Southern Christian Advocate

SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE

EXTRACTS
From An Article In The Biblical Repository,
ON THE
LIFE, CHARACTER AND
Works of John Wesley.

We may here pause to inquire the cause of the rapid and extensive spread of Methodism in England; so extensive, that in a few years its followers were numbered by thousands, and there was hardly a considerable town in England or Wales which did not have its chapel. They were everywhere spoken against; they were everywhere more or less successful. Neither ridicule nor persecution, neither the neglect of the magistrates nor the opposition of prelates, neither the authority of Lavington nor the learning and asperity of Warburton, could stop the advancing opinion. The tide flowed up to the very foot of the frowning rocks, and insinuated itself into almost every hamlet in the kingdom. The causes are several, and some of them not difficult to be detected.

The class of people from whom the first converts were gathered, was a very ignorant class, unaccustomed to preaching of any kind; hence the word which they heard at fairs and marketplaces, in the fields and the collieries, startled them like a new revelation. They were heathen in a Christian country. A few words of truth at long intervals had come to their ears, just enough to awaken their suspicions and fear of a future wrath, just enough to afford a ground for the appeals of the preacher, but for not much more. They were as if under an enchantment, and when the terrible shell was shattered, they came out in all the bewilderment and fear of men who had been ignorantly sleeping on the brink of eternal destruction. It was the misfortune as well as the folly of the English church, to be bound so strictly by the customs of the fathers. To the poor the gospel was not preached, because the poor could find no room in the parish churches, which were not by any means sufficiently numerous for the population. There was little of that zeal for church extension which now animates nobles and prelates, and yet to preach elsewhere than within consecrated walls, shocked all their notions of order and propriety. The consequence was unavoidable, that great masses scattered over sparsely populated regions, or clustering about the centres of commerce, and in the mining regions, were left to ignorance and degradation. But this was one great class for which Wesley and his associates labored. Moorfields, "a royalty of the rabble, a place for wrestlers and boxers, mountebanks and merry-andrews," and Kingswood near Bristol, Kennington Common and Blackheath, were prominent scenes of their labors. The lawless and brutal inhabitants of the collieries, the dissolute and reprobate who resorted to the fairs to be trained up in vice were their hearers. It should not then be wondered at, that when Whitefield first preached to the colliers, ignorant, but too careless to be prejudiced, they stared upon him in utter astonishment, nor that they trembled as he warned them, with his awful power, of "temperance, righteousness and judgment," nor that the tears made white grooves down their sooty cheeks, as he told them of the love which Christ had for them. From these circumstances it happened that many societies were formed, not from the ordinary worshippers in the established church, but from those who worshipped nowhere.

Another reason is to be found in the nature of the doctrines preached. The great truths that men must be born again, and that conversion is instantaneous; that they must be justified by faith; that none who come to God through Christ will be cast away, were the cardinal points in their creed. Some doctrines were in dispute, such as free will and predestination, but these were not dwelt upon in their sermons. The burden of their exhortation was "flee from the wrath to come;" flee from the city of destruction; awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life. They felt the absolute necessity of regeneration as something entirely different from resolutions, from Pharisaical obedience, from external humiliations and the performance of ceremonies, from a sombre countenance and a monkish life; of regeneration, as a mysterious change of the heart, wrought by the Spirit of God, which no one can explain, for none can comprehend, but as real and undeniable as our own existence. The liturgy and the creed were as full as ever of sound and wholesome doctrine. The Articles still read that "every man is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh always lusteth contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation," and "that we are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings;" but these comfortable truths were to a great extent a dead letter in the Prayer Book. Ministers resorted to the church for a living, with not even an intellectual apprehension of the truths they professed to teach. But these truths came to many a suffering and panting soul, like bread to the famished, like cold water to the dying of thirst. There were many who were travailing and groaning in bondage, and freedom could not be more delightful to the captive, than the liberty of Christ to them.

Another reason may be found in the character of the early Methodist preachers. The most remarkable and gifted of these was Whitefield, whose popularity renders it hardly worth the while to speak of his eloquence. In winter mornings he gathered a crowd at five o'clock, to hear his discourses in the Tabernacle. At night when he preached in the open air, "Moorfields was as full of lanterns as the Haymarket is of flambeaus on an opera night." A thousand notes were sometimes sent to him during the week by those whom his appeals had awakened. These surprising accounts may render us in some danger of judging a little unfairly of his real merits, when we find in his printed sermons so little to account for these effects, so little profound thought, so little argument, so little even of what we should most expect to find, bursts of feeling, a rush of startling imagery, an excessive vividness of appeal. He was emphatically a speaker, not a writer; a speaker whose instruments were not only his thoughts and words, but his eye, his hand, his unequalled voice, his whole frame; a speaker the most plain and direct, and simple to the comprehension of the meanest, of the liveliest sympathy, of the quickest perception, wise to conform to the peculiarities of his various audiences, and adroit to avail himself as by instinct of every casual circumstance which could enhance his power. To judge of such a man by the remains of his discourses will not do at all. "The books do not preserve the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them." The same may be said, though not perhaps with equal force, of other great orators, whose just fame would be belied by the record of their speeches. Neither the speeches of Patrick Henry nor the sermons of the late Dr. Mason, admirable as they are, would bear such a partial scrutiny. The man who could charm Dr. Franklin and Garrick, Hume and Doddridge, Bolingbroke, John Newton, Chesterfield and the rabble of Moorfields, must have had a virtue in him, which remains no more upon earth. It was the depth of his heart which spoke; hence when he first preached to polite audiences, accustomed to fine discourses,—that is, to lifeless ones,—his familiar language, his earnest tone, his genuine feeling, his plain exhortations, without learning or art but full of sincerity, caught hold irresistibly of the feelings of his audience. They perceived that he was speaking to them, on very serious matters, and their whole sympathies flowed out towards the preacher. They flocked to hear one who told them such new things, new in fact to many, and in the manner of telling, new to all.

Wesley himself, though better known to us as the founder of a sect, was no mean preacher. His labors in this part of his vocation were prodigious, and no one knew how to turn them to better effect. His earnest address, his self-possession, and his logical acuteness, sometimes carried conviction when the appeals of Whitefield were entirely ineffectual. "As soon as he got upon his stand," said one of his hearers in Moorfields, who afterwards became one of his preachers, "he stroked back his hair, and turned his face towards where I stood, and I thought fixed his eyes upon me. His countenance struck such an awful dread upon me, before I heard him speak, that it made my heart beat like the pendulum of a clock; and when he did speak, I thought his whole discourse was aimed at me."

Charles Wesley too, by his great fervor and sincerity, by his rich thoughts and copiousness of expression, attracted hearers of education and refinement, while the fervor of his devotion went to the deepest hearts of the serious. A dissenter who heard him, thus described the effect: "Never did I hear such praying; never did I see such evident marks of fervency in the service of God. At the close of every petition a serious amen, like a gentle rushing sound of waters, ran through the whole audience, with such a solemn air as quite distinguished it from whatever of that nature I have heard attending the responses in the church service. He was standing on a table board in an erect posture, with his hands and eyes lifted up to heaven. He preached about an hour in such a manner as I scarce ever heard any man preach: though I heard many a fine sermon, according to the common taste or acceptation of sermons, I never heard any man discover such evident designs of a vehement desire, or labor so earnestly to convince his hearers that they were all by nature in a sinful, lost, undone state. And though he used no notes, nor had anything in his hand but a Bible, yet he delivered his thoughts in a rich variety of expression and with so much propriety, that I could not observe anything incoherent or inanimate through the whole performance. If there be such a thing as heavenly music upon earth, I heard it there. As for my own part, I do not remember my heart to have been so elevated in divine love and praise as it was then and there for many years past, if ever; and an affecting sense and savor thereof abode in my mind many weeks after."

Besides these, was a chosen company of preachers selected by Wesley himself, than whom no one ever judged more wisely of the fitness of the men for their office. Napoleon could not better select his generals than Wesley his preachers. Both were sometimes deceived, but not often. Whatever be the faults of democracy it usually has the virtue of giving "the tools to those who can use them." It may be foolish, may be passionate and rash, may be ungenerous and ungrateful, but seldom weak. In Wesley's scheme of government, there was a skilful mixture of freedom and constraint, of authority and independence. He himself was amenable to no man. He did not appoint himself the head of the sect, but came to it by the providence of God, and he bore himself like a King and Priest. They were not obliged to bear the burdens which he laid upon them.—Were they grieved at his measures? there was an easy remedy: when they entered the society they gave no pledge, and they might leave it without opposition. Did they become restless under his orders and seek to subvert his plans? they must leave the society. He gave them permission to preach in his chapels, and when they abused that permission, he withdrew it. His magnanimity never descended to annoying restrictions, nor to a capricious exercise of authority for the sake of authority, but neither would it allow the great plans which he had formed to be thwarted by the folly or pride of those who had no plans at all beyond the present day, and their own congregation. No dictator was ever more jealous of authority, yet none ever assumed it with a stronger feeling of his divine right to rule, nor used it more wisely. He did not justify himself by arbitrary determination, but by appeal to the course of Providence, and he sustained his measures by unanswerable arguments, by the power of a strong mind over weak ones. He selected his preachers wherever he could find them. Did a man who gave evidence of conversion find himself gifted with the power of speaking and feel impelled to call his fellow men to repentance, he had an opportunity to display his gifts before Wesley, and if approved, was forthwith sent to some of the widely extended circuits. No pride of birth, no previous education, no want of it, stood in the way or prejudiced the career of the candidate for these irregular orders. He who was unfit for one service, was found useful in another.

It is doubtless one mark of the profound policy of the Roman Catholic church, that it affords to individuals in all classes, who are moved to devote themselves to the extension of the faith, an appropriate sphere for their labors, and each is sure of honor according to what he does. The monk who goes barefoot, and wears nothing but a gown of coarse serge, may be doing a great duty for which the benignant mother smiles upon him. Though born in poverty, he may aspire to the Popedom. The passion of every man and every woman is turned to a wise account. Every one feels a personal interest in the triumph of the faith. Thus are secured the distinguishing virtues of despotism and democracy, unity and perseverance in design, vigor and self-devotion in execution.

This was the plan of Wesley. He was the head and heart of the association, but his instruments, chosen wherever and whenever presented, were directed with consummate prudence, inspired by the most untiring zeal. Hence the most earnest and sincere and self-devoted flocked to his standard. Their own experience was many times most affecting, sometimes terrible. They seemed to be expressly called of God; they had been snatched from the jaws of the bottomless pit; they had been mysteriously turned from courses of desperate and heart-hardening sin; they had felt the terrible burden of a wounded conscience; they had bent under the prostrating load for months or years; they had agonized in prayer; they had wrestled with the angel even till break of day; they had rejoiced with joy unspeakable; they had heard and seen and felt what no man could tell to his fellow-man. Why should we doubt the reality of such joyful or bitter experience? Its truth and their honesty were sometimes attested by a laborious and almost uncompensated career of twenty years. The self-devotion, the enthusiasm, the fidelity and boldness of some of the early preachers would have secured them in the Papal church, honors, authority, and perhaps a saintship. They sought and obtained only a decent (we should think scanty) subsistence, a humble and useful life. Their own experience made them ardent and fearless. They warned men of dangers which they themselves had seen; of sorrows which they themselves had felt. There was no affectation, no illusion. They did not gather their feelings at second hand; all was real and most painfully personal to them. They were like the man whom Christian saw at the house of the Interpreter, just rising from his bed all shaking and trembling, for he had dreamed of the day of judgment, of the flames of a burning world, and the yawning pit of hell. They had more than dreamed of them. They had hung over the gulf of despair, expecting every moment that the brittle thread would be cut and they fall forever. But now they were saved, and while they walked soberly, as in constant remembrance of the fearful past, they could not help calling upon men, with tears, to save themselves from a doom whose bare anticipation was so terrible.

The power of Wesley's preachers was economized by the system of itinerating. They must be emphatically pilgrims, without an abiding place. At first he allowed them to preach at one station but one or two months; subsequently, one, or at the utmost, two years. They must always stand ready to be sent to the barren wastes of Cornwall, or the mountains of Wales or the great Riding of Yorkshire. We might suppose that such a restless and harrassing life would deter men from the office of preacher. It did no such thing. It afforded the very trial into which many an enthusiastic mind was ready to leap. He afforded them very little which would allure a selfish heart but very much to stimulate a magnanimous one. "Do you ask me what you shall have?" he had once written to Whitefield; "Food to eat, and raiment to put on; a house to lay your head in, such as your Lord had not; and a crown of glory that fadeth not away." The honor of the conquest is proportioned to its difficulty. The same lofty feeling of self-devotion animated his preachers, which would prompt the soldier to volunteer as one of the forlorn hope. Many a soldier has applied the torch to the mine which would destroy him as well as the enemy, not from a fear of punishment if he failed, but under the deep impulse of the heroic self-sacrifice to which his duty called him. Many a Missionary, among the mingled feelings which find a home in his bosom, has been somewhat sustained by a high sense of the perilous service in which he has enlisted, and a conscious freedom from all the ordinary forms of selfishness. There is a peculiar joy in being truly disinterested; in undertaking any service, however severe, which we know to be uncontaminated by the bane of selfishness. We very much mistake, if we suppose that a luxurious and effeminate life will attract the best minds. A sense of degradation attends a life of mere pleasure, that few can submit to, while intrepid exploits and laborious services bring with them a satisfaction which is their greatest reward. Danger itself has a charm. We rush into it, not to risk our lives or our happiness, but to conquer it, and enjoy the glory and delight of victory. Make the object difficult of attainment and worthy of effort, if you would excite ardent and lofty minds. Ease and comfort would no doubt seduce many, but they were not the sort which Wesley wanted. His followers must shrink from no labor, and be deterred by no danger. He himself avoided nothing which he imposed upon others. After his 80th year he used to travel four or five thousand miles annually.

Besides this, the system of itinerating was necessary both for the success of his measures and the real advantage of his preachers. It was necessary for the preservation and extension of the sect. Like many other of the peculiarities of the order, it had sprung from the necessities of the case, and when time had proved its usefulness was incorporated into the rules. The preachers must be itinerants, for otherwise the founder of the order would soon lose control over his subordinates. They would become independents and schismatics, instead of useful parts of one grand whole. The great design would thus be entirely frustrated. No less useful and important was it for the preachers themselves to improve their resources by the opportunities which change of place would necessarily offer. For the most part, men of no education, men who trusted to their feelings and the plainest truths of the Bible, they could not be expected to interest or instruct any congregation for many years in succession. It was well for them to exchange the listless countenances of an old audience for the curious faces of a new one. Thus they would feel that they were doing good, and their sermons were unquestionably improved by repetition. Franklin tells us that he heard Whitefield repeat the same discourse to different audiences, and could witness the progressive improvement in thought and delivery, in metaphor and illustration. Not till after he had preached it twenty times did he rise to the highest pitch of fervor and freedom; and so far were his high-wrought pleadings and expostulations, and his consummate action from appearing theatrical though heard a score of times, that they were expected and received with as much delight the twentieth time as they were listened to with surprise the first. The process of re-preaching was like that of re-writing, correcting and enlarging a composition. It might not, in the case of the ministers generally, greatly multiply the weapons of their armory, but it would render those which they already possessed more highly polished and doubly effective.

Shortly after his return from Germany, Wesley had separated from the Moravians. A later period brought a more trying disunion between himself and his early friend Whitefield. Personal causes for a while estranged them, but such men "carried anger as the flint bears fire." In their confiding and generous hearts was no room for continued resentment, their differences were soon reconciled, and they continued warm personal friends to the last. On points of doctrine and ecclesiastical policy however, their paths divided. Whitefield became a Calvinist, Wesley an Arminian. Whitefield, free from the ambition, as well as the ability of ruling, looked to the Countess of Huntingdon, as patroness of the Calvinistic Methodists, who then assumed the name of Lady Huntingdon's Connection. Wesley, receiving his authority as in the course of nature his and nobody's else, acknowledged no patron gave his own name to the sect. Wesley sometimes ventured unguarded assertions respecting full assurance of faith, and Christian perfection, which Whitefield did not dare assent to. Wesley wrote against the "horrible decree of predestination;" Whitefield defended the doctrine. Hardly a passage in the whole range of theological literature can be found of such tremendous vehemence (we by no means say truth) as a portion of Wesley's sermon on Free Grace. He brought the whole concentrated energy of his mind to bear on a subject in which his heart was most deeply interested. After a course of powerful remarks, he appeals in a strain still more vivid and terrible to "all the devils in hell." "This is the blasphemy for which I abhor the doctrine of Predestination; a doctrine, upon the supposition of which, if one could possibly for a moment suppose it, call it election, reprobation, or what you please, (for all comes to the same thing,) one might say to our adversary the devil, 'Thou fool, why dost thou roar about any longer? Thy lying in wait for souls is as needless and useless as our preaching. Hearest thou not, that God hath taken thy work out of thy hands, and that he doth it more effectually?' Thou, with all thy principalities and powers, canst only so assault that we may resist thee; but he can irresistibly destroy both soul and body in hell! Thou canst only entice; but his unchangeable decree to leave thousands of souls in death, compels them to continue in sin, till they drop into everlasting burnings. Thou temptest, he forceth us to be damned, for we cannot resist his will. Thou fool! why goest thou about any longer, seeking whom thou mayest devour? Hearest thou not that God is the devouring lion, the destroyer of souls, the murderer of men? Moloch caused only children to pass through the fire, and that fire was soon quenched; or, the corruptible body being consumed, its torments were at an end, but God, thou art told, by his eternal decree, fixed before they had done good or evil, causes not only children of a span long, but the parents also, to pass through the fire of hell; that fire which shall never be quenched; and the body which is cast thereinto, being now incorruptible and immortal, will be ever consuming and never consumed; but the smoke of their torment, because it is God's good pleasure, ascendeth up forever.

"Oh, how would the enemy of God and man rejoice to hear these things were so! How would he cry aloud and spare not! How would he lift up his voice and say, To your tents O Israel! flee from the face of this God, or ye shall utterly perish. But whither will ye flee? Into heaven? He is there. Down to hell? He is there also. Ye cannot flee from an omnipresent, almighty tyrant. And whether ye flee or stay, I call heaven, his throne, and earth, his footstool, to witness against you; ye shall perish, ye shall die eternally! Sing, O hell, and rejoice ye that are under the earth! for God, even the mighty God, hath spoken, and devoted to death thousands of souls, from the rising of the sun, unto the going down thereof, Here, O death, is thy sting! They shall not; cannot escape, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Here, O grave, is thy victory! Nations yet unborn, or ever they have done good or evil, are doomed never to see the light of life, but thou shalt gnaw upon them forever and ever. Let all those morning stars sing together, who fell with Lucifer, son of the morning! Let all the sons of hell shout for joy: for the decree is past, and who shall annul it?"

Never since the days of Paul, was a man more assiduous in labor than Wesley. Not a day was given to repose, not an hour to unnecessary leisure. For more than sixty years, he rose at four in the morning; preached at five and frequently in the evening. In his eighty-fifth year, he speaks of that day as a day of rest, in which he preached only twice. Before the latter years of his life, he usually journeyed on horseback, and read poetry, history, and philosophy as he rode, having no other time for such employments. "Leisure and I," he said "have taken leave of one another. I propose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged to me," and fortunately he was always well. For seventy years, he did not lose a night's sleep. He attended the conference; he directed the preachers; he kept a steady eye on Scotland and Ireland, on the West Indies and America, he founded schools; he inspected the circuits; after his eightieth year we hear of him in Holland, in Guernsey and Jersey, in Wales, in Scotland, in Ireland, and every considerable town in England; he systematized the rules of his order, and established that discipline which shows his foresight and energy and wisdom; he purchased ground and erected chapels; he wrote sermons, and essays, and tracts, treatises on Primitive Physic and on Theology, memoirs of good men, and notes on the New Testament, besides his numerous letters and copious diary. Sixteen octavo volumes of his works were published some time after his death. Always calm and cheerful, curious and acute, he read new books, and looked upon novel and strange things to the very last with all the interest of youth. At the age of eighty-five, we find him criticising new works in his brief and acute manner, visiting the wax-work at the museum in Spring Gardens and "the man who played so wonderfully on the glasses."

Amid these complicated labors the solemn drama of that earnest, cheerful, and laborious life drew to its serene close. Already had one and another of his earliest and best friends lain down to his eternal rest. The affection of Charles Wesley for John was most sincere and profound. It never lost the freshness of youth. "My heart is as your heart," were his words in a letter; "what God hath joined, let no man put asunder. We have taken each other for better, for worse, till death do us part? no, but eternally unite. Therefore, in love which never faileth, I am your affectionate brother." This loving brother, blessed to the very end of his fourscore years, in the church and in his family, had calmly and joyfully met the change whose last pangs, he had always dreaded. Mr. Fletcher too had gone. So gentle and pure a life as his, so cheerful and holy a character, so tranquil an end, the world has rarely seen. He was born at Nyon, on the shore of lake Geneva, and the many vicissitudes of his early life, seemed to indicate that Providence was guiding him to an object that he knew not. Unsatisfied with the clerical profession to which he was early devoted, he left Switzerland and entered the military service of Portugal, destined for Brazil. What a beautiful soul seemed on the point of being lost! An accident (so men call it) changed his whole destiny. On the eve of embarkation, a servant overturned a kettle of boiling water upon his leg. He was left behind on the sick list. Recovering, he sought active service in Holland but peace was declared and he passed into England, After a time he took orders in the Episcopal church, joined the Methodists, and by his holy life has made the little parish of Madeley, to which he was appointed, a name always to be heard with joy. His account of himself as he drew near the close of his useful but not protracted life, is too "beautiful," as Southey justly calls it, to be passed over. "We are two poor invalids," he says of himself and wife, "who between us, make half a laborer. She sweetly helps me to drink the dregs of life, and to carry with ease the bitter cross." "I keep in my sentry-box till Providence removes me. My situation is quite suited to my little strength. I may do as much or as little as I please, according to my weakness; and I have an advantage which I can have nowhere else in such a degree; my little field of action is just at my door, so that if I happen to overdo myself, I have but to step from my pulpit to my bed, and from my bed to my grave. if I had a body full of vigor and a purse full of money, I should like well enough to travel about as Mr. Wesley does; but as Providence does not call me to it, I readily submit. The snail does best in his shell."

A man averse to authority and the honors of office, but full of gentleness and benevolence, after a life of self-sacrifice, was now about to end his connection with the world and seek his home in heaven. His death was as remarkable as his life. The hand of disease arising from previous exposure pressed heavily upon him. As he was performing the services of the Sabbath, he nearly fainted, but recovered and insisted on going on. After the sermon he walked to the communion table, saying, "I am going to throw myself under the wings of the cherubim, before the mercy-seat." "Here," says his widow, "the same distressing scene was renewed, with additional solemnity. The people were deeply affected while they beheld him offering up the last languid remains of a life which had been lavishly spent in their service. Groans and tears were on every side. In going through this part of his duty, he was exhausted again and again; but his spiritual vigor triumphed over his bodily weakness. After several times sinking on the sacramental table, he still resumed the sacred work. and cheerfully distributed with his dying hand, the love memorials of his dying Lord." "From that long service, made longer to him by hymns and exhortations, he retired to his chamber, never to leave it again. The next Sunday, the whole parish were in mourning: the poor whom he had befriended, and many of whom had come from a distance, wished once more to look upon their beloved pastor and friend. Permission was granted, and they passed along by the open door of his chamber, and looked in upon the sick man, who sat supported in bed "unaltered in his usual venerable appearance." A few hours later his earthly career was ended. "I was intimately acquainted with him," says Mr. Wesley, "for above thirty years. I conversed with him morning, noon, and night, without the least reserve during a journey of many hundred miles, and in all that time I never heard him speak one improper word, nor saw him do an improper action. Many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within fourscore years, but one equal to him have I not known, one so inwardly and outwardly devoted to God; so unblamable a character have I not found, either in Europe or America. Nor do I expect to find another such on this side of eternity." "Wesley," adds Mr. Southey, "had the temper and talents of a statesman; in the Romish church he would have been the general, if not the founder of an order, or might have held a distinguished place in history as a cardinal or a pope. Fletcher, in any community would have been a saint."

And now the messenger came for Mr. Wesley himself, and brought the token that he was a true messenger. "Those that look out of the windows shall be darkened, the grasshopper shall be a burden." Fourscore years found him still active, travelling four thousand miles annually, preaching, writing, and directing the extended business of the society, Six years more, and he began to feel that the machine was wearing out, that the "weary wheels of life must stand still at last." He could not well preach more than twice a day. His service at five in the morning, continued for so many years, was given up. He wrote in his cash account book with a tremulous hand, "For upwards of eighty-six years I have kept my accounts exactly. I will not attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction, that I save all I can and give all I can, i. e. all I have." Thus closed the accounts of one, who, never being rich, gave away during his life thirty thousand pounds! "Time has shaken me by the hand," he said in the words of his father, "and death is not far behind." The second day of March, 1791, came at last. Sixty-five years of his ministry had passed away. The horologe had pealed out the eighty-eighth year of his life, and the hands of the dial stood still forever.

The body, dressed in his clerical habit, with gown, cassock, and band, lay "in a kind of state" in the plain chapel of the denomination, and multitudes flocked to look once more upon the mild and venerable features. The mourners were many, and at the funeral, early in the day for fear of a crowd, when the preacher read that part of the service, "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother" -his voice changed and he substituted the word father. The whole congregation burst into weeping.

Thus ended the life of one of the most influential men of his age; whose authority at the time of his death, extended over more than a hundred and twenty-five thousand followers; and whose influence will reach down a thousand years.