Looking back to look forward: Tommy Toye
I recently broke new ground. I finally succeeded in working out how to use the SatNav on my phone! Travelling from my home in East Belfast to a previously unvisited location in West Belfast I was guided on my journey by the cultured tones of a lady who informed me as to when I should ‘turn right’ or go ‘straight on’. During the course of this one-way conversation the lady kept referring to ‘Great George’s Street’. The mention of this street name instinctively triggered in my mind a name – Tommy Toye.
EARLY LIFE
Tommy Toye was born in Clonakilty, County Cork, in 1801. It would appear that his family belonged to the upper class as Rev James Morgan, commenting on Tommy Toye’s upbringing said: ‘his father possessed considerable means and was in the rank of a gentleman’. (1) He attended a good classical school and was destined to continue his education at Trinity College, Dublin, but because of ill health this plan did not come to fruition. It would appear that when he was a young boy of seven years of age his nurse put him to sleep in a damp bed and this led to the chronic asthma which plagued him for the rest of his life.
Tommy Toye’s parents were not converted during his childhood but he came under good evangelical and gospel influences from an early age. The minister of Clonakilty Parish Church was Rev CC Townsend who was a noted evangelical and it seems that Tommy Toye came to personal faith in Christ as a young man through the preaching and witness of Rev Townsend.
Because of his ill health Tommy often spent time away from Clonakilty staying with relatives in other places. He spent considerable time with an uncle in Mallow and with an aunt in Cork city. These relatives belonged to independent congregations where there was faithful ministry that greatly influenced young Tommy. He developed a passion for the lost, holding cottage meetings and establishing, with others, a branch of the London Missionary Society in Clonakilty in 1827. Wonderfully though his witness and faithful preaching his own parents came to faith in Christ.
MINISTRY IN BELFAST
Up until 1842 Tommy had had next to no connection with Presbyterians but in that year his life and ministry radically changed. He moved to Belfast and became known to some of the leading Presbyterian ministers in the city. He studied the Westminster Confession of Faith, became familiar with the distinctives of presbyterian church government and was installed as the minister of James Street Church. The next year a new building was opened in Great George’s Street to accommodate the ever growing congregation.
Tommy Toye was unconventional and eccentric in his everyday living and these characteristics were reflected in his preaching and pastoral work. If, during the course of a service, he felt an asthmatic attack coming on he would leave the pulpit during the singing of a hymn in order to ‘puff at his pipe’ which he believed eased his asthma and enabled him to continue the service! Tommy Toye was the first of the Belfast ministers to invite some of the new converts from Connor and Kells to address a series of meetings in Great George’s Street at the end of May 1859 and historians of the revival agree that it was during these meetings that the revival first broke in Belfast. Indeed, so many people in the city came under conviction of sin at this time that on 4th June 1859 Ewarts Flax Spinning Mill had to close early as many of the staff were troubled in their souls and were incapable of continuing with their work.
NICHOLSON’S FORERUNNER
Tommy Toye died in 1870 some six years before WP Nicholson, the well know evangelist, was born. Those who have read the ‘Focus’ articles on ‘WP’ will be surprised at the similarities between these two men whom God chose to use mightily in the city of Belfast. While ‘WP’ would have been horrified by Tommy Toye’s pipe smoking yet they were undoubtedly both ’characters’ who did not fit in with the ecclesiastical norms of their day. Like Nicholson Tommy Toye had experience of a number of different churches. His great concern, like ‘WP’, was to proclaim the gospel to sinners, to see men and women coming to a living faith in Jesus Christ, without paying too much heed to the particular denominational label that was above the church door.
Another wonderful way in which the two men were similar is in terms of their prayer life. Rev Samuel Prenter stated that ‘Mr Toye often spent whole nights upon his knees. He dwelt with God, and he came forth from the presence of the eternal like Moses, with his face on fire with the Divine glory’ (2)
Here is where Mr Toye especially speaks to us today. Do we want to see God at work in salvation? Do we long to see our land transformed and changed by a mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God? Then maybe, like Tommy Toye, we need to spend whole nights upon our knees.
Footnotes
(1) James Morgan: Recollection of my Life and Times: An Autobiography, Belfast 1874, p.1
(2) Thomas Toye – His life and Times, Rev Samuel Prenter
