company, he came home at night in an agony of mind. He did not dare to pray his conscience stared him in the face; and he became melancholy. The cause of this distemper was more obvious than the cure; and when he was invited one evening to attend a meeting, the father declared he would knock his brains out if he went, though he should be hanged for it. John Oliver knew how little was meant by this threat, and stole away to the sermon. He "drank it in with all his heart;" and having afterwards been informed, by a female disciple, of the manner of her conversion, he was "all in a flame to know these things for himself." So he hastened home, fell to prayer, fancied twice that he heard a voice distinctly saying that his sins were forgiven him, and felt, in that instant, that all his load was gone, and that an inexpressible change had been wrought. "I loved God," he says: "I loved all mankind I could

not tell whether I was in the body or out of it. Prayer was turned into wonder, love, and praise." In this state of exaltation he joined the society.

Mr. Oliver was a man of violent temper; he loved his son dearly, and thinking that a boy of sixteen was not emancipated from the obligation of filial obedience, his anger at the course which John persisted in pursuing was strong in proportion to the strength of his affection. He sent to all the Methodists in the town, threatening what he would do if any of them dared receive him into their houses. He tried severity, by the advice of stupid men; and broke not only sticks, but chairs, upon him, in his passion. Perceiving that these brutal means were ineffectual, and perhaps inwardly ashamed of them, he reproached his undutiful child with breaking his father's heart, and bringing down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. The distress of the father, and the stubborn resolution of the son, were now matter of public talk in Stockport. Several clergymen endeavoured to convince the lad of his misconduct. One of them, who had been his schoolmaster, called him his child, prayed for him, wept over him, and conjured him, as he loved his own soul, not to go near those people any more. The father, in presence of this clergyman, told his son, that he might attend the church-p -prayers every day, and should have every indulgence which he could ask, provided he would come no more near those "damned villains," as he called the objects of his violent, but not unreasonable prejudice. John's reply was, that he would do every thing in his power to satisfy him as a child to a parent, but that this was a matter of conscience which he could not give up.

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Mr. Oliver had good cause for apprehending the worst of consequences from that spirit of fanaticism with which the boy was so thoroughly possessed. The disease was advancing rapidly toward a crisis. At this time, his heart was kept in peace and love all the day long;" and when his band-fellows spoke of the wickedness which they felt in themselves, he wondered at them, and could discover none in himself. It was not long before he made the discovery. "Having," he says, "given way to temptation, and grieved the Holy Spirit of God," all his comforts were withdrawn in a moment : my soul was all over darkness: I could no longer see him that is invisible: I could not feel his influence on my heart: I

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sought him, but could not find him. I endeavoured to pray, but the heavens seemed like brass at the same time such a weight came upon me, as if I was instantly to be pressed to death. I sunk into black despair; I found no gleam of light, no trace of hope, no token of any kind for good. The Devil improved this hour of darkness,. telling me I was sure to be damned, for I was forsaken of God. Sleep departed from me, and I scarce eat any thing, till I was reduced to a mere skeleton." One morning, being no longer able to endure this misery, and resolving to put an end to his wretched life, he rose very early, and threw himself into the river, in deep water. How he was taken out, and conveyed to the house of a Methodist, he says, is what he never could tell; "unless God sent one of his ministering spirits to belp in the time of need." A humbler Christian would have been satisfied with gratefully acknowledging the providence of God: he, however, flattered himself with the supposition of a miracle; and Wesley, many years afterwards, published the account without reprehension or comment. That evening, there was preaching and praying in the house; but, in the morning, "Satan came upon him like thunder," telling him he was a selfmurderer; and he attempted to strangle himself with a handkerchief. It was now thought proper to send for Mr. Oliver, who had been almost distracted all this while, fearing what might so probably have happened to the poor bewildered boy. He took him home, promising to use no severity; for John was afraid to go. A physician was called in, whom Oliver calls an utter stranger to all religion. He bled him largely, physicked him well, and blistered him on the head, back, and feet. It is very possible that the bodily disease required some active treatment; the leaven of the mind was not thus to be worked off. The first time that he was permitted to go out, one of his Methodist friends advised him to elope, seeing that he would not be permitted to serve God at home. He went to Manchester; his mother followed him, and found means to bring him back by force the father then gave up the contest in despair, and John pursued his own course without further opposition. Now it was, he says, that his strength came again: his light, his life, his God. He began to exhort; soon afterward he fancied himself called to some more public work; and, having passed through the previous stages, was accepted by Wesley upon trial as a travelling preacher. At the year's end he would have gone home, from humility, not from any weariness of his vocation. Wesley's reply was, "You have set your hand to the gospel-plough, therefore never look back! I would have you come up to London this winter. Here is every thing to make the man of God perfect." He accepted the invitation; and had been thirty years an active and successful preacher, when his life and portrait were exhibited in the Arminian Magazine.

Oliver describes himself as having always been of a fearful temper-a temper which is often connected with rashness. During part of his life, he was afflicted with what he calls a scrofulous disorder. A practitioner in Essex, to whom he applied for relief, and who began his practice by prayer, told him his whole mass of blood was corrupted, and advised him to a milk diet: he took daily a quart of milk, with white bread, and two table-spoonfuls of honey. In

six months his whole habit of body was changed, and no symptom of the disorder ever appeared afterwards.

JOHN PAWSON was the son of a respectable farmer, who cultivated his own estate, at Thorner, in Yorkshire. His parents were of the Church of England, and gave him a good education according to their means; and though, he says. they were strangers to the life and power of religion, brought him up in the fear of God. The father followed also the trade of a builder, and this son was bred to the same business. The youth knowing the Methodists only by common report, supposed them to be a foolish and wicked people; till happening to hear a person give an account of his wife, who was a Methodist, he conceived a better opinion of them, and felt a wish to hear them. Accordingly, he went one evening to their place of meeting; but, when he came to the door, he was ashamed to go in, and so walked round the house, and returned home. This was in his 18th year. He was now employed at Harewood, and fell into profligate company, who, though they did not succeed in corrupting him, made him dislike Methodism more than ever.

Two sermons, which had been preached at the parish church in Leeds by a methodistical clergyman, were lent to his father when Pawson was about twenty. These fell into his hands. and convinced him that justification by faith was necessary to salvation. He went now to Otley to hear a Methodist preach; and from that hour his course of life was determined. The serious devout behaviour of the people, he says, struck him with a kind of religious awe : the singing greatly delighted him; and the sermon was, to use his own phraseology, "much blest to his soul." He was permitted to stay, and be present at the Society Meeting, and "had cause to bless God for it."

There was nothing wavering in this man's character: he had been morally and religiously brought up; his disposition, from the beginning, was good, and his devotional feelings strong. But his relations were exceedingly offended when he declared himself a Methodist. An uncle, who had promised to be his friend, resolved that he would leave him nothing in his will, and kept the resolution. His parents, and his brother and sisters, supposed him to be totally ruined. Sometimes his father threatened to turn him out of doors, and utterly disown him: but John was his eldest son; be dearly loved him; and this fault, bitterly as he regretted and resented it, was not of a nature to destroy his natural affection. He tried persuasion, as well as threats, beseeching him not to run wilfully after his own ruin; and his mother frequently wept much on his account. The threat of disinheriting him gave him no trouble; but the danger which he believed their souls were in distressed him sorely. I did not regard what I suffered," says he, so my parents might be brought out of their Egyptian darkness." He bought books, and laid them in his father's way, and it was a hopeful symptom that the father read them, although, it seemed, to no good purpose. seed, however, had struck root in the family: his brother and some of his sisters were "awakened." The father became more severe with John, as the prime cause of all this mischief: then again he tried mild means, and told him to buy what books he pleased, but

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besought him not to go to the preachings; he might learn more by reading Mr. Wesley's writings, than by hearing the lay-preachers; and the Methodists, he said, were so universally hated, that it would ruin his character to go among them. It was hard work" to withstand the entreaties of a good father; and it was not less hard to refrain from what he verily believed essential to his salvation. There was preaching one Sunday near the house, and, in obedience, he kept away; but when it was over, and he saw the people returning home, full of the consolation which they had received, his grief became too strong for him he went into the garden, and wept bitterly; and, as his emotions became more powerful, retired into a solitary place, and there, he says, bemoaned himself before the Lord, in such anguish, that he was scarcely able to look up. In this situation his father found him, and took him into the fields to see the grass and corn; but the cheerful images of nature produced no effect upon a mind thus agitated; and the father was grievously troubled, believing verily that his son would run distracted. They returned home in time to attend the Church service; and in the evening, as was their custom, John read alond from some religious book, choosing one to his purpose. Seeing that his father approved of what he read, he ventured to speak to him in defence of his principles. The father grew angry, and spoke with bitterness. "I find," said the old man, "thou art now entirely ruined. I have used every means I can think of, but all to no purpose. I rejoiced at thy birth, and I once thought thou wast as hopeful a young man as any in this town ; but now i shall have no more comfort in thee so long as I live. Thy mother and I are grown old, and thou makest our lives quite miserable thou wilt bring down our gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Thou intendest to make my house a preaching house, when once my head is laid; but it shall never be thine: no, I will leave all I have to the poor of the parish, before the Methodists shall have any thing to do with it." Pawson was exceedingly affected; and the father seeing this, desired him to promise that he would hear their preaching no more. He replied, when he could speak for weeping, that if he could see a sufficient reason he would make that promise; but not till then. Well," replied the old man, " I see thou art quite stupid-I may as well say nothing the Methodists are the most bewitching people that ever lived; for, when once a person hears them, it is impossible to persuade him to returnback again."

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Pawson retired from this conversation in great trouble, and was tempted to think that he was guilty of disobeying his parents; but he satisfied himself that he must obey God rather than man. It was a great comfort to him that his brother sympathized with him entirely: they both strove to oblige their parents as much as possible, and took especial care that no business should be neglected for the preaching. This conduct had its effect. They used to pray together in their chamber. The mother, after often listening on the stairs, desired at last to join them; and the father became, in like manner, a listener at first, and afterwards a partaker in these devotions. The minister of the parish now began to apprehend that he should lose the whole family the way by which he attempted to

retain them was neither wise nor charitable; it was by reviling and calumniating the Methodists, and in this manner inflaming the father's wrath against the son. This was Pawson's last trial: perceiving the effect which was thus produced, he wrote a letter to his father, in which, after stating his feelings concerning his own soul, he came to plain arguments, which could not but have their due weight. "What worse am I, in any respect, since I heard the Methodists ? Am I disobedient to you or my mother in any other thing? Do I neglect any part of business?" He asked him also why he condemned the preachers, whom he had never heard. "If you will hear them only three times," said he," and then prove from the Scripture that they preach contrary thereunto, I will hear them no more." The old man accepted this proposal. The first sermon he liked tolerably well, the second not at all, and the third so much, that he went to bear a fourth, which pleased him better than all the rest. His own mind was now wholly unsettled: he retired one morning into the stable, where nobody might hear or see him, that he might pray without interruption to the Lord; and here such a paroxysm came on," that he roared for the very disquietness of his soul.". "This," says Pawson, " was a day of glad tidings to me. I now had liberty to cast in my lot with the people of God. My father invited the preachers to his house, and prevented my turning it into a preaching house, (as he had formerly said,) by doing it himself. From this time we had preachings in our own house, and all the family joined the Society."

It might have been thought that the proselyte had now obtained his soul's desire; but he had not attained to the new birth: his prayer was, that the Lord would take away his heart of stone, and give him a heart of flesh; and, ere long, as he was hearing the word" in a neighbouring village, the crisis which he solicited came on. "In the beginning of the service," says he, "the power of God came mightily upon me and many others. All on a sudden my heart was like melting wax: i cried aloud with an exceeding bitter cry. The arrows of the Almighty stuck fast in my flesh, and the poison of them drank up my spirits; yet, in the height of my distress, I could bless the Lord that he had granted me that which I had so long sought for." It was well that his father had been converted before he reached this stage, or he might with some reason have believed that Methodism had made his son insane. He could take no delight in any thing; his business became a burden to him; he was quite confused; so that any one, he says, who looked on him, might see in his countenance the distress of his mind, for he was on the very brink of despair. One day he was utterly confounded by hearing that one of his acquaintance had received an assurance of salvation, when he had only heard three sermons; whereas he, who had long waited, was still without comfort. Public thanks were given for this new birth; and Pawson went home from the meeting to give vent to his own grief. As he could not do this in his chamber without disturbing the family, he retired into the barn, where he might perform freely, and there began to pray, and weep, and roar aloud, for his distress was greater than he could well bear. Presently he found that his brother was in another part