to write: "We have a large chapel built here. It is as tonishing to think how this handful of people have done it; but God was with us. What is nearly as wonderful is that, notwithstanding the English laws are not admitted. here, yet I have got it settled on the Conference plan by a public Act of the Royal Court. I am about, therefore, to leave this people on a good footing, prospering in the ways of God, and well established in spiritual and temporal matters."

In Jersey, too, a similar movement took place for the erection of a chapel at St. Helier's; and, along with these efforts to promote the material consolidation of the good cause, the preachers had the unspeakable joy of witnessing the manifestation of the Divine power in the upbuilding and beautifying of the spiritual temple of the Church. I will conclude these annals of Mr. Clarke's missionary life, by transcribing a manuscript letter, which gives some remarkable details on this subject. It is addressed to Mr. Wesley, and was probably the last he wrote to him from the islands. The date is "Jersey, July 15, 1789."

MY REVEREND FATHER IN CHRIST,-In my last I gave you a short account of the prosperity of the work of God among us, and the prospect we had of an increase. Since that time the Lord has indeed wrought wonderfully. You perhaps remember the account I gave you of the select prayer-meeting I had just then established for those only who had either attained, or were groaning after, full redemption. I thought that, as we were all with one accord in the same place, we had reason to expect a glorious descent of the purifying flame. It was even so. Soon five or six were able to testify that God had cleansed their souls from all sin. This coming abroad, for it could not be long hid, (the change being so palpable in those who professed it,) several others were stirred up to seek the same blessing, and many were literally provoked to jealousy, among whom one of the principal was Mr. De Queteville. He questioned me at large con

cerning our little meeting, and the good done. I satisfied him in every particular; and, being much affected, he said, 'Tis a lamentable thing that those who began to seek God since I did should have left me so far behind. Through the grace of Christ, I will begin to seek the same blessing more earnestly, and never rest till I overtake and outstrip them, if possible.' For two or three days he wrestled with God almost incessantly. On the 30th of June he came into my room with great apparent depression of spirit, with the earnest inquiry, 'How shall I receive the blessing, and what are its evidences?' I gave him all the directions I could, exhorted him to look for it in the present moment, and assured him of his nearness to the kingdom of God. He returned to his room, and after a few minutes, spent in wrestling faith, his soul was fully and gloriously delivered. set off for the country, and like a flame of fire went over all the societies in the island, carrying the glorious news wherever he went. God accompanied him by the mightily demonstrative power of his Spirit, and numbers were stirred up to seek, and several soon entered into, the promised rest. I now appointed a love-feast on the 5th inst. Such a heaven opened on earth my soul never felt before. filled with pure love; and some then and since have, together with a clean heart, found the removal of inveterate bodily disorders under which they had labored for a long time. This is an absolute fact, of which I have had every proof which rationality can demand. One thing was remarkable—there was no false fire; no, not a spark that I would not wish to have lighted up in my own soul to all eternity; and, though God wrought both in bodies and souls, yet everything was under the regulation of his own Spirit, and fully proclaimed his operation alone. To speak within compass, there are not less than fifty or sixty souls who, in the space of less than a fortnight, have entered into the good land, and many of them established, strengthened, and settled in it; and still the blessed work goes daily on.

Several were

"This speedy work has given a severe blow to the squalid

doctrine of sanctification through suffering, which was before received by many, to the great prejudice of their souls. Several of your particular acquaintances, my dear sir, have had a large share in this blessing; and, among others, Mrs. Guilliaume, Madam De Saumarez, and Miss Lempriere. The former is one of the greatest monuments of God's to sanctify that I have seen. The latter are blessedly brought out of [their former] dreary state. Several, who had long been adepts in making Procrustes' bed, are now redeemed from every particle of sour godliness."

power

The divine blessing on the labors of Brackenbury, Clarke, and their colleagues in the islands, was seen in the numerical and moral strength which the cause has thus already attained. Mr. Clarke left two hundred and forty-eight members in Jersey, and one hundred and five in Guernsey. At the present time chapels of the French and English Methodists are found in all parts of the islands. There are more than three thousand members in Society; who, besides sustaining thirteen ministers, English and French, in their own service, contribute some seven hundred pounds per annum to the cause of foreign missions.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CIRCUIT MINISTER.

A NEW and noble field of labor was now opening to Mr. Clarke. Henceforward his ministry will be exercised in large and thickly peopled cities, and thousands be enriched from those stores of saving truth which had been incessantly accumulating in his soul. The character of the times was assuming an unprecedented grandeur. Europe was beginning to heave with the throes of that political earthquake in which the feudalism of the past was doomed to give way before another development of society. The trumpets of Providence were sounding the advent of a new era in the history of the world. Revolution and change had become the order of the day; and, in the desired abolition of many unquestionable corruptions, there was a danger that the sacred institutes of legitimate authority and rule, the safeguards of the true rights of mankind, might also be swept away by the swelling tides. The demon of infidelity had come forth into this storm, and was pervading the popular mind with imaginations of rapine and murder. Nor was England without her peril of being drawn into this vortex of ruin. Among the masses of the people there were too many who, without consideration, were disposed to feel and act with the atheists and democrats of bewildered France. In those days, then, the voice of the evangelist was more than ever needed; and the Gospel of order and peace, which from his lips went straight to the hearts of the people, contributed more to the security of the altar and the throne than the worldly wisdom of Parliaments, or the whetted sword of the secular law. It was in the opening time of this national ordeal that Mr. Clarke began to appear as a promin

ent member of an order of men whose self-denying endeavors have not only saved multitudes of souls for all eternity, but contributed also, in a most honorable degree, to the temporal safety and well-being of their country.

Our preacher quitted the Norman Isles in July, 1789, and proceeded to the Conference at Leeds, leaving Mrs. Clarke and their infant at Trowbridge on his way. The trustees of the Leeds Circuit had already petitioned Mr. Wesley that Mr. Clarke should be appointed there the ensuing year-a measure that was frustrated by a circumstance which seems sufficiently ludicrous. Mr. Clarke preached twice at Leeds. on the Conference Sunday. In the morning prayer he casually omitted to pray for the king. Reminded of the failure, he endeavored to repair it in the evening, when, among other supplications for His Majesty, he devoutly implored that God would bless him with his pardoning and sanctifying grace. Some of the "chief women" of the congregation took umbrage at this style of petition, as implying “that the king was a sinner!" So deeply was their sense of loyalty wounded, that a remonstrance against the appointment was signed by these ladies, and sent into the Conference, with the understanding that "the dangerously democratic principles" implied in such a prayer sufficiently unfitted the person who could utter it for ministering among the people of Leeds. Mr. Wesley, who wished to keep peace so far as possible, and who had a sincere respect for the simple-hearted, steadfast piety of the petitioners, acceded to the request, and appointed Mr. Clarke to Halifax. The leading men of the society, however, were not so well satisfied with this decision, and an overture was made to reverse it. But Mr. Clarke was unprepared to listen to anything of the kind, and hastily pronounced the resolve never to enter Leeds in the way of an appointment as a traveling preacher; because he would not recognize any church, nor minister in any, in which the supreme rule was not with his Divine Master!

Just at that time he seems to have been incapable of propitiating the good graces of the Methodist ladies of York