REV. WILLIAM J. LAINE.

EV. WILLIAM J. LAINE was born near Wakefield in Southampton county, Virginia, June 18, 1863, and died in Suffolk, May 28, 1898. He was the second son of William F. and Mary E. Laine. In 1882, he was converted and received into Burton's Grove Christian church, and on account of his exemplary Christian character he was chosen soon thereafter as a deacon. He represented his church in Annual Conference at Cypress chapel in 1888, and was received into the Biblical class. He was a student at the Suffolk Collegiate Institute two years, and entered Elon College, North Carolina, September 2, 1890, and graduated in June, 1894.

      Being highly recommended by the church at Centerville in Prince George county, the Eastern Virginia Conference at Franklin, Virginia, in 1891, authorized his licensure through its president. While at Elon College, he served and preached at the following churches: Mt. Zion, Mt. Vernon, and Shallow Ford. Having completed his college course, he spent a part of 1894-'95 in Harvard Divinity School, and then returned to Suffolk, where he supplied the Christian church in the absence [395] of the pastor, Rev. W. W. Staley, D. D., who was on a tour abroad in Egypt and the Holy Land in 1895. At the Conference at Berkley, Virginia, in 1895, he was recommended for ordination, and subsequently served Oakland, Mt. Zion, Isle of Wight Courthouse, Windsor, Holland, and Liberty Spring churches as pastor.

      At the Conference at Suffolk, Virginia, in 1896, he was on the committee to consider the recommendations of the General Convention of the Christian Church, South, in regard to Christian Endeavor Societies, and was chairman of the committee on Sunday schools. He preached the annual sermon before the Eastern Virginia Conference at Bethlehem in 1897, taking as his text 1 Pet. 2:21. He served as chairman of the committee on Foreign Missions, and was appointed chairman of the committee on Home Missions for the following year, and was elected as a delegate to the Southern Christian Convention to meet in Raleigh, North Carolina.

      He was an active member of the Christian Missionary Association and was its Recording Secretary. Among the resolutions of the Association this one shows the high esteem in which he was held: "That in the death of Brother Laine the Church loses one of its most useful and promising young men, and this Association one of its best members."

      The following is from the report of the Conference committee on memoirs: "His health failed in January, 1898, and rapid declension under consumption terminated within five months that life so full of promise to the Church. Measured by all the standards known to us, he embodied those natural endowments and acquired traits of character that commend the minister to our esteem. Modest and brave, studious and prayerful, diligent and fervent, sincere and liberal, he won his way into public favor and private confidence, and seemed to be entering upon a ministerial career of growth and [396] usefulness. His churches were working out of debt, organizing their forces for active service, enlisting the interest of the young people with new hope, laying plans for systematic giving to the cause of Christ, and tuning their harps for sweeter praise.

[LCM 395-397]