Harvey always loved reading and was very interested in the subject of Christian evidences or Apologetics as we call it today. He regularly read The Reasoner, “a journal of free thought and positive philosophy” and often wrote letters to it as "Inquirer".
On October 21, 1855 he went along to the Scientific and Literary Institution at 23 John Street in Fitzroy Square near Tottenham Court Road (John Street, interestingly enough, later became Whitfield Street for George Whitefield). This was a gathering place for so called free thinkers. There Harvey heard Robert Cooper (d 1868) "a distinguished advocate of secularism", author of an 1852 booklet ridiculing death-bed repentances and the editor of the secularist London Investigator on the subject of Miracles. "The time is approaching, gradually indeed but surely," he claimed "when this delusion — this imposition upon the understanding of mankind — will be consigned, as it deserves, to public contempt". Harvey entered into debate with him and felt able to trouble him with at least one argument.
On March 30, 1856, Harvey had opportunity to reply to Cooper at the same venue. He begins by identifying himself with his audience, a first rule of rhetoric. He tells then that he too is a free thinker and one with a good working class background. He is not an enemy as he is seeking exactly what they seek – the truth and the good of the people. He goes on to speak of the reasonableness of the evidence for the truth of Christianity and what it is that mankind wants. He argues that miracles are possible and the apostles are reliable, moving on to what is really wrong with this world and how it can be put right.
Having been able to say something worthwhile, he nevertheless resolved to give more time to reading and study in this area.
On January 11, 1857, he spoke at the John Street Institute one again, this time replying to a lecture by the free thinker, atheist and editor of The Reasoner, George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906) against Christianity as a system of morality. Holyoake called Christianity indefinite, inadequate and inoperable, whereas Harvey claimed it was definite, adequate and operative. Holyoake was allowed a rejoinder after Harvey's' message.
In September 1862 Harvey was asked to umpire a six day debate between Rev W Barker and the notorious freethinker and radical, later an MP and President of the National Secular Society, Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891). Until 1868 he would bill himself as “Iconoclast”. These debates were popular in the period. A similar one between Bradlaugh and another minister looked at subjects such as God's nature and attributes, creation and science, the flood and how reliable the Bible is.
In 1871 Harvey's only son, Alfred, only 16, made known his desire to be a minister of the gospel. Harvey Senior wrote that though he had “hoped for it and prayed for it and have expected it” for so long yet it “... seems almost to take me by surprise ...”.He had taken the policy, as many do, of never hinting “the matter to him”. Harvey Junior went on to be an Anglican vicar in the west country, in Shirehampton.
At the end of his little book on his father the son speaks of his father's catholicity. Harvey was an evangelical first. “Baptist though I am,” he wrote “yet I have ever objected to work especially as a Baptist; I prefer to do so on the much broader basis of a disciple and servant of Christ.” In his reading he was happy to read the Anglican Thomas Griffith. When his work Fundamentals or bases of belief concerning man, God and the correlation of God and men came out Harvey wrote offering to finance the wide distribution of the book. Typical of him was the way once on holiday in Southwold he saw a need and immediately sent 10 guineas to the vicar to help.
On March 30, 1856, Harvey had opportunity to reply to Cooper at the same venue. He begins by identifying himself with his audience, a first rule of rhetoric. He tells then that he too is a free thinker and one with a good working class background. He is not an enemy as he is seeking exactly what they seek – the truth and the good of the people. He goes on to speak of the reasonableness of the evidence for the truth of Christianity and what it is that mankind wants. He argues that miracles are possible and the apostles are reliable, moving on to what is really wrong with this world and how it can be put right.
Having been able to say something worthwhile, he nevertheless resolved to give more time to reading and study in this area.
On January 11, 1857, he spoke at the John Street Institute one again, this time replying to a lecture by the free thinker, atheist and editor of The Reasoner, George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906) against Christianity as a system of morality. Holyoake called Christianity indefinite, inadequate and inoperable, whereas Harvey claimed it was definite, adequate and operative. Holyoake was allowed a rejoinder after Harvey's' message.
In September 1862 Harvey was asked to umpire a six day debate between Rev W Barker and the notorious freethinker and radical, later an MP and President of the National Secular Society, Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891). Until 1868 he would bill himself as “Iconoclast”. These debates were popular in the period. A similar one between Bradlaugh and another minister looked at subjects such as God's nature and attributes, creation and science, the flood and how reliable the Bible is.
In 1871 Harvey's only son, Alfred, only 16, made known his desire to be a minister of the gospel. Harvey Senior wrote that though he had “hoped for it and prayed for it and have expected it” for so long yet it “... seems almost to take me by surprise ...”.He had taken the policy, as many do, of never hinting “the matter to him”. Harvey Junior went on to be an Anglican vicar in the west country, in Shirehampton.
At the end of his little book on his father the son speaks of his father's catholicity. Harvey was an evangelical first. “Baptist though I am,” he wrote “yet I have ever objected to work especially as a Baptist; I prefer to do so on the much broader basis of a disciple and servant of Christ.” In his reading he was happy to read the Anglican Thomas Griffith. When his work Fundamentals or bases of belief concerning man, God and the correlation of God and men came out Harvey wrote offering to finance the wide distribution of the book. Typical of him was the way once on holiday in Southwold he saw a need and immediately sent 10 guineas to the vicar to help.
