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He grew up in Glasgow, surrounded by strong Christian influences. His Christian parents belonged to a lively Independent Church, and early in his teens he displayed a real commitment to Christ. At the age of 15, he and some friends founded three 'Youths' Societies' - to support the Bible Society, Foreign Missions, and Tract distribution. Indeed, it was an age of 'societies', with Christians across the land grouping together to initiate and support all kinds of outreach activity. One further, crucial stimulus in Glasgow was the work of Thomas Chalmers, who carried out his great 'social experiment', from 1819 to 1823, creating a new and small parish amid the crowded slums, and instigating systematic visitation by volunteers, to reach the unchurched.
Nasmith wanted to do more than merely support missionary work. At different times he applied to go to Africa and the South Seas as a missionary, but was turned down because he had insufficient education. But his evangelistic zeal found an outlet in Glasgow, where he devoted an increasing proportion of his time to all forms of evangelistic and charitable work. This included visiting prisons, and he once spent all night in a cell with two men who were to be executed the next day.
In 1826 he founded the Glasgow City Mission, which took Chalmers' pattern of district outreach two crucial steps further. One was to make the work inter-denominational, by enlisting the support and involvement of all evangelical churches and aiming to encourage the unchurched to attend any evangelical church. The other was to recruit and pay full-time lay agents, instead of using volunteers, to do the visiting. Not only were the agents more dependable than volunteers, they also tended to be from the working class, and so were better-equipped to relate to the inner-city poor.
Following the success of the Glasgow City Mission, Nasmith began to travel the world. By 1835 he had toured Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, and France, addressing local church leaders and encouraging them to form City Missions and other societies. No less than 140 organisations resulted! Not all of them survived - but some did, including, of course, the London City Mission, founded in May 1835, in what was then the largest city of the western world.
In an age of considerable denominational rivalry, even among evangelicals, the LCM had a shaky start. The first Committee was drawn from no less than eight denominations. But many in the Church of England and elsewhere were suspicious or hostile. Nasmith remained as the Secretary of the new society for less than two years because of some of the complications of that rivalry. His departure, though painful, was not embittered, and he continued for the final two years of his life to found City and Town Missions around England. When he died, the entire workforce of the LCM attended his funeral at Bunhill Fields, in London.
David Nasmith was a great visionary and organiser. But though he founded so many societies, he was no empire-builder. Through all that he said, wrote and did, there shines a true catholicity of spirit. He saw the need for Christians to work together for the salvation of the lost, and he never lost sight of that need, which remains at the heart of LCM's strategy and work today.
But he was no mere organiser. He was an evangelist himself, and he had a rare ability to stimulate others to evangelise. When he came to London, from Dublin, in 1835, he decided to walk from Liverpool, to save money for the work. Staying in Market Harborough en route, he held meetings in the town, and so enthused two young men that they joined him, walking to London and becoming the first two candidates for the LCM.
John Nicholls
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