them to escape, shall I be called an enthusiast
now? No, sinner, I am not an enthusiast in
so doing; I call on thee aloud to fly for refuge
to the hope set before thee in the Gospel of
Christ Jesus."

William Huntington, the coalheaver, was a
strong contrast to Rowland Hill, and was
immeasurably inferior to that really remarkable man
in every respect. Huntington was born in the
Weald of Kent; his father was a day labourer,
earning seven or eight shillings a week.
Huntington, in his published sermons, tells several
anecdotes of his childhood, one of which shows
his inordinate conceit and vanity. He had a
great desire to go as errand-boy into the
service of a certain Squire Cooke; but the squire
already had an errand-boy, with whom he was
very well satisfied. Huntington bethinking
himself that if all things were possible with
God, it was possible for the Almighty to send
him into Squire Cooke's service, and procure
the discharge of this unfortunate boy, asked
the Almighty in an "extempore way" (his own
words) "to give him that boy's place;" and
made many promises how good he would be if
this request were granted. Some time after
a man came to his house, and told him that
Squire Cooke's boy had been turned away for
theft, and advised him to go and apply for
the place. He did so, and (as a matter of
course) obtained the situation. The inference
that the theft was committed for Huntington's
special behoof through Divine interposition, is
very shocking.

On another occasion when this favoured
gentleman was older, he was again in want of a situation;
a part of his history which appears to us to
be highly probable. He was informed that a
certain Squire Pool, of Charren in Kent, was in
want of a servant. He went after the place,
and, on the way, he prayed God to grant him the
situation. When he arrived at the gentleman's
house, he found a servant in the parlour, with
whom the gentleman had partly agreed; but the
squire immediately broke off with this man when
he saw Huntington (very much to his subsequent
regret, we have no doubt), and engaged that
lump of conceit. Huntington ascribed this, of
course, to the great influence of his prayers, and
the high regard in which the Almighty held him.
He soon left this situation, too (through a want
of appreciation on the part of sinners), and tried
to set up as a cobbler; failing that, as a
gardener. He obtained a gardener's situation, and
lost it (so he says) for refusing to work on
Sundays; he then became reduced to the necessity
of labouring as a coalheaver, and began to preach
in earnest.

Huntington used generally to preach at
Woking; but he also visited his friends, and
preached in their houses. In his sermons, The
Bank of Faith, and God, the Guardian of the
Poor, printed with an account of his life, he
mentions, as an instance of the Lord's care for
him, that he had ordered a box of clothes to
be left at the Star Inn, at Maidstone in Kent,
and that he went for it with only a shilling
in his pocket. When he arrived at Maidstone
he found that the box had been sent on by the
carrier, so he had to go back again without it.
He had spent his shilling, was very hungry
and tired, and began to think that if he had
faith and prayed, he might have anything he
wanted. Just then, the thought seized him that
he would go out of the footpath into the horse-
road; he did so, and instantly saw a sixpence
lying in the road, and, a little further on, a
shilling. He attributed his finding these, to the
regard the Lord had for him, and to the effect
of his prayers, and to his great faith.

On another occasion, a heavy fall of snow
threw him out of work. In the night he prayed
the Lord to send the snow away. When he got
up next morning, he found it all melted. No
doubt, if he had lived in the last great frost, he
would have procured a thaw immediately.

Some of this man's printed sermons are very
ludicrous. In one of them, he relates that, being
greatly in want of a pair of leather breeches,
he prayed very earnestly to God for this favour.
He went to London to get a pair on credit at a
shop belonging to one of his friends. Not finding
the shop, he called on another friend of
his, a shoemaker, who told him that a parcel
had been left there for him. He opened the
parcel, and found that it contained a pair of
leather breeches, which fitted him perfectly,
although he had never been measured for them.
In a letter he wrote to the unknown donor, he
declared that God must not only have put it into
the heart of that charitable personage to send
him a pair of breeches, but must also have
given him his (Huntington's) exact measure.

One Sunday, as he was rising early to go
to Moulsey to hear a popular preacher who was
coming to preach there, there came a voice
which he both heard and felt, saying, "You
must preach out of doors to-day, and you must
preach from this text: 'Go therefore into the
highways, and as many as ye find, bid to the
marriage.'" He went to the meeting. The
preacher did not make his appearance, and
Huntington got up and preached with such
effect, that a young widow fell down in a fit
caused by "violent convictions," and was obliged
to have a blister applied to her head. We
strongly recommend this remedy for general
adoption in similar cases.

At the latter part of his life, Huntington
preached several sermons, which were afterwards
printed separately. Among them is The
Coalheaver's Cousin rescued from the Bats. In one
of these compositions he says, in reference to
a gentleman having made him a present of ten
guineas, "I found God's promises to be the
Christian's bank-notes; and a living faith will
always draw on the Divine Banker; yea, and
the spirit of prayer and the deep sense of want
will give an heir of promise a filial boldness at
the inexhaustible bank of heaven." He was
also in the habit of calling the Almighty his
Bank, his Banker, and his blessed Overseer.

A very different man from Huntington was
the Rev. William Dodd, LL.D. He is