effect of making the Methodist preachers so unpopular, that they fled, leaving only one preacher behind them, less obnoxious, because less known. Methodism was however kept up by preachers of American birth, and, in 1777, notwithstanding these discouragements, it numbered seven thousand members. On the resignation of the English clergy, and the break-up of the Episcopal Church, the Methodists, deprived of ordinances, and rejected by Dissenters, found themselves involved in serious difficulties. If ordination continued to be withheld from their preachers, it appeared that they would soon be deprived both of ordinances and pastors. The Methodist members applied therefore to Mr. Asbury, the only clergyman who remained to them, to ordain ministers for them. Asbury demurred, and laid the case before Wesley. But the impatience of the body anticipated and constrained his decision. The members in America took the matter into their own hands; selected and ordained some of their brethren. The only way to induce them to stop these irregular proceedings, was to open a legitimate channel of supply; and Wesley, seeing the necessity, made up his mind. Arguing,* that Bishops and Presbyters are

His actions he justified in these words, "I firmly believe that I am a scriptural episcopus as much as any man in England or in Europe; for the uninterrupted succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever did or can prove. But this does in no wise interfere with my remaining in the Church of England; from which I have no more desire to separate than I had fifty years ago."

the same order, he proceeded to appoint Dr. Coke to the functions of a Bishop, while he ordained others as presbyters.

He justified himself thus: Up to this time he had refused to ordain preachers in England, though on applying to the English Bishops to grant them orders he had been refused. "But the case is widely different between England and North America. Here there are Bishops who have a legal jurisdiction. In America there are none, neither any parish ministers; so that, for some hundreds of miles together, there is none either to baptize or to administer the Lord's Supper. Here therefore my scruples are at an end; and I conceive myself at full liberty; as I violate no order, and invade no man's right, by appointing and sending labourers into the harvest."*

In 1784, he took this decided step, notwithstanding the regret and disapproval of his brother; and this step satisfied both his agents and the American Metholists. From Bristol, Dr. Coke, burning with zeal, sailed to New York, and thence began his itinerant labours. In Pennsylvania he found a feeling friendly to Methodism; there he met Mr. Asbury, who was to be associated with him; he convened a conference at Baltimore, where sixty out of eighty-one preachers assembled, and there the final arrangements were made. The general conference was to choose, the Bishops were * See his Letters of Ordination. Southey, ii. p. 439.

to consecrate, the Bishop. He was to preside in the conference, station the preachers, and travel through the connection. Some changes were made in the mode of administering the Sacraments.

Dr. Coke then consecrated Mr. Asbury a Bishop, and the two leaders presented a petition on behalf of the Methodist body to Washington, by whom the Methodist Episcopal Church was finally recognized.

These arrangements completed, Dr. Coke plunged into the work which was congenial to him. He had much of Wesley's ardor, with less of his sobriety of judgment. But America needed that ardent zeal. Deprived of the English clergy, the episcopalian body had been left to themselves. Churches were in ruins, or were used to shelter pigs and cattle. The rising population had no provision for religion, and had rapidly lost all sense of it. Among many, the name even of our Saviour was absolutely unknown. In a young country, whose population spreads and scatters, divided from each other by forest and morass, it is not easy to attain a settled establishment for religion. To these various wants, Methodism brought a remedy; and the roughness and fervency of its itinerancy were well adapted to the case. Calmer reasoning, more temperate discourses, would have been thrown away on the rude outcasts of the desert and the forest. Graphic pictures— strong appeals-high-wrought sentiments moved them. In one hour Dr. Coke baptized more adults and chil

dren, than he would have done in a year in a parish in England. Men marvelled when they learned, for the first time, the tidings of a judgment and a gospel.

All ranks crowded to listen. In North Carolina, the House of representatives was lent to Dr. Coke, who preached to the members from the Speaker's chair. At Annapolis, he preached in the theatre, whose pit, gallery, and boxes, swarmed with auditors.

Under this itinerancy, Methodism grew. In 1786, nearly as many members were added to it as the Society had numbered ten years before. In 1789 they had reached forty-three thousand members, and they soon surpassed, in that small population, the number of the Methodist members in Great Britain.

Not less remarkable was the progress of Methodism among the negroes of the West Indies. As early as 1758 Wesley met, at Wandsworth, the Speaker of the House of Assembly in Antigua, Mr. Gilbert, and baptized some of his negroes. Mr. Gilbert, failing on his return to procure a Methodist preacher, began to teach the negroes himself. Despised by the white population, his instructions told with effect on the blacks, who kept up, after his death, the devotional services which he had taught them.

In 1778 a shipwright from Chatham was removed to Antigua. John Baxter had been a class-teacher at home, and on his arrival in Antigua he took charge

of the infant society. Sunday he gave entirely to preaching. On week-days, as soon as his ordinary work was over, he resumed the business of a teacher. He often rode ten miles at night to preach to crowds of negroes, gathered from distant plantations. It was difficult to conceive, as a spectator of their meetings has told us, the intense emotions of the negro, when he learned, for the first time, that he was a being endued with an immortal spirit, and capable of immortal joys.

Baxter, the happiest of men in his work, procured the building of a chapel by the money of his negro flock, and then hastened to pour forth, in a letter to Wesley, his doubts, difficulties, and hopes. He asked for help in the person of teachers, and from an unlooked-for quarter help came. First arrived, by strange circumstances, among a party of Irish emigrants, an old man, compelled by a storm, which had nearly wrecked the ship, to take refuge at Antigua. Next, wind-bound, came a vessel freighted to America, which carried Dr. Coke on his second voyage. Coke preached and administered the sacrament in the Methodist chapel, built by negro hands, and crowded with a dense congregation of negro converts. Already it appeared, that to this rude body Methodism had brought morals and peace. The soldiers, who were employed to keep the negroes from riot at Christmas, were no nger needed. The planters appreciated the impor

Dr.