Robert Hall, Leicester, to Thomas Raffles, Liverpool, 12 March 1817.

12 March 1817

Rev. & dear Sir

             I feel myself much honoured by the regard of so respectable a Society to officiate at its anniversary. Be assured my readiness to do so is not the least diminished by a difference of opinion on one religious subject, the importance of which has been in my humble apprehension now much overrated. Instead the circumstance to which I allude would rather operate as an inducement than as an impediment. But still there are powerful reasons which compel me to decline an invitation which does me honour. I feel that my powers of voice are by no means adequate to reach the audience which may be expected on such an occasion. Next, I am already engaged the ensuing spring & summer to be absent in different places for as much time (I might say more) as I can with the least propriety be spared from my home engagements. Finally though I have the highest respect for the motives which actuate the members of your most respectable Society, & other similar ones, yet I have always disrelished the air of publicity & attention with which the operations of missionary Societies are usually conducted. For my own denomination, I never yet took a part, nor ever intend in any meeting when speeches were delivered &c. &c.  I have been too strongly impressed, whether correctly or not, with the perception that these meetings are repugnant to the simplicity of the gospels, & that they tend too much to assimilate the Kingdom of Christ to the spirit & maxims of the World. I cannot forget our Savior’s divine aphorism, the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation, or as Cambell has it, not with parade. I am far from wishing to censure others, but such are my feelings & convictions, to which as an honest man, while they continue to be such, my conduct must be conformed.

          Permit me my dear Sir, to thank you very cordially for the present of your travels.[4] I have been reading them only with Mrs Hall with very great delight. I admire greatly the judicious selection of objects – the brevity of the style & the force & vivacity of the descriptions. You have planted your reader in the very heart of the scene you are exhibiting whether it be the tumultuous magnificence of Paris, or the solitary & romantic grandeur of the Alps.

         I have read nothing on the same subject with equal pleasure. Wishing a perpetual increase in usefulness & happiness, I remain dear Sir

                                             Your affectionate friend & Brother

                                                               Robert Hall

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 177-78 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 377, fol. 859b, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. John Campbell (1766-1840) was one of Scotland’s most notable missionaries in the early years of the nineteenth century. In 1812, 1814, and 1818-21 he toured parts of South Africa on behalf of the London Missionary Society. He published an account of his first journey, Travels in South Africa, Undertaken at the Request of the Missionary Society (1815), from which Hall has probably taken the reference mentioned above. Another reference above is to Raffles’s Letters During a Tour Through France (1818).