rings, their ear-rings, their powder, their feathers. Opposition, indeed, there was; for the Devil would not be still. My life was threatened; but my friends were abundantly more in number than my enemies.” In attacking these things, the preacher acted in entire conformity with the spirit of Wesley's institutions: but in America, Wesley would perhaps have modified the rigour of his own rules; for even Franklin, who long maintained opinions as rigorous upon this point as Wesley himself, at length discovered that vanities like these have their use, in giving a spur to industry, and accelerating the progress of civilization.

There were parts of the country where the people must have remained altogether without the ordinances of religion, had it not been for the Methodists. Dr Coke observes, that in his first tour in America, he baptized more children and adults than he should have done in his whole life if stationed in an English parish. The people of Delaware had scarcely ever heard preaching of any kind, when Freeborn Garretson entered that country in one of his circuits. Meeting a man there one day, he asked him, in a methodistical manner, if he knew Jesus Christ; and the man answered, that he did not know where he lived. Garretson repeated the question, supposing that it had not been distinctly heard; and the reply then was, that he knew no such person. Before the Methodists had built chapels for themselves, they officiated sometimes in curious situations, either because there was no place of worship, or none to which they had access. The church-doors at Cambridge, in Maryland, were locked upon Dr. Coke, though there had been no service there for some years, and though it had often been left open for dogs, and pigs, and cattle. At another place, the church was in so filthy a condition, that, at the people's desire, he held forth in the court-house instead. At Raleigh, the seat of government for North Carolina, he obtained the use of the house of commons: the members of both houses attended, and the speaker's seat served for a pulpit. At Annapolis,

1

they lent him the theatre. "Pit, boxes, and gallery," says he," were filled with people according to their ranks in life; and I stood upon the stage, and preached to them, though at first, I confess, I felt it a little awkward."

*

Itinerants in America were liable to discomforts and dangers which are unknown in England. There were perilous swamps to cross; rivers to ford; the risk of going astray in the wilderness; and the plague of ticks in the forests, which are so great a torment, that Dr. Coke was almost laid up by their bites. To these difficulties, and to the inconveniences of sometimes sleeping on the floor, sometimes three in a bed, and sometimes bivouacking in the woods, the native preachers were less sensible than those who came from Europe; but a great proportion of the itinerants settled when they became fathers of families." It is most lamentable," says Coke, “to see so many of our able married preachers (or rather, I might say, almost all of them) become located merely for want of support for their families. I am conscious it is not the fault of the people: it is the fault of the preachers, who, through a false and most unfortunate delicacy, have not pressed the important subject as they ought, upon the consciences of the people. I am truly astonished that the work has risen to its present height on this continent, when so much of the spirit of prophecy, of the gifts of preaching, yea, of the most precious gifts which God bestows on mortals, should thus miserably be thrown away. I could, methinks, enter into my closet, and weep tears of blood upon the occasion." At another time he says, "The location of so many scores

* Brother Ignatius Pigman was lost for sixteen days in the woods on the way to Kentucky. This inhuman name reminds me of a controversialist, who advanced the notion of the pre-existence of the human soul of Christ, and fiercely supported his notion, which he called Preexistarianism, in the last series of the Gospel Magazine. His name being Newcomb, he signed himself Peigneneuve, to show his knowledge of the French tongue; and one of his adversaries, who, if peradventure less accomplished in languages, was not less witty than himself, "wickedly detorted" this word, and called him Mr. Pig-enough.

of our most able and experienced preachers tears my very heart in pieces. Methinks, almost the whole continent would have fallen before the power of God, had it not been for this enormous evil." Dr. Coke himself had the true spirit of an errant preacher, and therefore did not consider how natural it is, that men should desire to settle quietly in domestic life, and how just and reasonable it is that they should be enabled and encouraged to do so after a certain length of service. Mr. Wesley's original intention was, that the Methodist preachers should be auxiliaries to the Church of England, as the friars and the Jesuits are to the Church of Rome. In America, where there is no Church, it would be consistent with this intention, that the Methodists should have an order of settled pastors in place of the clergy.

But though the American itinerants withdrew from their labours earlier than their brethren in the mother country, new adventurers were continually offering themselves to supply their place, and the increase of Methodism was far more rapid than in England. In the year 1786, two-and-twenty chapels were built in a single circuit within the State of South Carolina, and the society in that same year had added to its numbers in the United States, more than 6600 members. In 1789 when the census of the Methodists in Great Britain amounted to 70,305, that in America was 43,265. In less than twenty years afterwards, they doubled their numbers at home, but the Americans had then become the more numerous body, and their comparative increase was much greater than this statement would imply, because it was made upon a much smaller population.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES.

In the year 1758, Wesley baptized some negroes at Wandsworth, who were in the service of Nathaniel Gilbert, Speaker of the House of Assembly in Antigua. Mr. Gilbert was a man of ardent piety, and being desirous of promoting religion in a part of the world where slavery had produced the greatest possible degradation of the moral feeling, he invited Mr. Fletcher to return with him. Mr. Fletcher hesitated, and consulted Charles Wesley; "I have weighed the matter," said he; "but, on one hand, I feel that I have neither sufficient zeal, nor grace, nor talents, to expose myself to the temptations and labours of a mission to the West-Indies; and, on the other, I believe that if God call me thither the time is not yet come. I wish to be certain that I am converted myself, before I leave my converted brethren to convert heathens. Pray let me know what you think of this business. If you condemn me to put the sea between us, the command would be a hard one; but I might possibly prevail on myself to give you that proof of the deference I pay to your judicious advice." That proof was not exacted. Fletcher remained in England, where he rendered more essential service to Methodism by his writings, than he could have done as a missionary, and Mr. Gilbert returned to Antigua without any minister, or preacher in his company. Being, however, enthusiastic by constitution, as well as devout by principle, he prayed and preached in his own house to such persons as would assemble to hear him on Sundays; and, encouraged by the facility of which he found himself possessed, and the success with which these beginnings were attended, he went forth and preached to the negroes. This conduct drew upon him contempt,

or compassion, according as it was imputed to folly, or to insanity.* But he had his reward; the poor negroes listened willingly to the consolations of Christianity, and he lived to form some two hundred persons into a Methodist society, according to Mr. Wesley's rules.

After Mr. Gilbert's death, the black people were kept together by two negresses, who prayed to them when they assembled, and preserved among them the forms of the society as far as they could, and the spirit of devotion. In the year 1778, a shipwright, by name John Baxter, who was in the king's service, removed from the royal docks at Chatham, to English Harbour in Antigua, and, happily for himself and the poor negroes, he survived his removal to one of the most fatal places in all those islands. He had been for some years a leader among the Methodists, and upon his arrival, he took upon himself immediately, as far as his occupation would allow, the management of the society. His Sundays he devoted entirely to them; and on the other days of the week, after his day's work was done, he rode about to the different plantations, to instruct and exhort the slaves, when they also were at rest from their labour. Some of them would come three or four miles to hear him. He found it hard to flesh and blood, he said, to work all day, and then ride ten miles at night to preach; but the motive supported him, and he was probably the happiest man upon the island. He married, and thereby established himself there. The contributions of his hearers, though he was the only white man in the society, enabled him to build a chapel.

* A son of Mr. Gilbert published, in the year 1796, "The Hurricane, a Theosophical and Western Eclogue." and shortly afterwards placarded the walls in London with the largest bills that had at that time been seen, announcing "The Law of Fire." I knew him well, and look back with a melancholy pleasure to the hours which I have past in his society, when his mind was in ruins. His madness was of the most incompresensible kind. as may be seen in the notes to the Hurricane: but the poem contains passages of exquisite beauty. I have among my papers some curious memorials of this interesting man. They who remember him (as some of my readers will) will not be displeased at seeing him thus mentioned with the respect and regret which are due to the wreck of a noble mind.