iterature with an economy of time, and an
alertness, which put many of us to shame. With a yearning after wider
culture he longed to go to Kingswood School in England, and when that
became impossible, he devoted himself with greater enthusiasm to his
studies, and employed John Wesley to send him books.

Although he was a model itinerant and was preaching every day, he
pursued the method of training his own mind and instructing his
hearers by courses on systematic theology, which is an ideal system
for any minister. He writes: "In my last sixteen discourses I have
taken a view of man in his primitive state, and in his fall, the
consequences of his apostacy, to himself and to his posterity, the
interposition of a Mediator, his offices, incarnation, life, death,
resurrection, ascension into heaven, and session on the right hand of
the Father. O, how wonderful is the process of redeeming love!" Living
in a real world and deeply impressed with the needs of the people, he
had no time to devote to any literary work, though he might have
rendered some service by his pen to the cause of Christ, but modesty
barred the way, and he was above everything else a pioneer evangelist.
Only once did he consent to have one of his sermons published, and
that was a discourse preached at Windsor, Nova Scotia, on Deut.
33:13. "He made him to suck honey out of the rock." When he preached a
sermon on Bishop Asbury at the General Conference in Baltimore, and
was importuned to have it published by that august body, he
respectfully declined the honor.

William Black was a great Christian without any singularity or
ostentation, ever bemoaning his lack of spirituality and yearning
after holiness of heart and life. As he read the lives of great saints
of other days, he prostrated himself before God, and craved
pre-eminence in the attainment of the higher virtues of religious
experience. Humility was one of the dominant factors in his life,
which became a habit, through contrasting his actual acquirements in
piety, with the saints held in much esteem by the Christian Church. He
was extremely sensitive, and this subjected him to periods of mental
depression, when he was severely tempted and almost given over to
despair. Seasons of melancholy seemed to follow him all through life,
especially at the beginning of the year, when he passed under review
his life and work. But there were times when he renewed his covenant
with God in writing, and when he was