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BROWNLOW NORTH 1810 —1875AD. 1 BROWNLOW NORTH: THE STORY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK. BY THE REV. KENNETH MOODY-STUART, MA., MOFFAT. POPULAR EDITION. Lo n d o n : HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLXXIX. 2 PREFACE. ______ HIS Memoir of the late Brownlow North, B.A. Oxon., does not profess Tto be a biography in the strict sense of the term, but rather a record of his spiritual experience, and his labours for the advancement of Christ’s cause, with an estimate of the character as well as the results of his teaching. On this account the chronological order has not been adhered to except in the opening chapters and those at the close. Elsewhere the arrangement is topi- cal; but as the dates are always inserted when known, the reader can for him- self refer each letter or incident to its own year. On this account also only letters of a religious nature have been inserted, or the portions selected from his general correspondence have been confined to extracts bearing upon his labours, or his religious experience and counsels. The extent of the valuable recollections furnished for this volume by many friends, to whom the Author returns his grateful thanks, and whose contribu- tions are acknowledged as they are successively inserted, must no doubt, to some extent, interfere with the unity of the book as a composition. On the other hand they greatly add to its value, both as being penned by more com- petent hands than those of the compiler, and as presenting the reader with a truer portrait of Brownlow North than could be furnished by any likeness sketched by a single writer. In order to admit of this new edition being published in a cheaper form, and also to make the volume more useful and acceptable to a wider circle of readers, certain curtailments of the letter-press of the first edition have been effected. These consist principally in the more or less complete omission of five chapters, which were formerly printed in small type, to indicate to the eye that they did not form a part of the direct narrative, and which it was from the first intended to omit, in the event of a new edition being called for. As the chapters now omitted or curtailed, constituted more specifically the “Records” from which the first edition took its title, it has been deemed de- sirable to adopt the present subsidiary title instead of that used in the earlier and more extended edition, viz., “Records and Recollections.” The chapters referred to are chapters v. and vi., on the History of Lay-preaching, and the Proceedings of the Free Church General Assembly at the Public Recognition of Mr. North as an Evangelist, a portion of the latter chapter having been retained, including Mr. North’s own Address; and chapters xiv. and xv., con- taining extracts from Mr. North’s annotated Bible, of which, however, many samples are inserted at pp. 76, 77, and elsewhere throughout the volume. Chapter xviii. is also removed, but all the most interesting and important of the incidents and characteristics narrated in these Reminiscences by personal 3 friends are now incorporated in the regular course of the narrative. The names of the persons, portions of whose spiritual experience have been recorded, have never been published without their own permission, or in cases where they have deceased, without the sanction of their surviving relatives. In instances where it was hopeless to trace the writers after the lapse of years, the names, or correct initials, have been suppressed, and their place supplied by the earlier letters of the alphabet in order. This record of Brownlow North's words and work is given to the public, with the prayer that it may prove a means of building up in their most holy faith many of those who were awakened, quickened, or edified under his ministry, and that it may prove a channel of saving blessing to some who never heard the gospel message from his lips, so that by it he being dead may yet speak. K. M. S. Moffat, 1879. 4 I. BROWNLOW NORTH’S EARLIER YEARS. “I loved Thee late, though early I well knew From saintly mother what to Thee was due. * * * * “I loved Thee late, Lord, after shameful years Of strife, waged hard between desires and fears: Thy word now checked me; now my will gave rein To lusts that drew me deep in vice again. O patience wonderful! Thou didst not hate The lingering heart of him who loved Thee late.” PROF. BLACKBURN ON ST. AUGUSTINE. BROWNLOW NORTH is a name that has become a household word throughout the length and breadth of Scotland, and also in many of the cities and towns of England and Ireland. It is a name which will be held in grateful remembrance and esteem by a large portion of the present generation of Scottish Christian people, as that of a man who has influenced, by his preaching and teaching, the spiritual life of our land more than most have done. It seems therefore unfitting that such a man’s life should be allowed to become a thing of the past without some permanent record being preserved of those labours in which he was so unwearied, of that teaching which made such a deep impression upon multitudes, and of that evangelistic ministry which has formed one of the most important factors of the religious, as distinguished from the ecclesiastical, history of Scotland in the present generation. Brownlow North was born on the 6th January, 1810. He was the only son of the Rev. Charles Augustus North, Rector of Alverstoke, Hants, and Prebendary of Winchester, and of Rachel, daughter of Thomas Jarvis, Esq., of Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire. His grandfather was the Hon. and Rev. Brownlow North, D.D., Prelate of the Noble Order of the Garter, who was successively the Bishop of the sees of Lichfield, Worcester, and Winchester. Mr. North was thus a grand-nephew of Lord North, the celebrated prime minister of George III., not a little of whose characteristic ability and genius, along with that of other members of the distinguished family to which he belonged, reappeared in him. It is a family which has produced members who have exercised an appreciable influence on the community both in Church and State. His birth took place at Winchester House, Chelsea, the town house of his grandfather. His father was the Bishop’s youngest son; but as his cousin, the Earl of Guilford, had no son, and his elder brother Francis had been long married, and was also childless, the infant boy was welcomed as heir to the 5 earldom; and hearty were the cheers which greeted him, when his father’s intimate companion and friend, Christian Schetky, the well-known marine painter,1 receiving him from the nurse’s arms at breakfast, presented him to the company as the future Earl of Guilford. It was these expectations which prevented his being trained for any of the professions, and which thus, as in many similar cases, eventually proved a serious disadvantage to him. The little boy throve apace, and a story which is told of him when he was five years old, gives evidence of his natural quickness of mind. Walking with his aunt, Lady Lucy North, in the park where the deer were lying lazily basking and browsing, he said to her, after some minutes’ silence, “Aunt Lucy, why are you like that big stag there?” “I’m sure I can’t tell,” replied his aunt. “I don’t think I’m a bit like. Tell me why.” “Because, Aunt Lucy, you’re a great dear.” To dive to the depths of a long pocket, and extract half- a-crown, was the quick rejoinder of his aunt to his jeu de mot; and afterwards, with much praise of his cleverness and affection, she related the story as it has since been preserved in the family. At the early age of nine he went to Eton, when Dr. Keats was headmaster, and remained there six years, in Dr. Hawtrey’s house. He did not distinguish himself there by application to his books, but was known as a first-rate swimmer and general good fellow by the sobriquet of Gentleman Jack, in contradistinction to a bargee of his name, with whom the Eton boys of that time were familiar. The prayers and pious training of his mother, who was a most godly woman, bore as yet no fruit in the wild and wayward character of her boy, who was strongly averse to all that was good, his influence upon his schoolfellows being exactly the reverse of what she would have desired. His father dying in 1825, young Brownlow was removed from Eton, and went out to Corfu with his cousin, Lord Guilford, who was Chancellor of the Ionian Islands, where he had founded a Theological College, in which it was hoped his young relative might be induced to continue his studies. Nothing, however, seemed able to subdue the wild, high spirits of the lad; and the old gentleman, after finding one day that the window of his class-room had been made the winning-post and last jump of an amateur steeplechase, which Brownlow had got up, regretfully sent him home again, as beyond his control. He was then sent abroad with a tutor, to make, as it was then termed, the grand tour; but this experiment proved no more fortunate than the preceding, for meeting with his tutor in a gaming saloon the first night after their arrival in Paris, he insisted, under penalty of exposure, that all the books 1 Schetky when a young man in Rome received the blessing of Cardinal York, the brother of Prince Charles Stuart, and died within a year of Brownlow North’s death, at the age of ninety-six.

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