subtle truths and
deep symbolic meanings in common things; whose winning and graphic
eloquence made these truths and meanings clear to others, showing
them that not a blade of grass springs by the roadside, nor an insect
flutters for a day in the gladdening light of the spring-time, but
has its lesson, if men will but search for it, of tender mercy and
fatherly care. His broad and catholic spirit was wide enough to
embrace within his friendship men of widely divergent thought and
belief. His life was one long and eloquent lesson to us all. If ever
man deserved the blessing following the words, "Inasmuch as ye did it
unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me," that
man was Charles Vince, for of him, more emphatically than can be said
of most of us, it may be recorded that "he went about doing good."

It is not necessary to sketch the mature character of one so recently
taken from amongst us. The shadow of his homely figure has scarcely
faded from our streets, and the sound of his eloquent voice still
seems to vibrate in our ears. It seems but yesterday that, on that
cold and cheerless day, his lifeless but honoured remains were borne
to the grave through the crowds of sympathising people who thronged
the busy streets to see the last of him they knew so well and loved so
heartily. Little could be added to the warm tributes that were paid
so recently to the memory of the gifted, truthful, fearless, earnest,
hard-working Christian teacher, who, in the prime of his life and the
zenith of his powers, was removed from the sphere which he adorned by
the purity of his character, and benefited by the power and graces of
his intellect.

But these tributes referred mainly to what he was, and what he did,
in the later part of his career, and in the maturity of his powers.
In some of them the references to his parentage, his birth, and
his boyhood, were singularly inaccurate. In one periodical of
large circulation and great influence, statements full of error and
misrepresentation went forth to the world unchallenged. It is my
purpose, therefore, in this paper, to correct the mistakes of those
who wrote, being imperfectly informed; and to give, as I had it from
the lips of his friends, his schoolfellows, and his relatives, a
simple, but at all events a strictly accurate, record of the few and
unromantic events of the early days of one who became so fruitful in
goodness and in charity.

With the view that thi