er know you in heaven, and there be
permitted to resume and perfect that intercourse and acquaintance,
which here were so transient, and so speedily suspended by separation.
In the General Assembly, and Church of the First-born, I hope to meet
my honoured friend again, and to mingle with his, and with those of
ten thousand times ten thousand others, my everlasting Hosannas to the
Lamb that was slain. Even so, Lord Jesus! I was pleased and thankful
sometime ago in a Love-feast at Saddleworth, to hear the testimony of
one, who was awakened under a sermon you preached at Delph, from
'Behold I stand at the door, &c.,' on the Sunday you spent there with
me in April 1800. I mention this to show you, that you have some seals
of your ministry in these parts of the world, and that your labours of
love among us were not in vain in the Lord."

The kindness shown toward William Black during his visit to England,
and the fact that he was born there, naturally induced him to
entertain the idea of taking a circuit and spending his remaining
years in the old land, but Dr. Coke was strongly averse to him leaving
Nova Scotia where so great success had attended his labours, and his
influence was unbounded. Feeling that he could not very well leave the
care of the churches to others, without some provision being made for
superintending them in the event of his going to live in England, he
drew up a scheme of handing them over to the Methodist Episcopal
Church in the United States, and wrote to Bishop Asbury on the matter.
There were however political difficulties in the way, and being unable
to make satisfactory provision for supplying the churches with
ministers, and the danger of disaffection in the event of a war
between Great Britain and the United States, he decided to remain in
Nova Scotia and continue his active duties. Possessed of
administrative abilities of a high order, added to the skill and zeal
of an evangelist, he was a man of mark, who could not be left in
charge of a single circuit, but must have a wider field. Consequently
at the Conference held in Philadelphia in 1804, Dr. Coke requested him
to take a station in Bermuda for three or four years, and in order to
conciliate the members of the church in Halifax by the temporary
removal of their pastor, the Doctor wrote them a letter, in which he
said, "Mr. Black has been your apostle for above twenty years, and it
is now high time that he should be an apostle elsewhere. I ha