CONGREGATIONAL UNION EBENEZER ELLIOTT — MORAVIAN HYMN- BOOKLETTER TO MR. LATROBE- NEW EDITION OF HIS WORKS -LETTER FROM LUCY AIKIN TENNYSON — THE DECKIN CHARITY ANTI-CATHOLIC MEETING- CRYSTAL PALACE — BIRTH-DAY PRES- ENTS-MONTGOMERY MEDAL-MEMORIAL TREES VISIT TO THE SCHOOL OF DESIGN — LECTURE BEFORE THE LITERARY AND PHILO- SOPHICAL SOCIETY — MEETING OF THE METHODIST CONFERENCE — LIFE OF MONTGOMERY. CHAPTER I. EARLY DAYS-DEPARTURE FOR ENGLAND-MORAVIAN SETTLEMENT CELEBRATION "GRACE HILL" -The name, like many other of the Moravian christenings, "Tents of peace," and "Pilgrim's resting-places," has a spiritual significance, pointing towards a religious faith, which cradled, schooled, and carried forward its disciples with a paternal lovingness and care. It is a settlement in the village of Ballymona, Ireland, founded by that "hardy worker and hearty preacher," as Whitefield calls him, John Cennick, one of the fruits of the Great Awakening, and for a time teacher in the famous school of Kingswood Colliers. Drifting from the Methodist to the Moravian current of religious life, he established himself in Ireland, where his earnest preaching gathered a "Settlement of the Brethren," and "Grace Hill,” as it was named, we cannot doubt, became a beacon light to many a lost and wandering one. Such it became to John Montgomery, a young man in the neighborhood, who left his all, that all the tools of --- some humble craft,- to join the Brethren, by whom for hist gifts or graces he was soon singled out to become a preacher of the gospel. In due time John married Mary Blackley, the daughter of a grave and serious matron, and together they embarked their fortunes in the self-denying and perilous labors which have distinguished the Moravian ministry. The young couple were sent to Irvine, a small seaport in Ayrshire, the first spot in Scotland where these godly men. found a footing, and were there domesticated in a humble cottage beside the chapel wall, the pastor "much impressed Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds Sorrow and joy entered their open door. Death took Mary, their eldest born, a child of eighteen months, who 66 was the first grain sown in the Brethren's burial-ground at Ayr." Then a new-born took its place in the mother's arms, James, a son, on the 4th of November, 1771. Two others, Robert and Ignatius, afterwards came to be cradled in the lowly parsonage. James was a yellow-haired boy of sweet and serious disposition. Nature in her manifold forms of beauty early delighted his eye and spoke in tenderness or awfulness to his soul. The round red moon mounting on the hills, the young moon dropping behind the west, the rolling river and the dashing ocean, mingled their voices with the martial pageantry of royal birthdays, and all the sounds and sights of busy life in streets and at shop windows. What wonder and admiration stir the boy's mind as he looks out on the great marvels of the world into which he is born! or, as he afterwards sung, DEPARTURE FOR ENGLAND. "Proud reason still in shadow lay, The dazzling star of wonder shone, Creation opened on my earliest view, And all was beautiful for all was new." 133 At home the gentle discourse of his mother, the devout sobriety of his father, the grave mien and godly spirit of the Brethren as they come in and sit by the pastor's hearth, awaken within him reverent thought, and he early feels the presence of the Great Unseen presiding over all things without and within his little hemisphere. And so, "Heaven lay about him in his infancy." After a few years' residence in Scotland, the pastor and his family returned to their Irish home, and James passed from the gentle tuition of his mother to the harder tasks of the village schoolmaster. How much Master Jemmy McCaffery taught the boy we do not know, but the band of music at Gilgoran castle, near by, the castle, and the soldiery, often led away his truant attention, stealthily peeping over the tree-tops to freer and gayer scenes beyond. That James needed better schooling than Grace Hill could then afford, forced itself strongly upon the father, and a school in England was accordingly determined upon. A tearful parting between mother and child—his warm kisses on her wet cheek. the laughing caress of the baby in her lap-mother's benedictions and childhood's promises-good-byes to familiar things-the stir of a departure about the door, and James has gone-gone never again to have a home, where "mother, wife, Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life, Around whose knees domestic duties meet, And fireside pleasures gambol round her fect." A terrible storm overtook the little Liverpool packet having on board the father and son. The howling wind and groaning timbers filled the boy with fright. He looked into his father's face. It was calm as summer's evening. "Trust the Lord Jesus, who saved the apostles on the water," ," said the father. The boy cast himself on the same arm of strength and sweetly rested there. Peace stole over his affrighted spirit, and he sat quietly through the storm "I would give a thousand pounds for the faith of that child," exclaimed the captain, more fully perhaps comprehending the peril of his craft. But safely the little packet outrode the storm. They arrived at Liverpool, and the pastor and his son proceeded to Fulneck. Fulneck is a Moravian settlement in the parish of Calverley, in the neighborhood of Leeds, in Yorkshire. This also had its planting in the Great Awakening. Those familiar with that glorious era of moral renovation in which Whitefield and Wesley bore so distinguished a part, will remember Benjamin Ingham, one of the little band of praying students at Oxford, who were first cross-laden with the name of Methodists, and then crowned with its spiritual effulgence. The singleness and simplicity of the Moravian faith and its element of loving consecration to the Master's work early attracted the attention of Wesley and Ingham, who at different times visited Count Zinzendorf, and took sweet counsel with the Brethren on the continent. It was in their pulpit at Fetter Lane that Whitefield and Wesley first preached, in their company that the earliest |