Part 1

Transcribed from the 1888 William Rice edition by David Price, email [email protected]

Memorials OF FRANCIS STORR.

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_SERMONS_ BY REV. CANON HOARE, AND REV. W. MAY,

_Preached in Brenchley Church_, _26 February_, _1888_.

ALSO

_NOTES OF THE LAST SERMON PREACHED BY_ REV. F. STORR, _12 February_, _1888_.

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LONDON: WILLIAM RICE, 86 FLEET STREET, E.C.

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In Memoriam. FRANCIS STORR.

_From the_ GUARDIAN, _Feb._ 29_th_, 1888. {3}

On Saturday, February 25th, the mortal remains of the Rev. Francis Storr, for thirty-four years Vicar of the parish, were buried in the beautiful churchyard of Brenchley. The snow lay thick upon the ground, but the sun shone bright in heaven, and the outward scene symbolised and reflected the feelings of the mourners—the blank sorrow of a bereaved parish, and the rejoicing that the last prayer of their beloved pastor had been granted, and that he had been summoned home before increasing years had necessitated that resignation of his work and ministry which would have been to him a living death.

His work was well described by Canon Hoare, who preached the funeral sermon:—“He was a true specimen of a devoted parish clergyman. He did not take much part in things outside his parish. Most thankful should we have often been if we had had more of his help and counsel in matters concerning the diocese and the Church. But the parish was his sphere, the parish was his home, and the parish was the one object for the benefit of which he spent his life.” The Bishop of Dover writes,—“No one could possibly be half-an-hour in his company without seeing a transparently Christian character, the chief features of which were personal humility and genial sociability.” And the Archbishop of Canterbury writes,—“My last day in Brenchley, and my walk and talk with him were one of the never-to-be-forgotten days. The labour and the love which turned an affliction so great [his blindness] into a gain, were indeed in the very spirit of St. Paul and of his Master.”

Born in 1808, and educated at Harrow and Queen’s College, Oxford, he entered the ministry in 1833 as curate of Up-Waltham, in Sussex, where he often exchanged pulpits with Archdeacon (now Cardinal) Manning. In 1837, he was appointed to the rectory of Otley in Suffolk, through the instrumentality of the present Bishop of Norwich, who, with a conscientiousness which was in those days rarer than now, refused himself to hold two livings. The parish had never before had a resident incumbent. A dilapidated and empty church was speedily restored and filled. The young preacher with his striking presence, clear voice, and impassioned delivery, attracted a congregation not only from his own parish, but from the neighbouring villages, where in those days such preaching was unknown, so that hearers from twenty-three different parishes have been counted at one Otley service.

In 1846, he was presented by Lord Tollemache, who as a near neighbour had seen and appreciated his work at Otley, to the living of Acton, in Cheshire. Acton is a large and straggling agricultural parish, but with the help of curates and district visitors, he soon got to know each household almost as intimately as in the village of Otley, and any one in trouble, whether of mind or body, instinctively turned to the Vicarage. Acton was one of the first parishes, if not the first parish, to give up generally the practice of Sunday cheese-making. Till, at his instigation, the experiment was tried, it had been pronounced by farmers an impossibility. After eight years of incessant labour (he was hardly absent as many Sundays from his parish), the declining health of his wife compelled him to move southward, and he was appointed to the living of Brenchley, vacant by the death of the Rev. R. Davies, Secretary of the C.M.S., whose widow some years later became his second wife. The special work of his predecessor was carried on by him with ever-increasing zeal and success, and, whereas in 1848 Brenchley had scarcely heard of the C.M.S., in 1887 the contribution from the parish amounted to over £300. Part of this sum came from outside friends who knew that the most acceptable birthday present they could make to the Vicar was a subscription to his favourite Society, but the larger proportion was given in sixpences and coppers. It must not be supposed that this preference made him overlook other claims, or ignore other charitable societies. In particular, the London City Mission, the Flower Mission, and the Bible Society were very near his heart. As for the wants of his own parishioners, he not only gave profusely himself, but he was indefatigable in urging their claims on all who could or would give. He was, I believe, the first incumbent in Kent to remit, without solicitation, a percentage of the tithe. Latterly, in hop-gardens where no hops were picked, the tithe was wholly remitted, and no farmer who was in real straits was ever pressed for payment. For labourers out of work, work was somehow made or found. Thus, during the last winter, as many as thirty at a time were employed by him in road-making. Endless similar charities might be recorded, and still more were done in secret and unknown; but these would wholly fail to represent “that best portion of a good man’s life, his little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” His utter unselfishness and his quick power of sympathy endeared him to an ever-widening circle of friends. He never lost sight of any he had known, and all, whether rich or poor, knew that, if content with simple fare, they would be welcome visitors at the Vicarage.

During the last ten years of his life, the greatest of earthly privations was sent him. There was a gradual failure of sight, ending in total blindness. None who knew him even slightly can have failed to admire the serenity and cheerfulness with which this loss was borne. Like Milton, he “bated not a jot of heart or hope, but still bore up and steered right onward . . . content, though blind.” He never would admit that it was to him a heavy trial, though to a man of his independent character and restless energy it must have been a daily thorn in the flesh. Thanks to the guidance of loving hands, he was able to continue to the last his pastoral visits, and would fearlessly mount the narrowest and steepest stairs of cottages, wherever the sick or dying needed his ministrations. His sermons and lectures seemed almost to gain in power by his concentration of thought and abstraction from objects of sense. He would not rarely take (I had almost written “read”) the whole of the Morning Service, including the Psalms and the Holy Communion. Even in his eightieth year his memory was hardly impaired, and he would give chapter and verse for text after text quoted in his sermons. His knowledge of the Bible was wonderful; it was as if he had it photographed on his heart. The last sermon, preached only nine days before his death, was clear, stirring, and energetic, and bore no trace of flagging powers.

His life was one of the many golden threads that run through the variegated warp of England’s Church history, and show the continuity of her ministry. Though severed by five centuries, he is the direct lineal descendant of Chaucer’s “poure Persoun of a toun,” and there is scarce a word in that marvellous portraiture that might not have been written of Francis Storr, for

“Christes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taughte, but first he folwede it himselve.”

In Memoriam. FRANCIS STORR.

_From the_ RECORD, _March_ 2_nd_, 1888.

Among the deaths of last week our readers will have seen the name of the Rev. Francis Storr, Vicar of Brenchley, Kent. The news reached us only in time to record the bare fact, but we cannot pass over in silence a life, uneventful indeed, but none the less noteworthy. Mr. Storr was one of the oldest, if not the oldest, of a remarkable band of men, linked together by common views and doctrines, but still more closely united by the apostolic zeal and devotedness to Christ’s service which animated one and all. He was the brother-in-law and intimate ally of Dean Champneys and Bishop Utterton, and the life-long friend of the Bishop of Norwich and the Bishop of Liverpool.

Born in 1808, he graduated at Oxford in 1833 (the year of the first appearance of _Tracts for the Times_), being awarded an honorary Fourth Class. With the Tractarian movement he felt no sympathy, and, though on terms of friendship with some of the leaders of that movement, from the very first he threw in his lot with the Evangelical party, never swerving in his allegiance to the end, though ripening years taught him more and more to see good in everything and to attach less importance to party distinctions. In the same year he was ordained by the Bishop of Chichester to the curacy of Up-Waltham, and two years after he took the curacy of Beckenham, Kent. Here he married his first wife, Caroline, daughter of Colonel Holland of Langley Farm, Beckenham, a true and constant helpmate during the twenty years that she was spared to share his labours. In 1837 he was presented to the living of Otley, in Suffolk, and in this small but neglected parish his energies found for a time full scope. When he came, there was no parsonage (no previous Rector had ever lived in the parish), the church was dilapidated, and the churchyard a neglected waste. A parsonage was built, the church restored, and the churchyard reclaimed. But the spiritual change wrought by his means in the parish was even more striking. The voice of one crying, not in a dissenting chapel, but from a Church of England pulpit, “Repent ye,” and appealing with all the fervour and some of the eloquence of a Whitfield, to the individual conscience was a strange sound in that sleepy hollow. Those who had never before set foot in a church came, first from curiosity, then from genuine interest, and then carried the good news to their neighbours, so that the little church could sometimes not contain the hearers who came from twenty parishes round. His sermons were wholly extempore; he never took a note with him into the pulpit. In the most literal sense of the words, “he preached unto them the Scriptures,” for having studied the text of the Bible as few clergymen are now wont in these days of multiplied expositions and commentaries, and being gifted with a strong memory, he would pour forth verse after verse in support of any point he was urging, giving in each case the exact reference. But it was even more by house-to-house visitation than in the pulpit that he made his influence felt. By his absolute unselfishness, his large-hearted sympathy, his deep personal humility, and his genial humour, he found his way sooner or later to every heart, and Dissenters who would denounce him in public as part and parcel of the hated and apostate Establishment, welcomed him in private as their truest counsellor and friend. Over children he exercised almost a fascination; they would follow him along the village street like the Pied Piper, and for each child he would have his sportive nickname or little private joke.

Leaving Otley for Acton was one of the greatest trials to his singularly affectionate nature, and to the end of his life Otley and its people were very dear to his heart. But, much as he loved his first parish, he felt that he could not resist the call to a wider sphere of duty. Of his work at Acton, his successful crusade against Sunday cheese-making, and his unflagging work and labour, both spiritual and sanitary, in the fatal cholera year, we have left ourselves no space to speak. We must pass to the last and longest chapter of his life at Brenchley, of which for thirty-four years he was the Vicar. Succeeding the Rev. Richard Davies, the faithful and devoted Secretary of the C.M.S., he accepted as a sacred legacy the furtherance of the claims of that Society. How successfully he pleaded its cause is shown by the fact that in 1886 Brenchley, a rural parish with no resident squire, sent up a larger contribution than the whole of Scotland. The chief proportion of this came from the coppers of missionary boxes, and the proceeds of a missionary basket to which an old servant of the family was “told off.” During his incumbency the growing district of Paddock Wood, and the off-lying hamlet of Matfield, were made into separate parishes. If all parishes had had an Incumbent like the Vicar of Brenchley, we may confidently say that the question of extraordinary tithe would never have arisen. Each defaulter was treated by him as a tenant in arrears with his rent would be treated by an indulgent landlord, and in bad years some remission of tithe was freely granted at a time when such indulgence was unknown, at least in Kent. Nor were the labourers less cared for than the farmers. No man or woman who could show a plausible case of distress was ever sent empty away from the Vicarage, and relief was always, if possible, given in kind or by providing employment. For the hop-pickers who swarmed each autumn from the slums of London one or more Scripture-readers from the London City Mission were always retained; field meetings, magic-lantern entertainments, &c., were got up; pressure was brought to bear on the farmers to supply more decent sleeping accommodation—in a word, they were treated for the time as members of the flock, and, as far as time and opportunity permitted, Christianised. Of his private life this is not the place to speak, but this much we may venture to state—no man since Dr. Primrose numbered so many poor relations, for the plea of poverty or distress was at once admitted by him as a claim of kinship. And he never lost sight of a friend. Curates who had worked with him forty years ago would still write to seek his counsel and help in any difficulty.

For the last ten years of his life it pleased God to afflict him with the hardest of human trials—the total loss of sight. Yet he found a way to turn his loss to gain, and his noble example of cheerful and almost joyous resignation to the will of his Father more than compensated for any diminution of his energy as a pastor. Not indeed that he relaxed or slackened his work to the very end. In his eightieth year it was his habit to take the Communion Service and Sermon in the Morning, and to read Prayers in the Afternoon; and, though he had necessarily to depend more on others for seeking information and carrying out his behests, no household in the parish was unknown or uncared for.

His last prayer, ἐν φάει καὶ ὄλεσσον, was granted him, and he died in harness, quietly, almost painlessly, and with consciousness to the last. One minute only before he was taken, he asked one of his sons on what text he had preached the previous Sunday, and on being told, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” he whispered, “Our Father—in those two words, rightly understood, lies the whole of the Gospel.”

I. SERMON BY REV. CANON HOARE, M.A. _Sunday Morning_, _February_ 26_th_, 1888.

Ezekiel xxxiii. 33: “_And when this cometh to pass_ (_lo_, _it will come_), _then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them_.”

YOU can see at a glance the application of these words to the solemn occasion that has brought us together this day. They were spoken to Ezekiel. He was a very popular and attractive preacher. The people sat before him, and his words were unto them “as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument.” But they produced no effect; for the people heard his words, but they did them not. These words were therefore spoken to warn them that when certain predicted troubles should arise, they would learn the truth of Ezekiel’s ministry. Those troubles are described in verses 27, 28; and these words were added to warn the people that when all this should come to pass—which it most surely would do—they would then learn the awful fact that there had been a terrible reality in the message of the prophet, and be taught by too late experience that, although they had regarded him not, they had had a prophet among them.

Now, the word “prophet” is not applied only to those persons who were moved by the Spirit to predict the future, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. It means one who speaks forth the Word of God, and proclaims the message of God in the Lord’s name. It is a term therefore that, in this its wider sense, may well be applied to your late beloved pastor, our dear and honoured brother now taken from us, of whom it may be said with the most perfect truth that for thirty-four years he went in and out a true prophet among you.

He was a prophet in the true meaning of the word, for he spent his life in publishing or speaking forth amongst you the hidden mysteries of the salvation of God. We quite acknowledge that he was not a prophet like Ezekiel, carried away in lofty flights of inspired ecstasy; nor like John the Baptist, feeding on locusts and wild honey; but he was one who was in his own quiet, devoted life a true prophet, and who for fifty-five years laboured for souls and faithfully preached Christ Jesus his Saviour.

I have no words to express my profound reverence for such a man. He was a true specimen of that most honourable class, the country clergymen of the Church of England. He did not take much part in things outside the parish. Most thankful should we often have been if we had had more of his valuable help and counsel in matters concerning the Diocese and the Church. But the parish was his sphere, the parish was his home, and the parish was the great object for which he spent his life.

Remember him, then, in his Pastoral work. For thirty-four years (the best part of his ministry) you have enjoyed this privilege. I am speaking, I know, to a bereaved flock; and I want you to look back on your past privileges. He went in his pastoral work into the homes of his people. Think of him: how kind, how faithful, how full of sympathy, how diligent in visiting, even in his blindness. Was he not in very truth a true friend to you all? I am sure every heart must answer, “He was.”

Think of him among the Young. The majority of you must have grown up under his care, and you know what an interest he took in you; how he watched over you in the schools, cared for you in your confirmation, and welcomed you when you became communicants at the Table of the Lord.

In my position at Tunbridge Wells, I see young people from all the surrounding villages, and by the candidates which I have for confirmation I can form some estimate of what is going on in the different parishes. Now I always have a good hope when I have to do with young people who have been brought up at Brenchley. I find them, as a general rule, well trained in the Gospel. I cannot say that they all love it, but they have been taught it, and all that the pastor can do has been done for them in their early training. How many are there in this church at this present time who can look back with profound thanksgiving to lessons taught them in early life by that venerable man!

Think of him in his Missionary work. I do not mean in parochial missions, such as you have just been having—I mean in his warm love for that grand institution, the Church Missionary Society. Were there ever known such Bible and Missionary meetings as those in his schoolroom? What a holy enthusiasm did he kindle amongst us! What a glow there was all around him! The dullest hearts could not fail to catch his fire. How he knew the history of each box! He could not see the records because of his blindness, but he knew all about the boxes and their possessors; and it was impossible to be apathetic in his presence. And what was the secret of it all? How was it brought about? How was this fire kindled—this enthusiasm? Was it not that he was a man of prayer? I remember the last meeting I was at in Brenchley. Just before we left the Vicarage we knelt together in his study, and there he poured out his whole soul before God, and pleaded for that blessing which he found awaiting him when we reached the schoolroom. There was the secret of his power, and there it was that he learned that even in his loss of eyesight God’s grace was sufficient for his need.

Then think of him in the Church. What a wonderful thing to have seen that man, totally blind, standing at the Communion Table only last Ash Wednesday, and going through the service with the Epistle and Gospel as well as those who have their full vision. It was a grand thing to see the blind man not reading the prayers but repeating them. He had loved those prayers throughout his ministry; he had prayed them all through the days of his eyesight, and they had become so completely a part of himself that, when his eyesight was gone, the prayers remained written both on his memory and soul; so that instead of sight he had memory, and instead of his prayer-book he made use of the fleshy tables of the heart. That is the way to pray.

And then follow him to the Pulpit. How often has he stood in this pulpit to plead with you! He must have preached in this church between three and four thousand sermons! and who can measure the value of such a ministry? Here he stood as the ambassador for Christ, “warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that he might present every man perfect in Christ Jesus,” &c. Here he stood to warn the wicked, to awaken the careless, to carry hope to the convicted, to proclaim pardon to the repentant, help to the weak, comfort to the afflicted, and to give food to those hungering and thirsting after righteousness. To sum up, he preached the Gospel of God through the power of the Holy Ghost. And how earnestly did he do it, and how prayerfully! how faithfully and yet how tenderly! How did his heart yearn for souls! How did he first plead with God for sinners in his own home, and then come here to plead with sinners for God! It is to such preaching as this that for the last thirty-four years you have listened habitually, and who shall venture to say that there has not been a prophet among you?

Once more, look at him on his Death-bed. For a long time it had been his constant prayer that it would please God to take him home before he had to give up his work, and so when the answer came all was ready. There was no alarm, no hurry, no confusion. He could still think of his beloved people whom he was about to leave, mentioning by name some of the sick and aged whom he was habitually visiting. He could say, as Mr. Standfast in “Pilgrim’s Progress” did, “I see myself now at the end of my journey; my toilsome days are ended. I have formerly lived by faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him in whose company I delight myself.”

And so in the peaceful calm of an assured faith, with his blessed Saviour full in view, and his beloved people, like the names on Aaron’s breastplate, borne still on his heart, he could step across the border-line to receive from his Lord, whom he had so faithfully served and so truly loved, the blessed welcome, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

And now, what was the secret of the whole character and the whole work? What was it that made him what he was in the home, in the parish, amongst the young, in the mission work, in the church, and on his death-bed? What was it that was the very essence of his life?