C URRENT LITERATURE.
A FAMOUS CONGREGATIONALIST.
Urijah Rees Thomas : his Life and Work. By David Morgan Thomas, of the Inner Temple. (Hodder and Stoughton. 75. 6d.) —Mr. D. M. Thomas has performed a labour of love in compiling this elaborate account of the life and work of his brother, Urijah Rees Thomas, the well-known minister (for nearly forty years) of Redland Park Congregational Church, Bristol, and a most devoted and laborious citizen of the great Western city. From a literary point of view, we are compelled to regret that the work has not been very considerably abridged. It is in many ways too long, too diffuse ; while the proportionate value of events in the life of Mr. Thomas are not always adequately recognised. We feel, however, that the author has his reasons for this diffuseness. Among the very large number of persons in Bristol and elsewhere who were in daily touch with Mr. Thomas are many who will greatly prize letters and details obtained through personal knowledge, though such letters and details will not be found in any final biography of this famous Congregationalist. The family was, of course, Welsh. The grandfather of the subject of this memoir was a well-known minister near Tenby. His son David Thomas devoted his early ener- gies to trade. At the age of thirty, however, after his marriage and the birth of Urijah, he suddenly decided to become a minister. He settled in London and became the minister of Stockwell Chapel. Ia 1853 he founded the successful paper, the Homitist. He died as recently as the end of 1894. His son Urijah was born at Tenby on February 16th, 1839. In 1856, after a good educa- tion, the boy decided to enter the ministry, and he joined the Cheshunt Training College in the autumn of 1857. Whilst there he showed great mental capacity and extraordinary gifts for preaching. As a student, he went out into the Hertfordshire villages and brought new life into the simple old- time meeting-houses. His power of preaching developed very rapidly, and in 1862 he was invited to accept the York Street, Dublin, Chapel. This he felt compelled to refuse, as also invita- tions from Glasgow and Portsea. An invitation to Redlands Park, Bristol, was then pressed upon the young man of twenty- three, and this he felt bound to accept. In this ministry he laboured till his death on March 8th, 1901. During this period of thirty years Mr. Thomas was in the thick of spiritual, social, and educational work, primarily in Bristol, and inci- dentally elsewhere. The high value of his work to the spiritual cause of which he was so distinguished a member was shown by the fact that in 1895 he became Chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, while his weight among a consider- able section of the Liberal party was exhibited when he became in 1900 the Vice-President of the South African Conciliation Com- mittee. His political views, in fact, almost exactly coincided with those of the present Bishop of Hereford, and (often as we have disagreed with those views) we fully recognise the conscientious way in which they were held. Mr. Thomas's work in Bristol will not easily be forgotten, and has been gladly recognised by men of all denominations. For a quarter of a century his work upon the Bristol School Board, whether as a simple member or as Chairman, was of vast service to education, and though he objected to schools being made a "training ground for Sectarianism," yet he took good care that no enmity should be shown to the existing voluntary schools, but that they should be treated with perfect fairness. His personal friendship with the clergy both of the Established and the Roman Catholic Churches was evidence of his breadth of view. We only wish that men of the type of the late Mr. Thomas controlled the general policy of the unsectarian educationists. It would, at any rate, prevent friction and loss of energy. It was this kindliness of disposition and gentleness of manner, coupled with great business powers and unusual gifts of preaching, that made Mr. Thomas so loved, and makes him so greatly missed, in Bristol and elsewhere.
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