his artless but powerful ministrations. He founded Methodism in some places, and promoted the erection of chapels in others by his peculiar success in begging money for them. He became a tireless evangelist and a favorite platform speaker at missionary meetings. In chapels, in the open air, in prayermeetings, in missionary assemblies, in the rural districts, and in the metropolis, Samuel Hick was always a chief attraction to the multitude, and always bore humbly his popularity. His spirit won all hearts, disarming often violent opposers. He seldom disputed with an opponent or with any person, but usually fell abruptly on his knees and conquered by prayer. A Yorkshireman threatened to knock him down for a word of exhortation which the blacksmith had uttered; the latter dropped upon his knees and began to pray; his opponent took to flight. He was pleading in vain with a rich miser for a donation to Coke's West Indian missions; he at last knelt down and began to pray. "I will give thee a guinea if thou wilt give over," cried the covetous man. But Hick continued to pray for the miser, and for the heathen, for whose salvation a guinea would be so insignificant a pittance. "I tell thee to give over," exclaimed the miser; "I will give thee two guineas if thou wilt only give it up." Rising suddenly, the blacksmith took the money and bore it away to a missionary meeting held in the neighborhood, where "he exhibited it with the high-wrought feelings of a man who had snatched a living child from the clutch of an eagle."

Samuel Hick was one of the most effective agents of the missionary development of Wesleyan Methodism-one of the organs through which the higher minds of the denomination reached, for that purpose, the masses of the people—and his services were hardly of less historical importance than those of his superior brethren.

WILLIAM DAWSON is a still more remarkable character, and is known throughout the Methodist world as much by his piety and usefulness as by his eccentricities. A Yorkshire farmer, a local preacher, a general missionary advocate, shrewd in natural discernment, intelligent without much education, apt at speech, a talent which was the more effective in popular assemblies for his native dialect; eccentric, but equally relevant in thought; given to allegory and the oddest illustrations of his subjects, to

an irrepressible but kindly humor, which he lamented as his "besetment" and "plague," but which, if it was a fault, was apparently the worst one he had; robust in his moral manhood, tender and gentle as womanhood, simple and confiding as childhood; apostolic in his faith and life; a poet-orator in rustic guise such was the famous "Yorkshire Farmer." "He displayed a force of genius and command of striking illustration such as I rarely ever heard," says a good judge belonging to another communion, (Rev. John Angell James,) who also applies to him the remark of the poet, that "nature made him and then broke up the mould." With his intellectual traits 'he combined not a few personal advantages; he was nearly six feet high and strongly framed; he had a noble forehead, an eye "keen and full of fire," and features round, but expressive of "thought brilliant, active, and penetrating."

Such was the power of his genius and the extent of his public services, that, though he was not a member of the Conference, and therefore not recorded in his obituary, that body honored him at his death in its Annual Address to its societies. "Few men," it said, "were ever more extensively known in the Wesleyan Connection, or more highly esteemed wherever known." Such was the grateful and admiring regard of the common people for him that his funeral procession was like a triumphal march. Some of the factories of the town suspended their labors that their operatives might follow him to the grave. As he was borne through Leeds, the streets presented "for above a mile and a half one congregated mass of people." He was carried seven miles to his family burial-place; procession met procession, in the towns on the route; a hundred men on horseback, nearly a hundred carriages, with a vast multitude on foot, singing hymns on the highways as they bore him along. It was the spontaneous tribute of the grateful people who had for years been benefited by his rare talents and unblemished example. Their Methodist ancestors had borne brave John Nelson to the tomb in a similar manner in the early days of the denomination; the old battle field over which they bore Dawson was now waving with such a moral harvest as Methodism had produced nowhere else in the world.

He was converted in 1791 while kneeling at the sacramental altar, and was licensed as a local preacher in 1801. His singular

talents were revealed in his first ministrations. The colliers especially followed him from town to town. His congregations were often so large that he had to preach in the open air. He was in general demand for missionary anniversaries, the dedication of new and collections for indebted chapels. In Leeds the churches were invariably thronged when he preached. Some of his sermons and speeches, frequently reported, became famous throughout the connection. His "Death on the Pale Horse" is described as a discourse surprisingly graphic and sublime. Under his sermon on "David slaying Goliah," an excited rustic rose in the congregation and shouted to the preacher, "Off with his head! off with his head!" A discourse to seamen, in which he described the wreck and loss of souls, so aroused a mariner that he rose and cried out, "Launch the life-boat! launch the life-boat!" Some of his allegorical missionary speeches would have been burlesques with any other man, but with his peculiar manner they seemed not only congruous, but were often sublime examples of poetry and eloquence. His "Harvest Home," "Reform Bill," "Railroad" and "Telescope" speeches are yet talked of generally in the country. One who heard them says: "Their effects on immense audiences we never saw before, nor expect to see again. Not a man, woman, or child could resist him. His travels and labors were almost as extensive as those of Robert Newton; and few men have done more in support of the various institutions of Methodism." "What an astonishing mind he has," said the learned Adam Clarke after a long ride with him in a post-chaise. Such a man, of and among the people, wearing, as was the custom of the substantial farmers of Yorkshire, in their best attire on Sundays and holidays, breeches of corduroy or plain velvet, and thick soled "top-boots;" living a life noted for its honesty and purity, and overflowing with religious feeling, sympathy, and humor, could not but be a man of power. Down to about the middle of the century, none of the greater lights of Methodism could eclipse him in popular assemblies, especially on the missionary platform. Without accepting, for many years, a sixpence beyond his traveling expenses for his services, he went to and fro in the nation calling the multitude to repentance, collecting money for poor churches, opening new chapels, pleading for missions, and recruiting the societies. At

last the "Dawson Fund" was established by the denomination to enable him to give his whole time to the public. He died in its service, after contributing as much perhaps as any cotemporary man to the spread of Methodism.

Another similar laborer did signal service in the local ministry during these times, and for nearly forty years, especially in the missionary development of Methodism. "It was thought fitting that a memorial should be raised for JONATHAN SAVILLE, by which the Church might glorify God in him," wrote a president of the Wesleyan Conference, and proceeded to prepare a "Memoir" of the good man, which is one of the most remarkable of those many records of the power of religion in humble life, which the denomination has afforded to the Church. Jonathan Saville was a poor, feeble, crippled man, the victim of cruel treatment in his childhood, whom Methodism found in an alms-house, but purified and exalted to be "a burning and a shining light" in the land. He was in Hoxton Workhouse before he was seven years of age. He was afterward apprenticed -a "fine, growing, active lad," but was sent by his master to work in the Denholme coal mines, where he labored from six o'clock in the morning to six at night, and after walking two or three miles was required to spin worsted till bed time. His health failed of course; on returning home one night when about ten years old, he was so feeble that he could not free his feet, which had stuck fast in a piece of swampy ground. A young man helped him out and assisted him home. He could go no more to the coal-pit. "My strength," he says, quite gone; I was more dead than alive, and my soul was sick within me;" but he was now closely confined to the spinning wheel at home. Shivering with the cold one day, he stepped to the fire to warm himself, when a daughter of his master thrust him away and knocked him down, breaking his thigh bone. He crawled into a room and lay down on a bed, but was commanded by his master, with terrible threats, to resume his work; he attempted to reach the wheel, supporting himself by a chair, but fell to the floor, when the imbruted man dragged him to his task, where he labored the rest of the day in agony. No doctor was called to set his thigh; no relieving treatment was given him by the women of the house; they mocked at the groans of the little sufferer; he crept, as he

was

could, to his bed at night, where he held the fractured bone in its place with his hand. Nature at last healed the broken limb; but he was left a mere wreck, bent almost double, and for some time compelled to creep whenever he went out of doors. Hopeless of any profitable service from him, his master conveyed him to the workhouse, carrying him part of the way, on his back, the broken leg of the poor boy "dangling in the air." The superintendent of the workhouse took compassion on him, bathed him, comforted him, fed him well, and gave him light tasks at spinning. The poor inmates healed his broken heart by their sympathies; they remembered that his pious father had often prayed within their dreary walls. An aged man among them made him a pair of crutches, and an old palsied soldier taught him to read the Bible. He had suffered so much that when he was fourteen years old he was smaller in stature than when he was seven; but he worked so diligently that he was able to earn extra wages, which he expended at a neighboring evening school. He used to limp on his crutches to the Methodist chapel in Bradford, guiding thither an aged blind pauper, the "halt leading the blind," and the good people, patting him on the head in the street, would say: "Poor Jonathan! his father's prayers will be heard for him yet." They little supposed that he was to be venerated throughout their communion, and commemorated in their history.

After remaining some years in the almshouse, with improved but still feeble health, he learned the craft of a warper, and his industry enabled him to earn a comfortable living. He removed at last to Halifax, the scene of his remaining long life and of his greatest usefulness. He became a "prayer-leader," and was singularly useful in that office for several years. He was afterward appointed a class-leader. His gentle spirit, subdued by long sufferings, and sanctified by piety; his clear understanding especially in the word of God, studied under such disciplinary adversities; his apt remarks, quaint, singularly pertinent, laconically brief, and refreshed by a cheerfulness which, on appropriate occasions, corruscated with humor and even with wit, led not only simple but intelligent people to seek his religious guidance. He soon had two, and then three classes under his care. His original class "swarmed" six times, and their new leaders were mostly his "pupils." He led out bands