Wesley Corpus

Many of them were present at five in the morning, when I left them full of love and good desires. About nine I preached in the Town-Hall at Ballimannely; about twelve, at another little town; and in the evening, at Ballymena. Tues. 9.--We rode through a small village, wherein was a little society. One desiring me to step into a house there, it was filled presently; and the poor people were all ear, while I gave a short exhortation, and spent a few minutes in prayer. In the evening, as the Town-Hall at Carrickfergus could not oontain the congregation, I preached in the market-house, on, “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole of man.” The people in general appeared to be more serious, and the society more earnest, than they had been for many years. Thence we went to Belfast, the largest town in Ulster, said to contain thirty thousand souls. The streets are well laid out; are broad, straight, and well-built. The poor-house stands on an eminence, fronting the main street, and having a beautiful prospect on every side over the whole country: The old men, the old women, the male and the female children, are all employed according to their strength; and all their apartments are airy, sweet, and clean, equal to any thing of the kind I have seen in England. I preached in the evening on one side of the new church, to far the largest congregation I have seen in Ireland; but I doubt the bulk of them were nearly concerned in my text, “And Gallio cared for none of these things.” Thur. 11.--About nine I preached to five or six hundred people in the old church at Newtown, Clannibois. The sight of these vast buildings and large gardens running to decay, through the extinction of the family that lately owned them, (so successful was the scheme of those wretches who pur posely educated poor Mr. C-, the last of the family, in such a manner as to insure his not living long, and his dying without issue,) always makes me pensive; but still our comfort is, “There is a God that judgeth in the earth.” About twelve I preached at Kirkhubly: Thence we went to Port-a-ferry, and found a ready passage to Strangford. I stood 128 REv. J. Wesley’s [June, 1778.