West Port Experiment

The following is a delightful quote in the preface of the 1840 edition of Thomas Chalmers’ Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation:

We confess no small gratification in finding, at the end of twenty years, that our promulgations, held at the time to be altogether Utopian, of the great charm and efficiency which lie in the household ministrations of clergymen, are now repeated in the most popular, and at the same time, the most able and authoritative of our daily journals. The Times newspaper of a few days back recommends with great force and eloquence, and in the following terms, “the still further prosecution of an earnest and indefatigable system of parochial domiciliary visiting throughout all the parishes of the land. This, depend upon it, is the only patent and talismanic key to English hearts, whether of Churchmen, Papists, or Dissenters. Disinterested and persevering kindness, brought habitually to a man’s home under all sorts of discouragement, is what no human being can long or rudely resist. With that elevated determination and singleheartedness, which, in the absence of all impertinent intrusions or officious curiosity, manifestly seeks to engage mankind in a devout concern for their immortal interests, let every family in every city, town, or hamlet, be regularly and affectionately visited, no matter what denomination they may belong to. The established clergy, accredited, commissioned, and upheld by the law of this realm, are the clergy of the whole nation. Every fireside in their parish is a part of their allotted charge. They have an official as well as a moral right, subject, of course, to discreet limitations, to seek admittance into every door, ‘ whether men will hear or whether they will forbear.’  Painful repulses will occasionally, though not often, occur; but these, compensated by a consciousness of dutiful exertion and by cordial welcomes in other cases, will sooner or later be overcome hy meek and patient endurance. Only let all the families of England be regularly invited to the dispensation of a free gospel in a free church ; and eventually the very universality of this hahit of parochial visiting will establish it as a part of our social system; and cause it to work with the uniform beneficence of nature’s general laws.”