Christopher Newman Hall
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Rev. Dr. Christopher Newman Hall (May 22, 1816 - February 18, 1902), English Nonconformist divine, and abolitionist, was born at Maidstone.
His father was John Vine Hall (1774-1860), proprietor and printer of the Maidstone Journal, and the author of a popular evangelical work called The Sinner's Friend. Christopher was educated at University College, London, and took the London BA degree. His theological training was gained at Highbury College, whence he was called in 1842 to his first pastorate at the Albion Congregational Church, Hull. During the twelve years of his ministry there the membership was greatly increased, and a branch chapel and school were opened.
At Hull Newman Hall first began his active work in temperance reform, and in defence of his position wrote The Scriptural Claims of Teetotalism. In 1814 he accepted a call to Surrey Chapel, London, founded in 1783 by the Rev. Rowland Hill. A considerable sum had been bequeathed by Hill for the perpetuation of his work on the expiration of the lease; but, owing to some legal flaw in the will, the money was not available, and Newman Hall undertook to raise the necessary funds for a new church. By weekly offertories and donations the money for the beautiful building called Christ Church at the junction of the Kennington and Westminster Bridge Roads was collected, and within four years of opening (1876) the total cost (£63,000) was cleared.
In the 1860s Newman Hall supported the north in the American Civil War, disapproving of secession by southern states. England should side with the North, he wrote, particularly because emancipation of the slaves is just. He felt so strongly that he published one of his few non-theological books on the subject: The American War. A Lecture delivered in London, October 20, 1862. Newman Hall visited the United States during the Civil War, and did much to promote a friendly understanding between England and America. At the Great Union and Emancipation Meeting at Exeter Hall, London on 29th January 1863 in support of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the crowning speech of the evening was by Christopher Newman Hall. The meeting was a huge success in showing support for abolition in the United States of America, being reported by Harper's Weekly to have been one of the largest and most enthusiastic emetings ever held in London; its overspill of people who could not get into the packed meeting itself, being formed into three large, ancillary open-air meetings.
In 1892 Newman Hall resigned his charge and devoted himself to general evangelical work. Most of his writings are small booklets or tracts of a distinctly evangelical character. The best known of these is Come to Jesus, of which over four million copies have been circulated in forty different languages.
A Liberal in politics, and a keen admirer of John Bright, few preachers of any denomination have exercised so far-reaching an influence as the "Dissenters' Bishop," as he came to be termed. See his Autobiography (1898); obituary notice in The Congregational Year Book for 1903. He is buried with his father John Vine Hall in a polished red coffin tomb at Abney Park Cemetery, which prior to the early 1880s was a largely Congregationalist enterprise, established to pioneer non-denominational burial practice.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
