"HAPPY PETER" IS GONE TO GLORY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 444, 16 October 1869, Page 3

"HAPPY PETER" IS GONE TO GLORY.

Well, but who was " Happy Peter?" people will ask. He was not an archbishop, nor a bishop, nor an archdeacon, nor an eminent Dissenting minister ; bat ha was a great preacher, as multitudes of the " unwashed" of London would readily testify. Happy Peter'a parishioners were a rough lot, who did not dwell in any particular parish at all. As for his church, it was the first door-step, the first tree, the first bit of open ground. He was not the sort of man to adapt Christianity to the West-end, but he turned many a wayward heart from wickedness and sin. He spoke the language of the poor, for he knew no other. Dives would hare passed him as an ignorant, howling fanatic ; but he was Lazarus' own chaplain. Neither Cambridge nor Oxford had examined him or given him a degree, The fact was, be had graduated as a " navvy ; " and, when he had learnt his lesson, it was to the navvies that he had repeated it. Peter Thompson — for that was his name— was of the John Bunyan order of men. " The human heart is evil " — " think of tae judgment to come" — "sin no more"— such was the burden of his song. He spoke to men and women whose vices were broad and unmistakeable. In effect, but in humbler language, ho said — " Let there be an end of violence, of drunkenness, of profane swearing ; for the violent man, the drunkard, and he that pollutes his soul with foul and noisome speech, shall never see the better land where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." Peter was great with the parable of the Wise and the Foolish Virgins. " See that your lamps be trioied and your house in order, for no one knows at what hour the bridegroom cometh." Surely it was so in his own case ; for the other day, during the intense heat, Peter was addressing a largo

crowd, and had been very imgtant both in preaching and in prayer. He had ended bfe sermon— this happentd in Clapham— and htuf just uttered a very solemn " Amen," when he staggered, and fell back in the arms of the bystanders. It was his last speech. With that word of faith upon his lips, the spirit «f this poor earnest man flew away to him who gave it. Surely (says a London contemporary) this was a fine end of a inan'a life. We would speak of him with reverence. As fur as men can be j udges of their fellow-men v we have a right to say that Peter Thompson; was — what he held himself out to be— \ preacher whose heart was in his work, and to whom the saving . of a human soul was the true business of life.