After three months' stay he started on his return to England to seek priest's orders for himself, and funds for the orphans that might be expected sometime in Georgia.

He was successful in both his errands.

He was ordained; he collected more than one thousand pounds for the orphan-house; and being detained in the kingdom by an embargo, he began that course of evangelistic preaching which continued on either side of the ocean until his death, and which is without a parallel in church history.

His incomparable eloquence thronged the parish churches, until the churches were closed against him, and the Bishop of London warned the people against him in a pastoral letter.

Then he went out into the open fields, in the service, as he said, of him "who had a mountain for his pulpit, and the heavens for his sounding-board, and who, when his gospel was refused by the Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges." Multitudes of every rank thronged him; but especially the heathenized and embruted colliers near Bristol listened to the unknown gospel, and their awakened feelings were revealed to the preacher by his observing the white gutters made by the tears that ran down their grimy faces.