A Great Evangelical
Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 1847-1934. By the Right Rev. E. A. Knox. (Hutchinson. 188.)
WHEN the future Bishop of Manchester was being examined for his diaconate, one of his examiners wrote upon his specimen sermon the criticism that it " seemed very earnest and plain, but did not go deeply into the matter of the text " ; and, looking back upon a consistent and saintly life, which is now in its 88th year, Dr. Knox observes that, throughout his ministry, earnestness and simplicity have always been the first objects of his activity. It is a reviewer's happy privilege to add that these reminiscences display to the full the same qualities as that earliest sermon : they are impeccably earnest and simple ; and, with the ripeness born of the years that bring the philosophic mind, they " go as deeply " as any sympathetic reader could possibly desire " into the matter of the text." There is indeed no vain gossip here, no trivial anecdotage, no taint of bitter controversy. But, on the other hand, the book abounds in intimate pictures of a generation and its ideals long since obsolete ; it contributes to eccle- siastical and social history by its grasp of movements and motives ; it has much genial humour, and many illuminating stories ; and at every turn it maintains its unswerving loyalty to the Evangelical tradition in the English Church, its eager championship of religious education in the schools, and its conviction that character and conduct are the final aims of all Christian teaching. It is, in short, the testament of a great Evangelical, whose life has been devoted to the principles instilled into him in his boyhood, and who has left his mart
and an honoured memory wherever he has worked in the high service of the Christian faith.
Bishop Knox was born in the Madras Presidency in 1847, the son of a chaplain of the East India Company ; but his earliest recollections are of an English home, where a some- what austere puritanism tempered the free expression of deep parental affection. His mother came of a Quaker stock ; he recalls her influence with grateful devotion ; but the discipline of the household was rigid. The children were plainly dressed ; and, if they went to a party, thTT left before the dancing began, with the supper untested. They had almost no pocket money, and few recreations/ except those they made for themselves. From the day' when he first went to St. Paul's School (then still in the City) he cost his father nothing for his education ; not even at Oxford, where his scholarship at Corpus, and his exhibition and emoluments from school, were made to cover all his expenses. He gives a revealing account of St. Paul's under Dr. Kynaston ; and his Oxford chapter is equally illuminating. Corpus was a brilliant college in those days, and among his contemporaries were Robert Bridges, Walter Lock, C. P. Scott of The Manchester Guardian, and J. Huntley Skrine, afterwards Warden of Glenalmond. The terms under which the young Knox was elected to a Fellowship at Merton included the obligatory taking of holy orders ; but that presented no difficulty to his conscience. " I can hardly remember the time," he says, " when I did not long to be a clergyman."
His great chancel came when he was appointed to the living of Aston-by-Birmingham, a sphere of influence rapidly undergoing development and soon transformed under his hand into a centre of Evangelical teaching. Thence, by way of the suffragan bishopric of Coventry, he passed on to the see of Manchester, with whose history his name will, always be indissolubly connected. Every churchman remembers his valiant fight for Bible teaching in the schools, culminating in the demonstration against Birrell's Bill, when he brought thirty trains-full of churchmen up to London, and marched to the Albert Hall, at the head of a procession two miles long, shoulder to shoulder with the Bishop of London and the late Lord Halifax, with whom perhaps he could have agreed upon no other ecclesiastical cause except their consolidating fervour for the authority of Holy Scripture. Here, as in every other determining incident in his life, simplicity and earnestness were the inspiration of his enthusiasm ; and every page in this chivalrous and tonic record bears witness to the triumph of high principle over the anxieties and obligations of responsibility and duty.
ARTHUR WAUGH..
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