rose up, and ran to her father's chamber, and approaching his bedside, in a penitential, heart-moving tone confessed her guilt to him. Upon hearing of it, he to his honour like a generous, honest, tenderhearted man, freely forgave her to her no small comfort.

"The next day after dinner, at the hour appointed, I went to her expecting the performance of what she had been so long harping upon. She told me she had already done it, and where and in what I confess I had much higher thoughts of her and much lower thoughts of myself ever after that day.

manner.

"As she had a dread of sin, of any sin, so more especially of her former beloved sin, pride. Off went her topknots and all superfluous finery. What was her glory before, was her shame now. Oh, that all the young gentlewomen in England had seen her ghastly looks, and how dolefully she bemoaned herself for her horrid pride! It could not, I think, but be an effectual antidote against their staying so long at the glass and being so curiously exact in adorning the outside of their decaying bodies.

"She did in a wonderful manner shine forth in humility. When she was most lovely in the eyes of others she was most mean in her own. She could not bear that any should speak well of her. In her languishing condition she was made humble by God's providence, but when she was healed she was kept humble by his blessed Spirit.

"As she had a sense of the forgiveness of sins she loved much. Love was the ruling star in the firmament of her soul.

"As she loved Christ, so she loved the ways of Christ, the ordinances of Christ, the members of Christ, the ministers of Christ, and that with a pure

heart fervently. Her very soul was wrapt up in the saints' society; with them was her only delight.

"After she had tasted the love of Christ, she was extraordinarily solicitous even with a burning zeal for the conversion of sinners, especially of her own carnal relations. She could not speak of any of her near acquaintances in an unconverted state, without weeping for them. The night before she died, she expressed herself passionately concerned for the soul of her only surviving sister, with these and more such words: I am going to heaven, but ah! my poor sister-'

6

"She was full of heavenly discourse. She was only in her proper element when she was speaking of the things of God and the wonders of free grace. I could not forbear smiling to observe what a loss she was at in speaking of anything but spiritual matters; she was as a fish out of the water.

"She did amazingly grow in grace; her mighty progression heaven-ward is beyond what I or any mortal can express. She shined in grace even to the dazzling the eyes of all that beheld her.

"She was altogether heavenly; heavenly in her looks, heavenly in her speech, heavenly in her carriage, yea heavenly in all and every part of her life. She is now in that kingdom which cannot be moved, that city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. Farewell thou triumphant saint! No more will my soul be delighted with thy divine breathings, no more will my frozen heart be warmed with the sparkling flame of thy ardent zeal. Oh! that I improved no more those invaluable hours I had with thee!"

"Filled with the fruits of righteousness" (Phil.

i. 11).

CHAPTER XXII.

EARLY METHODIST PREACHERS.

The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.-Psalm lxviii. 11.

RATHER more than two centuries ago the Church of England put out from her by the Act of Uniformity the greater part of those of her ministers possessed of the eternal life of knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (John xvii. 3), such men for instance as Dr. Staunton, whose ejection was noticed in a previous chapter. No wonder then that a generation or two later-in the early part, that is, of the last century-this eternal life was almost unknown among her clergy.

And if any considerable number of dissenting ministers were possessed of it, they seem in general to have looked upon it as the special privilege of themselves, and of a few other elect souls gathered into their "churches," instead of a blessing which God was calling on them to proclaim in his name to all, with faith in Him to make the proclamation effectual to the salvation of multitudes.

But it pleased Him then to raise up in the Established Church-though presently to be despised and rejected by almost all in any official position in it, and to be distrusted by most of the dissenting ministers-several young clergymen, or young men preparing to become clergymen, to sound out the Gospel with great power freely to all, that by them

He might gather in very many, chiefly from among the poor, to Himself.

Among the most prominent of them were Whitefield, and John and Charles Wesley. Whitefield worked very much alone, going hither and thither, trusting God to convert by the Word He gave him to preach, as, in answer to his faith, He did by thousands, those to whom He sent him. The Wesleys began in the same way, but after a while adopted a different plan, still preaching indeed incessantly themselves, and used of God for the conversion of great numbers by these their own direct efforts, but at the same time calling in many partners (Luke v. 7), by whose help to gather in a much greater multitude, than if toiling ever so hard only by themselves.

any

They had no thought of being able to raise up such fellow-workers by training colleges or other such means; for they knew that, as has since been well expressed (Mary Winslow), no truth of God has much power in a man's mouth unless it has first been burned into his heart; so that those who learn merely in the way of intellectual knowledge, however clear and full, the truths which He enables those men, into whose hearts He has burned them, to preach with such power, try in vain to preach them, with whatever natural talent and perfectness of training, with anything of the same power, unless He has taken them also in hand to burn them into their hearts as well.

But God raised up to their hand, one by one, a body of devoted men prepared by Himself in secret (1 Sam. xvii. 34-36); and John Wesley watched for them, and recognised them, and sent them out here, there, and everywhere, proclaiming "the gospel of Christ," amidst all the resistance and per

secution that "the god of this world" (2 Cor. iv. 4) could raise up against it; and it was made in their mouths "the power of God unto salvation," to "an exceeding great" number (Ezek. xxxvii. 10) through their believing it (Rom. i. 16).

Many of these men afterwards wrote at his desire accounts of the way God had converted them and trained them for the ministry, and several of these he published in his magazine, and after his death they were collected and published, with other similar accounts, as the "Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers," a most interesting and valuable record, from which I have already, in the former volume, quoted a short piece, and hope, if it should be God's will that I shall go on with these accounts of conversion, to quote more largely hereafter. The book is in six volumes, and is rightly always kept in print by our Wesleyan brethren, and on sale at their book repository.

I shall give from it in the next four chapters the account of the early life and conversion of one of these preachers, and of his call to the ministry, and of some of the things he had to endure in the exercise of it, which may serve as a specimen of what it was to come out boldly as a preacher of the Gospel in England at that dark time, when the knowledge of it was hid away in nooks and corners, in the heart and life of a retired private Christian here and there, scattered and concealed like the Israelites in their "holes" while the Philistines had possession of the land (1 Sam. xiv. 11).

"Not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead" (Gal. i. 1).