John Morrison Davidson

“ Dale—he disclaims the "Rev." as a rag of priestcraft—I never met, combining as he does in no ordinary measure the laureate's desiderata of manhood,—"heart, head, hand." His practice squares with his theory of life to a nicety. His soul is in his work. Like Cromwell, he prays to God, and keeps his powder dry. What good, he is never tired of asking, is the petition, " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," if a man is not prepared at the call of duty to take off his coat and descend into the political arena to wrestle with the powers of Conservative darkness? ”

“ The selfishness of these men is as contemptible as their hypocrisy. They consent to accept all the advantages which come from the political institutions of the nation, and from the zeal and fidelity of their fellow-citizens. ”

“ It is the policy of the State to induce the country to accept or retain religious doctrines which seem to me to be erroneous, and an ecclesiastical polity which seems to me to be unfriendly to the free and vigorous development of the religious life. ”

“ There is, at all events in the Dale family, a kindly tendency to regard a Tory as an "undeveloped Liberal," who will do better by and by. The political evangel, like the religious, is not completely closed to any. ”

“ They ought to decline the services of the police when they are assaulted; they ought to refuse to appeal to such an unspiritual authority as a law court when their debts are not paid; and when a legacy is left them they ought piously to abstain from accepting it, for it is only by the intervention of public law that they can inherit what their dead friends have left them. ”

“ People who are so very spiritual that they feel compelled to abstain from political life ought also to renounce the benefits which the political exertions of their less spiritual fellow-citizens secure for them. ”

“ The Carr's-lane congregation consists of over fifteen hundred "souls," though I fear their pastor counts them as frequently by "votes." They are largely composed of working-men and small tradesmen,—nearly all Liberals. A sprinkling are quasi-Conservatives; among the latter a wealthy alderman, about whom Mr. Dale tells with glee how he described one of his special expositions of Christian truth as "a brilliant farrago of democratic nonsense."
And this has struck me as a peculiar feature of Birmingham Radicalism. It is intense, without being bitter or personally rancorous. ”

“ He believes that hereafter the spiritually fittest will alone ultimately survive. With him the spiritual, and not the material, is the real. There is a Light which lighteth every man that cometh into this world, be he Jew or Gentile, Christian or pagan. It is a plastic theory, of which much may be made by a humane mind. Accordingly, Mr. Dale is a very cosmopolitan sort of Christian. He is a strong admirer of Mr. Moody, of Moody and Sankey fame; and he is a sworn friend, at the same time, of Mr. Crosskey, the leading Unitarian heresiarch of Birmingham. ”

“ Perhaps you have sometimes met good people who have informed you, in a tone of spiritual self-complacency, that they have never been in a polling-booth. They do not seem to understand that the franchise is a trust, and that it imposes duties. ”

“ We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us; and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topic we have left?" Well, if there are any such great wits about who have a desire to exercise their talents in this particular way, I should strongly recommend them to go down to Birmingham, and break a lance with the minister of Carr's-lane Chapel. He is a man of the people, and will give them a kindly welcome. ”

“ They suppl}^ exactly the sort of information one desires with regard to that mighty theatre of new social and political experiments. That so many competent observers are now turning their footsteps towards the far West is a subject for unqualified congratulation. ”

“ If they do not find him at home in his formidably equipped stud}', deep in the production of some systematic theological treatise on the Atonement or the Ten Commandments, they will be pretty sure to discover him either at a Liberal ward committee, at the Liberal Association Rooms in consultation with the taciturn strategist Schnadhorst, or haranguing an obstreperous multitude of electors in the Town Hall. When he is disengaged, he will be at their service ”