Some Personal Recollections of the Late Rev. C. M. Birrell. 51

this may be given. During the American War, Mr. Birrell, it need scarcely be said, was an earnest supporter of the North. Southern feeling ran very high in Liverpool, and at a great meeting in the Philharmonic Hall Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, who was pleading the cause of the North with all the splendour of his eloquence and wit, was, during a considerable portion of his speech, unable to obtain a hearing. The storm was stilled when Mr. Birrell rose; and in perfect quietness he accomplished the feat of saying exactly what he wanted.

In presiding over meetings of the churches, Mr. Birrell was seen perhaps almost at his best. In 1876 he was Moderator of the Lancashire and Cheshire Association, and it devolved upon him to welcome back into the Association the representatives of several churches which some years previously had felt constrained to withdraw, but now, to the joy of their brethren, saw their way clear to return. No one who was present could fail to remember the dignity and grace with which he gave the right hand of fellowship to each of the ministers of the returning churches, having previously expressed his own feelings in relation to the incident in these wise and discriminating words, which seem singularly characteristic of his comprehensive bent of mind and largeness of heart:

"I think that there is a more correct view taken than there used to be of the liberty of thought to which every one is entitled, as well as of the extent to which co-operation with those who differ from us may justly reach. It is more distinctly seen that to require, in order to joint labour, uniformity in the details of Church government, or identical phraseology in the expression of religious truth, is not only to make such joint labour impossible except at the cost of sincerity, but to depart from apostolic teaching and example. It is no evidence of my approval of all a man's opinions that I approve of some of them; and because he joins with me in the prosecution of one great object, I am not entitled to insist that he shall help me to secure every other on which my heart may be set. So long as churches think that they are responsible for everything believed and done by their sister churches, they will be vexed by incessant suspicion and controversy; but when all hold and publish whatever they think they find in the Word of God, and combine in prayer and labour as far as they are agreed, they will present a strong front to the enemy. Such, I hope, will be the result of the re-union, which we celebrate to-day, of churches which, for the truth's sake, retired from our

Association, and now, for the truth's sake, return to it. If we respected the conscientious difficulties which led to our loss, we cannot but respect the conscientious impulse which now leads to our gain. There is no surrender of principle on either side, but an accession to the treasury of love, and to the number of fellow-soldiers."

This is true Christian breadth; and the expression of it is the more valuable because, as is well known, Mr. Birrell was fervently attached to Evangelical principles in the best and truest sense of that term.

His sympathies were always warm, liberal, and catholic, and he had a deep and sincere affection for all good men, although they might exhibit very various and even opposite forms of Christian thought, and feeling, and life, provided that the life itself was genuine and real. The Scheme for United Prayer for the first week of this year, issued by the Evangelical Alliance, was drafted by his pen. He was a decided Baptist, but he was no less decidedly in favour both of open communion and of open membership. For these principles he fought the hardest battle of his life, which ended in his departure from Byrom Street, where he began his ministry, and in the erection of Pembroke Chapel. He was a decided Nonconformist-decided in his objection to the connection of Church and State; but he was no less warm in his appreciation of all that is good and true and beautiful in the literature, the services, and the preaching of the Church of England. It was one of his treats, he told me, in his later years, to listen to the sermons of Canon Liddon at St. Paul's Cathedral-sermons which he admired for their intellectual wealth, but quite as much for their clear statement and close personal application of the Gospel of Salvation. This element of simplicity and directness in preaching, with all his ripe Christian experience and fastidious taste, he positively hungered for; and whether he got it from Mr. Moody, in Victoria Hall at Liverpool, or under the dome of St. Paul's, he was well pleased. The breadth of his sympathy and interest in all forms of Christian activity was further shown in his studious acquaintance with the missionary operations of all branches of the Church of Christ in all parts of the world, in his fervent prayers for missionaries, and in the hospitable reception with which he welcomed them to his house. During the lifetime of the noble wife whose bright character and conversation added such a charm to his fireside, he delighted in assembling a few friends to meet his foreign guest, and then, with that skill which amounted

Some Personal Recollections of the Late Rev. C. M. Birrell. 53

to a fine art, he would draw him out, and lead the conversation at his will from one topic to another, to the profit and enjoyment of the whole assembled circle. While, owing to his physical feebleness, somewhat of a recluse, with a touch even of the ascetic, so far as his own personal comforts were concerned, he was very social in his own way. At times, when he was somewhat off his guard, there would shoot out rich gleams of "dry" Scottish humour, and sometimes of pungent satire, and it was a treat to watch his restrained enjoyment of the brilliant wit of one of his choicest friends in the meetings of a small ministerial club at which, during his later years in Liverpool, he was a constant attendant. Much of the distinctiveness of his character, which marked him off from other men, and leaves his portraiture now so sharply defined in the memory of his friends, was due to the keenness of his sense of propriety and to the acumen of his critical faculty. "The critics!-the critics are those who have failed," Lord Beaconsfield makes one of his characters say. He was a critic certainly, not because he had failed, but because a singularly pure taste, and the aspiration after an extremely high standard, were part of his natural constitution. He criticised architecture, pictures, ornaments, furniture, books, sermons, preachers, characters; and there was no person whom he criticised so searchingly as himself, no work so searchingly as his own. I think he was fastidious to a fault. "If Mr. Birrell would now and then make a slip in his preaching, it would be quite a comfort," said a judicious friend, who thoroughly appreciated and admired him. He watched himself almost too closely, and managed himself almost too carefully; and it was this element of combined criticism and self-consciousness which made him not always at ease with others, and made others, who stood somewhat in awe of his judgment, not always at ease with him; but it was a self-consciousness which always took the lowest view of himself, as he looked up with loving reverence to the great saints and sages of the Church, and to the glorious Lord, who is Head over all. Such a character and life as his could not but gather round itself many of the excellent of the earth; and it would be difficult to find, in the records of Nonconformity, a band of men more spiritually intelligent, devout, and benevolent than those who surrounded the pastor of Pembroke Chapel in its palmy days. It was the custom, at the week-evening service, in the school-room beneath the chapel, for the deacons to sit in a row immediately to the left of the desk.

There they regularly assembled, all of them, week after week; for Wednesday evening was kept with scrupulous faithfulness for the worship of God. There sat Mr. John Cropper, friend and helper of every good work, his radiant face beaming with benevolence; beside him Mr. Guy Medley, Mr. Josiah Jones, and others, whose names are household words, not only amongst Nonconformists, but amongst all who are interested in the Christian life of Liverpool. And from the church meeting in that well-remembered school-room there have gone forth earnest and gifted men of a younger generation, amongst whom may be named Quintin Thomson to missionary enterprise in Africa; William Medley to the training of students for the ministry at Rawdon College; and Edward Medley to the work of the ministry at Nottingham-each of them carrying on, and in some form and degree representing, the teaching and impulse of the truly great mind under whose forming influence, at the most plastic period of their lives, they were providentially brought; and thus the echoes of his voice are still discerned, and the effects of his influence still are felt. So magnetic was his own personality that of him, more than of most even eminent men, it may be said that," he being dead, yet speaketh." His departure from us leaves a great sad blank, not only in the loss of the individual full of gifts and grace, but may it not almost be said. in the loss of one of the most perfect specimens of a type? Other fine specimens of the type do still remain; but the remarkable changes of the last quarter of a century have included the tone of Nonconformist ministers and churches within their scope. With much of what is best in the modern spirit, Mr. Birrell was thoroughly acquainted and thoroughly in sympathy; while, at the same time, he represented in his mode of thought and feeling, and in his manner of life, much of what is best in the past.

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new;

And God fulfils Himself in many ways."

Let us be thankful to God for the new, and thankful to God for the old, and especially thankful as we remember one who so richly combined in his large loving heart and life the best of both-the first minister of Pembroke Chapel. "Remember them which have the rule over you" (better, your guides or your leaders) "who have spoken unto you the Word of God; whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Liverpool. F. H. ROBARTS.

Two Inswers to a Question of Importance to Young Men and Women.

Y DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS,-I do not care to try to catch you with guile, and so I will tell you straightway that the question I mean is this: "Why do you not become decided Christians?" The two answers to that question with which I now venture, in a homely way, to deal are such as I have often heard from the lips of such persons as yourselves.

I shall not assume that you are either sceptical or, in any sense, immoral. It is enough for my purpose to regard you as failing to take a position as avowed disciples of Christ. I address you

as persons of some intelligence. You have been fairly "educated." You are fond of books; and you do not waste your time upon trashy novels and newspaper gossip. You are too well-bred to resent such words as I here offer to your notice as savouring of meddlesomeness on my part. You will not gruffly say to me: "Mind your own business. We can do very well without your garrulous, puritanical wisdom, and shall like you the better the less you preach to us." True, the young are often impatient under advice from those who are farther on in life, as though an illegitimate attempt were being made to restrain the free exercise of their powers, to check their pleasures, and to stunt their growth. But you to whom I now write have reached an age when some sense of the solemnity of life, and of the responsibility attaching to it, ought to have been awakened; and it is to that sense that I would appeal.

I dare say that to you, at present, life wears very much the appearance of a lottery, in which character, reputation, and all the various forms of prosperity are at stake. When every allowance has been made for the appointments of Divine Providence, and for the power of human purpose, the question as to whether you shall be raised up or cast down-whether you shall be rich or poor-whether you shall be famous or obscure-whether you shall be honourable or ignoble, are as yet open questions with you-problems which have yet to be solved. The world is full of temptations which, you