The Young Men’s Christian Association was formed soon after I came to my new charge, and with it I had connection from the beginning, being first on the list of lecturers in the City, before the annual courses at Exeter Hall commenced.
The Evangelical Alliance was founded in 1843, and as a desire for union has ever been with me a “passion,” I joined the Alliance from the beginning. There was great simplicity in the earliest gatherings, and an air of novelty gave additional charms. However, some members professing catholic sympathies on the platform pursued an exclusive line of conduct on other occasions, and this circumstance provoked unfavourable comments. Plausible objections, moreover, were made to the society’s constitution—the platform, too wide for some, being too narrow for others. I could have desired a wider basis and the furtherance of Christian unity apart from all controversy with those who differed from us. On the whole, however, it was a move in the right direction, and the gatherings of its early friends in town and in other parts of the country were of an eminently joyous description. Sir Culling Eardley and others, in private as well as public, promoted the interests of the Alliance. At that time several influential clergymen and leading Dissenters used to meet, not only on the platform, but in the homes of distinguished lay members, who threw themselves very heartily into the movement.
Brought into the neighbourhood of London, and already known by some brethren there, I soon found myself surrounded by many friends. For more than a century there had been in existence an association of Dissenting ministers, who took the title of _Sub Rosa_, from the confidential character of their intercourse. There were some of the most distinguished London Congregational ministers in the brotherhood at the time now referred to; and they discussed points of importance, and for the most part, as to denominational matters, acted in harmony. Some of the departed were men of great ability, conspicuous in the pulpit and on the platform; but the remembrance of them by the public is being gradually crowded out by new names and new questions of religious interest.