When Simeon moved to put benches in the aisles, the church wardens threw them out. He battled with discouragement and at one point wrote out his resignation.
“When I was an object of much contempt and derision in the university,” he later wrote, “I strolled forth one day, buffeted and afflicted, with my little Testament in my hand ”¦ The first text which caught my eye was this: ‘They found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross.'”
Slowly the pews began to open up and fill, not primarily with townspeople but with students. Then Simeon did what was unthinkable at the time: he introduced an evening service. He invited students to his home on Sundays and Friday evening for “conversation parties” to teach them how to preach. By the time he died, it is estimated that one-third of all the Anglican ministers in the country had sat under his teaching at one time or another.
Yes, Charles Simeon is truly an admirable role model for evangelical Anglicans. He represents the evangelical tradition at its best. Indeed, he is an inspiring, heroic model for all orthodox Anglicans with a passion for the truth of the gospel and a heart to obey the divine mandate to be a witness to that saving gospel. He bore “much fruit,” even a “hundred-fold.”
Two additional points not touched upon in this brief biographical sketch provided by the link. First, Simeon was a significant bridge builder between the Calvinist and the Arminian wings of English Protestantism. But he didn’t seek to reconcile those camps through the usual Via Media approach, splitting the difference between the “extremes.” Instead, he rightly sought to hold together both truths, divine sovereignty and predestination along with genuine human free will, insisting that their proper relationship was paradoxical, i.e., both true.
However, like all or us, Charles Simeon had his blind spots. Not least among them was that he was the sort of Anglican who can fairly be described as an English Protestant through and through. He failed to appreciate the catholic side of the Anglican inheritance and give it equal due. In some ways that is perfectly understandable, for he lived before the great flowering of the Catholic Revival within Anglicanism that started at Oxford in 1833.
But Simeon is the epitome of the faithful local pastor who ends up having a vast and far-reaching influence, especially by his personal example that inspired countless young men who went into the ordained ministry wanting to do as he did. Simeon’s “conversation parties” remind me of Luther’s similar tremendous influence through his “Table Talk” around the family table at his home in Wittenberg.
Thank God for the life and ministry of Charles Simeon. May Christ raise up many more like him in our own day!
David Handy+
Thank you for posting this. Simeon receives far too little attention these days, particularly from evangelicals.