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INTRODUCTION

This book demonstrates that a significant body of ministry by William Johnson can be found, although he is little known nowadays. Indeed, most of what can now be said about his life has to be gleaned from remarks in the addresses in this book.

William Johnson was born in 1850, and grew up under a godly mother in Brixham. As soon as he was old enough, he left home for what he calls his ‘sea liberty’. He says his mother’s prayers were answered by his coming to the Lord as a sailor at the age of 18 at a gospel preaching in a church in Glasgow. Of the interim, he says: ‘It was absolute slavery … I have sat in a concert hall and heard sweet music and I have felt the touch of my mother's hand and heard her pleading voice. She was spoiling all my pleasure by her prayers’. He speaks of his working life as a seaman; like his father, he was a Master Mariner - and referred to sometimes as Captain Johnson. He was married with a son and three daughters. In the 1880s, he lived in Ramsgate, where he and his father owned a fishing smack. The family was later recorded in West Ham, and he lived with his wife and daughters in New Malden from 1911 if not before. (His son was killed in the Great War in November 1915 shortly after going to Belgium with the Royal Army Medical Corps). He can be found taking an active part in other published reading meetings from around the turn of the century. There is a record of visits with his wife to the brethren in the United States and Canada in 1910-11 and 1913, and to his serving in various places there. His last ministry was a reading at Parkstone (a note from which is included here); he died unexpectedly in Boscombe on 28 April 1921 and is buried in Bournemouth.

Mr James Taylor, wrote a few weeks later to Mr D’Arcy Champney: ‘Like ourselves you will feel keenly the departure from among us of Mr Johnson. The Lord has given our beloved brother (especially of late) a great place in the affections of His people’.

The production of this new book has been prompted by finding manuscript records of five addresses given in Ilford in 1916. These manuscripts read like texts that have been revised for publication, although they contain no word that this was done; they appear here worded as found except in two places marked by end-notes; and the correction of quotations.

All the other articles - sixty in all, and reproduced here with the original content similarly unchanged - have come from pamphlets or periodicals; the source is given for each piece. I would like to share any other published articles not included here. Insofar as William Johnson’s ministry may already be known, it is most likely on account of another work, Meditations in the Psalms, published immediately after his death in 1921. These notes first appeared in that year in The Believer’s Friend in serial form; they were collected from the periodical by its editor, Russell Besley. This work is not reproduced in this book to allow room for all the other material that has become available. This material shows how often our brother drew on the Psalms in his ministry - for which, evidently, he had a particular gift from the Lord.

Most of this ministry can be dated, for example from the title or the date of the periodical in which it appeared. Several pieces can be placed at the end of our brother’s life by references to the years from his conversion. This book puts the oral ministry first with the dated pieces before the undated. There is then a group of written pieces; some of which have appeared as gospel tracts. The tracts do re-tell stories also found in the addresses; but a few other small pieces found in old periodicals have been omitted as they proved to be entirely replicated in longer articles.

The King James Bible has been used throughout this ministry - with occasional use of the Darby Translation; the two versions have been left as found, but every quotation has been re-checked for this second edition, and corrected as necessary – with all the references now added.

Mr Johnson’s remark in his address on Unity a hundred years ago applies to readers as it does to speakers and hearers: ‘it is absolutely necessary that both speaker and hearers should be found together in exercise … Being in fellowship and having taken a certain position will not save us. The needed thing with each is downright exercise of soul’. I believe the Lord will be honoured by making ministry given in this spirit more widely available.