Fullerton, William Young

Author

b Belfast, N Ireland 1857, d Bedford Park, Middx 1932. Raised in a northern Irish Presbyterian home, he spent most of his adult life as a Baptist in England. At the age of 17 his desire to speak for Christ ‘became a purpose’ as he listened to the evangelists Moody and Sankey. Still a young man, counting mountaineering among his interests, he came to London on business in 1875 and began attending the Metropolitan Tabernacle to hear the preaching of C H Spurgeon, who came to be ‘my leader and friend’. He became a Baptist, trained at the Pastor’s College (now ‘Spurgeon’s’), and between 1879 and 1894 travelled throughout the UK leading evangelistic campaigns. He then served for 18 years as pastor of Leicester’s Melbourne Hall, in 1912 becoming Home Sec of the Baptist Missionary Soc; during 5 years in that role he visited Europe, Africa, N America and Asia including China, as ‘not a missionary but a missionary traveller’. In 1917 he was President of the Baptist Union. He wrote biographies including one of C H Spurgeon, of his son Thomas Spurgeon (1856–1914, published 1919) and an autobiography (1917), At the Sixtieth Milestone; in this he concluded ‘We may hope that peace may come’ but distanced himself from some precise ‘prophecies’ being offered at that time. His expository, devotional and mission books including The Practice of Christ’s Presence, Christ in Africa, The Romance of Pitcairn Island, and Souls of Men (1927), which ends with the stz of F W Faber’s hymn providing the title of the book. The hymn included here, as in numerous, mainly evangelical, hymn-books, is the work for which his name is now best-known. He was awarded the DD. No.508.