In the same year Osborn was elected president of the conference, and rendered great service to the missions by his advocacy of their claims in the large towns in England.

Thomas Jackson in 1868, he was elected professor of divinity at Richmond College, and continued to reside there till 1885.

Originally he was strongly opposed to the admission of lay representatives to the conference, but when the matter had been carried against him, he at once acquiesced in the decision.

[3] In 1868 Osborn brought out The Poetical Works of J. and C. Wesley, collected and arranged, an edition in thirteen volumes.

His second major work was Outlines of Wesleyan Bibliography; or a Record of Methodist Literature from the beginning, 1869.