be the very place for me.' 'My object, Mr. Fletcher, is to make you comfortable in your own way. If you prefer Madeley, I shall find no difficulty in persuading Chambers, the present vicar, to exchange it for Dunham, which is worth more than twice as much.' In this way he became Vicar of Madeley."

Mr. Wesley never approved of the position that Fletcher chose for himself. He regarded it as the great mistake of his life-as nothing less than lighting a candle and putting it under a bushel. When, on the day of his ordination, he came to Mr. Wesley's assistance, the latter wrote in his journal: "How wonderful are the ways of God! When my bodily strength failed, and none in England were able or willing to assist me, He sent me help from the mountains of Switzerland, and a help-mate for me in every respect. Where could I have found such another?" Mr. Wesley, therefore, felt deeply disappointed when Fletcher buried himself in an obscure town on the borders of Wales.

Madeley, in the County of Salop, and the surrounding places, were inhabited by a population of miners and manufacturers, the great majority of whom were almost as ignorant as savages, and nearly as vicious in manners and morals. It was here that Fletcher, with but short intervals, spent the remaining twenty-five years of his life. At first his congregation was small, and at times he almost despaired of success. In a letter to Charles Wesley, dated March 10, 1761, he says:

"A few days ago I was violently tempted to quit Madeley. The spirit of Jonah had so seized upon my heart, that I had the insolence to murmur against the Lord; but the storm is now happily calmed, at least, for a season. Alas, what stubbornness there is in the will of man; and with what

strength does it combat the will of God under the mask of piety, when it can no longer do so with the uncovered shameless face of vice! The Lord, however, does not leave me altogether, and I have often a secret hope that he will one day touch my heart and lips with a live coal from his altar, and that then his word shall consume the stubble and break to pieces the stone."

His zeal rose with the necessities of the evil day. He was instant in season and out of season. Day and night, and every day and night, he was engaged in labours more abundant. When the heavy duties of the Sabbath were done, the no less severe duties of the week began. Besides preaching in different places in the neighbourhood of his parish, and returning frequently at two in the morning over miry roads, he regularly went from house to house, reproving, rebuking, instructing, and comforting, with apostolic authority, and equal apostolic meekness. The wants of the sick and the penitent he never neglected for a moment. At any hour of the most inclement night, when he heard the sound of the knocker on his door, he would instantly rise, and go forth to minister at the couch of pain, or follow to the gates of death, with his most fervent prayers, the souls of his dying parishioners. Whatever wrongs or wicked behaviour he saw among his people, he was sure to visit with becoming severity. While he pitied the weakness of human nature, he would not tolerate its licentiousness. He would sometimes break in upon a dancing party at midnight, and scatter them as no constable in the parish could do. He justly regarded this pastime, with its usual associations, as a disgrace to the Christian name; and in this opinion he is supported by the unanimous sentiment of all, in every age or country, who have

feared or loved God. To secure a better attendance at church, he waited on those who neglected it, and earnestly entreated them to come. Some of these excused themselves by saying they could not awake in time to get ready. Fletcher's zeal was not to be defeated by such an idle plea. He procured a hand-bell, and, starting at five o'clock in the morning, rang it through the town and awoke the whole parish. Such efforts could not entirely fail. Within a year he wrote again to Charles Wesley :

"When I first came to Madeley, I was greatly mortified and discouraged by the smallness of my congregations; and I thought that if some of our friends at London had seen my little company, they would have triumphed in their own wisdom; but now, thank God, things are altered in that respect, and last Sunday I had the pleasure of seeing some in the churchyard who could not get into the church."

By the following October, however, these blossoms and buds of promise were scattered, leaving but little fruit to compensate the toil of the labourer. On the 12th of that month he wrote again to Charles Wesley :

"My church begins not to be so well filled as it has been, and I account for it by the following reasons: the curiosity of some of my hearers is satisfied, and others are offended by the word; the roads are worse, and if it should ever please the Lord to pour his Spirit upon us, the time is not yet come; for instead of saying, Let us go up to the house of the Lord, they exclaim, Why should we go and hear a Methodist? I should lose all patience with my flock if I had not more reason to be satisfied with them than with myself. My own barrenness furnishes me with excuses for theirs, and I wait the time when God shall give

seed to the sower, and increase to the seed sown. In waiting that time I learn the meaning of this prayer, Thy will be done.""

The results of his unwearied labours among his people were various. A faithful minister never leaves his congregation as he finds them. Under his ministry they grow either better or worse; or, in apostolic language, he is to his people "a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death." It does not appear that the success of Mr. Fletcher's ministry was in any fair proportion to the extent of his labour or the intensity of his zeal. We speak of the number of actual conversions. In this respect Berridge, of Everton, whom Southey sarcastically calls "both a fanatic and buffoon," was more successful. But if Fletcher's ministry was not followed by a series of great revivals, its effect was visible in the general and permanent impression it made on the morals of his parish. Some, indeed, waxed worse and worse; but many, in the words of his epitaph, became his joy and crown of rejoicing. If Madeley was not converted, it was much reformed under the influence of his pure example and ministerial labour. It must not, however, be thought that Satan quietly yielded. Great and good as Fletcher was, the spirit of opposition rose against him, and, like Apollyon in the allegory, fiercely bestrode the way.

The contest between religion and sin is as real as the shock of contending armies. The war-figure of the Scriptures stands on a basis of fact. The world hates righteousness, and when its cherished evils are seriously assailed, like the apparently harmless toad touched by the angel's spear, it reveals at once the demon in his full proportions. Does any minister doubt this? Let him make the experiment on the next respectable robber that he meets. Let

him, like the Baptist, reprove, with becoming earnestness, the next Herod or Herodias that "hears gladly" the less pointed and personal words of his ministry. Let him place himself in bold opposition to the money-making vices of trade, and especially that "dreadful trade" which sends men reeling to the bar of God, and he will soon have the proof in no ambiguous terms.

But few men have had fuller experience of this truth than the excellent Vicar of dissolute Madeley. At one time his life was endangered by a mob of drunken colliers, who had assembled for a bull-bait near the Rock Church, in Madeley-Wood. They agreed among themselves to "bait the parson." Some of them were appointed to pull him from his horse, and others to set the dogs on him. As he was about to start for the place, he was unexpectedly called to the funeral of a child, which delayed his coming beyond the usual time. In the meanwhile the bull broke loose and threw down the booth where they were assembled, and put an end to the meeting and sport of the day. Mr. Fletcher went to the appointment, and knew nothing of the treatment intended for him until afterward told of it by his friends. Thus, by a special providence, this servant of God was saved from the fury of men and beasts.

But this was not the only class of men who set themselves in opposition to his ministry. When his church became crowded, some of the church-wardens undertook to hinder strangers of other parishes from coming to the sacrament, or even entering the church. The gentlemen of the town, and magistrates, whose revenues were derived in part from the public licentiousness, were as heartily incensed by his zeal as the vulgar herd. One magistrate threatened him with imprisonment, brandished his cane