 He was educated at private schools and by his father, of congregationalist views.In his seventeenth year he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Milton-next-Sittingbourne, Kent; reading John Howe's "The Redeemer's Tears wept over Lost Souls" diverted his attention from surgery to theology.After study at Highbury College, Middlesex, he entered the congregationalist ministry in June 1829.