Excerpt from Transactions, Vol. 18

The 57th Annual Meeting of the Society was held at Westminster Chapel on 16th May, 1956, at 5.30 p.m., with Dr. W. Gordon Robinson, our President, in the Chair. Fifty-one members and friends signed the attendance book. This number, though no more than a fraction of the Society's membership, was a welcome increase on that of recent years and may be taken to reflect a proper appreciation of the honour done us by Dr. Ernest A. Payne in coming to address us. That the General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland should desire not to lose touch with his earlier more academic interests is very natural, but that he should find time in the midst of his present avocations to prepare so careful and thorough a paper as that which he read to us is remarkable. Dr. Payne is a keen hymnologist as well as historian, and in his study of "The First Free Church Hymnal" he drew upon both interests. Those who listened to him not only learned much but enjoyed the clear and workmanlike way in which he presented specialized material of a kind which in itself could have been dry. We are grateful to Dr. Payne for his permission to print in these Transactions a paper for which he might have sought a more exalted station.

Another paper printed within we welcome as the first appearance in our pages of one of our own members. The Rev. Stephen H. Mayor, the minister of Handgate Church, Chester, and the author of a history of Cheshire Congregationalism reviewed elsewhere in this issue, is also engaged in work for a Manchester Ph. D. on "Organized Religion and English Working Class Movements, 1850-1914." He thus writes out of special knowledge. The number of students and ministers who in these days proceed to advanced degrees is increasing, and the number of theses concerned with leading figures in dissenting history, such as Richard Baxter or John Tombes or Edward Williams, or with the relation of Dissent to other movements, such as Evangelicalism or the missionary enterprise or the Labour movement, is also increasing. We are always glad to know of such work, especially by our own members, and, so far as our restricted space permits, we should welcome summaries, interim reports or studies thrown off by the way.

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