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The Earthquake at Madeley

Monday, July 5.--About eleven we crossed Dublin Bar, and were at Hoy lake the next afternoon. This was the first night I ever lay awake in my life, though I was at ease in body and mind. I believe few can say this: in seventy years I never lost one night's sleep!

I went, by moderate stages, from Liverpool to Madeley where I arrived on Friday, 9. The next morning we went to see the effects of the late earthquake; such it undoubtedly was. On Monday, 27, at four in the morning, a rumbling noise was heard, accompanied with sudden gusts of wind and wavings of the ground. Presently the earthquake followed, which shook only the farmer's house and removed it entire about a yard, but carried the barn about fifteen yards and then swallowed it up in a vast chasm. It tore the ground into numberless chasms, large and small; in the large, threw up mounts,1 fifteen or twenty feet high; it carried a hedge, with two oaks, above forty feet, and left them in their natural position. It then moved under the bed of the river; which, making more resistance, received a ruder shock, being shattered in pieces, and heaved up about thirty feet from its foundations. By throwing this and many oaks into its channel, the Severn was quite stopped up and constrained to flow backward, till, with incredible fury, it wrought itself a new channel. Such a scene of desolation I never saw. Will none tremble when God thus terribly shakes the earth?

Monday, August 16.--In the evening I preached at St. Austle; Tuesday, 17, in the coinage hall at Truro; at six, in the main street at Helstone. How changed is this town since a Methodist preacher could not ride through it without hazard of his lifel

 

A Man of Seventy Preaches to 30,000 People

Saturday, 21.--I preached in Illogan and at Redruth; Sunday, 22, in St. Agnes church town, at eight; about one at Redruth; and at five, in the amphitheater at Gwennap. The people both filled it and covered the ground round about to a considerable distance. Supposing the space to be fourscore yards square and to contain five persons in a square yard, there must be above two and thirty thousand people, the largest assembly I ever preached to. Yet I found, upon inquiry, all could hear even to the skirts of the congregation! Perhaps the first time that a man of seventy had been heard by thirty thousand persons at once!

Monday, September 13.--My cold remaining, I was ill  able to speak. In the evening I was much worse, my palate and throat being greatly inflamed. However, I preached as I could; but I could then go no farther. I could swallow neither liquids nor solids, and the windpipe seemed nearly closed. I lay down at my usual time, but the defluxion of rheum was so uninterrupted that I slept not a minute till nearly three in the morning. On the following nine days I grew better.

Sunday, 19.--I thought myself able to speak to the congregation, which I did for half an hour; but afterwards I found a pain in my left side and in my shoulder by turns, exactly as I did at Canterbury twenty years before. In the morning I could scarcely lift my hand to my head; but after being electrified I was much better, so that I preached with tolerable ease in the evening; and the next evening read the letters, though my voice was weak. From this time I slowly recovered my voice and my strength, and on Sunday preached without any trouble.

Monday, October 4.--I went, by Shepton Mallet, to Shaftesbury, and on Tuesday to Salisbury. Wednesday, 6. Taking chaise at two in the morning, in the evening I came well to London. The rest of the week I made what inquiry I could into the state of my accounts. Some confusion had arisen from the sudden death of my bookkeeper; but it was less than might have been expected.


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This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
at Calvin College. Last updated on March 22, 2000.
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