from suicide. I just got in in time to save the man, and relieve his
exhausted wife, and I was enabled to reconcile the man to live a little
longer, and try teetotalism again. My misguided superintendent never
attempted to reason with me, but when he thought he had a chance of
punishing me for my teetotalism, he snatched at the apparent opportunity
with the greatest eagerness.

One week night, when appointed to preach in Chester Chapel, I gave the
people a sermon on temperance. Some days after, I was summoned to a
meeting of officials, to give an account of my doings. I attended. My
superintendent, the bitter enemy of teetotalism, was in the chair, and
on each side of him sat a number of men of similar feelings, and of
grosser habits. I was told there was a complaint against me, to the
effect that the last time I was at Chester I had preached teetotalism
instead of the Gospel. I said, "Is that all?" And they answered "Yes."
"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourselves," I said, and left the
meeting. What they did after my departure I was never told.

One man in that neighborhood circulated a report that I had asked my
mother-in-law, who had been staying some time at our house, to have a
glass of brandy and water, when she was leaving for home in the coach.
This slander was refuted by a deputation, who at once visited my
mother-in-law, and brought back from her a flat contradiction of the
statement.

I ought to say, that while I was in this circuit, hundreds of drunkards
were reformed, many of whom became happy, exemplary, and useful members
of the Church. I was the means of tens of thousands becoming teetotalers
in the country round about, and the happy effects of my labors in those
regions remain, to some extent, to the present day.

12. In 1837, while I was stationed in the Mossley Circuit, I began a
weekly periodical called the _Evangelical Reformer_. I had long wished
for a suitable means of laying my views before my friends, but had found
none. The editor of the magazine published by the Body to which I
belonged was a very disagreeable man, and to me he was more
unaccommodating and offensive than to others. He would have published
articles under my name, but not till he had altered them, and made them
conformable to his own ideas and tastes. And this was more than I could
endure. There was another periodical which I could use, and had used
occasionally, but it lent itself to ill-disposed people as a vehicle of