Welsh Journals

THE WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODIST RECORD. FEBRUARY, 1854. THE LATE REV. WILLIAM JAY. William Jay was born at Tisbury, in Wiltshire, in the month of May, 1769. His parents were in humble circumstances, and he assisted his father, who worked in a stone-quarry. Being an intelligent boy, he attracted by some means the attention of that excellent man, the Rev. Cornelius Winter, who, in the course of his rural preachings, often visited the obscure village in which the future pastor of Argyle Chapel was born. Emboldened by the kind¬ ness shown to him, the ingenuous youth ventured to address to his early patron a letter, in which the following characteristic sentence occurred:— "Dear Sir,—I hope yourself and Mrs. Winter are in the enjoyment of health; for that is the salt that seasons, and the honey that sweetens, every temporal blessing." The pith of the sentence made an impression upon the mind of Mr. Winter, who justly augured future mental distinction from a turn of phrase and thought so far beyond the range of rustic youth. Under the more than paternal eye of that " celestial creature," as the ad¬ miring Bishop Jebb was wont to style him, he rapidly grew in intellectual stature, and in favour with God and man. The constant alternation of preaching with study, which, partly from choice and partly on account of Christian pity for the destitute villagers around, was a main feature in Mr. Winter's plan, " tended," Mr. Jay observes, " to keep the heart in the things of God, and to preserve the savour of religion on the mind; which, it is well known, is easily injured, if not destroyed, where all the studies are purely intellectual, and several young men of vivacity and emulation are blended together." Mr. Winter's solicitude for his " dear Billy," did not terminate with re¬ moval from under his fostering roof. His letters breathe all the love and tenderness of a father's heart. It is interesting to find him thus addressing