THOMAS OLIVERS.
1725—1799.
As the lark, ascending from the hidden depths of the grassy hollow, rises high and sings long and sweetly, so Olivers, coming of humble parentage, was at length known and honoured as a sweet singer in Israel. He was born at a village called Tregonan, in Montgomeryshire, in 1725. Both his parents died when he was four years old, and he was brought up by a farmer, Mr. Tudor, a distant relative, at Forden, in the same county. At eighteen, he was bound apprentice to a shoemaker; but owing to his bad conduct, of which he makes full confession in his "Autobiography," he was obliged to leave the neighbourhood. He went to Shrewsbury, then to Wrexham, and then to Bristol.
At Bristol, where he had gone to carry on his business, a sermon by Whitefield on the text, "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" was the means of his spiritual quickening, and he became a true Christian. He says, that at that time he spent so many hours on his knees in prayer as to make him limp a little in walking.
As he had pursued a sinful course, and had left small sums owing in several places where he had lived, he went first to pay these sums, and to make what reparation he could. He removed to Bradford in Wiltshire, where he became a member of the Wesleyan Society, and was very zealous. He had scarcely set up in business, before Mr. Wesley sent for him to become one of his travelling preachers in Cornwall. He had preached before. He set out on the 1st of October, 1753, and preached in many parts of England and Ireland, accomplishing most of his journeys on a horse which he had for twenty-five years, and upon which he rode about 100,000 miles, often meeting with opposition and violence in his good work. He married Miss Green, a person of piety and good family in Scotland. He was a severe sufferer in himself and in his family, and died suddenly in London, in March,
