Samuel Chadwick

Samuel Chadwick was born on January 6, 1860, in Burnley, Lancashire, in the north of England, in a family of mill workers. His father was a cotton operative, and the home was crowded and poor. The cotton towns of Lancashire in those years were places of hard labor, with long hours, little pay and little schooling for the children. At the age of ten, Samuel was sent into the mill as a half-timer. He spent half of his day at the loom or the machine and the other half in a school. By the age of thirteen, he worked full time. He was a thin, intense boy, who read whatever he could find and who was eager to learn. He later said that the mill was his first school and the Bible his first book.

He was brought up in the Methodist Sunday school, and he was converted when he was about fifteen years old. The change was real. He began to speak in the open air and in cottage meetings, and he became a local preacher while he was still a youth. He had a plain and forceful style, and his speech carried the weight of his own experience. He worked in the mill by day and studied at night. His gift was noticed by the older men of the church, and he was recommended for the ministry. He entered Didsbury College, in Manchester, the Wesleyan training school, and studied there. He was ordained and was sent to a number of circuits in the north of England.

He served as a pastor in Lancashire and Yorkshire, in churches in towns such as Oldham, Leeds and Hull, and then in London. In each place, he gave himself to the work with great earnestness. He was known as a man of prayer, who rose early and spent long hours alone with God. He had a deep desire for the power of the Holy Spirit, and he sought it with tears. He believed that the church of his day was weak because it had lost the experience of Pentecost, and he said so from the pulpit. He taught that the Spirit is the secret of power for the believer and for the church. He sought for himself the fullness of the Spirit and said that he received it in a definite way. His ministry changed. Revivals broke out in his churches. Many were converted, and the congregations grew.

In 1913, he was appointed principal of Cliff College, in Calver, Derbyshire, a Methodist school for the training of lay evangelists and workers. He remained there until the end of his life, nearly twenty years. It was the work for which he was best known. The college had been founded as a school for young men of little education who wished to preach, and it fitted his own background. He made it a place of prayer and of revival. He trained thousands of students, who went out to preach in the villages and towns of Britain and to the mission field. He held that a college should train men to know God and to love souls. He inspired his students by his example and his burning speech. He began the Cliff College Anniversary, a yearly gathering at Whitsuntide, which drew thousands of Methodists from all parts of the country for days of preaching and prayer.

He was a prolific writer and preacher. He edited the magazine Joyful News, a Methodist paper for evangelism. His books include The Gospel of the Cross, The Call to Christian Perfection, The Path of Prayer and, above all, The Way to Pentecost, which was published in 1932, shortly before his death. In it, he argued that the church has lost the power of the early believers, that the cause is a lack of the Spirit and that the remedy is to wait in prayer. He wrote in short, striking sentences. He insisted that the Spirit is given to those who obey, and that He comes to those who ask. He was elected president of the Methodist Conference in 1918, in the closing months of the First World War, the highest honor of his church.

He was a man of strong character, and he spoke with force. He had little patience with the liberal theology of his day, and he opposed it openly. He believed in the Bible and in the cross. He could be severe in his judgments. He was also a man of tenderness. His students loved him. He was devoted to his family and to his wife, Mary, who supported him through many years of labor. He suffered from poor health in his last years, and he continued to work. He had a heart condition, which gave him trouble.

He died on October 1, 1932, at Cliff College, at the age of seventy-two. His funeral was attended by crowds of Methodists. His life shows the effect of a mill boy who grew into a teacher of evangelists. He called the church back to the experience of Pentecost, and the college that he led sent out workers across the world.