13 JULY 1901, Page 25

George Whitehead: his Work and Service. Compiled from his Autobiography

by William Beck. (Headley Brothers. 2s. 6d.) —George Whitehead became an "acceptable minister" in the community of Friends at sixteen, and laboured for more than seventy years, living to see the end of the troublous times in which his youth and manhood were spent. Mr. Beck does not give us verbatim extracts from his autobiography during the earlier part of this period. We gather, however, that his methods were somewhat aggressive. The apology that "the Church at that time was so disorganised that a class of unordained preachers was in possession of the pulpits" sounds a little strange, as does the remark that persons "who had no training for the ministry" often followed it, "weavers; butchers, or tailors." George Whitehead himself was a grocer, and the idea of a trained ministry certainly did not commend itself to the Friends. The volume, however, is an interesting record of a striking personality.