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Wesley's most famous cathedral; a magnificent church, if we may apply that term to a building of nature, among the wild moors; it was thronged by hushed and devout worshippers. Until Wesley went among these people, the whole immense population might have said, "No man cared for our souls;" now they poured in to see him there: wild miners from the immediate neighbourhood, fishermen from the coast, men who until their conversion had pursued the wrecker's remorseless and criminal career, smugglers, more quiet men and their families less savage, but not less ignorant, from their shieling, or lowly farmstead on the distant heath. A strange throng, if we think of it, men who had never used God's name except in an oath, and who had never breathed a prayer except for the special providence of a shipwreck, and who with wicked barbarity had kindled their delusive lights along the coasts, to fascinate unfortunate ships to the cruel cliffs! But a Divine power had passed over them, and they were changed, with their families; and hither they came to gladden the heart of the old patriarch in the wild glen-a strange spot, and not unbeautiful, roofed over by the blue heavAmidst the broom, the twittering birds, the heath flower, and the scantling of trees, amidst the venerable rocks, it must have been

ens.

wonderful to hear the thirty thousand voices welling up, and singing Wesley's words:

"Suffice that for the season past,

Hell's horrid language filled our tongues;
We all Thy words behind us cast,
And loudly sang the drunkard's songs.
But, oh, the power of grace Divine !

In hymns we now our voices raise,
Loudly in strange hosannahs join,

While blasphemies are turned to praise !"

Such was one of the triumphs of the Great Revival.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SINGERS OF THE REVIVAL.

CHIEF of all the auxiliary circumstances which aided the Great Revival, beyond a question, was this: that it taught the people of England, for the first time, the real power of sacred song. That man in the north of England who, when taken, by a companion who had been converted, to a great Methodist preaching, and being asked at the close of the service how he had enjoyed it, replied, "Weel, I didna care sae mich aboot the preaching, but, eh, man! yon ballants were grand," was no doubt a representative character. And the great and subduing power of large bodies of people, moved as with one heart and one voice, must have greatly aided to produce those effects which we are attempting to realise. All great national movements have acknowledged and used the power of song. For man is a born singer, and if he cannot sing himself he likes to feel the power of those who can. It has been so in political movements: there were the songs of the Roundheads and the Cavaliers.

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