FIRST METHODIST CHAPEL was laid, amidst great shouting of praise and thanksgiving. I have called it a Chapel, but the Methodists called it a "Preaching House." You may think what a great deal of money it took to carry on all the work that the Methodists were doing; sometimes their purses were very empty, and they wondered however they should get them filled again. But it was God's work they were doing, and of course the money always came. Like most Methodist Chapels nowadays, the money to pay for the Bristol Preaching House was not got all at once; but a plan was adopted which, I think, was a very good one. Every Methodist in Bristol promised to pay a penny a week until all the money was raised; and as there were some hundreds of Methodists, the debt was soon paid off. Some of the people, however, were too poor to pay even this small amount, so it was arranged that the richer men should each call upon eleven poorer ones every week, and collect their pennies, and when they could not give them, the rich man was to make it up. This was the beginning of the weekly class money which your fathers and mothers, if they are Methodists, pay in their class-meetings to-day. When Mr. Wesley told the society in Fetter Lane, London, of the good plan the Bristol people had made, they adopted it too, and always after that wherever the Methodists commenced a society, the penny-a-week rule was followed. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XXI. An explosion.--A new business at the old Foundry.--Mr. Wesley and his mother at home.--Grand helpers.--Poor little Tom.--The worst man in Bristol.--And one of the best. HOW old would John Wesley be in 1716, if he was born in 1703? Thirteen, would he not? a school-boy at the Charterhouse School. In that year there was a terrible explosion at a cannon foundry, where the guns were made for war. The roof of the building was blown off, and a great many workmen were injured and killed. After this explosion, the machinery and iron were removed to Woolwich, which, as you will learn in your geography is still the great place for making cannon and other weapons of war. All the years from 1716 to 1739 the old foundry had never been touched, there it was, still in ruins. One day in this year, 1739, while Mr. Wesley was in London, two gentlemen came and asked him if he would preach in this old tumble-down place. He consented, and one dreary November morning at eight o'clock, before the grey clouds of night had fled, he preached to about six thousand people in the old King's Foundry. The following week many of those who had listened to him, came and begged him to buy the old place for a meeting-house. After thinking and praying about the matter he consented, and before very long the roof was mended, galleries were made, and the first Methodist preaching-place in London was ready for use.