children, which they will carry home with them, and with which they will beguile in after-life many a weary hour. We know several schools where this is done, and the results are most encouraging. Children love stories, then tell them plenty of stories about Jesus and His love; your lesson should sparkle with them-the Bible is full of them. The kingdom of heaven is like unto ten virgins which took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom; like unto leaven hid in meal; like to a grain of mustard seed; like unto treasure hid in a field; like unto a merchant-man; like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind. Yes, gather likes of every kind and from every possible source for the children in our Sunday-schools. Hardly an incident of any moment occurs in a locality that the Sunday-school teacher cannot use to purpose and advantage in his class. We know a Sunday-school teacher who gathers all his stories from passing current events and the Bible. He will use the story of the burial of a good or wicked man in any neighbourhood, a serious railway collision, an explosion in a coal mine, or a shipwreck at sea, with considerable point, effect, and purpose. When the attention of his class is secured and the story is fastened upon their minds, some point in the story is laid hold of to apply the teachings of the lesson in hand. From every story he has a way into the kingdom of God. One way or another he always manages to get his boys to Jesus. Children love talking aloud, then let them have plenty of time to talk aloud about Jesus and heaven in all our schools. I mean let them have their weekly prayer meetings and band meetings that they may hear one another pray to and speak for Jesus. It is surprising how they love such meetings when they once get used to them. We know a Sunday-school of 300 children, divided into two parts, where this plan has been tried for several years with remarkable success. Twenty minutes only are set apart before closing the schools for the teachers and scholars to talk about Jesus, and they do talk about Him. We have heard twenty of them speak about Jesus in ten minutes. We said to the superintendent once, 'But some of these children really don't understand the meaning of what they say.' 'Probably not,' he said, 'but we will teach them to say it until they do understand it.' No wonder that the scholars there are anxious to meet in class, and that the society has grown from 32 to over 150 members during the last five years.

In conclusion, dear brethren, let me commend these matters to your prayerful and serious consideration. They are the utterances of a heart in deep sympathy with evangelistic work. We believe that God is calling us as a people by a thousand voices to-day to increased

activities in evangelistic work. Ours is a soul-saving Church, or it is nothing at all. The other Churches of the land and the ungodly world about us can ill afford to dispense with the vigorous evangelistic labours of Primitive Methodists. They are needed in the present day as much as ever they were in the past. Let us, then, to renewed work, and the people will gather about us. Our resources are not exhausted, and the glory is not departed from us, for the Holy Ghost still lives and burns in hundreds and thousands of our hearts. Keep up your class-meetings and prayer-meetings. Make them thoroughly efficient means of grace. Get there the baptism of fire, the power from on high, and then go out into the world and witness for Jesus at home and abroad. Be cheerful, earnest, resolute workers in the vineyard of Christ; put the whole of your soul into your work, whether it be in teaching a class in the Sabbath-school, or in visiting the sick and poor in their homes, or in distributing tracts from door to door, or in conducting mothers' meetings, or in any other Christian mission work, and you must succeed in your honest endeavours. And 'let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.'

WILSON BARRETT.

IX.-JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

JOHN ANGELL JAMES, like many other distinguished men who have been rendered a blessing to their age, and whose names are cherished in the national heart, was of humble origin, and, by dint of persevering industry and constant devotion to a noble pursuit, raised himself out of obscurity to that position of influence and honour he so worthily occupied for half a century. He was born at Blandford Forum, in Dorsetshire, on the 6th of June, 1785. The following interesting account of his ancestors appears in his autobiography:

I have nothing to boast of as regards the distinctions of earthly heraldry, none of titled rank and fame can be found in the line of my ancestry; but what to a Christian is of far greater honour, some of God's nobility were among them. I am descended from an old Dorsetshire family, and once bad in my possession, but have unfortunately lost it, a list of my pious progenitors on my father's side for two hundred years back. They were not men of wealth, but belonged to the yeomanry of the country, and lived principally in the neighbourhood of Dorchester. One of them was upon the jury at the bloody Assizes' of the ferocious and sanguinary Judge Jefferies, and, with his fellow-jurors, received the menaces of that ermined tiger if they did not do their duty; by which he meant consign by wholesale to the gallows the objects of his fury. My grandfather was a native of Swanage; a man of simple, earnest, and consistent piety. He endured the persecution of ridicule and opposition for his religion.

The father of John Angell James was a linen draper and button manufacturer. He was a regular attendant at public worship, but till the close of life made no profession of religion. Very little is known. of the ancestors of Mrs. James. Her father was a builder in Blandford, and she was brought up under the care of a Mr. and Mrs. Angell. She was a devoted Christian woman, of a peaceable and loving disposition, who felt a profound interest in the spiritual welfare of her children. She used to take them one by one into her chamber, and there earnestly plead with God on their behalf. She was of the Baptist persuasion, but as there was no Baptist meeting-house in Blandford she used to worship in the Independent chapel with her husband. John was her fourth child, but eldest son. He is described by his

An essay

read before the Ministerial Association of the Tunstall and West Midland Districts, at Old Hill, on Thursday, April 7th, 1881.

biographer as a bright, merry boy, with exulting animal spirits and a kindly, generous temper, and withal a good hand at trap-ball and rounder.' On one Guy Fawke's day he had the audacity to let off a squib at a soldier, which singed the warrior's whiskers. On another occasion he had filled his pockets with fire-works, which, by some accident, exploded and set his clothes in a blaze, and he was only saved from a tragic death by being placed under the pump spout until the fire was extinguished. We read, also, of his youthful pugilistic encounters. One day he had a 'battle royal' with a school-fellow, which lasted for half-an-hour. Thirty years passed before the combatants met again, and having talked over the heroic deeds of their boyhood, Mr. James looked his old foe and old friend in the face, and said, with genuine and affecting earnestness, 'My dear friend, I hope we are one in Christ?'

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He was not much indebted to schoolmasters for either secular or spiritual knowledge. His father intended him for business, and so, at the age of thirteen, he was taken from school and apprenticed to a linendraper at Poole, near Bournemouth, for seven years. He speaks of a fellow apprentice as being in some sense the occasion of his conversion. On the first night of his coming under the roof this young man knelt down at his bedside, in Mr. James' presence, for silent prayer. 'I shall ever have reason to bless God,' he writes, "for this act of Charles B- Here we have a striking illustration of the power of example and of the importance of the duty of confessing Christ. By his own request, Mr. James was taken by Charles B-- to the house of a pious cobbler, named John Poole, and the instructions he received there were the means of deepening his former religious impressions, and of leading him to a final and full decision for God. He soon commenced to labour as a Sunday-school teacher, and it was while thus employed that he was impressed with the conviction that he might be more extensively useful as a preacher of the Gospel, and at length decided to consecrate himself fully to the service of the Lord as a minister.

His father was strongly opposed to the carrying out of this new plan. Having paid a handsome sum as a premium at the time of his apprenticeship, and being required to advance still more money to procure his liberation--considering, too, that the time spent at Poole, as well as the money, would be thrown away, he offered many and strong objections. But by the advice of Dr. Bennett the father yielded at length, and Mr. James left Poole and went to Gosport to study under Dr. Bogue.

The college at Gosport had been founded by Robert Haldane, Esq., a gentleman of landed estate in Scotland, who had disposed of much of his property with a view of consecrating himself and his substance to Evangelistic work in India. Finding insurmountable barriers placed in his way by the East India Company, he undertook to diffuse the Gospel in his native land. He built chapels in different parts of the country, and appointed itinerating ministers both in the Highlands and Lowlands, and kept up preaching stations in the chief towns and cities. He also employed Dr. Bogue at Gosport to train suitable young men for the work of the ministry at home and abroad. The Gosport Academy was in truth a missionary institution, and many of the early missionaries sent out by the London Missionary Society were prepared for the work at Gosport. One of Mr. James' college associates was Mr. Morrison, afterwards known as Dr. Morrison, of China, the greatest missionary of his age. There is no doubt that the missionary spirit which worked so powerfully in the heart of Mr. James was imbibed at Gosport.

In August, 1804, Mr. James, then only nineteen years of age, entered Birmingham to preach to the church at Carr's-lane as a supply, and with no idea of becoming the pastor; but he had only preached to them four times when a deputation waited upon him to request him to become their minister as soon as he should leave the college. He returned to Gosport, and after another year spent there came back to Birmingham to enter upon the duties of the pastorate. At that time the Carr's-lane congregation consisted of not more than 200 persons, and the church itself of not more than sixty members. And it is a remarkable and almost incredible fact that during the first seven years the pulpit ministrations of Mr. James did not increase the number of his hearers. But there are circumstances which shed light upon this apparent failure. His predecessor had resigned his connection with Carr'slane church in consequence of alleged immorality; but on account of his splendid talents and the representation of his friends that he was a persecuted man, he had succeeded in taking with him nearly half the church and a large proportion of the congregation, and had also gained the sympathies of the public on his side. It should also be remembered that Mr. James was very young and inexperienced when he entered upon the pastorate, and that he preached in an unattractive chapel, situated in a dirty street. Nevertheless, his want of success was a great trouble to his mind; and while it disheartened and distressed him, it led to increased diligence in his studies, and also drove him to his knees in earnest supplications to the God of heaven for the