Bakewell, John, a Wesleyan lay preacher, was born at Brailsford, in Derbyshire, in 1721. He was a man of piety, earnestness, and consecration. He was made a lay preacher in 1749, and proved to be one of [27]Mr. Wesley's most efficient workers. He was for several years Master of the Greenwich Royal Park Academy. It was in his house that [28]Thomas Olivers wrote his justly famous and much-admired hymn, "The God of Abraham praise." He was an eminently useful man, and lived to a ripe old age, being ninety-eight years old when he died, in 1819. He was buried in City Road Chapel not far from the tomb of John Wesley. The epitaph upon his tombstone states that "he adorned the doctrines of God our Saviour eighty years, and preached his glorious gospel about seventy years." He composed many hymns "which remain in the manuscript beautifully written," but only one finds a place in modern Church hymnals:

Hail, thou once despised Jesus 171