98 MINISTRY AT WARRINGTON. [Chap. IV. 



shadowed forth in love of friends, that keep me from a com- 

 pletely reprobate mind. ... I never thought, three years ago, 

 that I could have fallen as much as I have done. ... I am 

 preaching an historical religion ; not what I feel now, but what 

 I felt once, and therefore know to be true." Of this period, 

 he afterwards wrote to him : " I asked God to chasten me very 

 much in the way He thought best, and He has done so ; . . . 

 and I have seen His hand in it all." His heart knew its own 

 bitterness, but he did not wish to dwell on it or record it. This 

 half-year he made no remarks in his pulpit-record, and he 

 discontinued his journal. " I am always sorry," he told his 

 mother, " when a cloud gets daguerreotyped." 



He was cheered at Warrington by having a new and 

 spacious school-room, erected in the ministry of the Rev. 

 F. Bishop (subsequently so efficient as minister to the poor at 

 Liverpool), whose earnest temperance zeal had borne fruit in 

 the large proportion of the scholars who were teetotalers. Philip 

 had proved the great benefit of his music lessons, and he was 

 anxious to procure a harmonium for the school. This led him 

 to give some lectures, illustrated by the magic lantern, in the 

 theatre, in connexion with the Mechanics' Institution, by which 

 he raised about £6. There was a crowded attendance — low- 

 priced and attractive lectures were a novelty ; but he felt that his 

 gallery audience would " take a season to lick it into shape ! " 

 He took a deep interest in a meeting of the Anti-Slavery 

 League, at which F. Douglass and H. C. Wright were speakers. 

 An effort was being made to induce the Free Church of 

 Scotland to "send back the money" which they had received 

 from American slaveholders.* "I devoted myself," he writes, 



* H. C. Wright (Dublin, April 4, 1847) printed a letter to the Central 

 Relief Committee of the Society of Friends in Ireland (who had accepted 

 money from the Slave States, and declined £70 sent through Lord J. 

 Russell, the proceeds of a special benefit at the Queen's Theatre) : " Slave- 

 holders or play-actors — which are the greater sinners?" Philip considered 

 the committee ' i blind guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. " 

 He saw a difference, however, between the relief of the starving and the 

 support of a Christian Church. In the first case, he would accept whatever 

 help was offered, unless those who sent it took his acceptance of it as an 

 approval of their practices, and a mark of fellowship. 



