William Henry NORRIS
Obituary

The Christian Advocate
March 20, 1879
Another Veteran Called To Rest
by F. Bottome, D.D.
NORRIS. - One by one the toilers from the vineyard and the veterans from the field are called to their rest to their reward. On October 19, 1878, Rev. W. H. Norris, at his home in Hempstead, Long Island, where several of his last years were spent in peaceful retirement from this long and active ministry, passed away in peace, leaving his honored companion to await a later signal to depart.

W. H. Norris was born in Orono, Maine, in 1801, from which place he came with his parents to the city of New York when about fifteen years of age. When between sixteen and seventeen he attended the services of Duane-street Methodist Episcopal Church and was converted to God, and at once united with that church, of which he was for several years an active member. He joined the New York Conference in 1825, thus giving a period of fifty-three years of ministerial life, including the few later years of his retirement--twenty-one years of which were spent in the duties of the active pastorate, nine years in the Presiding Eldership, and twelve years in special services to the church as missionary to South America and Agent of the American Bible Society to Mexico and Central America. His pastoral life, commenced with his admission to the New York Conference and divided almost equally between the distant Conferences in Maine and that within whose borders he at length finished his useful life--the New York East. The Church had possessed few persons whose lives were more useful, certainly none whose loyalty was more devoted than his. The best epitome of his character is that which the Scriptures give of the centurion Cornelius. He was "a devout man, one that feared God, with all his house, and gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always." His religious character was grafted on a good stock. His excellent parents had trained him in habits of filial piety, which made the new life of faith, in the Lord Jesus sit easily on him. An upright, sincere, and godly man, he was always reliable and trustworthy. To him the voice of the church was the voice of God, and so he never questioned the call of authority, but wherever that might direct he went, leaving the responsibility with those who sent him. And what it cost him to do this often can only be appreciated by those who knew the true character of the man, and the shrinking, self-depreciating nature against which he had to contend. The measure of the man may be best taken by reflecting on the estimate which the Church itself made of him, and which may be seen in the varied and often delicate missions with which he was charged. He was a safe man--one in whom the largest trusts could be reposed, and also one whose clear sense of right and ready ability of placing any matter of controversy in the simplest relations made him at all times sought after for these valuable qualities. As a preacher the same conscientious painstaking was always apparent. Methodical, logical, and scrupulously conscientious, his sermons were models of exactness and forcible conclusions. His chief excellence, perhaps, lay in the pastorate. Indeed, it often seems to us that if a man was ever called to a special work, Mr. Norris was called to this. Systematically dividing his time and his parish, he would go from house to house, mingling with his people, carrying their sorrows, advising in their perplexities, and specially sympathizing with the poor and fatherless; going as a man of God and going with both hand and heart open to minister to whatever necessities might crave his sympathy.



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