Excerpt from Transactions -21

The way in which this sentiment was received marks the advance in Congregational sentiment during fifty years. It is just about so long since Mr. Binney affirmed the same thing. 'Congregationalism', he is reported to have said, "is especially for the middle classes." Then the phrase was welcomed as a happy formula describing a state of things with which we ought to content ourselves - an ordinance of God which it was vain, almost impious, to resist. Now, the statement was again and again repudiated, and always with vehemence, almost indignation.'

It is easy to understand how Binney's words entered Nonconformist lore. His King's Weigh House Church had a special place in his denomination, largely because of his forty years' pastorate there. 'His pews show a finer set of heads, more square, intelligent and nineteenth-centuryish, than any other pews perhaps in the kingdom, ' remarked a sermon taster in 1851, and so it remained at his death in 1874:

There was a prestige in the Weigh House. It had been the Nonconformist Cathedral of Wealth, and of the middle classes ... and Thomas Binney was supposed very worthily to represent those imperial Tribunes of the Chambers of Commerce. There was a large detachment from this regiment of the Life Guards of England at Stamford-Hill on Monday (for his funeral service) ... He was Minister to the great peerage of the comfortable side of life ...

His most popular publication, reaching fifteen editions and selling a hundred copies daily in its first year (excluding Sundays), testified to this golden gospel. It was suggestively entitled Is It Possible to Make the Best of Both Worlds? (1853). His conclusion that it was possible was neither forgotten nor forgiven. An Anglican obituary notice commented: No one who can entertain the question and answer it as Dr. Binney did, whether it is possible to make the best of both worlds, can have a large measure of high spiritual power.

Mackennal's attitude is, therefore, understandable. In 1848 he was a thirteen year old whose family was just settled in London.

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