The subject of this short memorial sketch is a Christian
layman, and it must be confessed that this is a department of Christian
biography which has hitherto been too much overlooked. If it is not an
unwrought, it is certainly an unexhausted mine. How many shining examples of
Christian excellence in private members of our churches, and in "elders who
have obtained a good report," have been allowed to pass away without a
record to perpetuate by their example, their influence even, in the district
in which they had lived and moved! The picture which I shall be called to
present is not that of a man of great intellectual gifts,—though he was by
no means deficient in these, and was remarkable for his commonsense,—but
rather of one in whose character self-forgetting devotedness to the good of
his fellow-men was the outstanding feature; and who, in helping the poor and
needy, reclaiming the outcast, guarding the tempted, and encouraging those
who had been brought back as lost sheep to the Divine Shepherd's fold,—and
all this through a period of more than half a century,—made both the world
and the Church his debtor. Nothing but the living power of Christian
principle within him could have produced such a character. Those who were
brought into intimate and frequent intercourse with him felt his example
acting upon them as a moral tonic, and making it easier for them to do good,
and they seemed to hear the words ringing in their ears—
"Work, work in the living present,
Heart within and God o'erhead."
"As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto
all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith."
A. T.