ing more than common pains in imparting religious acquirements. He was taught to sing psalms, as well as repeat his catechism and his prayers, and to attend church twice on the Sabbath day. But the parish happened to be in a state of shocking immorality-there was one man, in particular, who studied the art of cursing, and would exemplify the richness of the Welsh language, by compounding twenty or thirty words into one long and horrid blasphemy. As this was greatly admired among his profligate companions, Olivers imitated it, and in time rivalled what he calls his infernal instructer. The other parts of his conduct were in the same spirit ; and he obtained the character of being the worst boy who had been known in that country for the last thirty years. When he was about three or four and twenty he left the country, not having half learned the business to which he had been apprenticed. The cause of his departure was the outcry raised against him for his conduct toward a farmer's daughter: he was the means, he says, of driving her almost to an untimely end. It was the sin which lay heaviest on his mind, both before and after his conversion; and which, as long as he lived, he remembered with peculiar shame and sorrow.

He removed to Shrewsbury, and there, or in its neighbourhood, continued a profligate course of life, till poverty, as well as conscience, stared him in the face. He said within himself, that he was living a most wretched life, and that the end must be damnation, unless he repented and forsook his sins. But how should he acquire strength for this? For he had always gone to church, and he had often prayed and resolved against his evil practices, and yet his resolutions were weak as water. So he thought of "trying what the sacrament would do;" and borrowing, accordingly, the book called A Week's Preparation, he went regularly through it, and read daily upon his knees the meditations and prayers for the day. On the Sunday he went to the Lord's table, and spent the following week in going over the second part of the book, as devoutly as he had done

the first. During this fortnight he "kept tolerably clear of sin;" but when the course of regimen was over, the effect ceased: he returned the book with many thanks, and fell again into his vicious courses. Ere long he was seized with a violent fever; and when his life was despaired of, was restored, as he believed, by the skill of a journeyman apothecary, who, being a Methodist, attended him for charity. His recovery brought with it a keen but transitory repentance. This was at Wrexham. Here he and one of his companions committed an act of arch-villainy, and decamped in consequence; Olivers leavseveral debts behind him, and the other running away from his apprenticeship. They travelled as far as Bristol; and there Olivers, learning that Mr. Whitefield was to preach, resolved to go and hear what he had to say; because he had often heard of Whitefield, and had sung songs about him. He went, and was too late. Determined to be soon enough on the following evening, he went three hours before the time. When the sermon began, he did little but look about him; but seeing tears trickle down the cheeks of some who stood near, he became more attentive. The text was, "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?"

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"When the sermon began," says this fiery-minded Welshman, "I was certainly a dreadful enemy to God, and to all that is good; and one of the most profligate and abandoned young men living." Before it was ended, he became a new creature: a clear view of redemption was set before him, and his own conscience gave him clear conviction of its necessity. The heart, he says, was broken; nor could he express the strong desires which he felt for righteousness. They led him to effectual resolutions; he broke off all his evil practices, forsook all his wicked companions, and gave himself up with all his heart to God. He was now almost incessantly in tears he was constant in attending worship, wherever it was going on; and describes his feelings during a Te Deum at the cathedral, as if he had done with earth, and was praising God before his throne.

He bought the Week's Preparation, and read it upon his knees day and night; and so constant was he in prayer, and in this position, that his knees became stiff, and he was actually, for a time, lame in consequence. "So earnest was I," he says, "that I used, by the hour together, to wrestle with all the might of my body and soul, till I almost expected to die on the spot. What with bitter cries, (unheard by any but God and myself,) together with torrents of tears, which were almost continually trickling down my cheeks, my throat was often dried up, as David says, and my eyes literally failed, while I waited for God!" He used to follow Whitefield in the streets, with such veneration that he could "scarce refrain from kissing the very prints of his feet."

Here he would fain have become a member of the Society; but when, with much timidity, he made his wishes known to one of Mr. Whitefield's ministers, the preacher, for some unexplained reason, thought proper to discourage him. After a few months Õlivers removed to Bradford, and there, for a long time, attended the preaching of the Methodists; and when the public service was over, and he, with the uninitiated, was shut out, he would go into the field at the back of the preaching house, and listen while they were singing, and weep bitterly at the thought that, while God's people were thus praising his name, he, a poor wretched fugitive, was not permitted to be among them. And, though he compared himself to one of the foolish virgins, when they came out he would walk behind them for the sake of catching a word of their religious conversation. This conduct, and his regular attendance, at last attracted notice: he was asked if it was his wish to join the Society, and receive a note of admission from the preacher. His rebuff at Bristol had discouraged him from applying for what might so easily have been obtained; and the longing for the admission had produced a state of mind little different from insanity. Returning home, now that he possessed it, and exhilarated, or even intoxicated with joy, he says, that as he came to the bottom of the hill, at the entrance of the town,

a ray of light, resembling the shining of a star, descended through a small opening in the heaven, and instantaneously shone upon him. In that instant his burden fell off, and he was so elevated, that he felt as if he could literally fly away to heaven. A shooting star might easily produce this effect upon a man so agitated: for trifles, light as air, will act as strongly upon enthusiasm as upon jealousy; and never was any man in a state of higher enthusiasm than Olivers at this time. He says, that in every thought, intention or desire, his constant inquiry was, whether it was to the glory of God; and that, if he could not answer in the affirmative, he dared not indulge it; that he received his daily food nearly in the same manner as he did the sacrament: that he used mental prayer daily and hourly; and for a while his rule was, in this manner, to employ five minutes out of every quarter of an hour. Upon the whole," he pursues, "I truly lived by faith. I saw God in every thing: the heavens, the earth, and all therein, showed me something of him; yea, even from a drop of water, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand, I often received instruction."

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He soon became desirous of " telling the world what God had done for him ;" and having communicated this desire to his band-fellows, they kept a day of solemn fasting on the occasion, and then advised him to make a trial. Many approved of his gifts: others were of opinion that he ought to be more established, and was too earnest to hold it long. When he began to preach, his custom was, to get all his worldly business done, clean himself, and put out his Sunday's apparel on Saturday night, which sometimes was not accomplished before midnight: afterwards he sat up reading, praying, and examining himself, till one or two in the morning: he rose at four, or never later than five, and went two miles into the country, through all weather, to meet a few poor people, from six till seven. By eight he returned to Bradford, to hear the preaching; then went seven miles on foot to preach at one; three or four further to hold forth at five; and, after all, had some five or

six more to walk on his return. And as the preaching was more exhausting than the exercise, he was often so wearied, that he could scarcely get over a stile, or go up into his chamber when he got home.

When he had been a local preacher about twelve months, the small pox broke out in Bradford, and spread like a pestilence: scarce a single person escaped; and six or seven died daily. Olivers was seized with it the first week in October; heating things were given him by an ignorant old woman; and when some charitable person sent an experienced physician to visit him, the physician declared that, in the course of fifty years' practice, he had never seen so severe a case. He was blind for five weeks. The room in which he lay was so offensive, that those who went out of it infected the streets as they past. He was not able to rise that his bed might be made till New-year's day; yet, during the whole time, he never uttered a groan or a single complaint: "thus evincing," as he says, "that no suffering is too great for the grace of God to enable us to bear with resignation and quietness."

This long illness increased the number of his debts, which were numerous enough before his conversion. As soon, therefore, as he had gained sufficient strength for the journey, he set off for Montgomeryshire, to receive his little property, which had hitherto remained in Mr. Tudor's hands. The thorough change which had been effected in so notorious a reprobate, astonished all who knew him: when they saw him riding far and near, in search of all persons to whom he was indebted, and faithfully making payment of what the creditors never expected to recover, they could not doubt the sincerity of his reformation, and they ascribed it to the grace of God. Tudor explained the matter in a way more satisfactory to himself, because he could comprehend it better: he said to Olivers, "Thou hast been so wicked that thou hast seen the Devil." Having paid his debts in his own county, he returned by way of Bristol to Bradford, discharged, in like manner, his accounts in both.