Hello to everyone at Newcastle! I was encouraged by the interest shown by members of the congregation in my research into ‘Working Class Unitarians in Scotland’, and I was highly encouraged by the links sent to me by Louise, where I found a fascinating connection in the person of the Rev George Harris, who served both the Glasgow and the Newcastle congregations as minister. He was born in 1794 and entered Glasgow University at a very young age and had made a reputation as a gifted Unitarian preacher by the age of 20.

He was later offered a choice of several pulpits and he decided in favour of Glasgow, because, as he put it, he choose to work ‘where the supporters of the church were the least numerous’. He was one of the founders of the Scottish Unitarian Association in 1830. From Glasgow he went to Edinburgh, and on the 1^st of June, 1845, he preached his first sermon as the minister of the Church of the Divine Unity in Newcastle, where he remained until his death in 1859. He was by all accounts an impressive preacher and a tireless worker in the service of the church and the cause of Unitarianism, returning to Glasgow to chair a ‘Congregational Soiree’ for the opening of the new Glasgow Unitarian Church in St Vincent Street on May 3^rd 1856. But it was not until his sudden death in December 1859 and the publication of subsequent obituaries that the extent of his endeavours for political and social progress became more widely known.

He was a committed and energetic campaigner for the abolition of capital punishment and for improvement in housing, sanitary conditions and education for the poor:  A Mr S. G. of Newcastle, wrote in ‘The Daily Chronicle and Northern Counties Advertiser on December 30 1859, “God’s benevolence, said Rev Harris, is a moral benevolence. His own philanthropy partook of a like character: he was ever seeking to elevate and dignify the souls of men, by imparting to them the eternal truth which, through Christ, he had himself received, and desired to see in the possession of all the human family, without distinction of rank, sex, country or colour.”

Rev. R. B. Aspland of Hackney wrote in The Newcastle Guardian on December 31^st 1859 “He was the fearless champion of, and placed his unhesitating trust in, the power of God’s truth; that he regarded religious establishments as altogether unnecessary as a bulwark of true religion, and dangerous to the liberty of the subject, inasmuch as they might become an entrenchment for perpetuating prejudice and religious error; and that he sought to give to every rank the benefits of education.”

His theology may have been that of a Unitarian minister of his times, in the broadly liberal, free thinking Christian tradition; but in his commitment to social progress and political reform in the name of equality for all of God’s children he was definitely ahead of his times.”