Joseph John Gurney, of Earlham, felt seriously concerned respecting the American defection, in a community to which he had been attached from childhood. He had studied in the University of Oxford, had cultivated friendships in other denominations, was a good classic and Biblical scholar, and also an author of theological works. Mr. Gurney was “concerned” about the effect of Hicksite opinion on American and English Friends, and therefore took up his pen and wrote in reply to the leader who had done so much mischief.
Mr. Gurney, like his sister Mrs. Fry, undertook journeys for preaching the Gospel, and once he visited Windsor for that purpose. I was unwell at the time, but he called and talked by my bedside, and commended me to God in prayer. Several Quaker families at that period were living at Staines and Uxbridge; with them I had much intercourse, especially when we were joined in the advocacy of Slave Emancipation. The community, in both towns now named, was considerable for numbers and for wealth.
Friends now dress, speak and act much like other people. Conforming to common custom, they still eschew all extravagances of fashion. They no longer forfeit membership by “marrying out of Society.” “The Right Honourable John Bright” (how shocked George Fox would have been at the title!) told me once, that relaxation in strictness as to unimportant points, had checked a decline in numbers going on before.
V. Methodism, of course, brings to my mind a long train of early associations. Not merely names, but living forms, of noted preachers belonging to the second decade of this century come back to my recollection.
Calvert Street Chapel was opened about 1812, and Dr. Coke preached.
I cannot say that I remember his sermon; but, as noticed already, I distinctly recollect seeing the odd-looking, diminutive man, standing on a table talking in the committee room of Bethel Hospital { 377} adorned by paintings of foundress and governors. Dr. Coke energetically addressed on the occasion a number of people, who had been invited by my grandfather, to hear the noted advocate of Methodist missions. Many years afterwards I mentioned the circumstance to a gentleman, who at the time took care of the patients, when he fetched an old committee book, in which this gathering was noticed, with a minute expressing the displeasure of the Governors at such a liberty being taken, and forbidding anything of the kind in future. The Wesleyan congregations in Norwich were then very large, and _local_ preachers—uncultivated men in humble life—frequently occupied the pulpit in the afternoon service at Calvert Street, and, remember, delivered animated discourses likely to do their hearers good.