"O Jenner! thy book, nightly phantasies rousing,
Full oft makes me quake for my heart's dearest treasure;
For fancy, in dreams, oft presents them all browsing
On commons, just like little Nebuchadnezzar.
There, nibbling at thistle, stand Jem, Joe, and Mary,
On their foreheads, oh, horrible! crumpled horns bud;
There Tom with his tail, and poor William all hairy,
Reclined in a corner, are chewing the cud."
Even in Berkeley, Jenner was pursued with ridicule and suspicion; but he went quietly on his rounds, waiting confidently till the storm was laid, plashing through the Gloucestershire lanes in the garb that an acquaintance has thus described:—"He was dressed in a blue coat and yellow buttons, buckskins, well-polished jockey-boots, with handsome silver spurs, and he carried a smart whip with a silver handle. His hair, after the fashion, was done up in a club, and he wore a broad-brimmed hat." But Jenner, says Mr. Jeaffreson, found also compensation for all the ridicule and opposition "in the enthusiastic support of Rowland Hill, who not only advocated vaccination in his ordinary conversation, but from the pulpit used to say, after his sermon to his congregation, wherever he preached, 'I am ready to vaccinate to-morrow morning as many children as you choose; and if you wish them to escape that horrid disease, the small-pox, you will bring them.' A Vaccine Board was also established at the Surrey Chapel—i.e. the Octagon Chapel, in Blackfriars Road. 'My Lord,' said Rowland Hill once to a nobleman, 'allow me to present to your Lordship my friend, Dr. Jenner, who has been the means of saving more lives than any other man.' 'Ah!' observed Jenner, 'would that I, like you, could say—souls.' There was no cant in this. Jenner was a simple, unaffected, and devout man. His last words were, 'I do not marvel that men are grateful to me; but I am surprised that they do not feel gratitude to God for making me a medium of good.'"
ANGEL-WORSHIP.
A now obsolete ecclesiastical custom in Scotland was, Dean Ramsay says, that the minister should bow in succession to the heritors or proprietors in the parish, who occupied the front gallery seats; a custom, when the position of the heritors was tolerably well matched, that led to an unpleasant contest at times as to who was entitled to the precedence of getting the first bow. A clever and complimentary reply was made by Dr. Wightman of Kirkmahoe, when rallied on one occasion for neglecting this usual act of courtesy one Sunday. The heritor who was entitled to, and always received, this token of respect, was Miller of Dalswinton. One Sunday, the Dalswinton pew was filled by a bevy of ladies, but no gentleman was present; and the Doctor—perhaps because he was a bachelor, and felt a delicacy in the circumstances—omitted the usual salaam in that direction. A few days after, meeting Miss Miller (who was widely famed for her beauty, and afterwards became Countess of Mar), she rallied him, in presence of her companions, for not bowing to her on the Sunday. The Doctor immediately replied, "I beg your pardon, Miss Miller; but you know, surely, that angel-worship is not allowed by the Church of Scotland;" and, lifting his hat, he bowed low and passed on.
BUNYAN'S SUCCESSFUL AND PRESISTENT PREACHING.
A student of Cambridge observing a multitude flock to a village church on a working day, inquired what was the cause. On being informed that "one Bunyan, a tinker," was to preach there, he gave a boy a few halfpence to hold his horse, resolved, as he said, "to hear the tinker prate." The tinker prated to such effect, that for some time the scholar wished to hear no other preacher; and, through his future life, gave proofs of the advantages he had received from the humble ministry of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan, with rude but irresistible zeal, preached throughout the country, and formed the greater part of the Baptist churches in Bedfordshire; until, at the Restoration, he was thrown into prison, where he remained twelve years. During his confinement he preached to all to whom he could gain access; and when liberty was offered to him on condition of promising to abstain from preaching, he constantly replied, "If you let me out to-day, I shall preach again to-morrow." Bunyan, on being liberated, became pastor of the Baptist Church at Bedford; and when the kingdom enjoyed more religious liberty, he enlarged the sphere of his usefulness by preaching every year in London, where he excited great attention. On one day's notice, such multitudes would assemble, that the places of worship could not hold them. "At a lecture at seven o'clock in the dark mornings of winter," says one of his contemporaries, "I have seen about twelve hundred; and I computed about three thousand that came to hear him on a Lord's day, so that one-half of them were obliged to return for want of room."
LETTSOM'S LIBERATION OF HIS SLAVES.
Dr. Lettsom, the founder of the Sea-Bathing Infirmary at Margate, and of the General Dispensary, was left by his father a property, which happened to consist almost entirely of a number of slaves on an estate in Jamaica. When the benevolent doctor went out to the West Indies to take possession of his inheritance, he is said to have emancipated every one of the slaves on his arrival; so that, in the words of his biographer, "he became a voluntary beggar at the age of twenty-three." The doctor went afterwards to Tortola, where, by his practice as a physician, he amassed a considerable sum of money, with which he returned to England in 1768, and attained a distinguished position among the Metropolitan practitioners.
CIVIL TO THE PRINCE OF EVIL.
The devil, in his malignant wrestlings with the spirits of the righteous, has not always been so energetically and uncivilly received as by Luther and his ink-bottle. It is related in all seriousness, that a minister who "used often to preach for Mr. Huntington, was talking one Lord's day morning, at Providence Chapel, about a trial he underwent in his own parlour, wherein the devil had 'set in' with his unbelief to dispute him out of some truth that was essential to salvation. He said he was determined that the devil should not have his way, and he therefore 'drew a chair for him, and desired him to sit down that they might have it out together.' According to his own account, he gained a great victory over the empty chair." He did better in his confidence than Barcena the Jesuit did in the opposite spirit; who told another of his order that when the devil appeared to him one night, out of his profound humility he rose up to meet him, and prayed him to sit down in his chair, for he was more worthy to sit there than he!