Harris first commenced visiting from house to house in his own native parish, and in neighbouring ones. Then the people flocked together, and, almost without knowing it, he began to preach. The magistrates and clergy threatened him; but their threats failed to silence him. For a maintenance, he set up a school, and meantime continued preaching. Numbers were convinced of sin, and these the young preacher, only twenty-two years of age, formed into small societies analogous to those of which he had read in Dr. Woodward’s History. At the end of 1737, persecuting malice ejected him from his school; but, as in other instances so in this, it overshot its mark; for this, instead of silencing the preacher, made him preach more than ever. He now gave himself entirely to the work of an evangelist, and henceforth generally delivered three or four, and sometimes five or six, sermons every day to crowded congregations. A wide-spread reformation followed. Public diversions became unfashionable, and religion became the theme of common conversation. A few began to help him, of whom the venerable Rev. Griffith Jones was the most prominent. In 1737, this devoted clergyman instituted his movable free schools; and a letter published in the _Glasgow Weekly History_, of 1742, describes him as “one of the most excellent preachers in Great Britain.” Not a few of the teachers in his peripatetic schools became Methodist preachers; and certainly their travels as instructors, as well as his own preaching tours, prepared the way for the Methodist itinerant ministry. Thus was Howel Harris an itinerant preacher at least a year and a half before Whitefield and Wesley were; and, as the brave-hearted herald of hundreds more who were to follow after him, he met the fiercest persecutions with an undaunted soul and an unflinching face. Parsons and country squires menaced him, and mobs swore and flung stones and sticks at him; but he calmly pursued his way, labouring almost alone in his own isolated sphere until he met with Whitefield in the town of Cardiff, in 1739. Whitefield says he found him “a burning and shining light; a barrier against profanity and immorality; and an indefatigable promoter of the gospel of Christ. During the last three years, he had preached almost twice every day, for three or four hours together; and, in his evangelistic tours, had visited seven counties, and had established nearly thirty societies; and still his sphere of action was enlarging daily.” Almost contemporaneous with this marvellous work across the Atlantic and in Wales, was another across the Tweed, in Scotland. The facts following are taken from “A Faithful Narrative, written by James Robe, A.M., Minister of the Gospel at Kilsyth,” and printed in 1742.