fighting against God; and sitting there with my school-fellows around me, I inwardly said, O Christ, I have been a long time fighting against Thee, now I submit. At that moment it seemed as if a great light suddenly shone on my dark heart, and an assurance was given me that God accepted me through Jesus Christ. I was so happy that whether I walked home or floated through the air I cannot say."

His First Sermon.

Rejoicing exceedingly in the possession of his new-found joy he began to tell others the story of his blessed change, and at once commenced holding prayer-meetings with the boys in his bedroom. Without delay he entered upon definite forms of Christian work, and the preaching of the Gospel began to engage his most serious thoughts. He could not brook delay in this matter, so one day he called upon an elderly lady who lived in a cottage not far from the school and asked her if she would allow him to conduct a service in her humble dwelling, and Hugh having made the necessary arrangements, began at once to beat up a congregation for his first service. At length the eventful hour arrived, and the boy in Eton coat and collar, looking less than his fourteen years by reason of his short stature, took his stand on the cottage floor before a table spread with a white cloth and illuminated by two tallow candles. Seated on rickety chairs in front of him were some six or seven old people, amongst them being a wooden-legged old sailor, a person who suffered from rheumatism and groaned at every turn, the widow-proprietress and a few small boys. The juvenile preacher took for his text, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." Such

Hugh's name appeared on the plan of the Swansea Circuit when he was only fourteen years of age. Step by step this boy of wonderful promise found his way to the full work of the ministry, and many were the predictions uttered as to the great career opening up before him. His trial sermon, his "July examinations," his years of preparation for the ministry, all furnished assuring evidences that a man of rare and varied powers was making his advent in British Methodism. Immense crowds assembled to listen to this rising preacher and reformer. Dover, Brighton, London, and Oxford were centres which afforded Mr. Hughes ample opportunities for his marvellous gifts. and great were the victories which

the Divine Master enabled His devoted servant to win. Progress, reform, immense revivals and general uplift of the social and moral tone of the places blessed by his consecrated toil, followed in swift succession.

The whole Church began to feel the commanding influence of this man from the little Welsh principality. Here was at last a man of scholarly attainments, of profound passionate convictions, aflame with evangelistic zeal, grandly gifted as an organizer, a very prophet with a distinct message and mission not only to his circuit, but to Methodism, to the nation, and to British Christianity. By his sane enthusiasm, his magnificent audacity, his consuming devotion to God and to manhood, his unswerving loyalty to evangelical teaching, his broad catholicity of spirit, he succeeded in lifting the Methodism of England out of its ruts and grooves and giving it an inspiration for service and adaptation for which multitudes thank God to-day. Under the blessing of God, to a large extent he rescued the Methodism of the Mother Land from the humiliations and grief of a most lamentable shrinkage, and initiated movements which have secured a most assuring rehabilitation of the forces which alone can bring enlarging usefulness, confident expectation, and soul-inspiring victory.

The Missionary Apostle.

Who can forget that memorable scene at the Mission Breakfast Meeting in Exeter Hall, April 29th, 1882, when Price Hughes pleaded for the extinction of the embarrassing missionary debt of forty thousand dollars? Little did the officials of the Society dream of the results when they invited the popular Oxford preacher to speak and preach at their anniversary of that year. The Methodist Recorder de

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scribes his speech as ' one of marvellous and manifold power delivered in an accent of conviction that made it irresistible."

When he spoke of the debt as having assisted materially in killing Dr. Punshon, and stated as a literal fact that for months before his death he used to bedew his pillow with tears at the thought of that debt, the effect was thrilling and overpowering. So deeply had this man of power impressed his audience, that before the close of that anniversary the forty thousand dollars was raised and the appalling

No

mountain of debt was gone. wonder that the report of this meeting was translated into nearly every language in which Wesleyan missionaries preach (some twentyfive in number), and that the story of this blessed deliverance has gone out into all parts of the world.

Being requested on one occasion. to state how much he had collected for his own Church in various ways, after a careful calculation he found that it was considerably over one million and a quarter of dollars.

The West London Mission.
In no field occupied by the great

London preacher has he exercised so commanding an influence, and accomplished such gratifying results as during his sixteen years of service in this centre of London's tumultuous life. St. James' Hall, where this mission is located, is the most advantageously situated public building in this Queen City of the world. The activities of the West London Mission are wholly outside the walls of church or chapel. Here have been built up immense congregations in a section where Methodism was unrepresented, thousands have been added to the membership of the Church, a comprehensive network of allied mission halls and churches has been organized, and the Forward Movement in British Methodism initiated and demonstrated in the most wonderful form.

At

The afternoon conferences have always been a special feature and distinct attraction of the services in this great mission centre. first they met with no little unfriendly criticism from many who had become so rigid and fossilized that they found it impossible to adapt their teaching to the changing circumstances of modern society. Great questions were pressing upon the mind and soul of this prince of preachers. Must the Church of God adopt a policy of silence on the Sabbath day on matters that were eating at the very vitals of the nation, paralysing the Churches, and with satanic daring and maliciousness ruining vast multitudes for both worlds? Regular or irregular, it did not hinder this man of apostolic fervour and ambition. In fact, he believed in the irregularity of apostolic work and was convinced that he belonged to a Church of irregularities. To have Methodism stand confessed in any form before the world as a stupendous failure, incapable of social and religious aptitude and power, was to Hugh Price Hughes

he

too painful and insufferable a position for a Church possessing such a history. Is it too much to affirm .that in one way or another solved the problem of years and has demonstrated that Methodism can take its place in the van of the Militant Church, conspicuous alike for its flexibility, fervour, force and aggressiveness?

Free Church Federation.

Few men in the Nonconformist Churches in England have taken a more active part in the federation of the Evangelical Churches of the Old Land than the subject of this sketch. Both by voice and pen he has made most valuable contributions to what is now the most powerfully organized bulwark of Protestant Christianity in Britain -the Congress or Federation of the Free Churches of England. As President of the National Council and as one of the members appointed to formulate the New Catechism, representing the positive and fundamental fundamental doctrinal convictions of all Evangelical Churches, Mr. Hughes was recognized on every hand as a most important factor both in directing and controlling these new agencies, now accomplishing so much for the unity and success of the Evangelical Church.

If space permitted we should have noted at some length his seventeen years' editorship of the Methodist Times, a journal of the first rank and a most powerful force in all social and moral reforms. His election as President of the Wesleyan Conference in Hull, 1898, was a foregone conclusion. Out of 505 votes Mr. Hughes received no no fewer than 369. The year of his Presidency was a most fruitful one. The whole Connexion was, by the district conventions held in all the important centres of England, lifted into a richer atmosphere of spiritual life