undeviating regularity, twice or thrice every Sabbath. In vain he strove to satisfy himself with the husks of mere formality.

"A pebble in the streamlet's track has turned the course of many a river;" and it was a seemingly trivial incident that led John Greenhill into the path of evangelical truth and experience. At the pay-table on a certain Saturday night, a fellow-workman, on the look-out for opportunities of doing good, said to him, "We have a prayer-meeting to-morrow morning; will you come?" Still in bondage to formalism, he conceived that this might be an improvement upon his programme of church-going, and he accepted the invitation. By some mischance, however, he arrived the next morning in time to see the prayer-meeting breaking up. A classmeeting followed; he was invited to stay, and consented. These are the words in which he relates the effects produced upon him by what he heard: "The meeting was made a real blessing to me. The statements made, and the advices given, much struck me: I was amazed. I had thought I knew something, but I saw I knew nothing. My eyes were opened: my judgment informed. I felt the need of those blessings named by the members." The agonies of alarm passed away, but they left a steady, strong desire for Divine mercy. In this frame of mind he received his first ticket, in March, 1811; and soon afterwards he attended for the first time a lovefeast. He rose to speak; and while telling of God's mercy in imparting a desire for pardon, light broke suddenly upon his spirit, and the desired blessing was given. This manifestation of God's pardoning love brought an ccstatic delight, which lasted many days.

From the time of his conversion he became an earnest worker for God. Entering the Sunday school at Branston, he was chosen first a visitor and afterwards a superintendent. Removing to Tysoe, after three years' toil at

Branston, he became a local preacher; his piety being considered, after the manner of those working days, a sufficient guarantee of qualification, and thus he escaped the ordeal of a local preachers' examination. For sometime change was the law of his life; successive removals, to different places, were thought by him desirable and providential.

At length he settled at Shipston; and married there, in the year 1824, a pious young woman, who conducted a small drapery business. To this business, which his wife continued to carry on, he added a small school, of which he took charge. And now began a period of severe trials and sorrows. Surely few lives have been more chequered than his. A large family gathered about the godly pair. The children were sickly, and the wife's health was shattered. Doctors' bills had to be

met year after year. Then the prejudices of the town were strong against these consistent Methodists, and their trade suffered. After thirteen years' struggling against accumulating business difficulties, the brave wife's health completely succumbed to anxiety and fatigue, and she died in 1837. Mr. Greenhill afterwards married a godly woman, of superior intellect, who died peacefully in the Lord, and whom he survived some years.

For several years after the death of his first wife, Mr. Greenhill battled with the difficulties just named; but at length a complete failure became inevitable. The amount realized by the disposal of his business was fully paid to the creditors, who expressed their entire satisfaction at the manner in which he had acted. Some of them, however, he could not pay in full, and a balance was left owing to them.

At this time of deep distress, while striving to earn a living at book-binding, a sick daughter was compelled, by rapidly declining health, to return to her home. There is something touchingly mournful in the fact, that from this daughter he borrowed all her

little, hard-earned savings, amounting to twenty-six shillings. Adding to this amount a few shillings of his own, he again embarked in business. In two or three years he had so prospered as to have a small stock of stationery and grocery," my own," as he proudly records in a brief autobiographical sketch which he wrote a few years before his death. By the blessing of God prosperity continued to flow in upon him; and in a few years he was able to retire upon a competency. From the small beginning of a thirtyshilling capital has grown one of the most extensive and flourishing businesses in Shipston and the neighbourhood. He wrote, "I have retired upon a sufficiency for life. I have honoured God, (I desire to say this with deep humility,) and He has honoured me. All praise to Him, through Jesus Christ." But how about the creditors left unpaid at the failure? It is pleasing to relate that his first savings, after the tide of prosperity set in, were devoted to the paying of the unpaid debts. He did not think that in satisfying the law of his country he had therefore fulfilled the law of God. He did not believe that a respectable legal "whitewashing was the equivalent of an inward and God-given acquittal. Legally exempt, he held himself morally a debtor; and he preserved, as being among his choicest possessions, the letters and receipts which showed a full discharge of every obligation that rested upon him. One such letter says, "I assure you I almost envy you the proud satisfaction you must feel in thus discharging this debt."

During the chequered years of his pilgrimage he was faithful to his Christian profession. Through all those years of tempest he acknowledged

God as the Helmsman of his life. "I had not forsaken the Lord," he wrote, "or His cause. My house was open for the preachers; nor did I abate my payments." He never allowed domestic trouble or business perplexities to interfere with his work for his Master. Never did local preacher attend more conscientiously to his appointments than he. Until he had reached his seventyeighth year he toiled with unremit. ting vigour in a Circuit scattered for miles over a hilly country. Very multiform, in fact, was his work for Christ and Methodism. For more than half a century he was a faithful classleader, and was, at various periods, Circuit-steward, Society-steward, Chapel-steward, and sick-visitor. So large was his beneficence that during his latter years, when he was in a comfortable position pecuniarily, he lived on the humblest fare, in order that he might have a larger amount to give to the necessitous; and often has he been known to be well-nigh penni. less as the quarter drew to a close.

He was an ardent lover of souls, and sought the wanderers in the most squalid and forbidding localities.

The lovelier and more gentle features of his character may have been shaded and partially obscured by eccentricities and austerity of manner; but when his spare and tottering form was taken from our midst, the general confession was, "The best man in Shipston is gone." For several decades of years preceding his death he was the possessor of that perfect love in the heart which begets perfect devotion of the life to God. His death, which took place on the 20th of December, 1870 was serenely triumphant. He had attained to the ripe age of eighty-one years.

THOMAS RIGBY.