hope I have not often prostituted what I thought my duty to God to the desire to secure their friendship; but certainly of earthly things I value their affection above anything else.

It was at Stand that I experienced the first fresh joy of a Christian life, and the unchilled warm burst of youthful hope, and my heart went forth, trustful of finding a ready response, and full of confidence in God."

CHAPTER IV.

MINISTRY AT WARRINGTON: 1846-1858. ÆT. 26-38.

WARRINGTON was classic ground when, from 1757 to 1783, it was the seat of an academy, or college, of which Drs. Priestley, John Taylor, Aiken, and Enfield, Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, and others were tutors, and where many who afterwards rose to eminence were students. John Howard resided here, to have Dr. Aiken's literary aid while he was preparing his work on prisons, which was printed in this town: he attended the Presbyterian meeting-house, some monuments in which bear testimony to this period of its history. It has been recently renovated, but in 1846 it was dingy and sepulchral; and the town and neighbourhood had few of those charms which Mrs. Barbauld has immortalized in her poetic "Invitation." Philip had never lived in so drunken or unhealthy a place, and that autumn the swampy fields and market-gardens smelt horribly from the potato disease. A new parsonage was to be built; but meanwhile he and his sister resided first in Academy Place, and afterwards in the Butter Market.

After the great strain of his last half-year at Stand and his removal, he ought to have had a complete holiday; but he only allowed himself "a parson's week" with his sisters and myself at Ambleside. So it is no wonder that he felt completely exhausted, and good for nothing but to "stupidize" and rest. He wrote to his friend Travers: "I really do not wonder that people become very bad; for I feel with you that it is not really religious motives, primarily that is, but the same perhaps

H

shadowed forth in love of friends, that keep me from a completely reprobate mind. . . . I never thought, three years ago, that I could have fallen as much as I have done. . . . I am preaching an historical religion; not what I feel now, but what I felt once, and therefore know to be true." Of this period, he afterwards wrote to him: "I asked God to chasten me very much in the way He thought best, and He has done so; . . . and I have seen His hand in it all." His heart knew its own bitterness, but he did not wish to dwell on it or record it. This half-year he made no remarks in his pulpit-record, and he discontinued his journal. "I am always sorry," he told his mother, "when a cloud gets daguerreotyped."

He was cheered at Warrington by having a new and spacious school-room, erected in the ministry of the Rev. F. Bishop (subsequently so efficient as minister to the poor at Liverpool), whose earnest temperance zeal had borne fruit in the large proportion of the scholars who were teetotalers. Philip had proved the great benefit of his music lessons, and he was anxious to procure a harmonium for the school. This led him to give some lectures, illustrated by the magic lantern, in the theatre, in connexion with the Mechanics' Institution, by which he raised about £6. There was a crowded attendance-lowpriced and attractive lectures were a novelty; but he felt that his gallery audience would "take a season to lick it into shape!" He took a deep interest in a meeting of the Anti-Slavery League, at which F. Douglass and H. C. Wright were speakers. An effort was being made to induce the Free Church of Scotland to "send back the money' " which they had received from American slaveholders.* "I devoted myself," he writes,

*H. C. Wright (Dublin, April 4, 1847) printed a letter to the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends in Ireland (who had accepted money from the Slave States, and declined £70 sent through Lord J. Russell, the proceeds of a special benefit at the Queen's Theatre): "Slaveholders or play-actors-which are the greater sinners?" Philip considered the committee "blind guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." He saw a difference, however, between the relief of the starving and the support of a Christian Church. In the first case, he would accept whatever help was offered, unless those who sent it took his acceptance of it as an approval of their practices, and a mark of fellowship.

"to keeping the gallery quiet, and to the Christian work of keeping the window open; to do which I was obliged to let the flap down and sit upon it, in the midst of the rush of air, and then to go and stand at the door on the cold flags for half an hour, holding the plate: and, strange to say, I did not catch cold."

The Belfast Sunday School Association had offered a prize for an essay on religious education, etc., and he felt that he must accept this call to write down his thoughts. Travers would not write, because a prize was offered. Philip's disinterestedness showed itself in his urging as many to compete as possible: and in writing what he did not expect would please, on teetotalism, peace, and purity, and showing the entire inefficiency of mere institutions and plans of religious teaching without the living spirit in the teacher. The prize was not awarded him, but the committee asked leave to print his essay. By his wish his name did not appear. It is entitled "The True Object and Means of Sunday School Instruction; being an Affectionate Address to Sunday School Teachers, by One of Themselves.” "I wrote it," he informed the secretary, "at a period of great mental languor, and did not succeed to my satisfaction at all. I had to sit up almost two whole nights. The thoughts, however, are matured."

At the end of November he went to Liverpool for the opening of a temperance hall and sanitary work, and caught a violent cold, which was followed by a carbuncle and boils. A visit to Stand revived him, and he wrote home: "I am in the way to be better,' as my father used to say;" but he had a relapse on returning to Warrington. He was disabled for more than a month, but on the first Sunday in 1847 he records : "Returned to my labour with great thankfulness, with mind refreshed, and, I hope, prepared for faithful work, and felt rejoiced to begin the year among my people." Warrington was now his home, and it became the scene of his most arduous exertions. This was the famine year. An interesting summary of its claims upon him is found in a letter (August 19, 1847, half-past four a.m.) to his friend R. Walsh in America :—

"I never knew such a winter and spring and summer, even in the bad times at Stand, and trust I never may again. Most of the mills stopped; one since November, another since January, others for two or three months, and the rest half-time. Only three mills are now going, and those but partially. Fustiancutting not one-twelfth work; pin-making, ditto. Inundated with many thousands of starving Irish of the worst class,* determined not to work; food terribly high; fever much worse than the cholera. We have had more than twice the usual number of deaths; † large wooden sheds erected [for the sick]; and have now got so accustomed to see people with starving faces that one hardly thinks of it. You may trace them gradually getting thinner and thinner, and more and more sickly; things gradually pawned; credit gradually used up; hard-hearted relieving officer, and altogether a mass of misery. At the same time the file-cutters, etc., in good wages, and drinking hard as usual; the starving people often getting drunk when they can, just as before. We have had a soup-kitchen with regular visitation, dividing the town into districts. For a fortnight I did not sit down in my study. The rich people, for once, found the wretched ones out in their courts and hovels, and I cannot describe to you the stenches we meet. To go into the bed-room of an Irish lodging-house, with one or two ill of fever, and no windows open, walls and floor and everywhere reeking with filth! I have gone everywhere that duty called me, fearlessly and safely, thanks to our Father's protection. I have worked hard, and, having saved up a bit of money for times of pressure at Stand,‡ have been able to do some good. Susan has been more than a helper—a leader

*Irish of another description also visited Warrington. He wrote in July that his friend Mr. Robson was giving out post-office orders, one Sunday, to 104 Irish harvestmen.

† He wrote to another friend in June: "The Union surgeon has died of typhus fever, and four other officers are down with it. We have set up a starving schoolmaster in a Ragged School, and must try to raise him 7s. or 8s. a week."

He wrote to a friend, who asked him (not in vain) for a loan of £10, that he was spending much more than his income, which, at that time, was £80 less than he had at Stand.