serjeant, who embraced him without ceremony; and it appeared that this serjeant and some of his comrades had kept up the forms of Methodism, and were in the habit of exhorting the people, in a warehouse which a friendly merchant had lent them for that purpose. Before Dr. Coke could wait upon this merchant, he received an invitation to breakfast with him he proved to have been one of his hearers in America, where four of his negroes had been baptized by the Doctor. The missionaries were immediately received into his house; they were encouraged by the governor, and by the merchants and planters to whom they were introduced. Pearce was left upon the island; and Coke, having placed every thing in as favourable a train as could he wished, proceeded to St. Vincent's, whither the other two missionaries had preceded him, and where he was joined by Baxter. One of the party was stationed there to assist the former preacher; and Baxter and his wife willingly consented to take up their abode among the Caribs, and endeavour at the same time to civilize and to convert them.

Continuing his circuit, Dr. Coke formed a society at Dominica, and finding all prosperous at Antigua and St. Kitt's, visited St. Eustatius. Here he found that the aspects were different. The black Harry, after the Doctor's departure from his former visit, interpreting the governor's prohibition according to the letter rather than the spirit, abstained indeed from preaching to his fellow-slaves, but ventured to pray with them. For this offence he was publicly whipped and imprisoned, and then banished from the island. And an edict was issued, declaring, that if any white person should be found praying with others who were not of his family, he should be fined fifty pieces of eight for the first offence, a hundred for the second, and for the third offence he should be whipped, his goods confiscated, and himself banished the island. A free man of colour was to receive thirty-nine stripes for the first offence, and for the second to be flogged and banished; and a slave was to

he flogged every time he was found offending." This, I think," says Dr. Coke, "is the first instance, known among mankind, of a persecution openly avowed against religion itself. The persecutions among the heathens were supported under the pretence that the Christians brought in strange gods; those among the Roman Catholics were under the pretext of the Protestants introducing heresies into the church; but this is openly and avowedly against prayer, the great key to every blessing. Notwithstanding this edict, and the rigour with which it was enforced, so strong was the desire of the poor people on this island for religious instruction and religious sympathy, that Dr. Coke found above two hundred and fifty persons there classed as Methodists, and baptized a hundred and forty of them. He remained there only one night; but the sloop which he had hired to carry him and his companions to St. Kitt's, having received much damage by striking against a ship, they were obliged to return; and Coke, who interpreted this accident as a plain declaration of Providence, whereby he was called on to bear a public testimony for Christ, immediately hired a large room for a month. Whatever danger might be incurred would fall upon himself, he thought, by this proceeding; whereas his friends would have been amenable to the laws if he had preached in their houses. The next day, therefore, he boldly performed service, and gave notice that he intended to officiate again on the morrow. But Dutch governors are not persons who will suffer their authority to be set at nought with impunity; and on the ensuing morning the Doctor received a message from the governor, requiring him, and two of his companions, who were specified by name, to engage that they would not, publicly or privately, by day or by night, preach either to whites or blacks, during their stay in that island, on pain of prosecution, arbitrary punishment, and banishment. "We withdrew to consult," says he; "and after considering that we were favoured by Providence with an open door in other islands, for as many missionaries

as we could spare, and that God was carrying on his blessed work even in this island by means of secret class-meetings; and that Divine Providence may in future redress these grievances by a change of the governor, or by the interference of the superior powers in Holland in some other way, we gave for answer, that we would obey the government; and, having nothing more at present to do in that place of tyranny, oppression, and wrong, we returned to St. Kitt's, blessing God for a British constitution and a British government."

There was in Dr. Coke's company a third missionary, by name Brazier, whom the governor had not heard of, and who therefore was not included in the mandate. He thought himself perfectly justified in leaving this missionary upon the island. There were times in which such an experiment might have cost the contraband preacher his life; and if the governor had been as eager to persecute as Coke supposed him to be, Brazier would certainly not have got off with a whole skin. The truth seems to be, that the governor's interference had in the first instance been necessary. Harry's preaching was of that kind which ought not to be tolerated, because it threw his hearers into fits. If Dr. Coke, on his first landing, had distinctly expressed his disapprobation of such excesses, things might possibly have taken a different turn. But he had learned to regard them as the outward signs and manifestations of inward grace; and the governor, seeing that the black preacher was acknowledged by him as a fellow-labourer, regarded him and his companions as troublesome fanatics, and treated them accordingly. And when he discovered that Brazier bad been clandestinely left behind, he behaved with more temper than might have been expected, in merely ordering him to leave the island. A man in power, who retained something of the religious part of the old Dutch character, removed the banished missionary to the little island of Saba, a dependency upon St. Eustatius, containing about three thousand inhabitants, of whom one-third were whites. There was

a respectable church there; but the people had been seventeen years without a minister. They received Brazier with the greatest joy, and governor, council, and people entreated him to take up his abode among them, offering him the church, the parsonage, and a sufficient maintenance. Coke went there, and was delighted with the kindness and simplicity of the people. He informed them what the economy of the Methodists was, and particularly explained to them what he called the "grand and indispensable custom of changing their ministers." They were willing to comply with every thing; and though Brazier had been ordered by the Conference to Jamaica, Dr. Coke consented to leave him at Saba. But when the governor of St. Eustatius knew where he was, he compelled the government to dismiss him, though with sorrow and reluctance on their part.

Two missionaries had been appointed to Jamaica; but Coke having thus disposed of the one, left the other to divide his labours between Tortola and Santa Cruz, (on which little island the Danish governor promised him all the encouragement in his power,) and proceeded to Jamaica alone, merely to prepare the way. Some of the higher orders, being drunk at the time, insulted him while he was preaching at Kingston, and would have offered some personal indignities to him, if they had not been controlled by the great majority of the congregation; but on the whole he was so well received and hospitably entertained, that he says, in honour of the island, he never visited any place, either in Europe or America, where Methodism had not taken root, in which he received so many civilities as in Jamaica. He went therefrom to America, and from thence returned to England, in full persuasion that the prospects of the society, both in Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, were as favourable as could be desired.

The cost of his spiritual colonization now became serious; for the resources of the Connexion did not keep pace with its progress, and it necessarily increased expenditure. The missions could not

be supported unless separate funds were raised for the purpose; and those funds could only be drawn from voluntary contributions. By the request of the Conference, Dr. Coke (never so happy as when he was most actively employed in such service) made a tour of sixteen months in the United Kingdoms, preaching in behalf of the negroes, for whom these missions were especially designed; and collecting money by these means, and by personal application to such as were likely to contribute; going himself from door to door.* The rebuffs which he frequently met with, did not deter him from the work which be had undertaken; and he obtained enough to discharge the whole debt which had been contracted on this account, and to proceed with the missions upon an extended scale. In the autumn of 1790, he made a third voyage to the Columbian Islands. A chapel had been built at Barbadoes, during his absence, capable of holding some seven hundred persons; but the hopes of those, by whom this building had been directed, had been greater than their foresight. Though the curate at Bridgetown, Mr. Dent, was the only clergyman in all the islands who countenanced the Methodists, and was heartily glad at receiving from them the assistance which he wanted; though the governor was not unfavourable to them, and they had begun under such favourable appearances, the preacher had become obnoxious: the nickname of Hallelujahs had been fixed upon his followers, and they had undergone that sort of opposition, which they dignify by the name of persecution. Persecution, in the true sense of the word, they have since that time suffered in some of the islands; but in these instances the missionary seems to have been protected by the magistrates when he appealed for redress. At St. Vincent's, the attempt to civilize the

* A captain in the navy, from whom he obtained a subscription, calling upon an acquaintance of Coke's the same morning, said: "Do you know any thing of a little fellow who calls himself Dr. Coke, and who is going about begging money for missionaries to be sent among the slaves?"-"I know him well," was the reply. "He seems," rejoined the captain, "to be a heavenly-minded little devil. He coaxed me out of two guineas this morning."-Drew's Life of Dr. Coke, p. 588. vol. 2.