Birmingham, therefore, had to settle itself down and be content with a
Suffragan Bishop, at least for a time, and this, it is thought, may
prove to be a good long time.

In connection with the Birmingham Unitarians I may here, perhaps,
appropriately allude to a matter connected with the growth of our modern
city. The New Meeting House of the Unitarians in which Dr. Priestley
ministered was situated on the east side of the town, and as the
congregation was migrating westward they desired to have their place--I
won't say of worship, but their place of meeting, nearer to their homes.
Moreover, moved by the advancing spirit of the age, they wished for a
more important and ornamental looking edifice than the extremely plain,
I might say ugly, structure which their fathers had attended. Unitarians
may appear to be rather rigid and frigid, but they have an intelligent
appreciation of art and beauty.

Accordingly some forty years ago they selected a site on the west side
of the town, and erected what was then considered a handsome place of
meeting, which they called the Church of the Messiah, and which was
opened in 1862. The architect of this Church did not seem to be unduly
weighed down with Unitarian ideas. By accident or design he marked the
edifice with emblems of the Trinity, for at the very entrance there is a
large opening encircling three arches, which are suggestively
emblematical of the Three in One.

The building of this somewhat florid structure, and the move of the
Unitarian church from east to west, provoked a considerable amount of
caustic comment and humorous criticism at the time. These advanced
Unitarians were scoffed and sneered at for deserting the simple
tabernacle of their ancestors, and one which was associated with the