SOUTHALL, George Edwin 1884 - 1951

Born at Wolverhampton in 1884 ; entered Handsworth College 1908. He spent the years of his full strength in four cities : Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester.

None the less in Evesham, as a probationer, he wrote his name in the hearts of friends who still remember him with affection and gratitude ; and in Shanklin, at the close of his ministry, he inspired the setting up of notable youth activities.

Bristol claimed him after his ordination in 1914. During these war years his powers of sympathetic understanding and his grip on the Christian faith deepened, so that when five years later he moved to Saltley, Birmingham, he was ready for a great ministry in a great church.
From Birmingham he went to Nottingham, where he was elected Secretary of the District Synod.

As the second world war loomed ahead he went to Withington, Manchester, where he served from 1937 to 1944.

Such is the happy record of his distinguished circuit ministry. He cared for the old as for the young ; he loved his Church ; he was a man of outspoken honesty and of rich humour.

Like his Master, he was a craftsman with his tools at the bench. He gathered a fine library.

His friends will not forget the peculiar emphasis and longing with which, towards the close of his ministry, he would recite the lines :
My spirit, soul and flesh receive

A holy, living sacrifice.
Small as it is, ’tis all my store
More should’st Thou have, if I had more.

Now he is blessed, with still more to give to his Lord, in that fuller life on which he entered 20th September 1951 in the forty-second year of his ministry and the sixty-seventh of his age.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1952