Among the portraits of Christian leaders of past times in the Evangelical Library, one constantly caught my eye. It showed a grim-faced, rough looking man, and somehow I knew it would not have been wise to cross him.
My curiosity about this man grew, and I found his biography on the Library shelves. After just a few pages I realised I had found one of the most remarkable Christian biographies I had ever read. This all but forgotten man, William Huntingdon, was in his time one of the most influential and best-known preachers in England. More than that, his ministry had begun in the village of Ewell, near Epsom in Surrey, where I myself live.
Inauspicious start
Few Christian leaders can have had a less auspicious beginning. William Huntingdon was born William Hunt in 1745 at Cranbrook, Kent. His mother was Elizabeth, wife of agricultural labourer William Hunt, but his father was Barnabas Russell, William Hunt’s employer who had forced himself upon Elizabeth.
