He gives striking descriptions of the scenery of Shetland, and of the spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical condition of its inhabitants. An energetic, yet tender Christianity pervades the narrative; which is enlivened by characteristic anecdotes, and flavoured by a slight infusion of refined humour, which gives it a delicate piquancy, as of some wellcompounded condiment. It is the most effective picture of the Shetland Isles we have ever met with. Dr. McAllum delivered his report to the Conference of 1822, accompanying it by a most moving extempore appeal. On the strength of his representations and recommendations, the Shetland Mission was forthwith inaugurated, two missionaries being at once appointed. Dr. Adam Clarke, then President, was so affected by young McAllum's address, that he threw himself into the enterprise with enthusiasm, pledging himself to find the requisite funds. Such was his interest in the undertaking that he twice visited Shetland, though in his sixty-seventh year. The fact is, Dr. McAllum's natural and truthful eloquence took possession of the imagination as well as the intelligence and conscience of the Connexion, throwing around those misty islets an atmosphere of romance.

For reasons which can now be only conjectured, he declined a third year's appointment to the Edinburgh Circuit, notwithstanding the urgent invitation of the Quarterly Meeting. He gladly betook himself to his father's old station, North Shields. "At the close of the year," 1822, he

writes:

"It would argue more ingratitude than humility, if I were not to acknowledge that this last quarter has been one of considerable spiritual profit; and though I am yet far beneath the average of sincere Christians... yet I have had more spiritual-mindedness and established peace than formerly. I have looked into my heart, and

I see many marks of inbred corruption yet to be effaced, and many marks of the Saviour's work yet to be deepened. . . . I must seek for more Divine grace, that I be not moved to impatience or severity of speech. . . . It hath appeared, and more especially since I left the place, that, even in Dalkeith, my labours were not in vain. ...Our places of worship are crowded with attentive audiences. O that many an arrow may be lodged in many a heart!"

In 1823, he married the eldest daughter of the Rev. Henry Taft, M.D., himself a very notable man. This, like the former, was a real union of hearts. But the health of his second wife also soon began to show symptoms of failure. This new sorrow too was a source of sanctification. He records, "August 2nd.I seem to have some near glimpses of the state of those who are entirely sanctified."

Dr. McAllum left no part of his pulpit power on the North of the Border. A friend testifies :

"Never was any man more generally acceptable. For as a minister of Christ his talent was of the first order, and he was indefatigable, while the noble frankness which characterised his whole deportment, united to a disposition naturally amiable, ... conspired to give a living recommendation of the religion of which he was a minister. ... He felt the force of the injunction 'Go into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in;' and acting in the spirit of this injunction, he was successful in rescuing from the world a number of persons, whom he formed into a Class, and over whom he continued to watch with anxious solicitude. His visits to the sick were eminently instructive."

At the close of his second year at North Shields, the state of his wife's health which demanded a milder and more inland climate than that of the mouth of the Tyne, compelled him to leave a station where he was so useful, honoured and endeared, and, on his departure, so deeply regretted. By the Conference of 1824, he was appointed to the York Circuit, which then comprised,

besides the present two Circuits, that of Tadcaster also. Nearly fifty villages, within a radius of from ten to fifteen miles, were statedly visited by the three ministers. Those were grand years for York Methodism, when three such preachers as John Slack, David Stoner and Dr. Daniel McAllum occupied, in turn, its pulpit, albeit the frequent Connexional calls on the two most popular young men in Methodism, involved no trifling drawback from the rare privilege of their most attractive and effective ministrations.

It would be an unpardonable oversight not to note the points of comparison and contrast between the young Yorkshire usher and the young Scotch physician who now found themselves fellow-labourers in the Methodist ministry, especially, as by their early death, in the same Methodist year, they were indissolubly associated in the mind of Methodism, and as McAllum's portraiture of Stoner gives the most just and powerful idea of the personality of that lamented minister. The points of comparison were very striking and significant. There was not three months' difference in their age, Stoner having been born in April, McAllum in June, 1794; "and in their death they were not" much more "divided" than in their birth; Stoner taking the precedence by little more than eight months. They were the victims of the same capital error, -sin unto temporal death,-the merciless over-driving of physical powers ill-matched with their spiritual energies. They were both careful and conscientious cultivators of their naturally superior gifts; yet each was a more earnest student of his own heart than of his most favourite branch of literature; and each, in a religiously kept diary, has left the faithfully traced outlines of his hidden history. Each was endowed with

a masculine and active intellect, a vivid imagination and a perfervid temperament. Yet both stopped

short of a clear claim to the wonderful attribute called Genius, though McAllum came the nearer of the two. They were both men of stronglymarked individuality; neither imitators nor easy to be imitated; men who traded honestly and shrewdly with their own talents. They were equally intent on immediate and direct usefulness; both the one and the other rather shunned popularity than sought it, excepting as a vantage ground for assaults upon the kingdom of darkness. Both preached carefully composed and thoroughly mastered sermons, and each had a strong liking for awakening texts.

The trumpet

gave no uncertain sound, when McAllum's "What shall it profit a man, etc.?" "Choose you this day, etc; "The redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever;" "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven, etc.; "Why will ye die, etc.; alternated with Stoner's "The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, etc," and a succession of texts of that class. Moreover both were ardent preachers, and convincing examples, of Perfect Love.

But here the points of comparison end; all else was contrast. Their personal appearance might be termed antithetical. This is conspicuous in their portraits, as well as in the descriptions of their friends. Stoner was tall, gaunt, ghostly, hollowcheeked, with a long, deep and apparently tear-worn depression, stretching diagonally from the eye across the face; with a Baxterian expression of countenance; and hair combed and clipped with conscientious precision, and brushed down over his brow, as if to hide its intellectuality. His eyebrows hung so

tively shrunk further within it when any direct attempt was made to draw him out. But that he felt the burden and constriction of it very painfully is evident from his diary.* Like some of his superficial acquaintances, he mistook a chronic, and indeed a constitutional, infirmity for a grave spiritual defect.

On the other hand, McAllum's fascinating social qualities admirably reinforced the effectiveness of his public ministrations. His conversational powers were charming. His "speech" was alway with grace," in the twofold sense of the word, "seasoned with salt," the salt of Attic wit, as well as that of Christian courtesy. On this point Dr. Beaumont writes with enthusiasm :

"For agreeableness in private and social life, I never saw his equal, and never met his like. He possessed, in a high degree, and in equal proportions, the desire, and the art of pleasing. The music of his voice, the smile of his face, the kindness of his heart, and the intelligence and variety of his communications, rendered his society pre-eminently acceptable and delightful. He had a soul for friendship formed;' and sweet and grateful was its fellowship.

His literary and professional education; his close observation of, and practical acquaintance with, life and manners, men and things; his ample fund of instructive and stirring anecdote; his almost unequalled fluency and graceful elocution; his entire and constant self-possession; his uniform and overflowing sweetness.. of disposition, together with a very gentlemanly and easy address, gave to his companionship a charm which every one who was indulged with it felt and acknowledged."

The biographers of Stoner compare him to "a rich stone set in lead;" McAllum was a rich stone set in silver. Their style of preaching too was equally .contrasted; though they both were truly eloquent, and the texture of their sermons was closely argumentative,

*Memoirs. P. 328.

with inwrought imagery and manifold enrichment of well-selected diction. Both were careful stu

dents of style.

McAllum had a very high estimate of his colleague's "style." He describes it as

"Remarkably simple, pure and forceful. He was never coarse or vulgar, but he was easy to be understood. His words were, all of them, sought out and selected, on the principle of being the most familiar in which his ideas could be conveyed. For the same reason, his sentences were short and clear in their structure; neither loaded nor involved, but perspicuous and intelligible. He no more thought that what was perspicuous must be superficial, than that what was perplexed must be profound. His style was not meagre, but enriched with the purest and most classical terms which the example of the best writers has sanctioned among us. His were right words, and full of force; they had all the energy of compactness, of an equal structure; . they were condensed precision he never sacrificed specific gravity to bulk."

to

But Stoner's appalling earnestness and untamed imagination hurried him away into a sort of gigantesque style of illustration of which McAllum was as incapable as Wesley; illustrations like those of Pollok in the first Canto of his Course of Time, e.g. :

"Yet a few moments, and you will be enveloped in the curling, sulphureous flames of hell. . Hurricanes of fire and brimstone shall sweep across the infernal deep; and every blast shall howl, 'Eternity.' Every demon you meet will shriek, 'Eternity.' A monster shall gnaw your vitals, a monster with ten thousand tongues; and every tongue shall hiss, 'Eternity.'

Stoner's delivery was rapid to impetuosity; yet with him "action" was neither "first" nor second," nor even "third." He was almost as motionless as Isaac Keeling : in this respect much more like his ministerial biographer, Dr. Hannah, than his lay-biographer, William Dawson. But the momentum of his

articulation, the fervour of his tone and the white glow of his face, did all the work of gesture, pause and deliberate modulation. Here again, Dr. McAllum is his most favourable delineator: "Though rapid, it was perfectly clear; every word fell full and distinct upon the ear; and its very rapidity fixed attention, and by that means gave the more effect to his discourse."

Let us turn from McAllum's description of Stoner's delivery to Dr. Beaumont's description of McAllum's:

"As a preacher he was free from every disagreeable property or circumstance, habitual or occasional; and in manner, soft, elegant and impressive. His voice, which was not so remarkable for its power and compass, as for its melody and distinctness, fell gratefully upon the ear, and, being mastered with absolute power, and modulated with delicate skill, its intonations never became harsh. He was 'a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument.' Indeed, he was one of those few preachers of whom, by a rare combination of the most agreeable qualities, and the most happy proportions of style and manner and spirit, it may be said, with almost perfect truth, that they please everybody. And yet I do not conceive that Dr. McAllum's eloquence was of the first and highest order. His oratory was the sweet, even flow of a beautiful river; never the swell of the flood or the bound of the torrent. His preaching was not so profound as it was agreeable, not so argumentative* as it was persuasive. He was more Apollos than Paul, more Barnabas than Peter,-a son of consolation rather than a son of thunder. His speech was not the mighty sweeping rain, but a gentle, soft, insinuating dew. In his public discourse there was often a delightful richness and range of language, and when dealing with some subjects his acquaintance with science and philosophy contributed much to his advantage. On this, as on other accounts, his ministry was singularly acceptable to persons of taste and education, and was commonly attractive to young and inquiring minds."

* His MS. sermons do not sustain this judgment.

Reverse this picture, and you have Stoner instead of McAllum. In truth, the special mission of the two colleagues was to two different classes of persons. Stoner was just

the man to move the masses of his fellow countymen. He was essentially a revivalist; a stalwart reaper amidst the thick standing corn. His sermons were scythes, whetted to resistless keenness by study and by prayer, flashing with their swift and steady sweep, laying down multitudes at once. Few men in the history of Methodism have been so directly instrumental in the conversion of souls. Forty or fifty years ago it was a rare thing to attend a Lovefeast, within the populous district between Leeds, and Craven on the west, and the Yorkshire Wolds on the north, without hearing the testimony of one or more whom he had saved "with fear, pulling them out of the fire." McAllum's sentences pierced indeed, but like "the thrilling darts of harmony.' His sermon on "What shall it profit a man, etc.," shows on what a different plane of thought the two men stood. His gainer of the world is

"An elegant and accomplished voluptuary; all the grossness is separated from the indulgence by the modern refinements of polished sensuality. . . His taste is rich and cultivated; his acquirements. bounded only by the circle of science. He can enter into the very spirit of richly varied sound; . . into the soul of poetrymusic embodied in thought, from its lightest to its deepest productions. He can dwell with rapture on the poetry that meets the eye, the productions of the pencil. He is equal to all the beauties and open to all the delights of eloquencepoetry set loose from all the fetters of rhyme and metre; he has the well-turned period and the well-tuned voice, the charm of figure; the power to move men's minds."

"The well-turned period and the well-tuned voice." What a touch of Yet unconscious self-portraiture !