COX, Frank 1867 - 1950

Obituary from the Minutes of the Methodist Conference 1950, page 140

Born in 1867 at Blackwater in the Isle of Wight. Although his ministry lay in very different fields, he never forgot his native pasture. To the end of his life he retained a warm affection for the village chapel in which he received his earliest religious impressions, and delighted in recollections of the old-time local preachers, with their simple wisdom and quaint turns of speech.

He found his recreations in the old village crafts. He was a skilled worker in metal and wood and an assiduous gardener, and the workmanlike habits of mind which these pursuits fostered were applied to all his occupations, from the making of a ‘ plan ‘ to the skilful construction of a sermon.

He entered the Ministry in 1892 after training at Richmond College. A year of supply work was the prelude to a long succession of varied circuits, in all of which he proved himself a model circuit minister.

The high esteem in which he was held everywhere was won, not by any showy gifts, but by tireless diligence and solid competence in all his ministerial duties.

He was equal to every demand made upon him, but it was as a preacher that he was pre-eminent, and no other claim was allowed to displace his sense that his call to the Ministry was first and foremost a call to preach. It was the one duty from which he felt that he never could retire so long as he had the strength to fulfil it.

His merit was recognized by his election to the Legal Hundred of the Wesleyan Church and to the Chairmanship of the Sheffield District, but he valued such distinctions chiefly as marks of the esteem of his brethren in the Ministry.

He was widely read, both in theology and in general literature, and he took an alert interest in public affairs.

The work of Overseas Missions was one of his chief concerns ; the fact that both his daughters served on the mission-field was the greatest gratification of his life.

He died on 2nd February 1950, in the eighty-third year of his life and the fifty-eighth of his ministry.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1950

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