to mend many of my old nets, and am therefore obliged to preach on those subjects which happen to be at present most familiar to my mind. ... "Friday evening, September 22d.-This morning I rose very early, and finished my letters. I next indulged myself with a half hour's lounge in the booksellers' shops. The Dissenting ministers, I perceive, are quite before us Methodists in publications designed to stimulate the people to engage in the active defense of the country. Messrs. Hughes, Cooper, Fuller, and many others of them, have published sermons with that view, preached to their respective congregations. From Stationers' Court I went to Surrey Chapel, and heard a sort of lecture from Mr. Jay. He was not so animated or so brilliant as when I heard him before, but very instructive and impressive. Few preachers are able to extort tears from me; but he conquered me, and dissolved me into tenderness while enlarging on the character and sufferings of the Apostle Paul. When I hear such preaching as Mr. Jay's, I am always ashamed of myself, and wonder that the people should ever like to listen to my poor swashy sermons. I feel I am too declamatory in my mode of preaching. I want more weight and solidity. However, while I am humbled I am roused, and see the necessity of increasing diligence, that I too, by the blessing of God, may become in due time a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.' "Sunday evening, September 25th.-Mr. Rankin preached this morning from Psalm xxv. At our breakfast-meeting which followed, a Mr. Ringeldauben, from Germany, was introduced. He is come to England for the purpose of being shortly sent abroad, under the patronage of the Society for Missions in Africa and the East. I venerate greatly the zeal and piety of those who thus abandon their country and friends in order to evangelize the heathen. When I look at their sacrifices and exertions, I feel utterly ashamed of myself. However, some must stay in garrison, while others carry offensive war into the territories occupied by the enemy; and, on the whole, I do not doubt that I am where God would have me to be. Mr. R. very modestly requested that he might be appointed to some of our country chapels; but I took him with me to Spitalfields, and published him there for the afternoon. God bless him! I love him for his work's sake. I spent most of the afternoon alone, being too tired, and too anxious about my own work at Queen-street in the evening, to go to any place of worship. I was a good deal perplexed about my Charity-sermon text, being divided between Gal. vi, 9, and Deut. xxix, 29, the only passages I had before used on like occasions. At length I fixed on the latter. I have never been so fluttered by the sight of a congregation as I was for about half an hour after I entered the pulpit. After a while I forgot my fears and embarrassments, and spoke with considerable freedom. I am heartily glad that it is all over. Thus one Sabbath passes after another in rapid succession; my last will soon arrive. Though I certainly have now more ties to earth than I formerly had, I still feel that it cannot arrive too soon, if it do but find me ready. Exhausted in body and mind, I lay me down to rest, ashamed and disgusted with myself, but very thankful to God for the comforts I enjoy. Good-night to all the world!" "Wednesday, October 19th.-We had a tolerable congregation this forenoon at Deptford. My text was Zeph. ii, 3. I have reserved part of the same subject for the evening. Our good friends had a prayer-meeting in the chapel at three o'clock, but I thought it best to spend the afternoon alone, and found it profitable. I think I have experienced somewhat of the spirit of the day. I am humbled and affected by the sincere persuasion and conviction that I am one of the chief of those sinners whose ingratitude and abuse of mercies have exposed our country to the threatened judgment. But there is forgiveness with Thee.' O pardon my iniquity, for it is great.' While preaching in the evening I had much comfort and liberty of utterance, attended too, I humbly trust and believe, with some holy unction in the appli cation of my subject. I have always been haunted, as a preacher, by the drunkards. Instances of this might be adduced in my last circuit; and tonight an officer in the Volunteers who was present, and who, from his conduct, I conclude must have been tipsy, came to me as soon as I had concluded, very politely acknowledged the pleasure and instruction of the evening, and insisted on my accepting half a crown! I could not escape his importunities otherwise than by compliance; so, to avoid making a bustle in the chapel, I took his money, informing him that I would give it to the poor. "Friday evening, October 21st.-I wrote and read most of this morning, then went to Surrey Chapel to hear Mr. Jay. But I suppose he has left town, for there was another gentleman in the pulpit, who spoke so low that I could hear scarcely anything of what he said. He was expounding some part of the Revelation. I was in my study all the afternoon, and this evening preached at Saffron Hill to about forty poor people. My text was Rev. iii, 20, from which I was enabled, in words more than usually plain, and with feelings unutterably tender and affectionate, to call sinners to repentance, and to offer them mercy and salvation. O that I could always feel, in preaching, the spirit I felt to-night! "O may Thy bowels yearn in me, This verse is the prayer of my inmost soul." On the 24th of January, 1804, Jabez Bunting was married to Miss Maclardie, and preached the same evening. We have thus minutely traced the history of this distinguished minister until he stands before us a fully accredited Methodist preacher, of already recognized position in the Connection, settled in life, and grappling vigorously with its obligations and duties. We have desired to exhibit the formative period of his life, to which, indeed, this first volume of the biography is devoted. We have omitted some facts which indicated very strongly his already intimate acquaintance with the constitution of Wesleyan Methodism and his aptitude in controversy on its discipline, because the circumstances that developed these characteristics are comparatively without interest on this side of the Atlantic. The important part which he took in all the affairs of Methodism, and especially in its legislation, is prefigured in the concluding chapter of the present volume, and can only be treated of in a separate article. With his first appointment to London, which took place at the Conference of 1803, as already mentioned, commenced his initiation, however, into the business department of connectional labor, and that kind of work ever after grew upon him. Nor was he unwilling to give it his attention. From London he was removed to Manchester. At the Conference of 1807 he was elected assistant secretary of the Con ference, the youngest man, we believe, who had ever been chosen for that office. From Manchester to Sheffield, from Sheffield to Liverpool, and the first volume of this most delightful biography closes. We wait with highly awakened interest the appearance of the second. The secret of Mr. Bunting's great influence in the pulpit and in debate was not in any brilliancy of genius, or great powers of imagination, but in his conscientious industry, his intense application, his earnest devotion to the work to which he had deliberately given himself, his resolution to master every subject that rightfully claimed his attention, his manly piety, his strength and compass of thought, and his unceasing emulation to be a "workman that needed not to be ashamed." The improvement he made of the four years of his probation is thus described by his son. There is a lesson in the extract for every man called with the same holy calling: "He devoted himself exclusively to the studies and engagements directly relating to his new vocation. The pulpit received his first attention, not so much because its claims were instant and almost daily, as because he knew that the secret of ministerial influence lies chiefly there. This idea was kept uppermost, whatever interest he took in the private departments of pastoral labor, or in the welfare of the connection generally. He never missed an opportunity of hearing a sermon. Service during church-hours not having been yet introduced into the Methodist Chapel, he was able frequently to attend the vigorous ministry of Mr. Horne, and he communicated occasionally at his church. He read largely in general theology, including the published sermons of both old and modern preachers. He carefully copied and preserved skeletons and sketches of sermons. He extracted from his general reading everything that could suggest topics or materials for public discourse. He tried his hand at amending other men's compositions. His own preparations were full and elaborate, and were subjected to continual revision. He was very diligent in his attentions to the sick and aged of the flock, and particularly so to its younger members. To these his services were rendered eminently useful. He busied himself, in strict subordination, however, to his superintendent ministers, with every part of the finance and general business of the circuit. The letters from which I have quoted are evidence of his anxiety to master all questions affecting the connection as a whole. They also show a steady improvement in personal religion. "During the four years of trial he preached thirteen hundred and forty-eight times. At the end of the second year he had nearly a hundred sermons ready for use as he might require them. His plan seems to have been to preach each one at different places in the circuit in rapid succession." The above is the nearest approach the biographer makes to an explanation of the method followed by his father in the composition of his sermons and in his general pulpit preparations. This we think, is to be regretted. We are not sure, indeed, that the marvelous power, excellence, and influence of Mr. Bunting as a preacher, are made sufficiently apparent in the "Life;" and we find an occasional expression which leads us to think that the biographer's mind is more occupied with his subject as an "ecclesiastical leader" than as a preacher. This may be the result, however, of an understanding that to his brother, (the Rev. William M. Bunting,) who is editing a volume of the father's sermons, shall be left the fuller presentation of his character as a preacher. Some exhibition of the processes by which Jabez Bunting's masterly sermons were made to assume form and order would seem to be due to the younger ministers of the Church. It would at least be highly useful and beneficial. In the hope that the Rev. W. M. Bunting may yet supply a clear and full analysis of his father's power as a preacher, we waive our own criticism, as indeed our nearly exhausted space requires that we should do. Jabez Bunting aimed at excellence in everything, and he was especially solicitous and careful to attain conciseness, simplicity, and accuracy of expression. Perhaps no man was ever more thoroughly a proficient in this great art than himself. Even his boyish and youthful compositions are almost faultless.* In later years correctness had grown into the utmost felicity and beauty of diction, whether in the pulpit, on the platform, or in the domestic circle. His friend Dr. Liefchild mentions this remarkable elegance and chasteness of expression, and inquired of Mr. Bunting how he had attained it. The modest answer was, that he was not aware of such facility and exactness, but that if it were so it must arise from a habit he had formed at a very early age of expressing himself on every topic, however trivial or common, in the fewest and most suitable terms he could find." 66 ART. III.-RESULTS OF WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION. [FIRST ARTICLE.] In the early part of the year 1823 there was presented, in the British House of Commons, an example of moral heroism not often paralleled-one man, in the face of a powerful opposing government, and contrary to the judgment and wishes of all his friends, rising up, alone and unsupported, to strike a blow at the root of colonial slavery. That man was Thomas Fowell Buxton. He had * And yet, singularly enough, we find him in his tenth year making an entry in his memorandum book which scarcely any educated boy of his age would not have written more accurately:-"J. B. left Mr. Marchant's school January the 8th, 1789, in the ninth year of my age, who always acquitted his trust toward me in a manner worthy of esteem." given notice of his purpose to move, on a certain day, a resolution declaring slavery to be "repugnant to the principles of the British Constitution and of the Christian religion." The government, dreading to offend the powerful West India body, yet unprepared to brave and set at naught the deepening feeling of the people on the slavery question, earnestly begged for postponement; and his own political friends, and even his antislavery associates, infected with similar fears, also entreated him to defer his purpose, lest he should damage the cause he was anxious to serve. But, relying on the justice of his cause and the integrity of his motives, and convinced that the right time had come, he boldly assumed the entire responsibility, and submitted his motion according to the notice which had been given. In that hour a fatal blow was given to the system of British slavery. It is true that the motion was negatived on a division of the House, but it was by a majority so small that the government felt itself compelled to take action on the subject; and accordingly Mr. Canning, then prime minister, introduced and carried a resolution expressive of the desire entertained by Parliament for the adoption of effectual and decided measures for improving the condition of the slaves, and for their emancipation at the earliest period compatible with their own well-being, and with a fair and equitable consideration of the interests of private persons. From that day the abolition of slavery in the colonies became only a question of time; but it was not until after a severe and protracted struggle between the philanthropy and the religion of the nation, on the one hand, and the powerful interests involved in the maintenance of the system, on the other, that on the 28th of August, 1833, the act, passed by the two houses of Parliament, received the royal signature, which decreed that slavery should terminate throughout the British empire, and that immortal beings gifted with intellectual and moral faculties capable of illimitable development should no longer, under the sanction of British laws, be degraded to the condition of brutes, and bought and sold as goods and chattels. The passing of this measure had became a political necessity; for not only had the recent servile insurrection in Jamaica, accompanied as it was by a fearful sacrifice of property and human life, demonstrated the peril with which the maintenance of the system was fraught, and that the planters were living as on the crust of a seething volcano; but the exposure of the inherent evils and horrors of the system, to which that insurrection led, had so wrought upon the public mind, and aroused the conscience of the nation, that nothing less could satisfy the people than the adoption of immediate and effectual measures for the abolition of what was felt to be a national crime; |