ration and the fervid, active one of the present. O would that we could with like patience possess our souls!”
With regard to the system of Mr Sortain’s ministry, it suggests the usual difference of opinion whether every sermon to an organised congregation should contain an offer of free pardon and salvation to sinners, or whether each sermon should be a fragment of progressive religious instruction. On the one system the conviction is that, considering that to one or more of the hearers any sermon may be his last, a minister should always have one paragraph in his sermon stating the Gospel offer. On the other system, a knowledge of the Gospel offer is distinctly assumed, and it is judged to be inexpedient to be always laying the foundation and abridging the time to be spent in building. The latter has often been the idea of young men, and may sometimes have seemed to be Mr Sortain’s idea, his stock of knowledge being extensive and always ready to his hand. This may have occasioned the criticism of the younger John Clayton, written when that venerable divine was eighty years of age. It was not Mr Sortain’s lot to reach the confines of old age. Of a delicate frame, and under the pressure of too abundant and continuous labours, he died in his fifty-first year, on 16th July 1860. What Mr Clayton wrote of him from Torquay, 5th September 1860, was as follows:—
“I am much afflicted by the death of Mr Sortain, whom I had known from his boyhood. He was a man and minister sui generis, and I could strongly sympathise with many who deplored the loss of the pastor in North Street Chapel. But some of his panegyrists, in the ardour of their love and zeal, gave him ample credit on some few points in which, I think, he did not excel. I am happy, however, to know from very good judges that for the past few years his ministry has been more fully evangelical than it was aforetime.”
I have quoted the above in order to give the reply of Mr Aveling, the biographer of the Claytons:—[1]
“I am very happy to know, from very good judges as well as from personal observation, that Mr Sortain, with a pure eloquence, with great beauty of illustration and intense earnestness of manner, by manifestation of the truth commended himself to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. Some of the most stirring appeals ever addressed to crowded audiences, and some of the most full and faithful exhibitions of the cross of Christ ever presented by the heralds of the Gospel, were delivered from the pulpit of North Street Chapel, Brighton, by its departed minister, whose soul was too strong and vigorous for the fragile form in which it dwelt.”
Mr Sortain was buried in his favourite churchyard of Hove, near Brighton. On his tombstone is this epitaph:—
Sacred to the Memory of
The Rev. Joseph Sortain, B.A.,
for 28 years Minister of North Street Chapel, Brighton,
who died July 16th, i860, aged 50.
“Where I am, there shall also my servant be.” — John xii. 26.
In his own church a tablet was erected —
Sacred to the Memory of
The Rev. Joseph Sortain, B.A.,
who for upwards of 28 years proclaimed and vindicated “the truth as it is in Jesus” within this sanctuary with unwavering fidelity, rare eloquence, and marked catholicity of spirit.
He was born July 22d, 1809, and, after suffering prolonged affliction with cheerful resignation,
entered into rest July 16th, 1860, aged 50 years.
“Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
- ↑ “Memorials of the Clayton Family. With unpublished correspondence of the Countess of Huntingdon, Lady Glenorchy, the Revs. John Newton, A. Toplady, &c. By the Rev. Thomas V. Aveling.” London, Jackson, Walford, & Hodder, 1867.
