The loss of this benevolent man was deeply felt by his fellow-citizens; and his funeral was attended by a great number of persons of all ranks, and all religious professions; and many hundred of coloured persons joined the procession. It may justly be said that the mourners went about the streets," and that his memory was embalmed with tears. An officer, who had served in the American army during the late war, in returning from the funeral, pronounced a striking eulogium upon him: "I would rather," said he, “be Anthony Benezet, in that coffin, than the great Washington with

all his honours.”

82. WESLEY And Whitefield.

Mr. John Wesley, the celebrated founder of Methodism, was the son of a clergyman of the church of England.

He was educated for the ministry, received episcopal ordination, and ever considered himself as a member of the church of England.

In the year 1729 Mr. Wesley, then a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, with some others at the college, began to spend some evenings in reading the Greek Testament. They began also to visit the sick in different parts of the town, and the prisoners in the castle. They continued in those laudable practices, and in 1735 they were joined by the celebrated George Whitefield, then in his eighteenth year. At this time their number in Oxford amounted to about fourteen. They obtained their name from the exact regularity of their lives, which gave occasion to a young gentleman of Christ's Church to say, "Here is a new sect of Methodists sprung up;" alluding to a sect of ancient physicians who were called Methodists, because they reduced the healing art to a few common principles, and brought it into some method and order.

At the time Mr. Wesley and Mr. Whitefield entered upon their public ministerial labours, it is said that the whole kingdom of England was tending fast to in

Amid regions of ice and snow. the Moravian missionaries have with untiring zeal, successfully taught Christianity to the Esquimax Indians,

fidelity. These men of God, filled with love for the souls of their fellow-men, and fired with an ardent zeal for their salvation, went forth, preaching the gospel in many places, with uncommon energy and power. This brought upon them the opposition of the cold-hearted and formal professors of Christianity, and many refused to let them preach in their churches. In consequence of this, they were obliged to preach in the open air and in fields. They were oftentimes insulted, threatened, and hooted at by the mob, who in time of divine service cast at them stones, mud, dirt, &c., and in 'some instances they narrowly escaped with their lives.

But notwithstanding the opposition, their labours were crowned with success. By their preaching out of doors they drew together immense numbers, their congregations sometimes amounting to nearly twenty thousand persons. Thousands embraced the gospel, and many of the lower classes of society, who were degraded by vice and immorality of every kind, now changed their course of life, and became useful and respectable members of society.

Mr. Wesley is universally allowed to have been an extraordinary and highly distinguished character, and "whatever may be thought of his peculiar sentiments, no one can deny him the credit of truly apostolic zeal and perseverance in what he conceived to be the way of duty. His mode of address in public was chaste and solemn; there was a divine simplicity, a zeal, a venerableness in his manner, which commanded attention; and when at fourscore he still retained all the liveliness of vigorous old age. For upwards of fifty years he travelled eight thousand miles each year on an average, visiting his numerous societies, and presided at forty-seven annual conferences. For more than sixty years it was his constant practice to rise at four o'clock in the morning; and nearly the whole of that period to preach every morning at five. He generally preached near twenty times in a week, and frequently four times a day. Notwithstanding this, very few have

written more than he; divinity, both controversial and practical; history, philosophy, medicine, politics, poetry, &c., were all, at different times, the subjects on which his pen was employed. Besides this, he found time for reading, correspondence, visiting the sick, and arranging the matters of his numerous societies; but such prodigies of labour and exertion would have been impossible, had it not been for his inflexible temperance, and unexampled economy of time." After passing through evil report and good report, during more than sixty years of incessant labour, he entered into his rest in the eighty-seventh year of his age.

Mr. Whitefield was remarkable for his uncommon eloquence and fervent zeal. His eloquence was indeed very great and of the truest kind. He was utterly devoid of all appearance of affectation. The importance of his subject, and the regard due to his hearers, engrossed all his concern. Every accent of his voice spoke to the ear; every feature of his face, every motion of his hands, and every gesture spoke to the eye; so that the most dissipated and thoughtless found their attention involuntarily fixed, and the dullest and most ignorant could not but understand.

Wherever he went, all ranks and sorts of people were attracted, prodigious numbers flocked to hear him, and thousands were brought into the kingdom of God through his instrumentality.

His zeal and labours were not confined to the British isles. He came over to our country several times, and preached in most of our principal cities; every where crowds attended his ministry, and his exertions were crowned with abundant success. It is said that he preached upwards of eighteen thousand sermons in the course of his ministry, which included thirty-four years. Mr. Whitefield died at Newburyport, Mass., on the 30th of Sept., 1770, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, on his seventh visit to America.