West Port Experiment

When recently reading Iain Murray’s Scottish Christian Heritage, I caught an interesting aside about Chalmers’ regard for Charles Bridges, the author of the classic The Christian Ministry (1829). It should not be surprising, I suppose, not only because they were contemporaries, but also because they were establishmentarians who both believed in and practiced the territorial principle of home missions.

Here is a quote from Chalmers’ The Right Ecclesiastical Economy of a Large Town:

My excellent friend, the Rev. Charles Bridges, of Old Newton, Suffolk, finds, I am sure, most ample occupation among those six hundred people whom he may be said to have domesticated into one parochial family; and, were it not for his still more important services to the Christian church at large, would show, by his incessant labours, how possible it were to make out a most beneficial expenditure of all his strength and all his time amongst them.

I’d love to explore this connection further, as well as that of Chalmers and Charles Simeon.