TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A Martyred Bishop
JAMES HANNINGTON, B.A., Bishop and Martyr, born in Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, in 1847, made a few tours abroad, entered Oxford, was ordained in 1874, yet in these early days of his ministry Hannington was conscientious and absolutely sincere in all that he did;
but not even yet could it be said of him that he knew what it was to live in the knowledge that Jesus Christ was his personal Saviour. His time, his talents, his money he gave freely and ungrudgingly in the service of the people amongst whom he ministered; but he could not tell them from his own experience of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit of God in the human heart. He was conscious of something lacking in his ministry, and at times he became unhappy and depressed, because he felt that he had not the power he ought to have had in his work for God. But light and knowledge came to him—vouchsafed through the reading of a single chapter in a little book that his friend Mr. Dawson had sent to him.
The story of what may be called James Hannington’s conversion is one of the most remarkable of its kind that has ever been recorded. Thirteen months before the light came to him, when he was preparing for ordination, he had written to his friend, bewailing his unworthiness; and in his reply Mr. Dawson had related the story of his own spiritual experience, and urged him to give himself up in full and complete surrender to God. For more than a year that letter remained unanswered; and then, in his distress at his failure to realise the full meaning of personal salvation, he wrote again to his friend, begging him to come and help him. Mr. Dawson was at the time unable to leave his own work and journey into Devonshire; but he wrote a letter that he hoped would be helpful, and with it he enclosed a little book—”Grace and Truth,” by Dr. Mackay, of Hull. This book Hannington commenced to read; but he got no further than the preface, where he found what he too hastily concluded to be an error in scholarship on the part of the author. This was enough for him. He straightway threw the book aside.
For long the book remained neglected and forgotten; and then, when he was preparing for a journey, at the end of which he expected to meet his friend, he suddenly remembered it, and it occurred to him that he would probably be asked whether he had read it. Rather from a desire to be able to give an affirmative answer to that question than from any particular wish to know what the book contained, he put it into his portmanteau, and at the first opportunity he read the first chapter.
He found it so little to his taste that he made up his mind that not even for his friend’s sake would he read any more of it ; and his feeling of disapproval was so vigorous that he flung the offending volume across the room. Ultimately he put it back in his portmanteau, where it remained until his next visit to Hurstpierpoint. There he came across it again; and resolving for his friend’s sake to make one more effort to overcome his prejudice, he started for the third time to read it. He read straight on for three chapters, and came at length to one entitled, “Do you feel your sins forgiven ?” and by means of this his eyes were opened. “I was in bed at the time reading,” he says; “I sprang out of bed and leaped about the room, rejoicing and praising God that Jesus died for me. From that day to this I have lived under the shadow of His wings in the assurance of faith that I am His and He is mine.”
His transition from the darkness of doubt a,’uncertainty to the marvellous light and peace of the Gospel was a fact for which he seemed never able sufficiently to express his thankfulness and gratitude.