priest's orders; and secondly, that he might raise contributions for founding and supporting an orphanhouse in the colony. To this design his attention had previously been called by Charles Wesley and General Oglethorpe; and he was encouraged by the signal success of Professor Franck, in establishing a similar institution at Halle. Accordingly he sailed for Europe, and after a miserable voyage of nine weeks and three days, when they had been long upon short allowance, had exhausted their last cask of water, and knew not where they were, they came safe into Limerick harbour.

As soon as he arrived in London, he waited on the Bishop and on the Primate: they received him favourably, and no doubt were in hopes that the great object which he now had in view would fix him in Georgia, where there was no danger that his enthusiasm should take a mischievous direction. The trustees highly approved his conduct; at the request of the magistrates and settlers they presented him with the living of Savannah, and he was ordained priest by his venerable friend the Bishop of Gloucester. "God be praised," says he; "I was praying night and day whilst on shipboard, if it might be the divine will, that good Bishop Benson, who laid hands on me as a deacon, might now make me a priest: and now my prayer is answered." There remained the business of raising money for the orphan-house, and this detained him in England long enough to take those decisive measures which, in their inevitable consequences, led step by step to the separation of the

Methodists from the Church, and their organization

as a sect.

"Mr. Hall, Kinchin,

Many societies had by this time been formed in London, but the central place of meeting was a large room in Fetter-lane. Here they had their love-feasts, at which they ate bread and water in the intervals of singing and praying, and where they encouraged each other in excesses of devotion which, if they found the mind sane, were not likely long to leave it so. "On the first night of the new year," says Wesley, Ingham, Whitefield, Hutchins, and my brother Charles, were present at our love-feast, with about sixty of our brethren. About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch, that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of his majesty, we broke out with one voice, We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord." "It was a Pentecost season indeed," says Whitefield: "sometimes whole nights were spent in prayer. Often have we been filled as with new wine; and often have I seen them overwhelmed with the Divine Presence, and cry out, • Will God indeed dwell with men upon earth? How dreadful is this place? This is no other than the house of God and the gate of heaven!" "

Meetings of this kind prolonged far into the midnight, and even through the night, were what neither the Wesleys nor Whitefield approved in

their cooler age. They gave just offence to the

better part of the neither deficient in

clergy; and men who were piety nor in zeal, properly refused to lend their pulpits to preachers who seemed to pride themselves upon setting prudence at defiance. But if this had not driven them to fieldpreaching, they would have taken to that course, from a necessity of a different nature. One Sunday, when Whitefield was preaching at Bermondsey church, as he tells us, "with great freedom in his heart, and clearness in his voice," to a crowded congregation, near a thousand people stood in the church-yard during the service, hundreds went away who could not find room, and he had a strong inclination to go out and preach to them from one of the tomb-stones. "This," he says, "put me first upon thinking of preaching without doors. I mentioned it to some friends, who looked upon it as a mad notion. However, we knelt down and prayed that nothing may be done rashly. Hear and answer, O Lord, for thy name's sake!"

About a fortnight afterwards he went to Bristol. Near that city is a tract of country called Kingswood; formerly, as its name implies, it had been a royal chace, containing between three and four thousand acres, but it had been gradually appropriated by the several lords whose estates lay round about its borders; and their title, which for a long time was no better than what possession gave them, had been legalized. The deer had long since disappeared, and the greater part of the wood also; and coal mines having been discovered there, from.

which Bristol derives its chief supply of fuel, it was now inhabited by a race of people as lawless as the foresters their forefathers, but far more brutal, and differing as much from the people of the surrounding country in dialect as in appearance. They had at that time no place of worship, for Kingswood then belonged to the out-parish of St. Philip and Jacob; and if the colliers had been disposed to come from a distance of three and four miles, they would have found no room in the parish church of a populous suburb. When upon his last visit to Bristol, before his embarkation, Whitefield spoke of converting the savages, many of his friends said to him, "What need of going abroad for this? Have we not Indians enough. at home? If you have a mind to convert Indians, there are colliers enough in Kingswood."

Toward these colliers Whitefield, as he says, had long felt his bowels yearn, for they were very numerous, and yet as sheep having no shepherd. In truth, it was a matter of duty and of sound policy, (which is always duty,) that these people should not be left in a state of bestial ignorance; heathens, or worse than heathens, in the midst of a Christian country, and brutal as savages, in the close vicinity of a city which was then in extent, wealth, population, and commercial importance, the second city in England. On the afternoon, therefore, of Saturday, Feb. 17. 1739, he stood upon a mount, in a place called Rose Green, his "first field pulpit," and preached to as many as came to hear, attracted by the novelty of such an address.

" I

thought," says he, "it might be doing the service of my Creator, who had a mountain for his pulpit, and the heavens for a sounding-board; and who, when his gospel was refused by the Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges." Not above two hundred persons gathered round him, for there had been no previous notice of his intention; and these perhaps being no way prepared for his exhortations, were more astonished than impressed by what they heard. But the first step was taken, and Whitefield was fully aware of its importance. "Blessed be God," he says in his journal, "that the ice is now broke, and I have now taken the field. Some may censure me; but

is there not a cause? Pulpits are denied, and the poor colliers ready to perish for lack of knowledge." It was not, however, because pulpits were denied him that he had preached upon the mount at Rose Green; but in the course wherein he was proceeding, that which at first was choice, soon became necessity.

When Whitefield arrived at Bristol, the Chancellor of that diocese had told him that he would not prohibit any minister from lending him a church; but in the course of the week he sent for him, and told him he intended to stop his proceedings. He then asked him by what authority he preached in the diocese of Bristol without a license. Whitefield replied, I thought that custom was grown obsolete. And why, pray, Sir, did not you ask the clergyman this question who preached for you last Thursday ?" This reply he relates with