Bio 8f Thomas L Johnson

Student in England
Among the willing workers in the Providence Sunday School and at the church’s weekday adult literacy classes were the Stroud Smith family. Edward Stroud Smith was a help to Johnson with preparing Sunday School. The parents and two daughters were English and members at Western Avenue Baptist Church. They had great sympathy for their poor neighbours. The family were to become lifelong friends. Through them Johnson came to know their pastor, J J Irving, who had trained in England at Spurgeon’s Pastors College. After a while the Smiths returned to England. It was a sad farewell. Johnson had no real expectation of seeing them again, his heart set on Africa not England.
Meanwhile he discovered that the American Baptist Missionary Union had no work in Africa and no organisations were then sending African-Americans to Africa. Adding to his troubles his health was deteriorating and he again became seriously ill. He was nearly 40 now and still lacking the theological education necessary for work in Africa. Despite these disadvantages he was, however, able to secure the agreement of a Dr Murdock of the American Baptist Union to finance the journey from New York to Liberia, the American settlement for freed slaves in West Africa, though he could offer no other financial help.
Then early in 1876 Johnson received two important letters from England. One, from Stroud Smith, told of a conversation with W Hind Smith of the YMCA, Manchester about missionary work in Africa. The other was from Hind Smith himself and said that if Johnson could get to England he would arrange for his enrolment on a suitable course of study in readiness for Africa. Johnson was still gravely ill at the time but mustered the strength to write at once to say he would come. He also informed Dr Murdock of his intention to take up the offer of passage to Liberia. Remarkably he began to recover and arrangements were made for him to leave for England. Friends and members at the mission in Chicago were very kind and on August 19 that same year Thomas and Henrietta set sail for England on the SS Spain.
They arrived in Liverpool on September 1, 1876, and were taken to Manchester by rail, where they were met by the two Smiths. They stayed with the Hind Smiths and on their first Sunday morning went to hear eminent Baptist preacher and commentator Alexander Maclaren at Union Chapel, Oxford Road. By this time Maclaren had been pastor 18 years. A modest, unassuming Scot his expository sermons were very popular at one time. In the afternoon Johnson visited a ‘Ragged School’ where he spoke. Two things struck him on that occasion. The first was a picture he saw of Queen Victoria presenting a Bible to an African Prince. The story behind the picture is that the African had come to England to find the secret of her greatness. The Queen gave him a Bible and told him ‘this is the secret’. The other thing was the singing of some words by the children that Johnson was not able to join in with.
I was not born a little slave to labour in the sun,
Wishing I were but in my grave and all my labour done;
The Johnsons stayed in Manchester with the Hind Smiths whose young boys, Willie and Martin, had met the Jubilee Singers from America and loved to sing some of the negro spirituals with Thomas, including Steal away to Jesus, Mary and Martha just gone along and When he cometh, to make up his jewels. Sadly, just over a year after the Johnsons’ arrival in England, young Martin died. Meanwhile Johnson met various Christian leaders and businessmen, including the Bishop of Manchester and Dr Maclaren, mentioned earlier. A young student from Owen’s College was engaged to help him with his English grammar.
Maclaren gave Johnson’s name to the Baptist Missionary Society in London who invited him to meet them. The trip to the big city was an enjoyable one, especially the visit to the zoo in Regent’s Park. One mishap was being lost on Clapham Common. Johnson’s eagerness to meet Spurgeon led him to ask a bus driver where the great man lived. The man told him which bus to catch to get to Nightingale Lane, the other side of Clapham Common, but when he reached there, alas, Spurgeon was out. By then it was dark and the journey back was not easy or pleasant.
Back in Manchester Hind Smith noticed the damp weather was not agreeing with Johnson so he enquired of Spurgeon whether he might sit in on some lectures at the Pastor’s College. ‘Yes, let the man come’ was Spurgeon’s postcard reply. One can imagine Johnson’s amazement at this privilege. When he had first heard Spurgeon’s name he was, according to law, a ‘thing’, a mere ‘chattel’. Now he was going to study in the great man’s own college.
In accord with college policy the Johnson’s boarded with a family, the Wigneys. Mr Wigney was an elder at the Tabernacle. The college was then meeting in purpose-built premises at the rear of the Tabernacle and had been going for some 20 years. It endeavoured to teach not only theology but other basic subjects too. Tutors then included Archibald Ferguson, David Gracey and George Rogers. Johnson particularly mentions Ferguson, who would invite him to his home in West Ealing, where he was minister of the Baptist Church he had planted. Ferguson had been converted in Dundee in 1839, the year revival came to M’Cheyne’s church under W C Burns, who went on to serve in China.
Spurgeon would give one of his famous ‘Lectures to my students’ on a Friday afternoon and so Johnson soon came to meet his hero. His love and respect for the man were enhanced rather than diminished by this close encounter. ‘I at once fell in love with dear Mr Spurgeon’ he says of their first meeting. Many things about Spurgeon impressed him. ‘In the late Mr Spurgeon’ he writes ‘we had one in whom faith and courage and faithfulness in preaching God’s Word were predominant features of his ministry.’ It was in January, 1877, that the meeting mentioned in a previous post took place. He took great encouragement from Spurgeon’s assurances of help.
After a little while Johnson was accepted formally as a student. He found both tutors and students kind and welcoming. Gaps in his knowledge were sometimes a cause of mirth. He gives an example - his assumption that the world is flat! To be fair to Johnson at least one African-American preacher of the time claimed to teach similar ‘facts’ from the Bible. The most famous sermon of the otherwise reliable John Jasper (1812-1901) of Virginia was ‘The sun do move’. It appealed to Joshua 10 and 2 Kings 20 to disprove Copernicus and Revelation 7:1 to prove the earth flat! There was a great deal for Johnson to learn and quite a few things to unlearn. Ever after he was very grateful for his time there. In his first sermon before the students and faculty he turned to Acts 16:31, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and leaned very heavily on the work of 18th Century Baptist Andrew Fuller, hoping to go undetected. As students can be, they were merciless with poor Johnson. Professor Rogers defended him, however, but with the cutting remark that he saw in Johnson another Andrew Fuller! Johnson took it all in good part.