Rowland Hill, though a very old man in 1830, continued to fill Surrey Chapel with a crowded audience. I listened to a sermon in which he recommended young people when they set up house-keeping to secure one piece of furniture especially—_i.e._, the looking-glass of a good conscience, so that husband and wife, keeping it clean, might see themselves in it, with joy and thankfulness; “for a good man is satisfied from himself,” and, he added, “so is a good woman.” John Angell James, of Birmingham, was one of the most popular preachers at that time, and he occasionally occupied Surrey Chapel pulpit; but William Jay, of Bath, was a more regular “supply,” and echoes of his sonorous voice I still catch as I read his pithy and impressive sermons. When he came to preach Rowland Hill’s funeral sermon I had left college, and he honoured me with an invitation to preach for him at Bath the Sunday following. In 1886, when I occupied the same pulpit in my old age, a lady told me that she remembered my being there more than fifty years before, when the people wondered at their pastor’s sending “such a boy to take his place.” A similar occurrence had happened when Jay first preached for Rowland Hill.
James Parsons, of York, was a frequent visitor to London, and used to occupy for several Sundays in the year the pulpit of Moorfields Tabernacle, and that of Tottenham Court Chapel. Congregations gathered an hour before service to listen to this youthful preacher. He had been educated for the law, and, with a strong taste for rhetorical efforts, had cultivated, by the study of English authors, his own extraordinary gift for public speaking. Almost inaudible at first, his voice would gradually rise into tones shrill and penetrating; and after repeated pauses, when people relieved themselves by bursts of coughing, he would, during his peroration, wind them up to such a pitch of excitement as I have never witnessed since. He was thoroughly evangelical and devout, and did an immense deal of spiritual good. I became intimately acquainted with him in after-years, and found in his friendship a source of much enjoyment. His conversations in the parlour were as full of anecdote and humour as his sermons in the pulpit were of pathos and power. I have heard a member of Parliament, one of his deacons at York, say that Mr. Parsons’ eloquence in early days was perfectly electrifying, and that, as he listened to him at that time, he felt as if he must lay hold on the top of his pew to prevent being swept away by the force of the preacher’s appeals.