They must soon have become very well known, for so early as 1748, when a sad cluster of convicts, horse-stealers, highway robbers, burglars, smugglers, and thieves, were led forth to execution, the turnkey of the prison said he had never seen such people before. The Methodists had been among them; they had all yielded themselves to the power of “the truth as it is in Jesus,” and on their way to Tyburn they all sang together,
“Lamb of God! whose bleeding love
We now recall to mind,
Send the answer from above,
And let us mercy find;
Think on us, who think of Thee,
And every struggling soul release;
Oh! remember Calvary,
And let us go in peace!”
The hymns found their way to sick beds. The old Earl of Derby, the grandfather of the present peer, was dying at Knowsley. He had for his housekeeper there a Mrs. Brass, a good and faithful Methodist; the old Earl was fond of talking with her upon religious matters, and one day she read to him the well-known hymn, “All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw nigh.” When she came to the lines,