Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/80

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Walks in the Black Country.

in England was a more out-and-out Nonconformist than Mr. James, and perhaps no clergyman more a "churchman" than Dr. Miller. But that in which they agreed was far holier and lovelier than that in which they differed; and even the psalmist, if he had seen their manner of walk and conversation with each other, might have recognized the original of his ideal: "Behold, how goodly and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" When Mr. James was approaching his end, and was prostrated by an alarming attack of his disease. Dr. Miller offered prayer for his recovery on Sunday morning in his church. This drew from the venerable invalid a touching expression of gratitude, not only for such a token of sympathy, but for others of the same spirit.

Mr. James died the 1st of October, 1859, a few months after good Joseph Sturge was called to his rest and reward. Thus the two men, so united in sympathy and loving fellowship in good works during their lives, were separated in their deaths by only a small space of time. Their graves lie but a little way apart—one in the yard of the Friends' Meeting House in Bull Street, the other under the pulpit he filled for half a century in Carr's Lane. The shadow of a great sorrow lay dark and heavy on the town from one funeral to the other. For no other town ever had two such men living in it one year and buried in it the next.