Bunyan & Maclaren: 12 Years' Obscurity

A fine statue of John Bunyan is built into the corner of Arthur Keen’s 1903 Baptist Church House in London. Beneath is a second commemoration, of the Baptist Union’s Alexander Maclaren, who laid the foundation stone in 1901. Both men lived in different centuries yet benefited from extended periods of obscurity and isolation. Bunyan wrote his best works while suffering the discomforts of a Bedford prison cell; though unable to pastor his flock, God used him through his books to teach and pastor a great many more, the majority of whom were born after his death.

Maclaren was a famous Victorian preacher of Manchester, known as the Monarch of the Pulpit for his energising style. Several times he presided over the British Baptist Union (when such a position bespoke evangelical fervour), as well as the Baptist World Congress which was held in London in 1905. Yet this great man and prominent pulpiteer spent the first twelve years of his ministry in obscurity in Southampton before his forty-five-year-long Mancunian fame. He made similar claims for this period as I made for Bunyan’s 12 years of gaol time. Speaking to ministers-in-training as an old man, he once said:

“The trouble with you young men is that on graduation you get pitch-forked into a prominent position, and you cannot resist the temptation to attend this tea-meeting, serve on that committee, when you ought to remain in your study and do there the work that is of first importance in serving your day and generation according to the will of God.”

He had argued that his dozen years of insignificance granted him the grounding and maturity which served him so well in the years to come. Obscurity, unimportance, insignificance: contrary to the passions of our pride, these states are often the best for our souls, and therefore the most useful to the Master. Do not marvel that you are not some great and revered Christian about whom the biographers are busily recording your life; the Lord’s preferred instruments are usually the plain, the ordinary and the commonplace.