WESLEYAN-METHODIST MAGAZINE.

MAY, 1871.

MEMOIR OF MR. ROBERT AND MRS. ELIZABETH KEELING:

BY THEIR SON, THE LATE REV. ISAAC KEELING.*

ROBERT KEELING, my honoured father, was born at Newcastleunder-Lyme, on the 1st of December, 1758. The most interesting circumstance I could learn from him of his ancestry was, that his father's mother was a woman of reading and prayer, and was principally remembered as having been frequent in supplication for the religious interests of her posterity. He considered the petitions of this spiritually-minded woman as having been answered in the early conversion from sin to God of himself and his elder brother, the late Samuel Keeling, of London.

Four times before he was fourteen years old my father's life was in great danger. By a fall from his nurse's arms, when he was an infant, his right thigh was broken. The surgeons who attended could not discover the fracture, which, after three weeks of ceaseless suffering, was ascertained by his mother. The severed bones were afterwards so well united that he had no appearance of having ever suffered such an injury. This early affliction gave him a strong and durable interest in the tenderness of his mother; and he lived to repay her as fully as a parent can be repaid. He was a dutiful and affectionate son, and watched with filial solicitude over the infirmities of her declining years.

While he was yet a little boy, he fell into an open spring, deep enough to drown him; and had risen the third time from the bottom, when he was taken out, just soon enough to save his life. Some years afterwards, when bathing with others in a large pond, near the ancient moat of the ruined castle, he was led by an older boy beyond his depth, and carelessly left to struggle for himself. In this moment of peril, he did what not one in ten thousand would have done-instead of sinking he began to swim, and

*The following characteristic account of his revered parents was found among the papers of this eminent minister.

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thus first acquired the art of keeping afloat in deep water. After this he was pronounced by two medical men of reputation to be in a rapid consumption. He had previously been seeking the Lord with a tender and contrite spirit; and during his affliction was not only delivered from the fear of death, but was so happy in his reconciled God that he longed to depart, and was rather afraid to recover. Referring to this in his last illness, he frequently said, "Since that period through what scenes and afflictions has God led me!" And in the recollection of all these early perils, his feelings gave peculiar emphasis to his application to himself of that impressive hymn, which begins with the words,

"God of my life, whose gracious power," etc.

*

After his unexpected recovery, he joined the Methodist Society, sixty-four years ago. The Staffordshire potteries, with Newcastle-under-Lyme, and the Leek and Congleton Circuits, were then comprised in the Macclesfield Circuit. Two years later, the Rev. Samuel Bardsley was stationed at Macclesfield; and his ministry at that early period (1773) was often mentioned by my father as having been made a great blessing to himself. In subsequent years, he numbered the Rev. Messrs. Hanby, Rogers, Corbet, and Rodda amongst his personal friends.

The same year that he joined the Society, he was apprenticed to the late Josiah Wedgwood, Esq., of Etruria; and, with the exception of about four years, he continued to serve the family of his first employer till age and sickness rendered him incapable of labour; so that about sixty years of his life were spent with one firm.

During his apprenticeship, he found his father's house an unsuitable place for religious retirement. His father was frequently intoxicated; and when in that state was sometimes violent. My father's resource in these circumstances exemplified the truth that it is "not easy to deprive a praying soul of a praying place." Frequently after his hours of business ended, he borrowed from the chapel-keeper the key of the first Methodist chapel, in Penkhull Street, locked himself in, and spent a long evening in the pulpit, where he often felt as "in the verge of heaven; and where, in a long series of such seasons of holy solitude, he read the pulpit Bible through upon his knees.

When he was eighteen years old, he had an awful dream. It appeared to him that the last day had arrived; he heard in his mind's ear the sound of the trumpet; saw an exceedingly bright

* Mr. Keeling completed this Memoir on December 24th, 1885; that of his mother (which follows) in 1817.

light in the East; and watched its gradual increase, till the Saviour became gloriously visible. He thought, "And is the period come?" and awoke with the moving anticipation that he was about to be called to the presence of his Judge.*

When he was about twenty-two, he was appointed the leader of a class; and I have understood that while he remained at Newcastle he was a profitable and successful leader. In the Society of that place he was a steward for fourteen years; and once attended as such at the Macclesfield Quarterly-Meeting, a distance of more than twenty miles. He preached his first sermon in February, 1789; but had many years before been importuned by the itinerant preachers to occupy the pulpit. Mr. Rogers at one time offered to take him with himself through the Macclesfield Circuit; and Mr. Corbet, on his deathbed, said to him, "Brother Keeling, I believe a dispensation of the Gospel is committed to you, and that you will preach it when I am laid in the dust." About the year 1797, he withdrew from the Wesleyan Society; but returned to it about ten years afterwards, when he was forthwith appointed the leader of a class, and in a short time resumed his labours as a local preacher. These offices he continued to hold till his decease.

While the impression of this dream was fresh, he composed the following hymn, which he dictated to me one of the last times he was able to sit at the fireside. I have not altered more than two lines, which I have distinguished by putting them in italics.

These lines exhibit traces of the share which the Wesleyan hymus had in forming both his opinions and his taste.