Abraham Cheere, spelled C-H-E-A-R-E, who died in 1668. A man who somewhere in the 1650s was called to be pastor of the Plymouth Church, In 1660, he was arrested for his faith. Between 1660 and 1688, as many of you I'm sure are aware, those who were not Church of England members went through the fires of persecution. Those who were Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Quakers were imprisoned. Many Baptist ministers found themselves languishing in prison for lengthy periods of time for no other reason than the fact they refused to give up preaching and ministering to their people. Abraham Cheer spent eight years in prison, cruelly treated. He was imprisoned on a little island just off the coast of England, an island called Drake's Island, after Francis Drake, who was a resident of Plymouth. And you could see it from the harbor of Plymouth Harbor. Again, to give you some idea of the sort of character of Cheer, I want to quote from one of his letters. He was fearful that some of his Baptist congregation would compromise their convictions to avoid persecution. This did happen. Not as frequently, thankfully, as some might argue, but it did happen. And in one of his letters, he wrote the following. He quoted from a Puritan author named Jeremiah Burroughs. who had died just before this time of persecution. And this is the quote, I desire to be a faithful minister of Christ and His Church if I cannot be a prudent one. Standing in the gap is more dangerous and troublesome than getting behind a hedge. There you may be secure and under the wind, that is behind the hedge, but it's best to be where God looks for a man. In other words, it's better to suffer as a minister of the gospel than to be prudent. Cher was one who stood in the gap. He would die in prison for his Baptist convictions in 1668. So that's a little glimpse. We don't have time to go into the whole history of the Plymouth Baptists. There was another very well-known minister in the 18th century, Philip Gibbs, who was converted under the preaching of George Whitefield. But it's something of the character of the Plymouth church in its heritage. But as tears came into his teen years, he consciously spurned his heritage, both from his godly home and from the Plymouth Baptist community. According to his own testimony, this is his own testimony, several vicious schoolfellows became his closest friends, and he set his heart on what he would later describe as evil and wicked inclinations. But God had better plans for his life. In the summer of 1782, a young preacher by the name of Isaiah Burt, who would eventually become the minister at Plymouth and eventually succeed Pierce in Birmingham, was asked to come to Plymouth and preach for a few Sundays in the middle of that summer, the summer of 1782. The Spirit of God drove home Burt's words to Pierce's heart. The change in Pierce from what he later called a state of death, in trespasses and sins, to a life in a dear, dying Redeemer was sudden, but it was genuine and lasting. After his conversion, Pierce, again this is all from his own writing, Pierce noted that he was conscious of the Spirit's witness within his heart, that he was a child of God. He talks about him not knowing a conversion that was more cheerful, And he was filled with peace, again these are his words, and joy unspeakable. A year or so later, when he celebrated his 17th birthday, he was baptized and joined the Plymouth congregation in which he had been raised. It was not long in the mid-1780s before the members of the Church of Plymouth began to recognize that God had gifted young Samuel with gifts for ministry. And in fact, they called him to the Ministry of the Word, as they put it, in November of 1785. He was only 19. He had up until that point in time been serving as an apprentice to his father. His father was a silversmith and a watchmaker. And it is from this background then, he gives that up, The church recommends, after trying his gifts in the church for a period of time, that he go and study formally at the only seminary in England at the time, a place called Bristol Baptist Academy. the only Baptist seminary, I should add. The seminary still exists, unfortunately, liberal. It's the oldest Baptist seminary in the world. And so from August 1786 to May of 1789, that's where Pierce was. It was a time he would never forget. It was a small group of students that would have been there at the time. The classes were not large, maybe 20, at most 25 students in any given year. And it's not surprising then that he formed some very deep relationships in terms of friendships with some of the students. One of the men who would be a very important figure in Baptist history in England was a man named William Stedman, who had become the founder of Northern Baptist College in Yorkshire and was a major force in renewal and blessing in Northern England all through the first four decades of the 1800s. He also had the privilege of study under some remarkable individuals. Caleb Evans, who was the principal of the school, was one that he studied under. Robert Hall, Jr. was another man who was just beginning his career in the Calvinistic Baptist community. Robert Hall, Jr. probably became the most celebrated preacher in early 19th century England. Apparently, what would often happen in his preaching is, as he preached, he would so arouse men, it's only mentioned that the men would be gripped by this, that many of them, as he preached, would stand as he preached. And by the end of his preaching, it was not uncommon to find a whole congregation of men standing so intent on the words of Paul. And so this was something of the influence that he had in the school. He also had opportunities for preaching himself. He would later recall an occasion where he went to a mining community in a place called Colford, Gloucestershire. And he was asked to preach to about 20 or 30 miners in a hut. And he was standing on a three-legged stool as he preached. I don't know if you've ever stood on a three-legged stool. We have one in our home. I would not want to stand on it more than a few seconds in terms of talking. But such was the physical resources that he had at hand. And he was preaching on that passage from John 1, the land of God which taketh away the sin of the world. Fuller said of late later, such an unction from above attended his preaching that day that the entirety of his hearers were melted into tears, and he too, weeping among them, could scarcely speak for sighs and sobs. Early in 1789 he received a call to become a probationer in the Canon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. A little explanation. Baptists in this period, and I think actually it was a good thing, Baptists in this period, when they called an individual to be pastor, did not issue that call directly. The person was called to be a probationer. The individual would come and be on probation for three months, six months, maybe a year, in some cases two years. And what that meant is they fulfilled the preaching ministry of the church, but there was no commitment made on either the individual's part or the congregation. And that meant that if, as time progressed, the congregation or the individual realized that this was not of God, that there was not a harmonious fit, then the arrangement could be dissolved and there was no shame on either party. Spurgeon was a probationer when he first came to New Park Street Chapel in 1854. He was a probationer for, initially they said six months, but then they shortened it to four months and then took him on as pastor. Pierce was a probationer for nearly a year before they finally extended to him a call. I think there's a lot of sense in that personally, but that's to the side. The other thing to know too about Birmingham, this is the only Baptist church in Birmingham, Cannon Street Baptist Church, it's right in the heart of Birmingham. was in the midst, as many other large centers were, or what would become large centers, places like Manchester and Leeds, was in the midst of huge and massive growth. This is the time of the Industrial Revolution, when many people are being swept up from the countryside, uprooted from their roots on the lands, where their families had dwelt for many generations and they're being herded, literally herded, into the cities. Many cities by the end of the 18th century were crams, places like Birmingham, were people who worked regularly, 12, 14 hour days in factories, who lived in one room with 9 or 10 other people, with no furniture, sleeping on the floor, maybe on straw or what have you. And it's amongst the poor that Pierce's ministry would primarily be directed, the poor in Birmingham. One other event that needs to be noted, too, in this period, 1789 was a very important year in the larger history of Western Europe. It is the year in which there takes place across the English Channel the French Revolution. And thus, Peirce's ten-year ministry, because it would only constitute ten years, was spent under the shadow of war. Initially, the fighting in France, which lasted for about three or four years before that revolution, began to be exported to the rest of Europe, and England found herself locked in a titanic struggle with France. The 18th century, the long 18th century, if you take it all the way back to the 1690s and all the way through to 1815, was a century of war, worldwide war between two nations, the French and the English. And there was no love lost. This is bearing, you might think I'm wandering off, but this is bearing upon what I want to talk about later. There was no love lost between the French and the English. You ask a Frenchman, what is good about the English? Well, the good thing is when they're dead. And the same would be said about the English or the British regarding the French. And these two nations, neighbors, were struggling for the control of the entire world. The warfare was carried out not only in Europe, all across battlefields in Europe, but also in Asia, India was a central place, and in Africa, Egypt, and in the Caribbean, and obviously here in Canada. Right in the heart of that long century of war was the taking of Quebec City by the British in 1759. And the last war that almost as a climactic final episode were the Napoleonic Wars from 1793 to 1815. It's hard to imagine. 22 years of war with only one year or so of peace. And it was all out war. Very similar in many respects, although not in intensity to the First World War. Pierce went as a probationer then in 1789 to Birmingham. He had supplied the pulpit already once in the previous summer. People were impressed by his evangelistic zeal, the fact that there were people notably converted under his preaching. And so they asked him to return with a view to becoming the pastor of the church. And so it was in July of 1790, a couple of days before his birthday, being born on July the 20th, He was called to be the pastor of the church. He told the church he hoped the union between pastor and church would be for, quote, God's glory, the good of precious souls, for your prosperity as a church, and for my prosperity as your minister. It is noteworthy that in that list of four reasons for the union between himself and the church, he puts God's glory first. We're not talking about Sarah Edwards, but Jonathan Edwards was a mentor by the written word to Pierce and all of his friends like William Carey, who will come into our story in a few minutes, and Andrew Fuller. And if these men learned anything from Edwards, it was to see that the bottom line of scripture is the reason for the creation of this world, the reason for my existence, your existence, the reason for anything existing at all, was the glory of God. It's also noteworthy, and this gives you, I think, an insight into Peirce's character, he asked that he be allowed, every year, six weeks' vacation. And you might think that's a remarkable amount of time for a young minister to ask right off the bat, But he said he wanted the six weeks so he could go down and visit his father every year in Plymouth. I've not come across any other reference to the fact that of the other son. He was the youngest of two sons. I have no idea what happened to the other son, but the impression you get is by this time in his life he's almost like an only child and he feels concerned to look after his father. And it would take time. Travel in those days was nowhere near as fast as it is today and it would take time to get down there, spend time down there and then to come back. Plymouth is very far, fairly far away in those days from Birmingham. His ministry at Cannon Street occupied ten all too brief years. And yet they were ones of great, great fruitfulness. As you go through the minute books, and the minute books still exist in the city archives in Birmingham. As you go through the minute books, you can count up the numbers of people saved under his ministry and who formally came into membership. There were many who were saved who didn't come into membership. But in terms of the numbers, it's 335 in 10 years. And that's God's blessing, if you look at it. 335 in 10 years. He started a Sunday school. Sunday schools had only started going in the 1780s. Robert Rakes and William Fry in London had started Sunday schools, and he starts one in 1795. Within a short period of time, there were 1,200 children enrolled in it. Sunday school would be held in those days in the afternoon. And most of them had no connection to the church. They're brought in from the surrounding poverty and the poor homes. At the heart of his preaching was probably what is the keynote of evangelicalism in the 18th century, Christ crucified. Writing one Sunday afternoon to a friend, he said that he had for his sermon that evening the best subject of all in the Bible, Ephesians 1-7, redemption, how welcome to the captive, forgiveness, how delightful to the guilty, grace, how pleasant to the heart of a saved sinner. Christ's death for sinners, he went on to say, is the leading truth in the New Testament, a doctrine I cannot but venerate, and to the author of such a redemption my whole soul labors to exhaust itself in praise. The final letter he ever wrote to his congregation when he was dying in the summer of 1799, he reminded them of the gospel he had preached. It was, he said, the gospel of the grace of God, the gospel of free, full, everlasting salvation, founded on the sufferings and death of God manifest in the flesh. Within a short period of time, men and women, not only in the congregation, but throughout the Baptist community in England, began to call him the Silver Tongues because of the intensity and power of his preaching. And yet he often struggled. This was not apparent, but he often struggled with preaching. On one occasion in 1796, he wrote to William Carey the following about his struggles. Sometimes I question whether I ever knew the grace of God in truth. Other times I hesitate on the most important points of Christian faith. I've lately had peculiar struggles of this kind in my own heart, and I've often concluded sometimes to speak no more in the name of the Lord. When I'm preparing for the pulpit, I fear I'm going to avow fables for facts and doctrines of men for the truths of God. In conversation I'm obliged to be silent, lest my tongue should belie my heart. In prayer I know not what to say, and at times I think prayer altogether useless. And yet I cannot wholly surrender my hope or my profession. Three things I find above all others tend to my preservation. First, a recollection of a time when at once thinking of his sudden conversion, I was brought to abandon the practice of sins which the fear of damnation could never bring me to relinquish before. He was overwhelmed, he's interplying, by the love of God displayed in the cross. Surely this must be the finger of God according to the scripture doctrine of regeneration. Second, I feel such a consciousness of guilt that nothing but the gospel scheme can satisfy my mind respecting the hope of salvation." In other words, as he thinks about the guilt he feels, it is only Christ crucified, dying for sinners, that gives any peace. Thirdly, I see that what true devotion does appear in the world is only found among those to whom Christ is precious. A handful of sermons were published in his lifetime, not much really. He was working at the time of his death on a history of missions. He had all kinds of papers. They all seemed, at some point in time, to have disappeared. One item he did publish was a thing called The Doctrine of Salvation by Free Grace Alone. I just want to read it to give you an insight, which just picks up on the themes, really, we've been looking at in these last couple of minutes. An extract from that. It had started off life as a circular letter. That is, a letter sent around to a number of Baptist churches around Birmingham. And he's talking about what is it that makes us Calvinist, Calvinistic Baptists differ from others, and it's particularly the Calvinistic he's focusing on. The point of difference between us and many other professing Christians lies in the doctrine of salvation entirely by grace. For while some assert good works are the cause of justification, some that good works are united with the merits of Christ, and so both contribute to our justification, others that good works neither in whole nor in part justify but the act of faith, we renounce everything in point of our acceptance of God, but his free grace alone which justifies the ungodly, still treading in the steps of our venerable forefathers, the compilers of the Baptist confession of faith." That's the 1689 he's talking about. who thus express themselves respecting the doctrine of justification, those whom God effectually calleth he also freely justifieth, for Christ's sake alone, not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness, but by imputing Christ's active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness. In this point do all the other lines of our confession meet. For if it be admitted that justification is an act of free gracing God without any respect to the merit or the demerit of the person justified, then the doctrines of Jehovah's sovereign love in choosing to himself a people from before the foundation of the world, his sending his son to expiate their guilt, to wipe away their guilt, his effectual operations upon their hearts, and his perfecting the work he has begun in them, until those whom he justifies he also glorifies. Then it will be embraced as necessary parts of the glorious scheme of our salvation." It's a very dense text, but it gives you an idea that his ministry was focused on exalting God's grace alone and solely God's grace. Now I want to turn to his wife, Sarah Pierce. And so a Sarah does come into our story. It's not Sarah Edwards, but Sarah Pierce. A great support to Pierce who had his pastor at Cannon Street was his closest friend, his wife Sarah. And for what follows, and I should indicate this at this time, for what follows, my sources are a package, mostly a package of about 70 letters. that were preserved by one of their daughters down through the years. Seventy love letters that Samuel Pierce wrote to Sarah. And I've had the privilege of going through those letters on three occasions, the last occasion transcribing most of them. And they're the sort of things that you almost, you feel very odd in reading, because they were not intended for any other eyes but Sarah's. There is nothing embarrassing in them. Both Sarah and Samuel have been in glory a long time from human terms. Nonetheless, these are letters meant for her eyes alone. And what is so, I think, so precious about them is that they give an insight into not only, I think, Samuel and Sarah's life, but they give an insight into what transpires in the lives of many of God's people in their marriages that we never see. One of the things that often is neglected as you reflect upon those who are great figures in the history of the Church, or even lesser figures, is their private lives, and because we often don't know much about their private lives. Sadly, sometimes, the private lives are disappointing. Don't probe deeply into John Wesley's married life. It was a disaster. in many respects, and yet God did use him remarkably. George Whitefield, a great man of God, his marriage was mediocre. It was an odd marriage. How Harris was going to marry the woman, Elizabeth James, that he married. Harris felt that in marrying her he might be idolizing her, and therefore it would be a stumbling block. He suggested to George Whitefield, why don't you marry her? What is amazing is that Elizabeth James agreed, And one never gets the impression, as you read through their lives together, that there was a deep, deep passion for each other. It was convenient for both of them. But that cannot be said with Sarah and Samuel Pierce. She was a third-generation Baptist. Her grandfather was a man named John Ashe, a fairly well-known Baptist minister in his day. Her maiden name was Sarah Hopkins. She met Pierre soon after his arrival in Birmingham. She was in the church at the time. Pierre soon fell deeply in love with her and she with him. He would marry her on February the 2nd, 1791. But first, two quotes from his correspondence to her before their marriage. He wrote here on December 24, 1790 about the impact seeing her letters to him had on him. the quotes closely, where I averse to writing, one of your dear epistles could not fail of conquering the antipathy and transforming it into desire. The moment I peruse a line from my Sarah, I am inspired at the propensity which never leaves me. till I have thrown open my whole heart and returned a copy of it to the dear being who long since compelled it to a voluntary surrender and whose claims have never since been disputed." They were married on February the 2nd, as I said, 1791. His own understanding of what their marriage should be like is found again in another letter he wrote to her before his marriage, about two months before their wedding. May my dear Sarah and myself They made the means of leading each other on in the way to the heavenly kingdom, and at last there meet to know what even temporary separation means no more. In other words, for him, what was marriage? It was ultimately a place in which husband and wife encouraged one another in the Christian life, in the movement towards heaven. I'm going into this in some detail as a challenge. to those of you who are married, to a Christian spouse, to think of your marriages along these lines. For those of you who are not married, to think of what marriage should be like. Pierce's love for his wife deepened with the passing of years. Three and a half years after his marriage, he spent a significant amount of time away from home preaching, mostly in support of what we'll see in a minute, the Baptist Missionary Society. Three and a half years after their marriage, he wrote to her from Plymouth. Oh my Sarah, had I as much proof of my love to Christ as I have of my love to you, I should prize it above rubies. The following year, 1795, again he was away from home in London. He wrote to tell her, every day improves not only my tenderness, but my esteem for you. Not only his love for her in terms of his feelings, but his esteem for her as a person. Very important in marriage. veering off now. But very important in marriage is respect for one's spouse. I have a good friend whose marriage in recent years has fallen completely apart. His wife left him and has engaged in an adulterous relationship with another man, one of the man's very close friends. And speaking to my friend and that, and seeing his marriage, one of the things I think that contributed to the failure of his marriage was his lack of esteem for his wife. I can recall numerous times in conversation with him and his wife being there, his wife would vent her opinion. He regarded it not a wit, and he showed no respect for her intellect at all. And so in some ways I was not surprised at what eventually transpired. In 1795 he called his wife, the dearest of women, my invaluable Sarah. Another letter written about the same time, he informed the one he called the partner of my heart. It's a marvelous expression. He says, hold it, this letter is, quote, a forerunner of her impatient husband, who weary was so long in absence, he'd been away for a few weeks, again longs to embrace his dearest friend. 1796, again he's away. He's in Dublin preaching. And he got a letter from his wife. He said, last evening were my eyes delighted at the sight of a letter from my dear Sarah. I rejoice that you as well as myself find that absence diminishes not affection. For my part, and you need to follow this sentence closely, for my part, I compare our present correspondence to a kind of courtship rendered sweeter than what usually bears that name by a certainty of success. Not less than when I sought your hand in marriage do I now court your heart. They've been married four years. Nor doth the security of possessing you at all lessen my pleasure at the prospect of calling you my own when we meet again. And then, towards the end of the letter, he says this, Oh, our dear Fireside, when shall we sit down toe-to-toe, tête-à-tête again, Not a long time, I hope, will elapse ere I re-enjoy that felicity." The language is different from the sort of language we normally use, but I hope you get something of the passion he had for his wife. That she felt the same for him, he doesn't appear to have kept any of, or none of her letters appear to have survived. Numerous of his did to her. But she felt the same towards him is found a year after his death when her sister, Rebecca, was married to a man named Mr. Harris. And she wrote to her sister some marriage advice. And she said, she prayed that her sister might enjoy the most uninterrupted happiness. And then as an aside, for indeed, I can scarce form an idea of this side of heaven or greater equal to what I have enjoyed in her marriage. One final word about Samuel and Sarah's marriage needs to be said. What especially delighted Pierce about his wife was her passion for God. Again, he told her in the summer of 1793 in response to a letter he'd received from her, I cannot convey to you an idea of the holy rapture I felt at the account you gave me of your soul's prosperity. Now I want to turn to really what is at the heart of what I want to talk about this morning. All of this has been warm-up. And that is his spirituality. One theme has been already noted, and that is his centering on Christ crucified. But another theme is his longing for the salvation of sinners. This is seen in a number of ways, and I've really got four stories that illustrate this. Three of them are fairly small, one of them longer. The first story is he was on a preaching trip to Wales, and as he was going through Wales, and any of you who have ever been to Wales will know the scenery is incredible, especially for somebody growing up in the Midlands of England, which has got some rolling hills, but nothing striking in terms of mountain ranges. But he was going through Wales, and the scenery is quite striking. And he wrote a letter home to his wife, Sarah, about the lovely countryside they were passing through. He said, every pleasant scene which opened to us on our way, and they were very numerous, lost half its beauty because my lovely Sarah was not present to partake its pleasures with me. I should say, as an aside, I can identify with that. About a year ago, I was in England, and I went to a an old Roman ruin in Gloucestershire, where there was a villa that had been unearthed. And it was actually fabulous. It was dated back to the second, third century AD. But I was by myself, and Allison wasn't with me. And frankly, I went through it, and well, that's lovely. But it lost most of its charm. You know, you're by yourself. You've got nobody to talk to about it. Anyway, he goes on to say, though, To see the country, though, was not my immediate object of visiting Wales. I came to preach the gospel, to tell poor sinners of the dear Lord Jesus, to endeavor to restore the children of misery to the pious pleasures of divine enjoyment." You need to note how he conceives of the Christian life. It is a life of pleasure and enjoying God. That's one story. Second story is of an occasion when he was preaching in a place called Gillsborough in Northamptonshire. The Baptist Meeting House had been burned down by arsonists. It wasn't common in the late 18th century, but it did still happen, where the Church of England, because of its dominance in society and on the law books, sometimes mobs would form, sometimes actually fostered by the local Church of England minister. And they would persecute those who were not C of E, Church of England. On this occasion, the Baptist meeting house at Gillsboro was burned down by a mob. The Baptist took the arsonist to court, won the case, amazingly, and got money given back to them to rebuild the meeting house. And so it was rebuilt. And Pierce was invited with a number of key individuals to come and partake in the service. And he was to be the preacher. And he preached in Psalm 7610. It was a Sunday morning. Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee. After the service, they were all sitting down to lunch together, very common in Baptist churches in that period of time. You'd have the morning service, then lunch, and then the afternoon service. And most people would stay for lunch. And Pierce was there at the table, and a number of his friends, one of whom was Andrew Fuller, said that was quite an incredible sermon this morning. And he gave reasons why he felt it would be a blessing to his soul and to others. And he said to Pierce, would you be interested in preaching tomorrow morning? They were going to stay over in the area. And Pierce said, if a congregation can be found by 5 AM, because most of the people in the church were working men, And they'd be out in the fields. It's in the summer. If a congregation can be found at 5 AM, I'll find a sermon. Well, a congregation was found, and he duly preached. After the service, the ministers, there were about five or six of them, were sitting down to breakfast. And one of the ministers was a very young man, F.A. Cox. And he was only probably around 20, 21 at the time. He never forgot what transpired. Andrew Fuller was at the table. a sort of man who, once he got his hold on something, he wouldn't let go. And he said to Pierce, that was, again, a blessing, as we listened to your preaching this morning. But he said, he was very curious, the structure of your sermon. You went through the whole thing, and then it seemed you, at the end, went through the whole thing again. Why was that? Well, Pierce simply said, it was so. Fuller was not the sort of man to be put off once he had gotten his idea about something. He wanted to know why, and he kept badgering Pierce. And finally Pierce, and he was jovial, but he's badgering him, finally Pierce consents to explain why. Well, my brother, you shall have the secret, if it must be so. Just at the moment I was about to resume my seat, just the moment he was about to finish, thinking I'd finished, the door opened and I saw a poor man enter the working class. From the sweat on his brow and the symptoms of his fatigue, I conjectured he had walked some miles to this early service, but he had been unable to reach the place to the close. A momentary thought glanced through my mind. Here may be a man who never heard the gospel, or maybe he is one that regards it as a feast of fat things. In either case, the effort on his part demands one on mine. And so in the hope of doing him good, I resolved at once to forget all else, and in spite of criticism and the apprehension of being thought tedious, to give him a quarter of an hour." And that's a remarkable statement. Anybody here who has ever spoken publicly in a preaching context, where there have been others present who regularly preach, know that one of the things that goes through your mind is their evaluation. of what you are doing. The worst congregation to preach to, in some respects, is one that contains ministers of the gospel, those who preach regularly. Because they know how to set up a sermon. They know how these sort of things progress, and they know where to give illustrations, etc. And very often, one of the things that goes through their minds is a critique of the structure. And Pierce, what he did was he looked and saw this man enter, and he just He put to one side the thoughts of men like Fuller, a great preacher in his own right, and the others there who would have been critiquing his sermon, and he decided to give this man 15 minutes. Apparently, F.A. Cox many years later said, there was not a word spoken for a few minutes. Everybody just fell silent. It deeply impressed his hearers, not so much anything about the structure or the power of his sermon, but his love for souls. Now my third story, this is longer. Not given his ardour for the events of the Gospel, it's only to be expected that Pierce would find himself involved in that circle of men who formed what is really the first missionary society in the Western world, the Baptist Missionary Society. There were things that existed before, like the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, SPCK, or the SPC, the Society for Propagating the Gospel, But they were not missionary societies as we have known them in the last couple of hundred years. They were designed to plant churches in areas where the gospel and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ had never been heard. But in the 1780s, the late 1780s, God began to work on the hearts of a number of individuals, most prominent among them William Carey, and gripped his heart with the concern that as the world was being opened up to European commerce, that there was the need for the Gospel to be taken to places like Tahiti, and that's where Cary initially wanted to go, Tahiti, and the South Sea Islands, and India, where he eventually ended up. And so it was, in the providence of God, in October of 1792, a group of 14 men, Twelve pastors, two students, ministerial students, were crammed into a room nine feet by twelve feet, the room of a woman named Widow Wallace, whose husband had been a deacon at Kettering Baptist Church. And there they drew up resolutions to form what they called the Particular Baptist Society, Calvinistic Baptist Society, for propagating the gospel among the heathen, eventually shortened to the BMS, the Baptist Missionary Society. And they passed around a little snuff box, apparently, in which they put all their contributions, which came out to probably what today would amount to a few hundred dollars to fund this new venture. Many Baptists, especially Baptists in London, influential Baptists, thought they were nuts. They didn't say it in those words, but they gave them no support. Among those who did, though, who was gripped, was Samuel Pierce. He was at that meeting. Almost immediately after the end of the meeting, he went back to his church in Birmingham. He raised 70 pounds. That's a lot of money in those days. I'm not sure of the equivalent today, but it's a fair amount of money. It's about five times more than the ministers had gathered. He raised 70 pounds for his congregation and threw himself into raising the consciousness of Baptists and others to support the cause of missions and raising finances. Within a couple of years, Terry is gone to India. He's gone in 1793. He lands in the fall of 1793 in Calcutta with his family and with a man named John Thomas. John Thomas would prove to be a massive headache for William, but be that as it may. And Pierce is supporting in raising finances, in prayer, and eventually, by 1794, becomes convinced God is calling him and Sarah to the mission field. In October of 1794, we still have this diary, he set apart a day of prayer and fasting every week for God's guidance. One of the things that has impressed me is how frequently Our Baptist forebears in this period, in their seeking the guidance of God, would have times of prayer and fasting, a discipline we've lost. Anyway, he set aside one day a week of prayer and fasting and recorded in a journal what God was doing in his thinking. And one of the things he goes through, Andrew Fuller would eventually reproduce all of that journal, except for portions of it, in his memoirs of Fuller. One long portion he did not reproduce, which has never been published, was a long section in which Pierce went through, what if Sarah does not want to go? What do I do? It's a fascinating discussion in the whole area of thinking through the call of missions or the call of any call in the life of an individual. Thankfully, Samuel never had to face that issue because Sarah was wholeheartedly with him. William Carey, by the way, we won't develop this at any length, had to face that issue because Dorothy did not want to go and I'm sure you know when she got to the mission field, she eventually went insane and broke down. Anyway, Samuel goes through all this, and by the end of this month, he's convinced that God's calling him and Sarah to India. And he's written to Kerry to tell him, we'll be coming to Mudnabati, which is where Kerry was. Well, the society executive, who were all his friends, Fuller, John Ryland, Jr., John Sutcliffe, were to examine his case in early November 1794. He went and met with them. They spoke and prayed for about three hours and then they asked Pierce to step out of the room and they prayed for another two to three hours. And they gave him the response, no, we do not believe God is at this point in time sending you to India. Pierce's response to that is very interesting. He wrote almost immediately to his wife. She was not there. I am disappointed, but not dismayed. I ever wish to make my Savior's will my own. A little later, he wrote to Kerry. Instead of a letter he wrote to him, you perhaps expected to have seen the writer, and had the will of God been so, he would by this time have been on his way to Mudanabati. But it is not in man the walk of to direct his steps. full of hope and expectation as I was that when I wrote you last, I should be honored with a mission to the poor heathen and be an instrument of establishing the empire of my dear Lord in India, I must now submit and stand still and see the salvation of God. I shall ever love my dear brethren." He's talking about those who examined the case. the more for the tenderness with which they treated me, the solemn prayer they repeatedly put up to God for me. At last I withdrew from them for them to decide, and whilst I was apart from them and engaged in prayer for divine direction, I felt all anxiety forsake me, and an entire resignation of will, my will, to the will of God, be it what it would, together with a satisfaction that so much praying breath would not be lost. between two and three hours were they deliberating, after which time a paper was put into my hands in which the following is a copy. The brethren at this meeting are fully satisfied of the fitness of Brother Pierce's qualifications, greatly approved of the disinterestedness, that is, the purity of his motives, the ardor of his mind, but another missionary not having been requested and not being, in our view, immediately necessary, and Brother Pierce already occupying a post very important to the prosperity of the mission itself, we are unanimously of opinion he should continue in the situation which he now occupies." And then Pierce adds, I was enabled cheerfully to reply, the will of the Lord be done and receiving this answer as the voice of God I have for the most part been easy since. Let me very quickly make a comment on this incident because I have mentioned this incident in other contexts And the response has been given, what if they were wrong? And Pierce was right. He had spent a whole month praying and fasting over this issue, became convinced in his spirit and Sarah's spirit that God was leading them to the mission field. What if they were right and the BMS executive, the Missionary Society executive, were wrong? It's only recently, and I only came across this very recently, an article dealing with the mindset of Cary when he got out to India and what he sought to establish out there. He established a community, a missionary community. And one of the things the article mentioned was that what dominated Cary in his thinking, this is not Pierce but Cary, what dominated Cary was in that community was not so much the individualistic guidance that they might all individually seek to find, but what they would seek to determine was the strategy of mission as a community. And once, in prayer and so on, they had come to an idea of what they wanted to do as a community, then they would all subject their own individualistic thoughts and desires to the common purpose. This is a very difficult issue. I suspect that the question is asked because our Christian culture in North America at the beginning of the 21st century is highly individualistic. We have been shaped very, very strongly by our culture. And our culture is dominated by self-will, self-fulfillment, self-gratification. And I fear that our Christianity is shaped in many respects the same. Should not Pierce have pressed his case in going? That question, I think, is asked from the vantage point of a highly individualistic Western Christianity at the beginning of the 21st century. Pierce knew himself to be part of a team, and far more important was the triumph of what those men had come to see to be the will of God for their community than his own personal aspirations. Now, you might disagree with me, and if you do, please tell me, because I'm still thinking this through. Just when I recently read this about Cary, I didn't have an answer for that question. But I think the question is wrongly framed. It proceeds from a very highly individualistic vantage point. The five remaining years of Pierce's life, he extended much of his energy in raising support for the mission out in India. And one final story will be linked to this. One of the meetings at which Pierce preached was one which saw William Ward accepted as a missionary with the Society and sent out to India. And William Ward would become one of Carey's important circle of individuals in that community he was establishing in India. He had become the printer of the community. At that meeting, which was in October of 1798, many were deeply stirred. William Ward later wrote, he pierced at the whole meeting in a flame. Had missionaries been needed, more missionaries be needed, we would have had a cargo immediately. On the way back from that meeting, Pierce was caught in a heavy downpour of rain. The meeting was in Kettering. If you know your geography at all, it's in Northamptonshire. And he's riding from Kettering to Birmingham. And I'm not sure. I should have computed the distance. It's quite a number of hours' travel by horse. And he should have stopped at an inn on the way, but he wanted to get home. He was caught in a downpour of rain, drenched in the skin, and subsequently developed a severe cold. At that point, he should have taken some bodily rest. He didn't. Foolishly, he thought that pulpit sweats would be able to get rid of the cold. In other words, continue the round of preaching, and as he sweated, he would sweat it out. But he didn't know his constitution. And his lungs became so inflamed that by November of 1798, he could hardly speak. And William Ward had to be called in to preach for him. By mid-December 1798, he couldn't converse for more than a few minutes about losing his breath. He actually is in the early stages of pulmonary tuberculosis. Again, he isn't aware of that. It's in this context that the following story will take place. Early in the year, he is dying, actually. He can hardly speak. He's no longer preaching. He can hardly speak for more than a few minutes. He writes a letter to Cary and he tells Cary that for a number of months he's got this plan of taking the gospel to France. Remember, France and Great Britain are at war. This is the height of the war, 1798-1799. It's the period of Nelson fighting Napoleon on the Nile River and so on. It's the height of the war. England is in a state of almost conscription. And he tells Caradoc, I've got this idea of taking the gospel to France. I've been endeavoring, he says, to get five of our ministers to agree they'll apply themselves to the French language, learn French, then we... He's lying on a sickbed, dying, although he may not know the latter. We might spend two months annually in that country. The two countries are at war. At least satisfy ourselves that Christianity was not lost in France for want of a fair experiment in its favor. Who can tell what God might do? One of the great things I love about Pierce is that you see in his life kingdom priorities. He was not gripped by the passions, the nationalistic, petty nationalistic passions that so often grip men and women of this world. And sadly, sometimes Christians, it is a disgrace sometimes to hear evangelicals speak disparagingly about Quebecers. And I'm speaking here, they can obviously feel the same with us. But it is a disgrace for English-speaking Christians to speak disparagingly about Quebecers. Their greatest need is not a political solution, it is the gospel. And what I love about Pierce is he has kingdom priorities. His situation was a little It's a far more difficult one to talk in this way than ours is. We are not war with our Quebec neighbors. So that's just one illustration. They're in a war. And you ask your average Englishman on the street, what do you think about the French? The best the earth was rid of them, the better the planet would be. But that's not Pierce's thinking. One of the last sermons he preached was a sermon called Motives to Gratitude. And it had to do with the deliverance, a naval victory that had taken place. And during that sermon, Pierce was asked to preach a public sermon on this. And in the sermon he said, we are here rejoicing in God's saving of England, but we take no rejoicing in the French that died. None at all. And he went on to talk about how they needed the gospel. God did answer Pierce's prayers. And it came in 1815, as soon as the war was ended, a Scottish Baptist by the name of Robert Haldane crossed the France and found himself being led to Geneva. And God brought revival to the French-speaking Switzerland and southern France, one of the great revivals in the history of the church. That's another story. By the spring of 1799, Pierce was desperate of the year with pulmonary tuberculosis. He left his family in Birmingham and thought that he would travel down to Plymouth and get better air. In our day, the English Channel, which is some of those seaside resorts on the English Channel, they're just beginning to be developed in this period, was sometimes called the English Riviera. I remember as a youngster being taken down to Bournemouth and Torquay and bathing in the English Channel. At the best of times, it's cool. A little kid, they don't notice that. Anyway, he went down thinking that he could get help for his lungs, but it was not to be. Being away from his wife and children only aggravated his situation. His wife, Sarah, eventually parceled out all of their five children to friends and relatives in Birmingham, went down to Plymouth, and over a period of close to a month, brought Pierce home to Birmingham. Blessed be his dear name, talking now about Christ, he said not long before his death, who shed his blood for me. Now I see the value of the religion of the cross. It is a religion for a dying sinner. I taste its sweetness and joyous fullness with all the gloom of a dying bed before me. I would far rather be the poor and emaciated creature than I am than be an emperor with every earthly good about him and be without God. Some of his final words were for Sarah, I trust our separation will not be forever. We shall meet again. He fell asleep in Christ on Thursday, the 10th of October, 1799. William Ward sums up, I think well, his character. Not long before his death, he said this, oh, how does personal religion, religion is a good term for those people in that day, shine and pierce. What a soul, what ardor for the glory of God, I have seen more of God in him than in any other person I ever met." I think going through the life of Pierce is a great challenge for us at the beginning of the 21st century. One of the things I noted yesterday, I was in a context where I was looking at some pictures which had a display of food. It was Lime Ridge Mall, the eatery in Lime Ridge Mall, and there was a picture there French fries and a vinegar bottle. And I thought it curious, the appeal of that food is to our sense of taste. Why the picture? Because so often our other senses are brought into being or inflamed by pictures. And so it is in the Christian life It is good to look at pictures of God's people. They challenge us, they encourage us. And in what we've looked at here, I've tried to set before you a picture of a holy life, of a life given to God, a life given to love for God and love of sinners.