ference, and many highly intelligent members of that body desired to adopt this primitive and scriptural rite. Great respect was due to those aged Ministers who had been accustomed to regard it as an innovation; and an innovation it might have been deemed, so long as the Methodist Societies were theoretically held to be included in the pale of the Church of England. But now, as separate communion was unavoidably established, and as it was palpable to all men that the Preachers were placed by Divine Providence in an unencumbered pastoral position; no reason remained why the solemn separation of candidates to the office laid on them by the calling and law of Christ, which calling, and their own fitness to fulfil it, had been tested in their course of trial, should not be marked in the impressive manner observed by the church in all ages. It was felt by most, even now, that to come nearer to holy Scripture was not to depart from John Wesley especially as he, by his own practice and example, had sanctioned the act, in ordaining, by imposition of hands, Preachers to serve in Scotland and elsewhere; that is, where no previously-constituted church could claim them as members of its distinct communion. Two years afterwards, at the close of a serious and most brotherly debate, the practice was fully adopted. At the same time, the form of setting apart candidates, or, as it was called, "admitting them into full connexion," had all the essentials of ordination; for it involved strict examination, appealing to the people in reference to their blamelessness and good report, obtaining their testimony and the expression of their purposes, and committing them to the Head of the church in earnest prayer.

When the time, therefore, arrived, John proceeded in the fear of God to London, where the Conference of 1834 was held. He passed his final examination with honour. There were misgivings still as to his health, but they were overruled; and having "professed a good profession before many witnesses," he was affec

tionately received, with others like-minded, into the full charge and care of immortal souls.

The intelligent reader cannot fail to perceive, that the whole time of his probation was a season of growth, as a Christian, in grace, besides being a course of disciplinary preparation for more influential and onerous labour. He who at Waltham-Abbey shrank from external discomforts, and occasional collision with rude and unfeeling minds, now began to learn to endure hardness: he who longed then to flee to heaven, and be at rest, through a morbid and tender sentimentality, or would recoil from the shock of battle, now paused to reflect, with deep Christian faith and feeling, on the holiness of that better world;— that nothing that defileth can enter there; and that it is best to cherish life, health, and energy, in order to win more victories for Christ, and so, following Him, to bring many sons unto glory: he who would then vent himself in expressions of vexation and disgust at whatever was violently opposed to his will or taste, now began to possess his soul in patience, and stay himself on God, in order to be ready for all surprises. He was pensive still, and still earnest, faithful, and confiding, as well as eagerly desirous of the requital of friendship. But he was more holy, he had more of the mind that was in Christ. Nor does the improving process terminate here. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint."

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CHAPTER III.

HOME MINISTRY.

OUR friend, whom we shall henceforth call Mr. Bumby, was now summoned to sustain the full burden of ministerial responsibility. Some persons may think that he was as much a true Minister of Christ before, as he was after, his ordination; and so far as the designation of the all-wise God was concerned, he may have been such. But the call of God, in order to be distinguished from fanatical presumption, or the working of an ambitious fancy, must be tested or proved, according to that direction of the Apostle Paul which is both implied and asserted in several places of his Epistles to Timothy: (1 Tim. iii. 1-10; vi. 3; 2 Tim. ii. 21) and as such probation implies the possibility of mistake on the part of those who at first have had to judge, and of error and self-deception in the candidate himself, who may, indeed, by slow degrees, have fallen away from grace, even the grace of the call,—it is not for nothing that in historical Scripture, an ordination by ministerial act, in the presence of a consenting congregation, is taken to be the acknowledgment, both on the part of Pastors and people, that the will of the Head of the church, in reference to the applicant, is truly recognised; that His law so far has been obeyed, and the elect person is now, ipso facto, separated from worldly concerns, to fulfil his one great business of carrying on the work of Christ; watching and feeding as a shepherd, and contending as a soldier.

With these views the Conference, being responsible for carrying out the order observed by Christ's church from the beginning, has restricted its authority for administering the Sacraments to separated Elders; an arrangement which, with sacred instinct, the people have always sustained and approved, without

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withdrawing any portion of their love and confidence from those whose different offices did not include this function, so closely connected as it is and must be, in some of its aspects, with pastoral rule and oversight, and the admission of persons to catholic communion.

In this new exercise of administration, although the form of the Church of England is used amongst us with slight verbal alterations, the yearning heart of John Bumby found new vent for its prayerful and benignant longings, inasmuch as he was perfectly free (as are all other Ministers) to pour forth, in addition, for the people around, the extemporaneous expression of his own prayers. He was gladly received by the Birmingham Circuit as one of their fully-acknowledged Ministers. It was known on all hands, at the same time, that he was exceedingly delicate; but, with all this delicacy, his power in the pulpit was evidently on the increase. His impaired health did not merely arise from a morbid state of the chest and respiratory system, but from general debility, produced by an impassioned and long-continued praying and preaching, re-acting upon a most peculiar and sensitive organization. He was not at this time, or afterwards while in Birmingham, remarkable for practising very detailed house-row visitation to a great extent, the people conceded to him a freedom from this usually-required labour, partly on account of his limited strength, and partly on account of his influence and success in the pulpit. A less influential Preacher, or a stronger man, would not have been so generally excused. His visits, therefore, to a considerable degree, were confined to those persons with whom he had the strongest union of soul, and such sick and dying individuals as he might be summoned to attend. The mere bodily exercise of visiting a number of families, and exchanging with them pleasant acknowledgments and socialities, involves but little toil to the frame; oftener it exhilarates: but the pastoral duty of

kindly questioning, removing difficulties, resolving scruples, convincing of errors, correcting wrong opinions, offering sympathy and engaging in prayer, many times a day, all this involves an expenditure of thought and feeling, even to exhaustion, that the invalid shrinks from with a most reasonable fear. The congregations could not spare their young Preacher from the pulpit, nor the classes from the class-room, and therefore were content that he should not appear so often elsewhere. So affectionate were the Birmingham people, and especially his more particular friends, towards him, that his private intercourse with families tended rather to the solace and refreshment of his own mind, liable as he was, notwithstanding his manifest growth in grace, to be chafed by temptation, and depressed in spirit by occasional discouragements in his work. He seemed to have come away from the Conference, and joined his colleagues, with deeper convictions than ever of the momentous character of the Minister's office.

In looking around, he seemed to see that men in general, in this Christian country so called, had a much greater knowledge of the Gospel, and of revealed truth in general, than they allowed to be operative upon their heart and life; that they would read Christian books, and yield a cold assent to their sentiments and reasonings, and then go and plunge with eager avidity into a sphere of unbroken carnal-mindedness, as much as if the current of their thoughts had never been interrupted; that mere abstract truth, however Divine and holy, might be entertained by any of them for a few moments, as a subject of elevated contemplation, and then dismissed without an emotion, or so much as the breath of an inward prayer ; that, in fact, the public mind needed rather arousing, alarming, vivifying, than illuminating; and a vital agency was required, all instinct with spirit itself, to thrill through the spirits of others, and make them all eye and all ear towards God. And so, when he turned his attention to the results which were pro