History Book: The legacy of Charles Simeon

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, November 18th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. On this day in 1836, funeral preparations were underway for one of Cambridge, England’s most famous pastors. He served Holy Trinity Church for more than a half-century.

At times it was a tumultuous assignment. Staying wasn’t easy but his life of faithfulness echoes to this day.

WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde picks up the story the morning of the funeral.

CALEB WELDE: November 19th breaks dark and rainy in Cambridge. Fifteen hundred students in gowns … wait in the rain to walk in somber procession into King’s College Chapel. Ahead of the students, the college choir, the Scholars, and the Senior Fellows. The Provost … walks with Simeon’s relatives next to the coffin.

MUSIC: [CHRIS FLEISCHER, PIPE ORGAN: G.F. HANDEL: DEAD MARCH]

GRUENDYKE: And they get to the door and it's just choked with people from his church, from Holy Trinity.

Randall Gruendyke is co-author of 12 Faithful Men: Portraits of Courageous Endurance in Pastoral Ministry. He’s also working on a full-length biography of Charles Simeon.

GRUENDYKE: If you've ever been in there, you know that upon walking through any one of the doors, you reflexively look up.

The world’s largest fan-vaulted ceiling meets towering medieval stained glass windows. King’s College has canceled almost all events on campus. The downtown market is closed in his honor … and churches across the city ring their bells in solidarity.

GRUENDYKE: So you think, Well, this guy must have had 54 years of glory!

Not … exactly. Simeon's ministry began very differently than how it ended.

Simeon was appointed pastor of Holy Trinity Church … at twenty-two—before he’d finished his undergrad program.

GRUENDYKE: He was not yet ordained as a priest. He was ordained as a deacon, but not a priest, and there was already a fellow working there at Holy Trinity by the name of John Hammond, who was about seven years Simeon’s elder.

Simeon had always admired the church. His dad knew the bishop in charge of that diocese.

GRUENDYKE: So he talked with his father, His father talked to the bishop, and the bishop appointed Charles Simeon and and the people were incredulous. I mean, incredulous is probably an understatement.

Back then, many churches rented their pews … the pews had little doors on either end.

GRUENDYKE: So everybody locked their pews. There was no place to sit. So he rented benches, and he put the benches in the aisle so people could sit. Well, church wardens came in and threw them out onto Market Street.

When you hear “church wardens”—think elders. Simeon tried to start a separate evening service. So … the wardens locked him out of the building.

GRUENDYKE: So it was just really difficult for him to operate. But he he operated in as respectful a manner as he could, and just bore with the people and it wasn't until 12 years later that he was finally embraced by the congregation.

It would eventually become known that John Hammond—the original favorite—was a Unitarian. But in the dozen years of internal conflict, Simeon faced resistance outside the church as well … as he ministered in Cambridge.

PIPER: There were physical threats against his life.
When students were converted, they were ostracized in the university. They were called Sims and accused of “Simeonism.”

One professor intentionally scheduled his Greek class Sunday evenings … so students couldn’t attend Simeon’s service. Words of encouragement were few and far between.

PIPER: He said, I remember the time that I was quite surprised that a fellow of my own college ventured to walk with me for a quarter of an hour on the grass plot before Clare Hall.

Simeon continued … at Holy Trinity and on campus. He began hosting “conversation parties” to answer practical questions … and mentor students in the Scriptures. He also got involved with several mission organizations and personally encouraged students to go.

India was a country with strict anti-missionary laws.

GRUENDYKE: But, they realized if they appointed fellas to work as chaplains for the British East India Company, they could come down.

One student sent out by Simeon was Henry Martin. Martin went on to translate the New Testament into Urdu—spoken in India and Pakistan…and Persian, after the initial Persian translation proved inadequate for native speakers. Persian is now called Farsi—the language of Iran.

GRUENDYKE: He took guys like that who had great potential for their own personal success, and he encouraged them to do work that actually imperiled their lives, and when they died, and they did, Henry Martin wasn’t the only one that was hard. It was difficult for Simeon, but it didn't dissuade him from continuing to recruit guys to go to India.

Then, in 1807, Simeon came down with a mysterious illness that left him chronically exhausted. Suddenly, he could barely get through a sermon.

PIPER: He said, after preaching, I would feel more like one dead than alive, and could sometimes scarcely walk across the room. Now this lasted 13 years.

Then, Simeon very noticeably received his strength back … one day on a trip to Scotland.

PIPER: It seemed to me that God was saying, “I have doubled, trebled and quadrupled your strength that you may execute your desire on a more extended plan.”

Simeon followed through on this commitment … to give to the last of his strength to God … for seventeen more years.

Simeon followed through. But how … did Simeon endure through all this? Biographer Randall Gruendyke says “the thing about Simeon was he believed what he preached.”

GRUENDYKE: And one of the things that caused him to exude this this sincerity, this deep seated belief, was the fact that he never got over his conversion.

He marveled at God’s grace…frequently acknowledging his own shortcomings. He knew he was especially prone to anger, vanity, and pride.

GRUENDYKE: because of his conversion, because he came face to face with his sin and its offense before the Lord, but then the even greater sacrifice of Christ on his behalf, he was, he was deeply moved by that.

When Simeon was seventy-one, a friend asked him explicitly how he’d endured.

PIPER: This was his response, My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the remembrance that our holy head has surmounted all his suffering and triumphed over death. Let us follow him patiently. We shall soon be partakers of his victory.

Simeon was seventy-seven when he fully tasted of Christ’s victory. His service ended in the chapel vault where he’s buried beneath the inscription C.S.,1836.

Holy Trinity Church inscribed these words towards the front of the sanctuary. “In memory of the Reverend Charles Simeon, Senior Fellow at King’s College, and fifty-four years vicar of this parish; who, whether … as the ground of his own hopes, or as a subject of all his ministrations, determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Caleb Welde.

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