Preaching
Even in his early days Roberts endeavoured to organise preaching events wherever he went. His first serious attempt was in 1860, when he delivered a course of 8 public lectures in Senior’s School Room, East Parade, Huddersfield. The Huddersfield meeting then took on Spring Street Academy, (a former Campbellite meeting place) for Sunday meetings including public lectures. Some Sunday afternoons he would also give out-of-door addresses, either in St. George’s Square or the Market Place, Huddersfield. It was at Spring Street, in the winter of 1861, that Robert Roberts delivered a series of twelve Lectures on successive Sunday afternoons, systematically setting out Christadelphian beliefs.
In 1864 after moving to Birmingham, he organised a lecture at Birmingham Town Hall, in reply to an Irvingite preacher who had spoken there previously. Between 1,500 to 1,800 people attended. Eventually in 1866 he leased the Athenaeum Chambers, 71 Temple Row, Birmingham, staying there until December 1871 when the meeting moved to the Temperance hall, 8 Temple Street, Birmingham. Although based in Birmingham, he travelled widely around the country, preaching and supporting the growing Christadelphian movement.
Roberts used all the means at his disposal to preach what he believed to be the truth, and in 1877 he sent a copies of his pamphlet Prophecy and the Eastern Question to all the members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, receiving the following reply from Gladstone: “DUNSTER, January 24th, 1877. Sir, Allow me to thank you for your tract, which I shall read with great interest; for I have been struck with the apparent ground for belief that the state of the East may be treated of in that field where you have been labouring Your faithful servant, W.E.Gladstone.”
In 1895 he embarked (through pressure of circumstances) upon a voyage to Australia. He travelled via the Suez canal, touching at Naples and Colombo to Adelaide. He visited many towns and cities, in Australia and New Zealand, preaching everywhere he went. He then travelled back via the Fiji Islands, the Honolulu (then still known as the Sandwich Islands), Canada and America arriving back in Birmingham in 1896. In 1897 he returned to Australia with his family, they settled in Coburg, a northern suburb of Melbourne, in “Orient House”. In 1897-1898 he went on a short preaching tour in Australia, before embarking on a yet another preaching tour to New Zealand with is wife.
He was in the midst of yet more travelling and preaching when he died of heart failure in San Francisco on September 1898 aged 59. He was succeeded as editor of The Christadelphian Magazine by Charles Curwen Walker.
Read more about this topic: Robert Roberts (Christadelphian)
Famous quotes containing the word preaching:
“Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it done at all.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“But, with whatever exception, it is still true that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of the memory, and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is usual, and not at what is necessary and eternal; that thus historical Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man; where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man
that looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
We understand men do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could
not accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)