EARLY WESLEYAN PREACHERS.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 281, 6 May 1875, Page 2

EARLY WESLEYAN PREACHERS.

(Irish Evangelist.) For some years no stated provision whatever was made for the preacher. At a later period the circuits were directed to pay, if they could, £3 for his clothes and books. M ather was the first who received an allowance for his wife—it amounted to 4s a week. An additional allowance of 20s a quarter was made for each child. When the preacher was at home Is 6d a day was allowed for hia board; abroad, he lived among the people. It was no wonder that they should sometimes be “ brought to the last shilling.” In such a predicament it is reported that Samuel Bradburn once wrote to Mr Wesley an account of his sufferings, and Mr Wesley sent the following laconic reply, enclosing a five pound note;—“ Dear Sammy—Trust in the Lord to do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Yours affectionately, John Wesley.” Bradburn replied:—“ Reverend and dear Sir—l have often been struck with the beauty of the passage quoted in your letter, but I must confess that I never saw such useful expository notes on it before. I am, reverend and dear sir, your obedient and grateful servant, S. Bradburn.” In 1787 Jonathan Crowther and Duncan M ‘Allam were appointed to Inverness. Their journey to it was adventurous and dangerous; their circuit was large and their allowance next to nothing, for Crowther only received 50s for the whole year’s labor. He wrote to Wesley:—“No man is fit for Inverness Circuit unless his liesh be brass, his bones iron, and bis heart harder than a stoic’s. 1 f I were doing good 1 should be content (if I had them) to sacrifice seven lives during the year; but to live in misery and die in banishment for next to nothing is afllicting indeed.” When Thomas Taylor was in Glasgow he frequently desired his landlady not to provide anything for dinner, and a little before dinner dressed himself, and walked out till dinner, and then went home to his hungry room with a oruol appetite, and confesses that he had never kept so many fasts either before or since. John Jane died in 1750, and Wesley thus notices his death in his journal:—“ All his clothes, linen, and woollen stockings, hat and wig, are not thought sufficient to answer his funeral expenses, which amounted to £1 17s 3d. All the money he had was Is 4d, enough for an unmarried preacher of the Gospel to leave,'*