"The first time I heard this remarkable preacher was in an old building in one of the obscurest lanes of the city. That was his church. It was closely packed in every part with sailors, many in their red shirts, just as they had come into port. Every seat was in demand. The aisles were crowded, and the pulpit stand, up to the very top, while all gazed with breathless interest upon the one man who held them as by a spell. Just as he felt, they felt. Was he playful, they smiled; was he pathetic, they wept; was he swept along by the tide of his eloquence, they kindled into enthusiasm. Every heartstring vibrated

under the touch of his hand."

Sometimes the ludicrous image followed the serious and pathetic in his address. But generally a playful or comical sentence was the prelude to some moving exhortation or some searching attack. The stranger who smiled or laughed at the quaint conceits of the sailor-preacher expected to have a good time, and to go home with an undisturbed conscience. He little knew his man. These oddities and witticisms were but the skirmishers that masked the main attack, and broke the adversary's line before the heavy columns of the old general should be hurled upon it. The preacher had never read that laughter is the best preparation for tears, but genius had taught him the lesson; and his rarest wit was but the ambush for his most powerful assaults. Some of this great orator's sayings seem irreverent, as repeated out of their connection, and without any knowledge of their effect. They did not seem so to one, who,

after hearing the whole discourse, went home trembling, or cast himself at the altar with prayers for salvation. "I am always afraid when I am laughing at Father Taylor's wit," said a man of wit. "I know he will make me cry before he has done with me." To judge Father Taylor's oratory by single, detached, ludicrous expressions, is like judging the awful tragedies of Shakspeare by a sentence from the mouth of one of his clowns.

Whether he laughed or wept, whether he used sarcasm or pathos, he had that quality in oratory which is above all art, he forgot himself in his determination to enforce upon his hearers the truth which he loved. And all his powers of eloquence, wit, humor, pathos, were consecrated by their entire devotion to the service of his Lord.

IX.

IN THE BETHEL PRAYER-MEETING.

A Methodist Prayer-Meeting in New England. -Its Liberty of Praying, Proph esying, and Praising.- How it became and how it is conducted. His Ministerial Easy-Chair.-"Hit him 'tween the Eyes."- Fishing for Pearls. -The Three Hebrews. "The Devil heaved Overboard, Stock and Fluke." -"Salvation set to Music."-"Old North of Europe."-" Pure Hebrew.". The Up-towner rebuked. - -"Stale Bread." - "Lubricate." - Blowing away Chaff.-The Last Squab. - An Old Sinner's Tears.-"A Summer Shower."-"No Laughing in Hell."-"Melt that Snow."—" Rain in that Cloud."-"Red Cedar."—"Set Fire to that Wood."- Lightest Stuff floats First.-Little Barrels soonest filled." Devil never chases Chaff.”—“Give us Point." The Medicine-Chest.-"Quarrel with your Sins."- The Tinder-Box. -The Archbishop of Canterbury.- No Wedding Garment, and Why.-"Blue-Mould Manna."-"Give her Sheet!"-"Look out for the Lights!"— Working to the Windward of the Devil.-A Constant Revival. - The Old Sailor's Rebuke of the Swearing Merchant. - Nine-o'clock Christians.

That sugSuch it is

F the Bethel pulpit was a free place, the Bethel prayer-meeting was far more free. Here liberty had free course to run and be glorified. The word "prayer-meeting" does not express the fact. gests a gathering exclusively for prayer. in his church out of New England. Such it was in most churches except the Methodist. But when the Methodists entered New England, to gain a foothold, they had to yield something to the prejudices of the people. Here, as everywhere, were set ways. One of

these ways was two sermons together to the same congregation: another was pews owned by the occupants. To gain the people to them, they had to surrender these two points to them,- allow them the ownership of their pews, and two sermons a day. The last prevented the flourishing of the circuit system on her soil. It also prevented the development of the local-preacher system; for the people demanded a settled minister, or as near that as they could get under an itinerancy. To accommodate them, the sabbath-evening prayer-meeting was invented, meeting for a long time peculiar to New-England Methodists, and which drew, and yet draws, larger audiences steadily to its ministrations than the Sunday-evening preaching of other sections, or than any other form of sabbath-evening assemblage.

a

These meetings consisted of two or four short prayers and a dozen or twenty short exhortations or "testimonies," interspersed frequently with a verse of animated song, and concluding usually with an invitation to penitents to come forward to the front seats, or the rail enclosing the broad platform, and called an altar, that they may be prayed with, and led into the kingdom of Christ and peace. In the olden times, this platform, always spacious, was filled with the leading laymen of the church. They, today, generally leave it to the minister.

The preacher and his lay associates gather in the railed enclosure. The house is crowded with saints, seekers, and sinners. The service begins with a cheerful hymn, sung "lustily" to a cheerful tune.

The minister prays, or calls on one of his brethren. Two earnest prayers, and another short hymn is sung. Again two pray, and again an animated and animating song. Then a rapid succession of warm addresses, followed by warmer invitations put into sacred song, and the hour flies swift around to nine o'clock, and the end.

The freedom of such a meeting, its warmth, its rapidity, its consummation in invitations to seekers, their acceptance in prayer, and praise, combined to give it pre-eminence over any other regular religious meeting. The stiff formalism of the papal service, like ice to the frozen spectator, making him chillier by its superabounding chilliness; the long and largely intellectual services of the Puritan worship, rational to the verge of irrationalism; even the warmer pleadings of warmer pulpits, all fade into unattractiveness before the "hearty," social freedom and joy of a Methodist prayer-meeting. If it can be held to the old pitch of liberty and life, it will bring the world to its holy feasts. It makes every participant exclaim, —

"Blest Jesus, what delicious fare!

How sweet thine entertainments are !"

In such meetings Father Taylor would naturally revel. He had preached his two sermons, wringing himself dry with a change of linen; he was nervous, rejoicing to run a race, and, though tired, ready for a change in his work, and glad to throw off even the limited restraints of his pulpit for the broad liberty