Biography
Evan Henry Hopkins was born on December 29, 1837, in London, England. He was the son of a Welsh family, and he grew up in a home that valued learning. He trained as a civil engineer and worked in the profession for some years. He was a man of practical gifts and an orderly mind. In his early twenties he had a sense of being called to the ministry, and he gave up engineering to study for ordination in the Church of England. He went to Cambridge to prepare and was ordained in 1861.
His early ministry was spent in parishes in Kent and in London, and he was a conscientious pastor. He was also a man who felt something lacking in his own spiritual life. He believed the gospel but was haunted by his failure to live it. In the 1870s he came across the writings of Americans such as Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith, who taught that the believer could live a life of victory over sin through faith in Christ and the filling of the Holy Spirit. In 1873 he attended a conference at Oxford, where the teaching was set out, and he experienced a turning point. He said that he came to see that the Christian life is by faith, from the beginning to the end.
In 1875, he was one of the leaders of the first Keswick Convention, held in the Lake District in England. The convention became an annual event that drew thousands of believers each year, and it gave its name to a whole stream of teaching on the deeper life. Hopkins was among the most trusted of its speakers and served as chairman for many years. He gave careful and balanced addresses, and he tried to guard the teaching from extremes. He taught that holiness comes not by struggle but by surrender, that the Spirit gives power for daily living and that the believer must keep on trusting.
He served as vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Richmond, Surrey, for many years, and he was also the first editor of The Life of Faith, a weekly paper that carried the message of Keswick to the world. His book The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, published in 1884, was one of the clearest statements of the Keswick teaching. He also wrote on the life of faith and on practical holiness. His writing was careful, with attention to Scripture, and was free from the sensational.
The Keswick teaching was criticized from two sides. Some in the holiness tradition thought that it fell short of a full cleansing from sin, and some Reformed critics thought that it neglected the role of the believer's effort. Hopkins took a middle way. He insisted that the believer is not sinless but can be kept from the dominion of sin by the power of Christ. His moderate stance drew some to the movement and left others dissatisfied.
He was known as a gracious and humble man, with a tender regard for those who struggled. He did not claim to have attained and wrote that the Christian life is a daily dependence on grace. In his last years he continued to preach and teach, and he spoke at the Keswick Convention until his health failed. He died on April 1, 1918, at the age of eighty. His life shows how a quiet pastor and teacher can spread a message that shapes the lives of thousands.