Born on 9 April 1806 was our greatest engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Not only a man of two extraordinary names and a French ancestry; he was a towering giant in an age of abundant talent, an age of ground-breaking engineers – Telford and the Stephensons, amongst others.
At the same time Brunel was a man of two worlds. His latest biographer, Steven Brindle, makes this clear. Brunel thought for himself. He overturned accepted ways of thinking and worked from first principles. He repudiated the current calculation that no big ship could carry enough coal to take it across the Atlantic, let alone to Australia. He proceeded to build the biggest ships in the world. He built them of iron, not wood.
Brunel was a meticulous designer and an indefatigable engineer. On dry land he drove himself through hill and dale to bring 1,200 miles of railway into being. They called it God’s Wonderful Railway. It was a solid, uncompromising creation on which Castles and Kings later showed their paces. Brunel lived in days when engineers had everything to learn and there was nobody to teach them. He took unbelievable but calculated risks. Sometimes he worked 20 hours a day. He changed the world. He had his failures. His atmospheric railway proved impracticable. His colossal ship Great Eastern ended its days as a transatlantic cable-layer. He took great risks and enjoyed huge successes.
But we must also notice that Brunel was a man of the past. He inherited some of the outlook of the land-owning gentry who ran the country. He was, to use Brindle’s phrase, an examplar of authoritarian paternalism. He expected his employees to work as hard as he did. He did not give lesser men time to catch up. He sacked capable deputies for anything less than entire competence. He did things his way. He resented interference.
Jesus had something to say about this. “You know that, among the Gentiles, rulers lord it over their subjects, and the great make their authority felt. It shall not be so amongst you...” He went on to say that whoever wants to be great must be a servant and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all. The Son of Man, he said, had come to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Few of us can do as much as Brunel did, but we can all take this saying to heart.
THEY’RE BUZZING AT STOCKTON
Stockton-on-Tees parish church began its climb from 30 worshippers to 250 with the arrival of Alan Parish. The growth continues under its present vicar Mark Miller. He leads a strong ministry team and introduces himself and his activities, including Alpha, on a no-nonsense video.
THE LADY OF THE NORTH
St Cuthbert’s parish church, Darlington is known to the locals by the above name. It has been getting £500,000 of TLC in restoration work and is planning to make the building more flexible and warmer, with under-floor heating. Leading the ministry team is James Harvey.
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