William Patteson NICHOLSON

NICHOLSON, WILLIAM PATTESON (b. Cottown, near Bangor, Ireland, 3 Apr 1876; d. Cork, Ireland, 29 Oct 1959). Evangelist.

Nicholson was the son of John, a merchant navy captain and Ellen Campbell. He was educated in Belfast. Three of his siblings were missionaries and the family was influenced by the ministry of Henry Montgomery the 'New Light' Ulster Presbyterian. He began work in an office, but went to sea as an apprentice at 16 and then worked in a railway gang in South Africa, living a rough and dissolute life. He experienced a remarkable conversion, and then a filling by the Holy Spirit at a subsequent Convention, which led him to study at the Glasgow Bible Institute in 1901 and to open air evangelism in Belfast and Lanarkshire, around Glasgow.

He m. Ellison Marshall in 1907 and was given leave by the Lanarkshire Christian Union to work with the travelling evangelists Chapman and Alexander, coming to Australia with them in 1909. An interim ministry in 1911 at St George's Cross Tabernacle in Glasgow confirmed his call to be an itinerant evangelist rather than a settled minister and he worked for the Carlisle Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in the USA from 1914-18 before accepting appointment to the Los Angeles Bible Institute Extension Department. In 1920 he returned to Ulster and exercised a remarkable evangelistic ministry during the Civil War of the 1920s, especially in Bangor, Portadown, Lurgan, Newtownards, Lisburn, Belfast and Londonderry. Many saw parallels with the 1859 Revival, because of the large number of decisions and the changes in community life. Nicholson was very colloquial in his speech, had a superb voice and could deal very effectively with disruptions. He was his own team, singing and speaking for three hours, compelling attention by his humour, pathos and stern denunciations of sin and religious compromise. There were many new communicants in the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church while Christian Endeavour membership doubled 1921-24. Prayer meetings, ministerial and missionary candidates also significantly increased.

After a brief stay in the USA, he returned to Ireland in 1924, ministering in both north and south. His repute for a strong and forthright presentation brought him to Keswick in 1925 and then as a substitute for D J S Holden in a mission to Cambridge University which greatly strengthened CICCU. In 1926 he undertook an extensive tour of Australia, but his wife died and he had to take six months rest. Nevertheless he made a deep impression, both among evangelicals and in the wider community. His stern criticisms of modernism and his reiteration of traditional evangelical theological and ethical emphases strengthened Australian networks of evangelicals at a time when they were under challenge from liberalism in the major protestant churches.

Nicholson remarried, choosing Fanny Elizabeth Collett as his partner. He undertook further missions in Ireland in 1928-29, returned to Australia and New Zealand and also took campaigns in South Africa in 1936-37. His health was failing and though he undertook missions in Ireland in 1946 and 1958, he no longer commanded the attention he had in the 1920s and 1930s. His books and booklets were widely read and he was one of the best-known British evangelists of the 20th century.

S W Murray, W.P. Nicholson (Belfast, 1973)

IAN BREWARD