HAS SPURGEON GROWN.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1337, 17 December 1883, Page 4

HAS SPURGEON GROWN.

* , The Rev. Arthur Mursellwas one of the speakers at a meeting held' to give the Rev. Dr Culross a public 'welcome to Bristol. In the course of his racy remarks, Mi -> Mursell said : Mr fipurgeoti told his congregation in Exeter Hall the other evening that it was twenty-eight years ago since He first preached there, and he had'nt grown an inch since then. It was an instance of that audacity of consecrated exaggeration which gives power to much that he says. Not grown ! lam certain not one of the garments would fit him now in which I saw him preach in Bristol twenty : eight years ago.— (Laughter.) Neither his Coat nor his creed, his waistband nor bis theology ■would fit him now.— (Laughter. ) He had outgrown them both. Then his tailor would cry ont "26£" as he flung the tape round .a slim pillar of nothing in particular.— (Roars oi laughter.) Now, goodness knows what he calls out as he shouts^o his assistant, to meet him on the other side. — (Great laughter.) Twenty reight years ago he bent his grand imagination on a painted fire and eternal pain ; now lie exalts it to portray 'a sun-bathed heaven and a- beatific jby; Then he raved of hell and damnation ; now kv sings of ransom and redemption. Then the crude ardor of his zeal mutilated his teaching against angles; which only bruised the mind and horrified the soul ; now the contact of riper experience with dying love has r flung the heart-beat of that love into a, nobler testimony. Not grown ! Oh, yes, he has? But what he meant was that ht had not shrunk and shrivelled — thai the pedantries of a dwarfish scienct had not driven him from the granc doctrines of a giant grace. — (Cheers. God forbid that any of us should for sake them. / '

It is staled in theßendigo Advertiser that Kate Kelly, the sistev of. the notorious bushranger iWho held , the North- Ksatern district in such a state of terror three yearsjagjp, is/at present in the Beech.wqi-tli.'H.pspital, sulfering from cousuiypj^on, which she is not expected «) recover. At Il^aiirgto^on the Cup day, a favorite j? Win a donna wore a harmony in aazure-blure r £atm, large poke bonnet of the same, color, frttge parasol, and blue gloves to match. As the bearer of this dress tripped down the lawn with the sunlight playing on her* she looked for all the world liK^ a floating cloud.