Elihu Burritt

“ No truer friend of the great masses of the people ever lived in England. To all that made for their well-being he gave an earnest sympathy and unwearied effort, and he gave both without the alloy or imputation of a selfish sentiment or object. No man could have had a stronger distaste for the tactics of partisan warfare or for the excitement of parliamentary life, and nothing but a deep and honest sense of the political rights of the unenfranchised people could have constrained him to offer himself as a candidate for a seat in the House of Commons. ”

“ He came to the pulpit without the loss of a single lock of his young manhood's strength. That classical culture that so often exhausts the vital heat of the soul in producing mental brilliance, had not sobered or softened the pulse of a single faculty within him. He entered upon his work with all his young enthusiasm at full glow, and with all his great-eyed hope and faith, looking out grandly into the future. Thus, at the outset of his ministry, he threw into it all the native eloquence of his heart ”

“ Joseph Sturge felt and did for the myriads of negro slaves scourged to their unrequited toil under British or American masters. No man in England ever gave more thought and effort to their emancipation and enlightenment than he did. But all he felt and worked for them did not affect the rotundity of his philanthropy; indeed it seemed to perfect as well as expand its sphere; and in that sphere he laboured so steadily and evenly, that now he is gone, one can hardly say for what enterprise of benevolence he was most distinguished. ”

“ Their deeds and dispositions have brightened the pages of history with the beautiful sunshine of benevolence. They are the men and women who fix the eye and heart intently upon some particular form of moral evil or physical suffering, and sight and feeling grow more and more intense as they look and think upon the subject of their concentrated efforts. For a time, it may be, each has his own field all to himself, and it is large and the work is arduous, and he cannot even look over into another, much less lend a hand to the labour that other field demands. ”

“ Such a statue has a value beyond all the grace that a sculptor's genius can impart. These marble forms of men and women standing in the market-places and at the cross-roads of the people are the precious stones of nations. Birmingham erected such a memorial to Joseph Sturge, and placed it at the confluence of five roads, or at "The Five Ways," just at the entrance of the town on the south-west. ”

“ Like hundreds of young men who have ascended to the pulpit and platform, he was exposed to the imminent peril of that fluency of speech and richness of voice which have carried away nine in ten of them upon a noisy current of shallow thought into the dead sea of oblivion. For several years he seems to have yielded to these seductive and effeminating facilities of delivery. Few men could have been more tempted to obey their impulse and guidance. ”

“ At this crisis of the movement, its most dangerous stage, when the two great political parties were so nearly balanced that each was bidding high for the adhesion of the Anti-Corn-Law League, no man saw the peril of the temptation so clearly as Joseph Sturge. ”

“ Standing among the emblems of his love and good works, the serene and benevolent face seems to beam with the living smile of a beating heart, and the half-extended arm and the open palm to be warm with the pulse of their old sweet life, as if still inviting the African slave-child or the homeless orphan to climb up against his bosom. ”

“ With a single eye and heart for His service, the ardent young man not only forgot the things that were behind, but the things that were on either side of him, keeping the mark and prize of his high calling only and ever in view. ”

“ Although monuments of brass or marble are not needed to perpetuate the memory of such a man as Joseph Sturge, they are useful to show to subsequent generations how he was regarded by the men of his own day and community. ”

“ But the cause of universal peace and brotherhood of the peoples was equally dear to his great heart, and no man living or dead ever gave to that cause a warmer sympathy, a greater hope, a larger or steadier faith, or a more generous and munificent hand. ”

“ Church and Dissent never fraternized more beautifully than in the Christian sympathy and companionship between John Angell James and the Rev. Dr. Miller, the eminent clergyman of the Established Church in Birmingham, who will leave the record of a great and good life for some one to write. No minister in England was a more out-and-out Nonconformist than Mr. ”

“ Some of his published addresses on special anniversaries or occasions, are deeply marked with these characteristics; more frequently those delivered in the first years of his ministry. But this should not be ascribed to the youthful ecstasies of an exuberant imagination in the speaker. At the time when he delivered his most florid addresses, grave members of the British Parliament and platform orators adopted a style and diction equally ornate. The public taste for glowing and redundant metaphor pervaded every assembly, religious or political ”

“ His sermons and addresses began to grow in intellectual vigour; and he began to rise as a preacher. He was invited to preach a sermon in London. It made an impression not only for its graces of elocution, but for its intellectual force and logical structure. He was soon after invited to speak at an annual meeting of the London Missionary Society, at that time presenting about the only forum to ministers of different denominations for platform speeches. ”

“ James himself was a living bond of union between English and American churches. His letters to eminent ministers in the United States would make a large and interesting volume. No man in England ever did more to draw together the two countries by the liens of Christian fellowship and sympathy ”

“ He was a father to all the young men it educated for the ministry, and watched over, counselled, and encouraged them with the kindliest suavity of Christian affection, and assisted many of them in time of need from his own purse. ”