THE HINTONS: FATHER AND SON 



183 



in the Acts or the Epistles of St. Paul, it was like 

 listening to a passage from Paley's " Horae Pau- 

 linae." The sermon, or lecture, in the evening 

 was highly elaborated — often eloquent. In spite 

 of a certain hardness of manner — perhaps more 

 than manner — and an irascibility which was 

 troublesome enough, Mr. Howard Hinton was a 

 man of much tenderness. It was not uncommon 

 to see him weep in the pulpit. Nor was it easy 

 for the hearer to remain unmoved while he was 

 making pathetic appeals of the kind which so 

 frequently occur in the writings of his son James. 

 The chapel was built to seat, perhaps, eight hun- 

 dred persons comfortably, but it would contain a 

 thousand ; the majority of the audience were in- 

 telligent and sensitive, and the visible effect was 

 often A r ery great. 



We may put together in a desultory way a 

 few more particulars concerning a man who should 

 not be forgotten, before we pass on to his son. 

 Mr. Howard Hinton was intensely "musical." 

 Novello's " Psalmist " was produced for his con- 

 gregation — it contains one or two tunes of his 

 own composing — and it was as great an advance 

 upon the old " Union Tune-Book," edited by 

 Mr. Clark, of Canterbury, as that was upon Rip- 

 pon and Walker. The minister would detect 

 not only a false note, but a flat voice in any 

 corner of the chapel, and you might see him 

 all but start up in his pulpit, single out the dis- 

 sonantial person, and wither him with a glance. 

 The effect was a little grotesque, for the pulpit 

 was a half-cylinder standing forth from the wall, 

 with a door at the back by which the preacher 

 entered from the vestry ; and Mr. Hinton was a 

 large man. One effect of the singing on a Sun- 

 day morning was peculiar — to an outsider. At 

 the time in question the writer of these lines was 

 just in the early stages of a mental crisis — was 

 beginning to feel that his ultimate affinities lay 

 rather with the mystics than the intellectualists. 

 Sometimes, when he approached the chapel on 

 the Sunday morning, he felt unable to go in — the 

 presence of that miscellany of people would have 

 jarred upon his mood. Now, the chapel was sit- 

 uated down a narrow turning far out of the main 

 street, and very much jammed in. Right under its 

 windows went on a Jews' old-clothes market, and 

 the effect of the noise made by these Jews — the 

 chatter and clatter of bargain and gossip, in many 

 tongues, mingled with the full-voiced outburst of 

 song from the inside of the chapel (a sound 

 unique in London, perhaps in England) — was one 

 not to be forgotten by the loiterer without. 



The congregation was, for those days, a " rep- 



resentative " one — mainly composed, we should 

 say, of intelligent, well-to-do tradesmen, bank- 

 clerks, and that sort of middle-class folk gener- 

 ally, with, of course, a sprinkling of professional 

 men, doctors, lawyers, etc. Mr. Peto (now Sir 

 Morton) was a prominent member. The main 

 point, however, is that Howard Hinton and his 

 people were real thorough-going Dissenters of the 

 old school. Their modern descendants have less 

 backbone. We well remember the determined 

 manner in which the minister dealt with a proc- 

 lamation for a day of fasting and prayer. He 

 said, in substance : " We shall treat your procla- 

 mation as waste paper. You, the civil governor, 

 have no business within these precincts, and we 

 just slam the door in your face ! When we fast 

 and pray, it shall be because it seemed good to 

 the Holy Ghost and to us, and not because you 

 proclaim it." In the memoirs of the late James 

 Hinton which suggested these reminiscences, Miss 

 Ellice Hopkins quotes some writer who tells us 

 that Howard Hinton was often taken for " a bit- 

 ter disputant." If a little more of the straight- 

 forward spirit which gave him this repute had 

 been common in these days, the C. D. Acts would 

 have been swept away in a whirlwind of indigna- 

 tion long ago, and some other acts would never 

 have been passed, or would have been found ex- 

 tremely difficult to work. Howard Hinton would 

 have suffered the spoiling of his goods over and 

 over again rather than pay a school-board rate ; 

 and the reason he would have given, be it right 

 or wrong, would have been that it was a church- 

 rate in disguise. 



In his pulpit-discourses Howard Hinton was 

 accustomed to take his illustrations from a wide 

 range, and he showed a marked bent toward sci- 

 ence. 1 No doubt the ethical and religious ele- 

 ments constituted the dominant part of his na- 

 ture ; but he was unquestionably a rationalizing 

 preacher. In these days he would have been 

 fighting in one or other of the camps of open 

 and pronounced "free-thought;" but he would 

 have been sectarian — that is to say, he would 

 have insisted on creeds as a necessity of human 

 nature. It is not difficult to affirm the line he 



1 In a discussion between the Rev. Brewin Grant 

 and Mr. Holyoake, held many years ago, under the 

 presidency of Mr. S. Morley, Mr. Hinton was umpire. 

 One night the discussion waxed wild and hot, and 

 might soon have become very personal. But there 

 was a dead silence of expectation as the tall, stalwart 

 figure of the umpire arose to its full height. The ora- 

 cle spake, and what it said was, " Would the company 

 like a little fresh air ? " There spake the father of the 

 physiologist. James. The room was aired in silence, 

 and the wrath died away. 



