DEATH OF DR. ROBERT COLLYER.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1651, 18 January 1913, Page 9

DEATH OF DR. ROBERT COLLYER.

' BLACKSMITH AND DIVINE. ' Tho death is announced of Dr. Robert Collyer, .pastor emeritus of tho Church of tho Messiah, New York, and ono of tine' best-known. Unitarian ministers in tho United States. • A native of Kcighley, Yorkshire, where '• he was born eighty-nine years ago, Dr. Collyer began lifo as u mill-hand, toiling as a child for twelve hours daily. Later he became a blacksmith, and at tho ago of twenty-seven (s'xty-two .years ago)' he and his, bride'crossed the Atlantic to found, their home in America., His intention was 'to ■ follow, his trade, but ho-had-studied-divinity as ho blow tho bellows, and after some nine years' work at tho anvil he became' a Methodist preacher. Laterho joined tho Unitarians, and ho was soon welcomed into tho intellectual aristocracy of ■ • the American nation. For fifty years he held his place as an acknowledged leader of tho Unitarian bodv. ; His first,ministry was at Unity Church, Chicago, and thenco he moved to'tho-Church of tho Messiah'in Now York. Early in his ministerial life he beenmo one of the Concord fraternity, and enjoyed tho friendship of Emerson, Longfellow. Wendell Holmes, and Hawthorne. When tho Civil War broko out Mr. Collyer joined the Sanitary Commissioners, and- visited tho battlefields Biid hospitals, attending to the wounded, burying tho dead, and combining rare ad-ministrative-capacity with tender solicitudo for tho victims of ■ tho grim war. Five years ago, when ho revisited England, Leeds University conferred upon him its honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, and in responding he noted how nowadays the people of great cities tuslied away to the green fields and tho seaside for week-ends. Ho felt tempted to exclaim: "Oh, that I • could have had such a youth!" Ho mtght have mado another man. And yet he did not know, after all. The old bell that waked, nim from his sleep at five o'clock in'the morning seemed to him then, ho continued,to' bo the most infernal mechanism that ever broko the silence ■ of the heavens. Regarding this bell, Dr. Collyer told air interesting story, how when tho Leeds Corporation were building ' their waterworks in the Washburn Valley ho heard that they intended to pull down the old factory where ho worked,- and,' no doubt, break the bell' up' as old- metal. He. therefore, wroto and asked if ho could have a bit. But a few friends on this side actually sent tho entire boll across to him, and it was-now hanging in one of tho departments of Cornell University: Furthermore, he was tho first person to ring it after it had teen re-hung. "But, do yon know," added Dr. Collyer, "that instead of the infernal clang, whioh I expected, .its sound was sweet and musical. In the old Methodist Evangelical language, it had become converted, regenerated, sanctified, and glorfied." On that occasion Dr. Collyer confessed to being a very happy old man. He thanked tho 'University for conferring the D.Lilt. degree on "an ox-blacksmitii who did as well as ho know how.what God gave'him to do." To tho end of his days he loved his native Yorkshire, mid even after sixty years' absence he could tell a .Yorkshire story with the dialect rendered to periaotum,—"Christian World."