Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission fieldYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missionaries
His father-in-law, Mr. William Wilson, had purchased the advowson of the
living of Islington, and, when it became vacant in 1824, presented it to
him, when he carried thither all his vigour and thoroughness. Church
building was his first necessity, and he absolutely prevailed on his
parish to rate themselves for the purpose, so that three churches were
begun almost at once, and by the time his Life was written in 1860 the
great suburb had multiplied its single church in thirty-six years into
fifteen. At Islington the chief sorrows of his life befel him. He had
had six children, of whom one died an infant and two more in early
childhood. The second son, John, after a boyhood of great promise, fell
into temptation at the University and led a wild and degrading course;
ending by his retirement to the Continent, where he died in 1833, after a
very painful illness, in which he had evinced great agony of mind, which
softened at length into repentance and hope. The eldest son, Daniel, who
attended him on his death-bed, had taken holy orders and succeeded to his
father's former living of Warton; and one daughter, Eliza, born in 1814,
survived to cheer his home when his wife, after some years of invalidism,
died in 1827. Zealous, resolute, and hardworking, he never allowed
sorrow to interfere with his work, and was soon in the midst of his
confirmation classes, and of a scheme for educating young tradespeople on
a more thorough and religious system.
In the meantime he had always loved and urged the missionary cause, and
had consulted with Bishop Turner before he went out. When the news of
his decease was received (the fourth Bishop to die at his post within
nine years), the appointment began to be looked on as a sentence of
death, and it was declined in succession by several eminent clergymen.
Daniel Wilson had anxiously watched for the answer in each case, and was
suggesting several persons to Mr. Charles Grant, when the thought struck
him, "Here I am, send me." A widower of fifty-four years old, of much
strength, and with no young children, seemed to him the fit person to
volunteer to fill the breach; and he wrote stating, that if no one else
could be found for the post, he was willing to offer himself. The
appointment was accordingly given to him, after an interval of nine
months since the see had become vacant, and an infinity of toil and
arrangements crowded on him. Islington was resigned to his son Daniel,
and he was consecrated by Archbishop Howley on the 29th of April, 1832,
"the day of my espousals to CHRIST my Saviour," as he wrote in his
journal; and on the ensuing 18th of June he sailed with his daughter for
Calcutta. The ship touched at the Cape, which under the government of
Sir Lowry Cole was by no means in the same hopeless state of neglect as
when Martyn had visited it. Bishop Wilson there held an ordination and a
confirmation, the first for himself as well as for South Africa, whose
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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