The Life, Labours, and Writings of Caesar Malan
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This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information in books and make it universally accessible. https://books.google.com ■ §■■■■■■■■■. §■■ m m HH1 ■ H 1 81 . ■ H I MB . iji ijj ■ IBS ■■J | 1 1 Hnfl:--:• HBJ B■S ■■1 ^■n HHfl ^-^ ^^R'iS^■-'^. HL ■ WKm s*r£* -Si A •,•>•- >^^g^z^=S«i^^- <===£= THE LIFE, LABOURS, AND WRITINGS C^SAR MALAN. MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL IN THE CHUECH OP GENEVA, DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, AND PASTOR OF "L'EGLISE DU TEMOIGNAGE." ONE OF HIS SONS. bibliotheque des pasteurs 7, ch. des Cedres 1004 ■ LAUSANNE (Fac-fiituile of the habitual Seal of Mala.ii. drawn and engraved by 1 llstlf in the beginning of the Revival.) T-H nfA. LONDON: JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 1869. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE Introduction, ..... 1 BOOK I. I. Childhood and Early Years, .... 9 II. New Convictions and Struggles, . .30 III. Malan's Chapel, and Pastoral Work up to 1830, . 113 IV. General Survey of the Years 1820-1830, . .171 BOOK II. Public Labours fbom 1830. I. His Dogmatism, and the Distinctive Character of his Teaching, 214 II. Evangelisation in Geneva, and other Countries, . 254 III. Public Labours in Geneva from the Year 1830, 310 ii CONTENTS. BOOK III. Malan's Private and Domestic Life — His Closing Relations to the Church— The Evening op his Life, and his death. I. My Father in the Bosom of his Family, . 373 II. Evening and Close of his Life, .... 430 INTRODUCTION. Immediately after my father's death, I received numerous requests to undertake the task of writing his biography. It appeared to me at the time that such a task might easily have been entrusted to abler hands, and a stricter impartiality at the same time have been secured. Though four years have elapsed 6ince that event, still, with the exception of a few articles in French and English newspapers, and a short notice by the Eev. John Augustine Bost,* no record has been furnished of my father's career. Under these circumstances, I have yielded to the appeals of those friends who seemed to think that, in some respects, I possessed special qualifications for recording his history. This they argued from their knowledge of the fact that I was most intimately associated with my father from the very nature of my own studies, and enjoyed the privilege * Published in 1865. I eagerly seize this occasion of thanking my old friend, in my name, and in the name of all my family, not only for the pages referred to above, so full of friendly feeling, but also for all his kind ness to my father in the last years of his life. Amongst the obituary articles in periodicals, the pages in the Record (8th June 1864), written by a friend of my father of long standing, are especially worthy of note. A 2 INTRODUCTION. of living near him, especially towards the close of his life, to a greater extent than any of my brothers. On the other hand, thankfully admitting that I owe what. religious light I may be at present enjoying to his teaching instrumentally, and more especially to his example, I must at the same time add that I was never a member of the community which acknowledged him as pastor, and that, from a very early period, I gave to the faith we shared in common, a dogmatic expression different from his. This, however, proved no hindrance to the intimacy which I enjoyed with him, or to the confidence with which he favoured me, while in his living piety and fervent faith I ever sought and found the fire which warmed my soul. Though the struggle which reflected such imperishable renown on his earlier days happened at a period beyond my recollection, I can distinctly recall the events which immediately followed. But my closest remembrances gather round his declining years, the long-protracted evening of his honourable life. Eeduced by his isolation to a chilling obscurity, he persevered as undauntedly as ever in the activity which had always characterised him, and secured by his testimony, faithful to the last, and by the unvarying harmony between his principles and his life, a position of peculiar prominence in the religious world, in the midst of which he was placed. It will be dfficult — I feel it strongly — to reach and retain that elevation of spirit from which alone a faith like his — so simple, natural, candid, and fervent — can be fairly appreciated. Still, I will endeavour to distinguish, with such clearness as I may be able to employ, between that INTRODUCTION. 3 faith or living principle communicated to his will by divine agency and the semi-human or Christian expression which he gave to it in dogma. To me the living faith of his heart appeared not only as a special grace beautifying his life, but as a heaven-lit beacon at the entrance of mine, destined, I am well assured, to guide me to the end of my days. Its dogmatical expression, in common with any other of his peculiar characteristics, I shall regard in the following pages, as submitted to that particular kind of appreciation which may be looked for in a son ; nor shall I, I trust, transgress in any subsequent criticism the limits which filial reverence would naturally impose. A still greater difficulty, however, remains to be noticed. For one, educated as I was, under bis immediate influence, and trained in the midst of the circumstances which iso lated his family and himself, it will, I feel, be no easy task to maintain a strictly unbiassed judgment in review ing his career. Not that I have any expectation of satisfying all the different sections of our religious world ; my only aim in this respect will be to avoid as far as possible all injury to just susceptibilities. To this end I shall endeavour, in imitation of him whose life I am recording, to maintain a spirit of brotherly love towards men I cannot wish to please, and to cherish a sincere respect for those whose opinions I cannot adopt. If I fail at times to suppress the personal element, if individual feelings prove too strong, my readers will have to judge from the facts submitted to them whether they justify the language employed. Though born in the midst of the First Eevival, I never witnessed under my father's roof the prejudice and 4 INTRODUCTION. narrowness of view with which the friends of that religions movement are so frequently credited. After an early visit to foreign countries, I commenced my studies in Germany, continued them at Lausanne under Vinet, and concluded them in the Theological School of the Evangelical Society of Geneva, at the time when E. Scheren was on the list of its professors. At a later period, I received many valued marks of esteem from our National Church. Dis sociated at present from any particular communion, my aim is to occupy a position amongst those believers who desire not so much to serve any particular section of the Church as to serve God Himself in any organised form with which His Providence may for a time connect them. Independent as is this position, which I felt it my duty to describe, I cannot but realise the difficulty of avoiding, on the one hand, indications of the partiality which no son could help experiencing for such a father, and, on the other, the undue influence of those emotions which will assert themselves whenever I recall his struggles and sufferings. Had Geneva continued to be what it was when these sufferings were undergone, my feelings in reference to them would have sufficed to deter me from my present undertaking. But the religious animus of 1817 is now extinct, and while the incidents of that period deserve to be recorded, the fact that the dominion of the clergy, in some of its severer manifestations, has succumbed to the logic of progress will never fail to be regarded with satisfaction. To sceptics on all " religious questions," it will suffice to say that, without dwelling on the interest which will ever attach to Malan's life in the eyes of those who shared the INTRODUCTION. 5 sentiments he so boldly asserted, his history will not be without its worth, even in the judgment of the indifferent, as being the career of a man persecuted and set aside for daring to remind the Church and nation of those traditions which alone have been the source of their past glory. As a man of faith he realised in his own experience the promise uttered once on our earth by Him for Whose cause he suffered. A true representative of a sincere profession, and of the rights of individual convictions, he lived long enough to see the ecclesiastical body which had discarded him stripped of the privileges they had abused, — long enough also, to hail, along with all the friends of Christian liberty and an unshackled gospel, a return of new life to the ancient Church of his fathers, always dear to him, — long enough, to bear public testimony before strangers that all this had come to pass. In undertaking to write his life, I believe that I am not only following my strongest inclination as a son, and a fellow-believer, but that I am even rendering a service to my country. Were I to seek to revive buried animosities, I know well that among the multitudes who would condemn me, he himself would be foremost.