that he preached what he knew to be the truth, and he would continue to preach. “Then,” said the Chancellor, “I will excommunicate you!” The end of it was that all the city churches were shut against him. “But,” he says, “if they were all open, they would not contain half the people who come to hear. So at three in the afternoon I went to Kingswood among the colliers.” Whitefield laid his case in a very respectful letter, before the Bishop, but on he went. As to Kingswood, tears poured down the black faces of the colliers; the great audiences are described as being drenched in tears. Whitefield himself was in a passion of tears. “How can I help weeping,” he said to them, “when you have not wept for yourselves?” And they began to weep. Thus in 1739 began the mighty work at Kingswood, which has been a great Methodist colony from that day to this. That was a good morning’s work for the cause of Christ when the Chancellor shut the doors of the churches of Bristol against the brave and beautiful preacher, and threatened to excommunicate him. Was it not said of old, “Thou makest the wrath of man to praise Thee”? Now, then, see him girt and road-ready; we might be sure that the example of the Chancellor of Bristol would be pretty generally followed. The old ecclesiastical corporations set themselves in array against him; but how futile the endeavour! Their canons and rubrics were like the building of hedges to confine an eagle, and they only left him without a choice—without any choice but to fulfil his instinct for souls, and to soar. Other “little brief authorities,” mayors, aldermen, and such like, issued their fulminations. Coming to Basingstoke, the mayor, one John Abbott, inhibited him. John Abbott seems to have been a burly butcher. The intercourse and correspondence between the two is very humorously characteristic; but, although it gives an insight as to the antagonism which frequently awaited Whitefield, it is too long to quote in this brief sketch. The butcher-mayor was coarse and insolent; Whitefield never lost his sweet graciousness; writing to abusive butchers or abusive bishops, as in his reply to Lavington, he never lost his temper, never indulged in satire, never exhibits any great marks of genius, writes straight to the point, simply vindicates himself and his course, never retracts, never apologises, goes straight on.