Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/79

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and its Green Border-Land.
65

to the meeting." From that "rough scheme of union" was shaped and laid the basis of an organization that unites a vast number of churches in both hemispheres in sentiment and action, for the purity and spread of the Christian faith.

Mr. 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; and both have common and equal cause to hold at equal value the legacy of his life and labours. While giving his best efforts to the organization of an Evangelical Alliance which should embrace and unite the Protestant churches in both hemispheres, he illustrated what such a vast communion should be, feel, and do, by becoming himself the soul and centre of an inner and smaller Evangelical Alliance in Birmingham. And the great one he founded would do well to take his little home fellowship as a pattern in spirit and action. 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