Chapter XVIII: Tributes

It is impossible to describe the feeling exhibited in Tunbridge Wells when it was known that Canon Hoare had passed away, and on the day of the funeral the town witnessed such a display of universal sorrow and respect as it had never seen before. To enumerate even the deputations from different parts of England and to describe the component parts of the huge procession of mourners would occupy pages of this book.

It is enough to say that everything which could be done by the Mayor and Corporation and inhabitants of the town to declare their loss and emphasise their respect was done. More than one Bishop and over a hundred clergy walked in the ranks of the mourners.

All testified as with one voice: “A prince and a great man is fallen this day in Israel.”

His mortal remains were laid beside those of his beloved wife, and he who in those thirty-one years of bereavement used sometimes to say, “In spirit we have never been parted,” was now in spirit reunited to her, and that for ever.

* * * * *

A little book published at this time {268} contains in full all that was said and done with reference to him who had passed away. There are to be found in it the funeral sermons preached all over the town, in church and chapel alike, as well as sketches of his character and career in their special bearing upon the town, whose particular reputation had been so much formed by him. It is a touching tribute of affection and respect, and is well worthy of perusal.

Hundreds of letters poured in upon the bereaved family, from all parts of England, and indeed from the ends of the earth. Extracts from these interesting tributes of affection would form of themselves a volume; it is therefore impossible to give them to the reader, but all testified with one voice to the esteem and admiration in which he was held by those who differed from him, and to the warm love and devotion which he inspired in all who knew him, and whom he had guided into the ways of peace. One expression may be mentioned which was overheard in the conversation of two gentlemen on the day of the funeral (one of them a man of light and leading in the world). Said the first, “We ne’er shall look upon his like again,” to which the other made reply, “Did we ever see his like before?”

The beautiful letters which follow, written on the day of Canon Hoare’s death, speak for themselves:—

“LAMBETH PALACE, S.E., _July_ 7_th_, 1894.

“MY DEAR MISS HOARE,—One word only of intense sympathy; but intense
in something which swallows up sorrow.

“No one will ever have looked more joyfully on the face of Christ in
Paradise.

“Sincerely yours,
“E. W. CANTUAR.”

* * * * *

“LAMBETH PALACE, S.E., _July_ 7_th_.

“MY DEAR MISS HOARE,—The news has this moment reached us, and I
cannot resist sending you one word of deepest sympathy. I know the
Archbishop will write for himself, but the thought of the beauty into
which that holy and beautiful spirit has entered lives in one so, and
in spite of all your personal sorrow and loss I cannot help feeling
that you are living in that thought now.

“You know how we loved him—how could we help it!—and that we do know
something of all he was and is and how the joy of the Lord has been
the breath of his life; and so we may give thanks with you, may we
not? though the heart must ache and the grief be keen. I must not
trouble you more—God bless and keep you.

“Affectionately yours,
“MARY BENSON.”

Notices of Canon Hoare’s death and sketches of his life, longer or shorter, appeared in countless newspapers in England, America, and Australia. The _Record_ published several articles upon his career and influence in the Church of England. One of the most happily written appeared in the columns of the _Guardian_ under the familiar initials “B. F. S.”

Few in the diocese of Canterbury had better knowledge of the man whom he described than the dignitary who penned those lines.

(_From_ “_The Guardian_”)

In Memoriam. EDWARD HOARE.

“By the death of Canon Hoare the Evangelical party in the Church of
England loses, perhaps, its doughtiest champion in our generation.
But long before his death experience and advancing years had so
suffused his views with catholicity that he was even more conspicuous
as a pillar of his Church than as the leader of a party.

“Born in a family in which piety was a tradition, and predisposed by
his Quaker blood to think little of public opinion where it came into
conflict with convictions, he inherited a vigour of mind and body of
which he early gave proof when, as stroke of the Second Trinity boat,
he raised it to the head of the river, and became a high Wrangler.
But though a Fellowship at Trinity was fairly within his reach, he
entered at once into the active duties of the ministry to which he
had devoted himself, and thenceforth his energies were wholly bent on
pastoral work, though not to the exclusion of the Mission cause
abroad and the furtherance in England of those views which he
believed most faithfully to reflect the mind of its Church. To the
successful study of mathematics he doubtless owed the habit of boldly
pressing his principles to their logical conclusions, undisturbed by
those many side-issues which often perplex minds less vigorously
trained in the exact sciences; though in his case a sturdy common
sense and native shrewdness did not suffer him to be betrayed thereby
into practical mistakes, while his large and loving heart would never
permit the strongest of his opinions to impair his affection for men
whose conclusions differed from his own, if they were otherwise
worthy of it.

“It was on a foundation thus broad and solid that his commanding
personality was built up, becoming a tower of strength to those who
resigned themselves to his religious guidance, and attaching
marvellously by its strength and sweetness converts to the religious
principles which he held and advocated. How important a place he
held at his best in the esteem of his neighbours those will remember
who witnessed the universal demonstrations of sympathy when his life
was in danger from Roman fever, and the whole town was quivering with
anxiety lest they should lose one whom they could so ill spare. And
though the wane of his physical powers and the inevitable changes of
a watering-place population may have narrowed the circle of his
influence towards the last, the striking demonstrations of respect
which marked his funeral bore witness not only to the deep attachment
of his own congregation, but also to the widespread conviction of his
brother-clergy and of all the country-side that a shining light had
been quenched, whose witness for God had penetrated far beyond the
range of his personal ministrations.

“Of the endeared relations between him and his congregation, who had
looked up to him for spiritual direction for over forty years, only
those within the magic circle of that pastoral connection could form
an idea. The well-spring of personal affection which flowed forth
from his loving heart towards the humblest of his flock was repaid by
a personal devotion which might have proved injurious to a weaker
character, less firmly rooted on the rock of truth. But there was an
element of generous appreciation in a remark let fall at his funeral,
that there was probably no more ‘personally conducted’ congregation
in England than that of Trinity Church, Tunbridge Wells.

“But on wider platforms Canon Hoare’s ascendency of character had
been in his time not less conspicuous. In his own ruri-decanal
meetings, in which he continued to take part up to within a few weeks
of his death; in the diocesan conferences, at which only a year ago
he bore his solemn and memorable testimony to the value of Church
Schools; and at Church Congresses, where he was ever ready to step
gallantly into the breach in defence of the principles of the Church
which he thought to be assailed,—in these various fields of encounter
the manliness of his advocacy, set off by his manifest sincerity, and
by his charity towards those who differed from him, commended itself
to the admiration even of those who remained unconvinced by his
arguments.

“But his own pulpit was undoubtedly the vantage-ground from which he
most effectively did battle for his Master’s cause. Armed with a
forcible, lucid, and winning mode of address, with an incomparable
command of Holy Scriptures, transparently in earnest, and known of
all men to live the life he preached, by the elevation of his
religious character no less than by voice and gesture, ‘he drew his
audience upward to the sky.’ Even after his eyesight failed him, and
he could with difficulty mount the pulpit steps, he continued to the
last, like the Apostle of love, to deliver his Master’s message. And
who shall say in how many hearts it found an echo among that
changeful congregation, and in what remote parts of the world a
generation which knew him not have been taught by their parents to
call his name blessed? His beloved Mother Church has lost no more
loyal, wise, persuasive, heavenly-minded son and servant—no more
trusty guide of souls from earth to heaven—than our modern
‘Greatheart,’ Edward Hoare.”

* * * * *

“_The Record_” _Friday_, _July_ 13_th_. CANON HOARE.

“The death of Canon Hoare removes from the front rank of Evangelical
Churchmen a conspicuous and commanding figure. He took his degree in
1834—Fifth Wrangler. He was ordained deacon in 1837, {273} the year,
it will be remembered, of the Queen’s accession. His jubilee
coincided with that of the Sovereign whom he so truly honoured; and
it is neither fanciful nor fulsome to say that he held a kind of
sovereign rank amongst the Evangelical clergy. One of their kings is
dead. It happens sometimes to all parties to lose a man who was much
more to them than to the Church at large. We do not deny that this
was the case with Canon Hoare. In spite of his conspicuousness, he
was not naturally the sort of man who loves to be conspicuous. He
grew to greatness amongst his fellows by the influence of character
alone. His abilities were considerable; his training was excellent;
his family traditions were of the best that the eighteenth century in
its ripe benevolence handed on to the young religious energy of the
nineteenth. That bright benevolence and beneficence shone in his
face, unmingled with the eagerness of the combatant or the push and
pressure of the ambitious candidate for leadership. His attitude to
the Church of England at large was one of admiring loyalty, but he
had no self-seeking thoughts. He dwelt, and loved to dwell, among
his own people. He took his share, an honourable share, in the
struggles of his own times; but the part which he took was, when it
led him to scenes of controversy, always a strange and unwelcome
work. But none the less, perhaps all the more for that, he did it
well. The nephew of Joseph John Gurney and of Elizabeth Fry was not
without a strong element of what is sturdy and staunch. That side of
his character found useful expression when, at the Church Congress at
Derby in 1882, he was suddenly called upon to meet the suggestion of
Lord Halifax that the Bishops should allow the alternative use at the
Holy Communion office in the Prayer-Book of 1549. Then, in his own
name and in the name of the Evangelical party, he spoke his apologia.
. . . That scene illustrates the man; and though a good deal has
happened since, and the Lambeth Judgment must not be forgotten, yet
that interpretation of the signs of the times remains the only
reasonable reading of them, and the alternative—the Reformers or
Rome—is still the only possible alternative if England is to remain a
Christian country. And yet, as we have said, this was an incident.

“His work, his real work, was of another kind. Perhaps no other
position in England would have suited him quite as well as the post
he held at Tunbridge Wells. He made Tunbridge Wells the Canterbury
of West Kent, and he was the unofficial primate. For forty years
this watering-place, the once fashionable and frivolous resort of
people half whose complaints were due to the too easy conditions of
their life, has come more and more to be the home of people whose
leading purpose is to find out how to do most for the Kingdom of God,
and have found there that a plain English clergyman was for the most
part at the back of all its missionary energies. ‘I am but one of
yourselves, a presbyter,’ said Newman in his first tract. So, in his
_last_ tract, might Canon Hoare have said. For forty fruitful years
the overshadowing influence of a good man’s life has been a kind of
visible sign of a yet higher overshadowing. Prayers and alms have
marked the life of the place, and, whatever the future may have in
store, there has been peace and truth in Tunbridge Wells in Canon
Hoare’s days. Outside his own parish, his next most influential
place was, no doubt, the Committee-room of the Church Missionary
Society. There was a time, indeed, when week by week two able men
came up to Salisbury Square, each in his own way exercising a
powerful influence upon the Cabinet deliberations. One was the pen
more than the voice, the other the voice more than the pen, of
missionary counsel. But those were the days of Henry Venn, and in
his days counsellors for the most part found themselves anticipated.
But when those days had passed away, and the increasing missionary
activity of the Church brought new conditions, new problems, new
agencies, new methods into view, then came a time in which
counsellors who had within them a living spring of energy, readiness
of mind, elasticity, hopefulness, breadth of view, a firm belief in
the future as well as a firm grip upon the past, were invaluable, and
such a man was Canon Hoare. Things new and old were in him, as they
always are in the men who by the force of character become guides of
their fellows. The man of routine, the mere pedant, the mere
deprecator of mistakes, asks always for a precedent. He does well to
ask for it; it is a finger-post to him. The man of wisdom makes
precedents, founding them on principles of which he is sure. In such
a man the inner sight is clear, the eye is single. When he speaks
there is the ring of authority in what he says, the highest
expression of the common sense of men.

“Who shall estimate the value of such a career? Who shall gauge the
loss to the commonwealth of the Church of one such counsellor? It is
pleasant to think that, priceless as Canon Hoare was to his party,
and thoroughly as he was in sympathy with its aims and sentiments,
there is no deduction to be made for bitterness, for narrowness, for
sour alienation from human interests. It was his privilege to touch
the life of his times at many points: in the abundance of his
interests he multiplied himself.

“Happy in his family, in the narrower and the wider sense of the
word, happy in his friendships, happy in his opportunities, happy in
his wide sympathies with humanity, his heart went out expansively to
all who challenged his attention. The world became one wide field,
to which he gave himself, his children, his substance, his time, his
prayers. He was heart and soul an Evangelical. But we are greatly
mistaken if the Church of England generally does not recognise in
Canon Hoare one of her truest children, not the less for that which
was part of his inheritance, the knowledge that Christ our Lord has
other sheep, not of the fold in which he was so distinguished an
under-shepherd.”

THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

The following minute, which was passed by the Committee of the above body at their first meeting after Canon Hoare’s death, records, as far as words can do so, the deep loss that the Society has sustained by this event:—

“In addition to the deaths of long-honoured and attached friends of
the Society within the last few weeks, the Bishop of Bath and Wells,
Canon Lord Forster, Lord Charles Russell, and Howard Gill, the
Committee record with affectionate and thankful remembrance a life
consecrated to the service of our Divine Master in the removal of
their beloved brother Canon Edward Hoare.

“Trained in the days of the Evangelical revival at Cambridge under
Simeon, Scholefield, and Carus, Edward Hoare commenced his ministry
in 1836 as curate to the Rev. Francis Cunningham, at Pakefield, where
he found the genial and warm sympathy of those who were at the time
engaged in the religious movement, and where he gave early evidence
of the bright living missionary spirit which was so prominent a
feature of his ministry in his after-life at Richmond, Ramsgate, and,
finally, at Tunbridge Wells; where, for forty-one years, he was by
the grace of God ever at the front of all missionary work both at
home and abroad. The remarkable position of influence which he
attained was not from his gifts, which were considerable, but from
his grace. The features of his character may be briefly summed up as
they were known in his private life, in his parochial work, in the
pulpit, on the platform, and in the Committee-room of the Church
Missionary Society: godly simplicity and unflinching courage,
clearness of judgment and expression, loving sympathy and
consideration for others, unfailing diligence and soundness in the
Faith, and supreme reverence for and delight in the Word of God.
These gracious qualities made his counsels and co-operation wise,
weighty, and practical. He was in the highest sense a faithful
witness to the principles of the Reformation and the doctrine and
discipline of the Church of England, and a zealous, popular, and
attractive advocate at all times of the work of his beloved Church
Missionary Society.

“The Committee commend the members of his family, especially those
who are in the Mission-field, to the very special prayers of the
Church, in the hope that a double portion of his spirit may be
imparted to his successors.”

* * * * *

The beloved son in the Mission-field was the only one absent when the aged father was laid to rest. His visit with his wife and children, three and a half years before, had been an unspeakable joy in the old home. During Canon Hoare’s latter years all who knew him remember the interest and delight that he took in the work at Ningpo, and how continually his thoughts turned to those dear ones who had dedicated themselves to labour for God in China. Yet—who can tell?—perhaps when the River has been crossed time and distance have ceased to be, and the blessed dead, being with Christ, are nearer those who are in Christ than when they moved among us here on earth.

* * * * *

“After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken
with a summons by the same post as the other, and had this for a
token that the summons was true, ‘that his pitcher was broken at the
fountain’ (Eccles. xii. 6). When he understood it he called for his
friends and told them of it. Then said he: ‘I am going to my
Father’s; and though with great difficulty I have got hither, yet now
do I not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where
I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage,
and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars
I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles
who now will be my rewarder.’

“When the day that he must go hence was come many accompanied him to
the river-side, into which as he went down he said, ‘Death, where is
thy sting?’ and as he went down deeper, he said, ‘Grave, where is thy
victory?’

“So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him at the other
side.”

* * * * *

“I passed from them, but I found Him whom my soul loveth” (Canticles
iii. 4).