From the New Church Her­ald (York­shire, Eng­land, 1886):

Long and complete ar­ti­cles hav­ing ap­peared in our con­temp­o­rar­ies con­cern­ing the late DR. BAYLEY, whose por­trait we have the plea­sure of giv­ing in this month’s issue, we shall give but a brief out­line of the ca­reer of that great and good man.

JONATHAN BAYLEY was born in Sal­ford, on Ju­ly 22nd, 1810. His love for learn­ing ear­ly man­i­fest­ed it­self, for we find that, at the age of 14, he be­gan to at­tend the ev­en­ing class­es which had been formed at the Me­chan­ic’s In­sti­tute, Man­ches­ter. At this age al­so, he joined the Sun­day School at the New Je­ru­sa­lem Tem­ple, con­duct­ed by the Rev. Da­vid Ho­warth, and thus be­gan to learn those glor­i­ous truths which were to have such a won­der­ful ef­fect on his af­ter life.

Until the age of 19 he was en­gaged at the Sal­ford Ir­on Works; the work, how­ev­er, was far from con­ge­ni­al to one of his stu­di­ous dis­po­si­tion, and he ac­cept­ed the more suit­a­ble po­si­tion of mas­ter of the Day School held in con­nect­ion with the Sal­ford New Church. This po­si­tion he filled un­til, a few years lat­er, he com­menced his pri­vate school at the Old Cloth Hall, Sal­ford. He was al­so the cor­res­pond­ing sec­re­tary of the New Church So­ci­e­ty in that town.

In 1833, he mar­ried Miss Lyd­ia Hod­son, daugh­ter of the late Fran­cis Mar­cell­us God­son, a well known Miss­ionary preach­er, who died in the year 1828. Mrs. Bay­ley, a tho­rough New Church­wo­man, and one who al­ways took an ac­tive in­ter­est in the Church, passed in­to the Spir­it­u­al World on the 20th of May, 1880.

At Sal­ford Dr Bay­ley soon won for him­self a re­pu­ta­tion as a preach­er, and a va­can­cy hav­ing oc­curred in the Ac­cring­ton So­ci­e­ty in 1833, an invita­tion was giv­en to and ac­cept­ed by Dr. Bayley, who at once com­menc­ed on his min­is­terial du­ties. The Ac­cring­ton So­ci­ety then con­sist­ed of 43 mem­bers, and the town had a pop­u­la­tion of almost 7,000. Un­der Dr. Bay­ley’s min­is­try, how­ev­er, the num­ber of mem­bers stead­i­ly inc­reased; so much so, that the build­ing in which they con­gre­gat­ed was found in­ad­e­quate to meet the re­quire­ments of the mem­bers, and on June 24th, 1849, the pre­sent com­mo­di­ous church was built. The so­ci­e­ty has now a mem­bership far ex­ceed­ing that of any other society in the king­dom, which no doubt is large­ly due to the en­er­gy thrown in­to the work by its for­mer min­is­ter. Dr. Bay­ley al­ways took a great in­ter­est in ev­ery move­ment set on foot which was cal­cu­lat­ed to ben­e­fit his fel­low­men. Soon af­ter com­ing to Accrington he com­menced a night school and later on he opened a school at Holl­and-bank. He then re­moved to Wa­ter­loo, and built the Mount, where, for sev­er­al years he had a school. That Dr. Bay­ley won the re­spect and es­teem of his fel­low towns­men, is ev­i­dent from the fact, that, on ac­cept­ing, the invita­tion of the So­ci­e­ty at Ar­gyle Square, Lon­don, to be­come their Min­is­ter, in June, 1885, a fare­well meet­ing was held in the Na­tional School, at which were rep­re­sent­ed all sec­tions of the com­mun­i­ty, show­ing that the great work he had done was ful­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed by those among, whom he lived and for whom he had la­bored. Dr. Bayley re­mained with the Argyle Square So­ci­e­ty for six­teen years, dur­ing which time its mem­bership in­creased from 125 to 328.

The Palace Garden Church, Ken­sing­ton, hav­ing, been pre­sent­ed to the New Church Con­fer­ence in 1871, by the late Mr. John Fin­nie of Bow­don, a So­ci­e­ty was formed and Dr. Bay­ley was asked to be­come its pas­tor. Here he con­tin­ued to la­bor un­til his death; his lucid and el­o­quent ex­po­si­tions of the Word ev­er in­creas­ing the al­rea­dy large num­ber of his ad­mir­ers and friends.

Owing to Dr. Bay­ley’s fail­ing health, it was found ne­ces­sa­ry, some time ago to ob­tain as­sist­ance for him, and the Rev. Thom­as Child of Bath was in­vit­ed by the So­ci­e­ty to act as Dr. Bay­ley’s co-ad­ju­tor. Mr. Child, who is con­sid­ered to be one of the most able lec­tur­ers of the New Church, Dr. Bay­ley was one of the most el­o­quent preach­ers which the New Church has ev­er had, and has tak­en the most prom­i­nent part in her work. He was pre­si­dent of the Con­fer­ence se­ven times, and was a mem­ber of ma­ny of the com­mit­tees.

His life was a liv­ing ex­am­ple of that re­li­gion, the mean­ing of which Swe­den­borg so beau­ti­ful­ly em­presses in the words: “All re­li­gion has rela­tion to life and the life of re­li­gion is to do good.” His rare el­o­quence, his acute and di­scrim­in­at­ing pe­rcep­tion, his sound judg­ment, and his ex­ten­sive read­ing, and above all his most won­der­ful mem­o­ry which sel­dom failed him, made him match­less as an op­pon­ent and ren­dered him in­val­u­a­ble as a min­is­ter of the New Church. One great trait of his char­ac­ter we must not over­look: that is, his great love for child­ren. It was this that prompt­ed him to es­tab­lish the New Church Or­phan­age in 1880, and it was for little child­ren that he com­menced a mag­a­zine in 1880, and ed­it­ed it for a per­io­d of 10 years. Tru­ly, he loved, and was be­loved, by child­ren; they, see­ing re­flect­ed in his kind and gen­tle face that good-heart­ed dis­po­si­tion, which at­tract­ed all to him. Well might he wish his ep­i­taph to be: “He loved lit­tle child­ren and de­sired to do them good.”

Dr. Bayley was a great traveler and at various times vi­sit­ed France, Ger­ma­ny, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Russia, Egypt and Palestine. He always prepared him­self by learning the language of the country which he was about to vi­sit.

Dr. Bayley has left be­hind some large and comprehensive works. The principal of these are “The Divine Word Opened,” “New Church Worthies,” and “Great Truths on Great Sub­jects,” a series of lectures delivered by him at Brighton in 1859, the circula­tion of which has reached its 43rd thousand. In addition to this, he edited, as we have said, The Juvenile Magazine, and al­so con­trib­ut­ed to The Intellectual Repository (now The New Church Magazine), and to other de­nom­in­a­tion­al magazines.

His whole aim seems to have been to make his fellow men happy, end his whole life was spent in propagating those New Church truths which alone can establish the Lord’s kingdom on earth. He was a true min­is­ter, ever willing to serve; an honor to his fellow men, and an ornament to his Church which may well mourn his loss—a loss which is irreparable. Well did he use the talents entrusted to his care, and af­ter a long and useful life, on the twelfth day of May, 1886, in his 76th year, he passed away in peace and was gathered to his fa­thers—those good and kind souls who, like him, had lived and labored for the good of others.

Hymns

1. O Jesus, Lord and Savior