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HANDSWORTH

(COPYRIGHT)
A  LOCAL  SOCIETY  MAGAZINE

CIRCULATING IN HANDSWORTH, PERRY BARR AND BIRCHFIELDS.

Vol. V			  	AUGUST, 1898.				     No. 50
Our Picture Gallery.

No. 50. – THE LATE REV. R. N  YOUNG, D.D.

The Rev. Robert Newton Young, D.D., whose demise on the 1^st inst. At his residence in Rookery Road has occasioned deep and widespread regret both in the Wesleyan Church, which he has done so much to adorn and the larger church outside, which though known by diver’s names, acknowledges the same divine master and is substantially the same in purpose, has resided in Handsworth for about seventeen years.  There are few more familiar figures in this locality than his, so lately passed away from mortal view and it may be added few Handsworthians have enjoyed in a greater degree the respect and confidence of the community.

Robert Newton Young was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on June 17^th, 1829.  His father, the Rev. Robert Young, was an honoured missionary and eminently successful evangelist, who enjoyed the confidence of his brethren in a high degree and was raised to the presidency of the Conference in 1857, shortly after the birth of the subject of our sketch, whom he named after the well-known and greatly beloved Dr Robert Newton.  In 1830 the father returned to England and the boy was sent to Woodhouse Grove School, Leeds, and subsequently to St Saviour’s Grammar School, Southwark, where he finished his education.

Constantly brought into association with religious people and religious life, it was in accordance with the fitness of things that at the age of twelve Robert Newton Young joined the Methodist Society and seven years later decided to adopt the ministry as a profession.  He had had some idea of devoting himself to a business career, but largely under the influence of a singularly vivid dream, he was led to change his plans.  He saw that the Christian ministry was his vocation and resolved to devote himself to it.  At the Conference of 1851 he was accepted as a candidate for the ministry of the Methodist Church and may be said to have fairly entered upon the great emprise of his life.

After a period of training and tutorial work at Richmond College, he was appointed to his first pastoral charge in the town of Hastings and for twenty-four years he remained a circuit minister.  He removed from Hastings to Nottingham after a two years’ residence and his subsequent circuits were – Bradford 1858; Leeds 1861; Birmingham 1864; Bolton 1867; London (Highbury) 1870; Blackheath 1873; and Clapton 1876.

The next twenty years of his life were devoted to teaching.  He was appointed classical tutor at Headingly College in 1977 and held this appointment with great ability till 1881, when he was transferred to the then new Wesleyan Ministerial College at Handsworth, where he laboured first as classical professor and latterly as principal.  In 1892 he became tutor in pastoral theology and house governor at the college and held this position till the Conference of 1897, when owing to failing health he retired from active service.

As a preacher he was expository in method, chaste and finished in style and effective in delivery.  He was greatly appreciated by his own sect, whiles his catholic sympathies endeared him to many other communities.  A sentence from a speech which he delivered as the British representative to the Irish Conference in 1886 will give some idea of the extent of his work in this direction.  He there described himself as belonging to the “vagrant class” and went on to say that he had spent the fifty-two Sundays in the previous twelve months in fifty-two different circuits and he had preached twice on each Sunday to a different congregation.  He had travelled from the extreme north to south, to the east and to the west of Great Britain and he thought he had therefore had a fair opportunity of gauging the religious life and enterprise and vigour of the people.

In 1882 he was the Fernley lecturer, choosing as his topic “The Witness of the Spirit” and on various occasions the pages of the Quarterly Review and the Wesleyan Magazine were enriched by his pen.  He took a keen interest in the psalmody of the Methodist Church and when the hymn book was enlarged twenty-four years ago he shared in the work and received the thanks of the Conference.  He also condensed Dr A Clarke’s Commentary into three volumes.

1884 he went to America as the senior representative of the British Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and in the following year the University of Middletown, Connecticut – one of the oldest Methodist Universities in the United States – conferred upon him the degree of doctor of divinity, as a tribute of respect to his scholarship to his established position as a Professor of Theology and to British Methodism, as whose representative he had made a great impression in the land of the dollar.

Dr Young’s services to that Conference will be long remembered.  Probably no minister had had a better conferential training or possessed a better knowledge of the usages and polity of Wesleyan Methodism.  He was elected to the Legal Hundred in 1873 and for eleven years prior to 1881 he was assistant-secretary to the Conference -  a class of work for which he developed rare aptitude.  In that year, on the retirement of the Rev. M L Osborn he was chosen secretary, a position to which he was annually re-elected by a practically unanimous vote till 1886, when the highest mark of Connexional honour was conferred upon him by his election to the office of President – an honour which came very fitly after his long service to the Conference and to the church.  The duties attaching to the office are onerous and exacting involving many long journeys, attendance at innumerable meetings, preaching and speaking at all sorts of gatherings, to say nothing of Connexional committees and official work.  All these duties Dr Young well and willingly performed, displaying tact, judgement and grace and it may not be inappropriate to quote the tribute of the Methodist Times on his retirement.  “The Rev. Dr Young” that journal said “has discharged the duties of his office with the courtesy and dignity which were expected of him.  He has also during the year maintained with conspicuous success the impartiality of the chair.  His public addresses have been characterised by great discretion and that rare felicity of style which has always distinguished him.  Best of all, many of his sermons have been marked by high spiritual teaching and timely practical advice.”

The above sketch brief and incomplete though it may be, bears witness to the variety and extent of the services which Dr Young rendered to the church of his choice and to the esteem in which he was held by his ministerial brethren.  He was a man of many gifts and accomplishments, a patient student and an excellent scholar, conversant with facts and efficient in administration.  No one who listened to his discourses could fail to recognise that, in this age of doubt and unrest with an aggressive science on the one hand and a defiant philosophy on the other, here was a Christian deeply read and profoundly thoughtful who could give powerful reason for the faith that was in him.  Dr Young’s expositions had more than a passing interest and more than a temporary influence and many of them are permanently preserved in his published works.  He was one of the men in who Wesley himself would have delighted – ready as he was to take any long journey and to preach any number of sermons in order to invigorate the religious life of the community.

To quote from a memorial sermon preached in Aston Villa Church on Sunday the 7tyh inst., by the Rev Enoch Salt (superintendent minister of the Wesley circuit) “It pleased God that a distressing affliction should mark the close of a long and brilliant career, but while He chastened His servant He did not forsake him.  Robert Newton Young died in the faith in which he lived and the memory of his reverent spirit and humble trust in his adorable Saviour will be long and tenderly cherished by all who truly knew him.”

Dr Young who died in the 70^th year of his age and the 47^th year of his ministry is survived by four daughters and one son.  One of the daughters is married to the Rector of Roddington, near Shrewsbury.

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THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE
“I found that the Russians by temperament were without exception the gentlest, most easy-going and humane nation in Europe – and I have seen them all,” says an English writer.  “Their defects are many, but the leading feature in the Russian character, high and low, which stands above faults of which they have their full share, is an enthusiastic generous humanity, easily moved to sadness and tears; full of expansive gratitude for kindness; free from meanness, pettiness and cunning greed.  In short, it struck me the more I contemplated the Russian character, that they were the only people in Europe who possessed several of the better characteristics of ourselves.  The Russians are not so fond of fair play, not so truthful, not so energetic, not so manly as we are; but on the other hand they are less hypocritical, more truly modest, gentler, more tender, more truly religious, more humane and less brutal and violent in every way.  This being so, I decline to believe that the Russian nation as a body or the Russian government as its representative – which shares the virtues and vices of that body – would ever lend itself heart and soul to an aggressive general war for mere purposes of spite and plunder and in this matter, far inferior though the Russians are to their new allies in intelligence, wit, vivacity and many other noble qualities, they are infinitely superior to the French.  They are a juster race, with less venom.”