EXTRACTED FROM “THE FATHERS AND FOUNDERS OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.”
DR. LOVE was born at Paisley, in Scotland, towards the close of the year 1756, and, from his earliest infancy, evinced a precocity of mind betokening those rare and masculine endowments by which he was afterwards distinguished. After acquiring in the domestic circle the art of reading English, he was sent, when a child, to the grammar-school of his native place, where he soon outrun most of his contemporaries in the career of knowledge, and was regarded by his teachers as a kind of intellectual prodigy. At the early age of 10 he was pronounced, on account of his classical and other attainments, to be fit for entering the University of Glasgow; where, notwithstanding his extreme youth, he rose to eminence in every department of the regular course; more particularly in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek classics, and in the several branches of mathematical science then taught in the University. Before the end of his course, he was looked upon by all competent judges as one of the first scholars of his standing upon the roll of his college.
No one, indeed, could have heard Dr. Love preach or converse without perceiving two things; first, that he was possessed of a fertile and original mind, and, secondly, that he had been much indebted to a sound and well-conducted education. The influence of his two favourite studies, the classics and mathematics, was strikingly evinced in the strength and soundness of his reasonings, and in the vigour and richness of his imagination. Long after he had ceased to glory in any thing save the cross of Christ, he displayed a loftiness of conception, and a brilliancy of diction, which fully testified to the early and sedulous culture of a mind of unusual versatility and power.
It does not appear, however, that Dr. Love’s college years were under the hallowing influence of a true conversion to God. Though outwardly correct and moral in his deportment, he gave no marked indication of the spiritual mind, or of those attachments to the saving truth of God’s word, which cannot fail to distinguish those who are born from above. On the contrary, he attached himself, with great zeal, to the moderate party of the Scottish kirk, both in politics and doctrinal sentiment: and, like many more of his own standing, rejected evangelical views, as enthusiastic and absurd. That so many of the established clergy of Scotland should at that time have signed the Confession of Faith, while they habitually denounced its Calvinism from the pulpit and the press, is a striking instance of the insufficiency of creeds and subscriptions to produce uniformity of doctrine in the ministers of religion.
For a season, after completing his university studies, young Love was a constant attendant upon the ministry of the moderates, and a warm defender of their lifeless and worldly theology. With this party, now happily greatly diminished, he would doubtless have cast in his lot, had not God been pleased in His sovereign mercy to awaken him to great concern about his eternal interests. In this new and interesting state of mind he could no longer regard religion as a question of cold speculation, but was compelled to look on it as a theme of highest personal interest. The solemn inquiry, “What must I do to be saved?” pressed home upon the conscience by the Spirit of God, led him to feel that the doctrines he was accustomed to hear and approve were but ill adapted to meet the exigency of a mind oppressed with a sense of its own guilt and unworthiness. The result was a determination to examine into the grounds of his hope, and to test the anti-evangelical theory of doctrine by a prayerful investigation of the only authoritative standard of religious truth. This process was one of severe mental conflict, and consisted far less in the polemic balancing of theological opinions than in the settlement of the great question of his personal salvation. The terrors of the Divine law, contemplated in its awful purity and spirituality, fell with almost annihilating force upon the conscience. Stript of all pretensions to moral excellence in the sight of the Divine Lawgiver, he beheld himself in the condition of one exposed to the immediate and eternal displeasure of the Most High. In this state of mind the legal platform of doctrine could afford him no relief; the virtue of human nature, of which he had fondly boasted, vanished like a dream before the light of apostolic truth; and, shut up to the faith of Christ, he was constrained to seek shelter in “that righteousness which is unto all and upon all them that believe.” From being an Arminian of the lowest school, he was brought, from the study of the great question of his own acceptance with God, to renounce the entire system of theology which had engaged his early speculations, and to rank himself with that section of the Church of Scotland, then a small one, in which the doctrines of the Westminster Confession were not only subscribed but cordially believed and faithfully proclaimed. His conversion to God and his adoption of the Calvinistic tenets were in his case simultaneous events; his creed and his conscience were brought to rest at one and the same time; and under the influence of new views of human nature, and of the person and work of the Lord Jesus, he was filled with divine peace, became dead to a vain world, and gave himself with energy and devotedness to the work of God.
The effect of Dr. Love’s investigations of the doctrines of grace was an attachment to all their divine peculiarities, which never forsook him during the whole course of his ministry. By some who regarded themselves as Calvinists, he was reckoned high-strung in his views of the Divine covenant; but there is reason to believe that he differed far less from his evangelical brethren in his actual views of doctrine than in his modes of expression, which were cumbered at times, by a phraseology peculiar to himself. He was an original thinker, and seldom fell into the common-places of more ordinary minds, the consequence of which was that some of his earlier pulpit exhibitions partook of an abstractedness and sublimity which clothed them in an air of mystery somewhat inconsistent with that “plainness of speech” which ought to distinguish the ministers of the New Covenant.
It was evidently a peculiarity of Dr. Love’s mind to seize on those topics in the revealed system of truth, which to ordinary minds are least attractive, and to ruminate upon them till he created a region of thought for himself, in which he delighted to expatiate in solitary grandeur, despite of all the aversions which such speculations produce in minds unaccustomed to metaphysical abstraction. It was no matter of surprise, therefore, that those who attended habitually on the ministry of such a man should fall in some measure into sympathy with his modes of instruction, and that they should regard as tame and insipid the discourses of other men who occupied a humbler walk in theology, and entered but little into the sublimer mysteries of the economy of grace. There was, indeed, a kind of clanship among the hearers of Dr. Love, which bound them to one another in the common admiration of an original and unique instructor.
The remarkable circumstances connected with Dr. Love’s conversion, added to his profound talents and varied attainments in literature and science, imparted to his early pulpit ministrations a rare and peculiar interest. Inspired with a zeal for neglected apostolic truth, proportioned to his former contempt of it—and possessed of powers of oratory calculated to render him acceptable to the majority of intelligent hearers—he soon found employment in his Master’s work after receiving the license of his Presbytery.
His first regular engagement was in the parish of Rutherglen, where he became assistant to the Rev. Mr. Maxwell, and where his preaching was both attractive and useful. Multitudes flocked to hear from his lips the unsearchable riches of Christ, on which he expatiated with all the delight and fervour of one who had but recently tasted and felt and handled the good word of life. The message proclaimed by him was blessed to the salvation of many souls; by which he learnt practically that the new views of truth he had embraced, after a most tedious and painful investigation, were mighty through God to the pulling down of the strongholds of sin and Satan in the hearts of men. He was “not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,” which had become “the power of God unto salvation” to not a few, who “with meekness” had received “the engrafted word.”
After labouring for a season at Rutherglen, with equal credit to himself and benefit to his hearers, he was invited to become assistant to the Rev. David Turner, of the old parish, Greenock, where his sphere of labour was greatly extended, and where a larger demand was made upon the resources of his powerful mind. Here, too, as at his former post, he found a people prepared for the Lord, who received him “in the name of a prophet,” and who shared with him “a prophet’s reward.” He continued to labour with Mr. Turner “as a son in the gospel” until death severed their union by the removal of that servant of Christ to his heavenly reward. On retiring, however, from Greenock, he had the unspeakable satisfaction of knowing that he had many seals to his ministry, among a people to whose spiritual culture he had devoted some of the best years of his public life, and who continued ever after to cherish the kindliest recollections of his faithful labours, both in the pulpit and in the private circle. With many who ranked as his spiritual children he has since met before the Throne, where they gaze with mutual wonder and delight upon the glories of that Saviour, whose matchless love forms the bond both of earth and heaven.
On quitting Greenock, amidst the tears and regrets of many who had received from his lips the words of eternal life, Dr. Love was invited to take the oversight of a congregation in London, assembling in Artillery Street, Bishopsgate. The arrival of such a distinguished servant of Christ in the Metropolis was hailed with joy by his brethren in the Scottish church, as well as by the orthodox Dissenting ministers. His urbane manners, original modes of address, catholic spirit, and profound piety, secured for him the hearty reception and cordial co-operation of the wise and good of every denomination; and had the place of worship in which he officiated been less secure, there is reason to believe that his success in London would have been more in accordance with the best wishes of his generous mind. It does not appear that, so far as his pastoral labours were concerned, his sphere in the Metropolis was at any time eminently congenial to his enlarged and devoted heart. He had, indeed, an attached few around him who knew how to value his rare excellencies of mind and character, and to whom he gave himself with an unsuspecting confidence and love; but the general tone and habits of his flock were such as rather to foster anxious solicitude than to draw forth the warm sympathies of such a mind as Dr. Love’s. There was a democratic spirit in the Artillery Street congregation, combined with a portion of the Antinomian leaven, which often oppressed the heart of the pastor, and which ultimately led to the disruption of the society. It is said that when Dr. Love made up his mind to retire from a field of labour which had been far from productive, on occasion of preaching his farewell sermon, he left his shoes in the pulpit as a testimony against that portion of his flock who had resisted the appeals of his faithful ministry. Be this as it may, it is certain that he left his charge in London because he did not believe that the slender measure of success which crowned his labours while there justified his continuance in the Metropolis. He had an impression, moreover, strongly formed, that his talents and style of address were more adapted to a Scotch than an English congregation. In this estimate of his own mental character and habits he was fully justified, as appeared from the success and comfort which attended his ministrations in his latter days amidst the scenes of his youth.
(To be continued.)