Now, sir,' are his words when he had remounted, "I am a stranger, and you refused me the common rights of hospitality; I am a messenger of the Lord Jesus, coming to you, your family, and your neighbours, with glad tidings of salvation by Jesus Christ, and you have refused to receive me: for this you must account at the bar of God. In the mean time, I must act as my Lord has commanded me, and wipe off against you even the dust of your floor that cleaves to the soles of my feet: so saying, he took his right foot out of the stirrup, and with his left hand wiped off the dust from his sole: he did the like to his left foot, and rode slowly off, saying, "Remember, a messenger of peace came to your house with the gospel of Jesus, and you have rejected both him and his message." He went on his way, and the farmer turned into his house.' And then is added What was the consequence? A Methodist preacher was never afterwards within his house or before his door. Ruin came on him, and his family became corrupt, and were at last finally scattered; and he died not long after.' that That Dr. Clarke should ever have written this passage, as a young man, is strange that he should have reviewed it, as an old man, and not struck it out, is stranger. Does he mean to say, because this poor farmer (for that he was then poor, all that is said of him indicates) did not choose to open his house to Methodist preachers, being satisfied with such means of grace as his own parish-church might supply to him—for a parish-church he must have had-and bid a youth of whose person he knew nothing, and of his capacity to instruct him less, seek for quarters elsewhere, he was in the situation of those persons of old times who actually rejected the gospel of Christ altogether, closed their eyes to miracles wrought expressly in evidence of it, and blasphemed the Holy Ghost?-or that he, a stripling teacher-many would say with a doubtful commission-was justified in hurling at this offender a dreadful sentence of wrath, entrusted to men endowed with supernatural gifts by the Saviour himself, to be executed upon such, and only upon such, as wholly and positively denied Him?-or that because this yeoman's family fell into decay —no uncommon thing for the family of a yeoman-and he himself, after a while, went down to his grave-he has a right to conclude that the hand of God was upon this man for his sin in refusing hospitality to the Rev. Adam Clarke? We fear there was more here of the spirit of James and John, under similar circumstances, at the Samaritan village, than the preacher himself was aware. There is another incident related in this part of the work, if possible, still more offensive: it happened in the island of Jersey. The Methodists, it will be remembered, were at the first an un popular popular body. On this occasion, the meeting-house was assailed by the mob: the congregation, for the most part, withdrew at their first approach; but Adam Clarke, and thirteen others, remained: some of the people proceeded to work at the foundations of the building, which was of wood, as if they would pull it down; others flung stones; and one man flashed a pistol at Clarke. He determined to go out and face the danger-which was what John Wesley would have done in a moment, and what Virgil represents his gravem pietate virum as doing with excellent effect. The mob divided for him right and left; drums, fifes, horns, pitchforks, bludgeons, and all—and a free passage was made. Either,' says he, their eyes were holden that they should not know him, or they were so over-awed by the power of God, that they could not lift a hand or utter a word against him :' (i. p. 265) and, lest the hint should not be understood, the whole affair, which had been detailed at great length by Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, with the suppression, indeed, of his own name, as an illustration of Luke iv. 30—' but he, passing through the midst of them, went his way'-is here extracted from that work, and added as a note! But, certainly, the vanity of this good man, for such we honestly believe him to be, is exuberant; though we know not that we should have thought it worth while to take notice of it, had it been confined to matters indifferent. He might have told us of his pedigree!-of his ancestor who was pronounced by King William to be the best-bred gentleman he ever met '—of the feuds of the M'Leans, whom he counted in his stem-of his becoming 'the oracle of the company,' in a visit to Warwick Castle, and of his astonishing the good old housekeeper there by his superior knowledge of his triumph over all the literati of the metropolis,' touching the substance of a stone and the language of an inscription upon it—of his having been required, in his duty as editor of a considerable work entrusted to him, ' to solve many difficult questions and illustrate many obscurities, and of his having failed in none, though the subjects were such as were by no means familiar to him of his visits to the Duke of Sussex-how his Royal Highness observed, upon his remarks on several questions of bibliography, curious! and important!' and ordered his librarian to write them down-or how 'the Duke, after a great many to-s and fro-s, addressed him with great affection, and said, (scores being all around him,) " Dr. Clarke, I am very glad to see you—” -all this and much more of the same sort, and which was all submitted, we believe, to Dr. Clarke's eye for future publication-w -we might have passed over as harmless; but when this foible leads him to trespass upon holy ground, we owe it to ourselves and our readers to expose the error, and supply the key to it. John Wesley, however, had taught his followers, by his own example, this presumptuous carriage, of which a curious instance occurs in this portion of Adam Clarke's life. The incident is indeed briefly noticed in Wesley's Journal, but here we have the colouring and costume, which is half the battle. Wesley, being at Guernsey, took a passage in an English brig to Penzance-Adam Clarke sailed with him—the wind became contrary, and they had to make frequent tacks :— 'Mr. Wesley was sitting reading in the cabin, and hearing the noise and bustle which were occasioned by putting about the vessel to stand on her different tacks, he put his head above deck, and inquired what was the matter? Being told the wind was become contrary, and the ship was obliged to tack, he said, "Then let us go to prayer"— his own company, who were upon deck, walked down, and at his request, Dr. Coke, Mr. Bradford, and Mr. Clarke went to prayer. After the latter had ended, Mr. Wesley broke out into fervent supplication, which seemed to be more the offspring of strong faith than of mere desire his words were remarkable, as well as the spirit, evident feeling, and manner in which they were uttered. Some of them were to the following effect:-" Almighty and everlasting God, thou hast sway everywhere, and all things serve the purposes of thy will: thou holdest the winds in thy fists, and sittest upon the waterfloods, and reignest a king for ever!-Command these winds and these waves that they obey thee, and take us speedily and safely to the haven where we would be!" The power of his petition was felt by all. He rose from his knees, made no kind of remark, but took up his book and continued his reading. Mr. Clarke went upon deck, and what was his surprise, when he found the vessel standing her right course, with a steady breeze, which slacked not till, carrying them at the rate of nine or ten knots an hour, they anchored safely near St. Michael's Mount, in Penzance bay. On the sudden and favourable change of the wind, Mr. Wesley made no remark; so fully did he expect to be heard, that he took for granted he was heard. Such answers to prayer he was in the habit of receiving, and therefore to him the occurrence was not strange.'—p. 260. What would not the master of the ship that was sailing from Alexandria to Italy' have given for John Wesley as a passenger instead of St. Paul! Wesley, however, it may be observed, ' makes no remarks'—asserts no claims of his own, but very wisely and very safely leaves them to his admirers to assert for him. Adam Clarke now marries. Some of his love-letters are given, and are curious-one of them relates to the eternal sonship of Jesus Christ; a pet subject with Clarke, which the study of Bull's writings would have enabled him to discuss with better success, if VOL. LI. NO. CI. K it it must needs be thought germane to the matter on hand to discuss it at all. Another of them describes the lover's feelings :— • After I left you, I felt rather a sudden alteration in my mind; a gloomy resignation (tolerably good in its kind) took place; and was fast reared by a stoical insensibility.'—vol. i. p. 312. Sir Henry Vane himself could not have made love in language more mystical. Miss Mary Cooke, the eldest daughter of Mr. Cooke, a clothier of Trowbridge, was the lady of his choice. 'The connexion,' says the autobiographer, ' was too good and holy not to be opposed.' This we do not understand: it is a principle, however, if true, which must be satisfactory to fugitives for Gretna Green. At all events, Mr. Clarke did not see reason to interpret a mother's opposition to her daughter's marriage as a manifestation from heaven against the union, though on some other occasions he would have gathered as much or more from less things. However, Mary Cooke was a person not lightly to be resigned-an excellent woman, who took Clarke in his poverty, and loved him for himself; and lived to see him the friend of the great, the learned, the good-the foremost man of a powerful community: and, as we · contemplate him on his circuit, and her at her fire-side, Donne's amusing comparison of man and wife to a pair of compasses seems meant, by anticipation, for the methodist preacher, when blessed like Clarke 'The one doth in the centre sit; Yet, when the other far doth roam, And grows erect as that comes home.' Indeed, the locomotiveness of the preacher amongst the Methodists forms a striking, and, if properly viewed, an instructive contrast to the settled habits of the established clergy. Here we have Adam Clarke appointed to circuits containing twenty, thirty, forty stations each-called upon, therefore, to preach at least as many sermons every month, and condemned to ride more miles than we can tell. The extent of each orbit, therefore, is such as to admit of little or no pause at any point of it; and that orbit itself is changed every second or third year. Adam Clarke, in a little more than twenty years, experienced thirteen such removes. Such a system, if the whole country were abandoned to it, would soon be productive of serious injury both to the pastor and his flock; to the pastor, as begetting in him, if it did not find in him, a restless Scythian taste, which no habits of regular life would satisfy a tendency to which we think we discover in Adam Clarke himself; as cutting him off from solid theological attainments, by allowing him no time for study-an obstacle, which this excellent man and a few other preachers of inextinguishable industry may year, have overcome;―as enfeebling the energies of the pulpit, by the unconscionable demand of five or six hundred sermons in the which must needs therefore be lean and flashy songs;'-and as relaxing that security for exemplary character which arises out of the rigorous scrutiny which a resident minister of God must be prepared to defy, but which the itinerant may hope to evade :how much is conveyed by that rule of Methodism, and the reason of it, which proscribes the preacher from meddling with drugs!(vol. i., p. 198.) The system would be injurious to the people, not merely because whatever is so to the pastor must through him be equally so to the flock; but also because it would give them no opportunity of seeing the domestic and quotidian habits of their minister the eloquent example of the good man's life, as he sits daily teaching in the temple; and would deprive them of the advantage of those easy visits which he makes from house to house,' when, after the manner of the servants in the parable, and for a similar purpose, he goes into the streets and lanes of the city.' Meanwhile, Adam Clarke found time-we are at a loss to know how-to master many Eastern languages, and thus to furnish much valuable assistance to the Bible Society in the department of their translations-to complete a Commentary upon the whole Bible, which served as a sort of saving-bank for the incidental labours of forty years-and to select, arrange, and edit for the Commissioners of Public Records a collection of state papers, supplementary to Rymer's Fœdera, who, beginning with the reign of Henry I. and coming down to the sixth of Charles II., left much to be done by his successors before the raw materials for English history should be fully gathered together. This new edition of the Foedera (for such was the shape the work assumed) Adam Clarke carried through the press nearly to the close of the fourth volume; and then, wearied with a task which taxed even his patience beyond endurance, resigned it into other hands. It will be seen from this undertaking, which was not strictly within the province which he had marked out for himself, that he ceased, as he grew riper in knowledge and judgment, to think the love of literature a sin; and accordingly we find him, when, as President of Conference, he had to visit various parts of the kingdom-with a view to promote the general interests of religion by sermons, speeches, and the like-making a pilgrimage by the way to the monument of Burns, in whom Scotland must ever feel with regret that she neglected a man who is her boast and her honour;' and rambling amongst the rocks a whole summer's day, to determine the scene of The Gentle Shepherd.' The various events of his busy life, active and contemplative, K 2 thus |