Arthur, William

ARTHUR, WILLIAM: Methodist; b. at Kells (18 m. n.w. of Belfast), County Antrim, Ireland, Feb. 3, 1819; d. at Cannes, France, March 9, 1901. He began to preach at the age of sixteen, was accepted as a candidate for the ministry by the Irish Conference in 1837, and spent the next two years as a student at the Theological Institution at Hoxton, London. In 1839 he went to India, and opened a new mission station at Gutti, Mysore, but returned to England in 1841, completely broken down in health. His eyesight, in particular, was much impaired, and from this affliction he never fully recovered. He was stationed at Boulogne, 1846, in Paris, 1847–48; preached in London, 1849–50; was appointed one of the secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, 1851; first principal of the Belfast Methodist College, 1868; honorary missionary secretary, 1871. In 1888 he retired and thenceforth lived chiefly in southern France. In 1856 he was made a member of the legal committee of his Church, and from that time on was prominent in all connectional committees and 308conference proceedings. He was president of the Conference in 1866. During the Civil War in America he championed the Union cause and wrote a series of able articles in its support for The London Quarterly Review—a periodical which he helped to found in 1853 and to which he contributed regularly for thirty years. His books are numerous and some of them had an enormous sale. They include: A Mission to the Mysore, with Scenes and Facts Illustrative of India, its People and its Religion (London, 1847; ed., with introduction, notes, and appendix, H. Haigh, 1902); The Successful Merchant, Sketches of the Life of Mr. Samuel Budgett (1852); The People’s Day, an Appeal to the Right Hon. Lord Stanley against his Advocacy of a French Sunday (1855); The Tongue of Fire, or the True Power of Christianity (1856); Italy in Transition, Public Scenes and Private Opinions in the Spring of 1860 (1860); The Modern Jove, a Review of the Collected Speeches of Pio Nono (1873); The Life of Gideon Ouseley (1876); The Pope, the Kings, and the People (2 vols., 1877; ed. W. B. Neatley, 1903); 0n the Difference between Physical and Moral Law, the Fernley lecture for 1883 (1883); Religion without God and God without Religion, a criticism of the philosophical systems of Frederic Harrison, Herbert Spencer, and Sir Fitzjames Stephen (3 parts, 1885–87).

Bibliography: Consult The Methodist Recorder, xlii, 11–16, London, Mar. 14, 1901, for biographical sketch.