Charles Clark (lecturer)
Charles Clark (19 April 1838 – 29 March 1903) was a Baptist minister and lecturer. Clark was born in London and entered the Baptist College at Nottingham as a student for the ministry. After filling several charges in London and the provinces, he accepted the pastorate of the Baptist Church in Albert Park, Melbourne, Victoria (Australia) where he arrived in April 1869. Having been very successful as an amateur lecturer on secular subjects, Clark resigned his pastoral charge in 1874, and lectured professionally throughout the Australian colonies with extraordinary success. Mr. Clark was gifted with a wonderfully retentive memory, great dramatic force, a powerful and melodious voice, and, above all, a fine quality of delicate sympathy and largeheartedness which brought him into direct touch with the public, and instinctively prompted him to select for his themes subjects which appealed to the emotions and loftier sensibilities of all classes of the community. Acting on the maxim 'The highest study of mankind is man,' Mr. Clark committed to memory the choicest selections from the writings of Charles Dickens, and recited them with such remarkable displays of feeling as to move his hearers either to laughter or to tears; He was just the