while you are shrieking in the blue flames of hell, and howling in the pit of dark damnation. May God save you!

"Though all the devils in hell got upon a damned man's shoulders, he would never sink to the bottom of that infinite abyss. But I tell you, man, I tell you, woman, here to-night, that my Lord can save you. My Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath, bled upon the cross, and went down into the dark grave, that you might be forgiven your iniquities, and love him and live with him in his joy forever. May Heaven help you to receive him into your hearts to-night!"

After an appeal of this kind at Birming ham, a gentleman called in a very perturbed condition at the house where our friend was entertained. Being told that Mr. Weaver was at home, he said, "Tell him that here is the Adulterer. He can't go home. He wants to speak to him. When he came into the room he fell flat on the floor. He was greatly terrified, and tore his hair crying, "Lord, do forgive me." After lying there some time he got up and said he was a married man and a member of a Christian Church, but had been living in the sin which the Holy Spirit of God had thus

brought home with agony to his conscience, and fanned into a fire unquenchable save by the blood of Christ. His heart was sprinkled from an evil conscience then, God in mercy saving him thus from the undying worm and the fire that never shall be quenched.

Having fulfilled his ministry at Birmingham, where many were added to the Lord, Weaver returned to Darlaston, and preached during the wake, by day in the open air, and at night in the chapel. On his way home one night he came to a public-house, outside which was a band of musicians sitting round a table on which their drink was set. He asked them if they could play "The Bleeding Lamb," and one of them said "Yes." He would give them a shilling, Richard said, if they would play it; but they admitted that they did not know it. Then he told them he would sing it for them, and began,

"In evil long I took delight,
Unawed by shame or fear,
Till a new object met my sight,

And stopped my wild career.
O the Lamb, the bleeding Lamb,

The Lamb on Calvary :

The Lamb that was slain, that liveth again,

To intercede for me."

After singing this hymn he prayed with

them, and they offered to play a long meter tune, which they did while he sang a hymn to it. He then spoke to them, and one of them took him by the hand, saying, “The Lord bless thee. Thou art right and we are wrong."

As he passed by another public-house he heard the sound of music and dancing inside. He walked in, and knelt down among them and prayed. The fiddle and banjo stopped, the dancers all quitted the room, and when he arose he was left alone with the fiddler, who said, "I'll never come here again, Mr. Weaver." One of the bad men in the house threatened to shoot him, but the landlady took his part, and the next night as he passed he found the house closed at an early hour. Shortly after, a man who had been there drinking on the night of the dancing was brought to Christ.

CHAPTER VIII.

RICHARD and his wife in the summer of 1859 paid a third visit to his mother. She was not, as on the previous occasions, at the stile to meet them, but was a confirmed invalid, a prisoner to be set at liberty only by the voice of her Lord, saying, "Come up hither." She was, however, to endure for some months longer before the hour of deliverance came. Her desire to hear her son once more was so strong that she induced his wife (for whom she entertained a warm affection) to help her out of bed, and seated by the window, wrapped in blankets, she listened while he preached in the chapel, which was very near the cottage.

A scene occurred at this time which Weaver related thus, when speaking at St. Martin's Hall, from the words of Simeon: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

"I remember, in the Sabbath-school of a village chapel, a little boy who was taught by an aged man with furrowed cheeks and

silvery hair. He used to put his hand upon the young scholar's head, and pray that God might bless him. One day the little boy was very noisy and rude in school, and when the teacher asked him to be quiet, the only reply he got was a kick on the leg from the lad, who told him to go to hell. The tears gushed to the old man's eyes; he dropped upon his knees, and said, 'Lord, bless the lad. Before I depart may I see thy salvation in the saving of this lad's soul. The Lord bless thee, lad!' For some fifteen years after this the old man had never met the boy. He had gone constantly to the chapel, and he had gone there many a time when there had been no one but God and himself, and they had had a good meeting nevertheless. One day he received information that a certain young man was going to preach. He knew the name and said, 'I will go and hear him.' When he went into the chapel the young man was preaching, in his way. The old man knelt down; after the other had done speaking he held up his feeble hands, and raising his dim eyes to heaven, said, 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.'