BROMSGROVE.-We received the following just too late for insertion in your February Reporter.] —When I wrote you last, we were just beginning to witness the dawnings of that success with which the laborious efforts of our beloved friend, Mr Pulsford, are usually crowned. The icicles that had for far too long a period encrusted our hearts, rendering them cold, and torpid, and impenetrable, were dissolving, and warmth, activity, and sensibility were beginning to be felt and seen.
Multitudes were flocking to the house of God, morning after morning, and night after night and several were pricked to the heart, and crying "what shall we do?"
The neighbourhood was in a state of unparalleled excitement -excitement which neither the bold front of avowed hostility, nor the more wary tactics of less bold, though perhaps not less bitter, opponents could repress. Masters, threatened servants; husbands, their wives; parents, their children; trustees of our local charities, their poor expectants, tyrannical priests and their despicable minions frowned and growled like over-charged thunder clouds. But they threatened and warned in vain. Reverend, and other gentlemen, sneered at the baptists, grew angry with them, said many naughty and bitter things about them, and preached against them; but still the Baptist chapel overflowed, still the work of God went on. Sinners heard the word, trembled under it, were converted, and have since yielded obedience to the command and followed the example of their Lord and Saviour. On Saturday night, Dec. 23, after a convincing sermon by Mr P., five individuals, (one of whom was my brother, Mr Thomas Scroxton) after having professed repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, were baptized in the presence of a cloud of witnesses, and publicly received into the church at the table of the Lord on the following day, together with one who had some time before been excluded. On Saturday evening, Dec 30th, nine others who had also "brought forth fruit meet for repentance," were buried with Christ and also received into the church at the Lord's table on the succeeding day. On Saturday, Jan. 6th, twelve others, who had also given satisfactory evidence that they had passed from death unto life, testified their allegiance to their great Lawgiver, and entered the church on the Sabbath. On Saturday, Jan. 13, eleven more were baptized; and next Saturday we expect to welcome ten or eleven more, in the same divinely appointed way. And still we rejoice to perceive that these repeated removals from the ranks of the inquirers into the church, do not thin those ranks; as these vacate their places, other recruits occupy them. I believe at the present time upwards of one hundred are anxiously inquiring the way, and amongst these are some specially interesting cases, brands plucked from the burning! Every time the chapel doors are opened for divine worship, I can see individuals, who before Mr Pulsford came, were bold blasphemers, whose words were curses and whose hearts were iron, who were living "as far from God and from the light of heaven" as they could get: gorging themselves with abominations, "defying the Omnipotent to arms," and running with headlong, terrible haste towards hell. I can now see them meekly sitting among those they so lately scorned, and earnestly and anxiously drinking in the waters of life, as dispensed to them from the blessed fountain of truth. I have seen them weep, I have heard them pray, and very soon I hope to sit with them around the table of our Lord and Master, feasting upon the dainties which that table offers. Mr and Mrs Pulsford left us yesterday, (Jan 17).
On Tuesday night he preached his farewell sermon to an overflowing audience and solemn and deeply affecting season it was. Multitudes were bathed in tears, and some could scarcely bear to leave the chapel. Mr P. could not get away till about half-past ten at night, so great was the anxiety of the people to receive his last parting blessing.
The church is now formed afresh into classes, each class taking some portion of the town or neighbourhood; and we hope, with God's blessing, to do something more than we have done towards bringing into a state of healthy cultivation the barren waste that stretches itself around us.
From, "The Baptist Reporter," March 1844, page 95.