application that it should be accordingly registered at the court of quarter-sessions. The three magistrates upon the bench require that he shall cease to use the house for religious purposes, until it has been duly licensed by this court. He is very well convinced that this is only a scheme to put an end to the services in that place altogether. (Herein, as it turns out, he is quite right: for, when the quarter-sessions arrive, the magistrates assume and exercise the illegal power of refusing to "record" the house.) However, as it will involve no more than the cessation of the services for a few weeks, he submits to this arbitrary stretch of authority, and consents to abstain from preaching at Ocho Rios until the court of quarter-sessions has been held. In dealing with the charge of preaching to slaves at unlawful hours, the accused refers to the very clause of the law under which the complaint has been made; and shows, what is very clear, that his case forms one of the exceptions there mentioned, inasmuch as he is a duly licensed minister,—licensed in the parish, and therefore entitled, by the new law itself, to continue religious services until eight o'clock; beyond which hour, even the accuser testified, those exercises were not continued. But he has to do with men who do not scruple to make the law bend to their own bad purposes and prejudices. It was pre-determined that the Methodist preacher should go to gaol, or pay a fine of twenty pounds at least; and, refusing to gratify these gentlemen by paying down this amount of his own or the Society's money, to gaol he is accordingly sent, committed by S. W. Rose, B. W. Smith, and David Brydon,—occupants, if not ornaments, of the bench, for "teaching and preaching to slaves at improper and unlawful hours, contrary to the true intent and meaning of the law now in force."

In the custody of the constable, the missionary is led to prison, one of the most filthy and noisome of all the loathsome prisons of Jamaica. The upper story of the gaol is divided into four apartments, two of which are used as the parish hospital, the partition walls not rising to the ceiling; but only part of the way, and surmounted with open lattice

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work; so that the unwholesome effluvia from the hospital float freely through all the apartments. One of the other two rooms is assigned to the missionary, while the second is crowded with prisoners. The four rooms occupy a space of thirty-five feet by twenty-five. Underneath, and separated only by a single-boarded floor, are cells occupied by three men under sentence of death, and by a crowd of prisoners, chiefly Negroes, who are awaiting their trial for various offences at the quarter-sessions. There is but one window to the missionary's cell, and that is so situated as to render the place almost intolerable. It is only by the free use of strong camphorated spirit, that he can overcome the nausea with which he is assailed all through the evening and the night. Ten long nights and days he endures this cruel confinement, after which he is set at liberty, with health broken, and physical energies much exhausted. As it is the blessed Sabbath, he bends his footsteps at once to the chapel, not far distant; where, enfeebled as he is, he conducts both the public services of the day,—rejoicing, with his afflicted, sympathizing flock, in the grace by which he has been sustained, while suffering for his Master's sake. On the Monday he reaches his residence at Belmont. Delightful is the change from that dreary prison to a sweet mountain home; and precious are the fresh and fragrant breezes which greet him there, where many sable hundreds testify by their tears the deepest condolence with their beloved minister, and with extravagant demonstrations welcome his return to his family and to them.

Having consented to abstain from preaching in the house at Ocho Kios until the quarter-sessions shall afford him th opportunity of having the place recorded for the purpose, he refrains from conducting any public service there, willing to conciliate prejudice by submitting for a season to an illegal restriction. At the proper time he presents himself before the magistrates; when the custos, who presides at the sessions, and another of the magistrates, express themselves in favour of registering the house at Ocho Rios, and granting the certificate. But the adverse influence of the rector has

been at work, and there is a large assemblage of magistrates who have been drawn to join the ranks of the persecutors, and have come together for the sake of putting down the Methodist preachers. The custos is outvoted, and the court decides upon refusing to grant any certificate. This amounts to a decision, that the services at Ocho Rios, which have continued for some years, shall be brought to a close, and the people in that neighbourhood deprived of sacred ordinances. The missionary is a man of meek and humble spirit, but also of courage. He is satisfied that these men have no legal authority for what they do; and, having shown his respect for what they choose to regard as law, and satisfied the Toleration Act, he concludes that he has done all that Christian duty and a good conscience require of him in the matter. And now, after much prayer, he resolves to obey God rather than men, and to refuse submission to a cruel intolerance that would leave dark multitudes around him to perish in their ignorance and sin. Accordingly he resumes the usual services all through the circuit, commending himself and his cause to God, and calmly awaiting the result; prepared to bring to a legal test, if need be, the authority assumed by the magistrates of St. Ann's. For some weeks he is suffered to go on unmolested, he and his brethren earnestly and confidently looking forward to the time when his majesty's disallowance of the persecuting law now in operation shall be signified to the governor. The rector and the magistrates also have some fearful anticipations of a similar kind, having probably received through the agent in London some intimation of the doom which is impending, at the Colonial Office, over this offspring of their intolerance; and, while the unrighteous law is still operative, they resolve to strike another blow. One day, during service at Ocho Rios, the missionary and congregation see the repulsive countenance of -peering into the chapel and around it. This is justly regarded as an omen of evil; for the presence of that man, like some bird of prey, augurs nothing that is good. No one therefore is surprised that on the following day the missionary finds himself again in the

custody of this spy, to be carried before the magistrates on the old charge of preaching to slaves in an unlicensed house; with the additional complaint of having married one slave to another without consent of the owner. The magistrates are, for the most part, as before, pliant and illiterate tools of the slave-holding rector. In vain the prisoner pleads that he has done all the law requires; and that, the house being certified, it is the fault of the magistrates themselves that it is not recorded; they having exercised an illegal power in refusing his application. In vain he pleads that he has violated no law by marrying the slave to the object of her choice, since none exists in the colony referring to marriage at all. (He might have added, that, until the missionaries introduced it, marriage was little known among any class of the people, and among the slaves and coloured people quite unknown.) As in the former case, the magistrates have come together to do only what they and their friend the rector had already resolved upon; and the persecuted servant of Christ is again handed over to ruffianly keeping, and taken back to the same unwholesome cell with which he is already familiar.

The place is indescribably odious, and produces loathing, which he seeks to counteract, as before, by the use of camphorated spirit, and other similar means. This fim he is committed for trial at the sessions, and not for a definite term of imprisonment. Bail is, therefore, sought and tendered for his appearance before the court; but difficulties are thrown in the way, and it is not until after the lapse of several days that the bail is accepted, and the suffering prisoner set at liberty. It is, alas! too late to save his life. He has never fully recovered from the effects of his former imprisonment. The deadly poison, inhaled during ten days' close confinement, is still lurking in his veins, corrupting the vital fluid, and weakening the citadel of life; and now, every hour that he breathes that polluted atmosphere, the subtle venom diffused through his system is quickened into activity, his strength is rapidly diminishing, and he is being hurried to the grave. It is, doubtless, the report

of the prisoner's failing health, made by the gaoler, that induces the magistrates to accept the proffered bail. Had he remained within those prison walls a day or two longer, he would scarcely have survived to pass through the gates. As it is, more serious effects than those of many years of wasting toil have been produced by a few days' imprisonment. Faint and exhausted, and almost dying, he is borne back to his mountain home, to leave it no more, till he ascends to that better home above, "the palace of angels and God." The cool and balmy air of the uplands revives him a little, and for a short time he seems likely to rally; but the seeds of fatal disease are within him, and the king of terrors has been permitted to mark him as his prey. The poison which has undermined all the powers of life is developed in a lingering fever, such as no medical skill can check; and it soon becomes evident to his weeping young wife that she must shortly be a widow, and her infant fatherless. Friends surround the bed of death, and do all that love can dictate for the relief of the sufferer. At intervals, when delirium ceases, he speaks sweetly of the allsufficiency of Divine grace, and the preciousness of the sprinkled blood; until, on the fifteenth day, waving his hand in triumph, and with a countenance all radiant, this witness for his Lord, while yet in the prime of youthful manhood, passes to the blessed spirit-land, to be numbered among those glorified ones who have resisted unto blood, and counted not their lives dear unto themselves, so that they might finish their course with joy. On the following day, amid the tears and lamentations of white and black, bond and free, the deserted clay is laid in that lowly grave, which afterwards, discoloured by time, met the eye of the traveller amid the ruins of the mission station at Belmont.

These things might not have been, had it pleased unerring Providence to spare the life of the Christian owner of these broad lands. But that good man has been sleeping in his family vault nearly a year; and his ransomed spirit is enjoying an endless rest. Methodism found him "floating upon