Just before the Victorian era began in England, Bernard Gilpin was led to understand, and to teach, that real communion with God is obtained through "patient waiting" which "is really identical with the way of tribulation."

He was made a faithful and effectual minister of the gospel. The church which gathered under his ministry knew all the hardships associated with living in the nineteenth century but could testify that God always sustained them, and sometimes visited them with "a near view of Christ and his spiritual presence."