tended to indispose them for any cool or dispassionate enquiry. Added to all which, we have to remember that the work of preaching grew so fast upon their hands that they were soon obliged to have recourse to lay assistants; and these necessarily brought in a great increase of fervour, less tempered also by the discretion, which a theological training is calculated to produce; and which, even in the cases of Wesley and Whitefield, was in a great degree lacking.

"The harmony of sacred truth, when at length it shall bless the the world, will not be seen arising from the bosom of a tempest-tossed Church. The Reformation yielded no such fruit; and with less reason could it have been looked for as likely to spring from among the excitements of Methodism. Wesley and Whitefield were destined to bear testimony, independently of each other, to great but dislocated principles. Each seized his doctrine, and well maintained it, so long as he dealt with it in its form as a positive truth; but each failed, and Wesley the most glaringly, when he used this doctrine as a weapon wherewith to demolish that of his friend and antagonist. Neither of them had the leisure, or the furniture, or the grasp of mind, that might have brought them to an understanding as theologians; and Wesley, by the structure of his mind, wanted that equipoise of the faculties which the bringing about such an agreement would demand.

"Whitefield, not, indeed, as a theologian, but by the genuineness and simplicity of his Christian instincts, and by the more entire harmony of his religious affections, had advanced beyond his friend's position, and had gained a wider and more elevated ground. Evils and abuses, he knew not what or how many, might come to claim affinity with his ample Gospel; nevertheless, he must preach it at all risks. Wesley foresaw these evils; and, indeed, they had already met him on his ministerial course in their most revolting forms; but he was frightened beyond the occasion, and in his terror he lost sight of truths which seemed so beset with abuses" (45).

The chief characteristic of Methodism-the feature which distinguishes it most, and to which it is most indebted for its success-is the making religion an individual, and personal, and all-engrossing concern; and this, which forms its main excellence, as an instrument of conversion, has been the grand impediment to its making further progress as an organized body or Church. The field-preaching into which Wesley and Whitefield were forced at the beginning-the desultory habit of thought which this engendered in them-and the variable and ever-fluctuating audiences which they had to address, rendered any course of systematic teaching impracticable; and, above all, the family, and the home, and the children, could scarcely claim a passing thought in the minds of these itinerant preachers, much less receive efficient attention.

"But the people-if, indeed, they are to know what that store of blessings is which Christianity holds ready to bestow upon themselves and upon their families-must have near them always, not preachers merely, but pastors.......Christian families trained within à Church which should well understand its commission to the world and should be alive to its duties-and mistrustful never of the grace, the power, and the faithfulness of God-such families, so trained, would send forth from their nurture bosoms, for catechetical instruction, their junior members-the members of Christ, the children of God, the inheritors of the kingdom of heaven....... When we have affirmed once and again in these pages that Wesley did not construct a CHURCH, a main part of what we mean finds its interpretation at this point" (255).

"Here has been the main point of defectiveness in Wesleyan Methodism; and it sprang unavoidably from Wesley's reluctance to break away from the Episcopal Church: it was an association of converts: he would not call it and did not make it a Church. Methodism regarded its converts individually: it knew them not, or knew them imperfectly, in their home relationships. The head of a family-husband, father, and master-was, in its view, a convert only, or chiefly : he was not recognised as the hierarch of home. Unless a Christian body becomes vital throughout its mass, in a domestic sense, it will neither be conscious of its want of pastors nor will it furnish such from its own bosom. An itinerating ministry-useful as it is in certain respects, and well adapted to the wants of a recently-evangelized people-must be regarded as indicative of a crude Christian condition: it is a practice that belongs to a transition state of things—a state which is not to be remedied by a more careful training of itinerating ministers; but in no other way than by a far-reaching renovation of the social mass in a word, by carrying Christianity, in its silent energies, from the chapel to the house. Wesley at length permitted his preachers to administer the sacraments and therefore to baptize infants. But where there is no CHURCH-where children are not thought of as members of Christ, and where they come under no discipline as such-the rite of baptism, administered in infancy, is a five minutes' operation-profitless, perplexing, unintelligible, and out of harmony as well with the Christian scheme as with the system under which it takes place-an incongruity not perceived by the parties, but yet serious was it when these preachers, whose function was only convert-making, welcomed infants into a society from which they were instantly afterwards thrust out; or thenceforward forgotten by it, until they were of age to listen to sermons" (63).

Wesley himself was utterly ignorant of the management of children of what they are and what they require. Witness his school at Kingswood, the planning and superintendence of which cost him more thought and trouble than all his other labours put together; and which proved, notwithstanding, an utter failure. Warm and benevolent as the heart of Wesley was, he expected to train children by rigid iron rules-early rising, solitary meditation, solemn deportment, and no play. Wesley

began his own course as an ascetic, and in opposition to the whole tone and temper of mind prevalent among the young men at Oxford when he became serious. The age was either thoughtless, light, and frivolous; or, if there was any thinking, it was technically called free-thinking, and meant scoffing at all religion and a thinking which was atheistical in its tone and tendency; and Wesley being the contrary of all this, and gathering a few friends who were disposed to become serious and orderly like himself, the party became honourably distinguished as Methodists in the midst of a most disorderly society. At the time when this name was given them, we cannot discover that they had any distinctively marked religious creed. Wesley's own religious opinions had scarcely begun to be formed, and the same may be said of Whitefield; so that being only conversant at that time with the first elements of the Gospel, in which all serious persons are in all ages agreed, there was no place for that controversy on deeper points of doctrine which, at a more advanced period in their religious experience, separated the two founders of Methodism the one from the other.

The Moravians, whom Wesley met with in Georgia, first made him sensible of the shallowness and insufficiency of his own spiritual attainments. It was in that society that the new and strange idea first met him of a Christianity more elevated and excellent than his own. The Moravian ministers were, and he felt it, far advanced in knowledge and experience beyond his own rate of attainment: they spoke to him as a novice, and in the power of truth brought his conscience to a stand by questions which, while he admitted the pertinence of them, he could not answer with any satisfaction to himself. "Thus it was that he returned to England in a state of spiritual discomfort and destitution: he had been stripped of that overweening religiousness upon which, as its basis, his ascetic egotism had hitherto rested. He rejoined his friends in a mood to ask and receive guidance rather than to afford it" (31).

Some time after Wesley visited the parent Moravian Society at Herrnhut; and on this visit he first laid hold of that doctrine which we are accustomed to regard as lying at the foundation of Protestant principles as contradistinguished from Romanism -the doctrine of justification by faith. It seems clear that, up to that time, Pharisaism and human merit had a strong hold on Wesley, and this hold it in some degree retained throughout the whole of his life; though it was certainly qualified in his preaching and practice by the clear perception he now got of this fundamental doctrine of the Gospel.

"The elastic force of his mind prévented his imbibing from other

minds any more of a foreign influence than he might, at the moment, be in a state to assimilate. Thus it was that in his visit to Herrnhut -too short for any purposes of intelligent enquiry as to the principles and practices of the society-he took up from Moravianism that which he then most needed-namely, a clearer apprehension of the first principle of the Christian life; or, to speak technically, he learned the doctrine of justification through faith. It does not appear that hitherto his notions on that subject had acquired any coherence, or had produced the fruits of peace in his own soul. Just so much aid as he then required, and which the Moravian brethren were qualified to afford, he received from them......... From Georgia, Wesley had returned-we might say-dilapidated; from Germany he returned edified; or at least, his Christian sentiments thenceforward rested on a better foundation, and which was afterwards to be built upon: as to the superstructure of a settled faith and peace, it did not yet appear......Several of his friends, who were far his inferiors as teachers or leaders or as rulers, stood in advance of him as to the homogeneousness of their religious sentiments. On this ground his brother Charles was always his superior, and Whitefield immeasurably so" (34),

There are some very striking remarks on the part which Charles Wesley had in the results produced by Methodism; especially in the many beautiful hymns composed by him, and which served in some measure to supply the place of a liturgy in the Wesleyan congregations-just as psalmody forms the principal element of the Lutheran worship in Germany. In the mining districts of Cornwall, as in the collieries of Kingswood, the Wesleys had reached the hearts of thousands who had lived the life of heathens before; and the chapels arose around the dreary mining districts where it was vain to hope for anything more than mere shelter and benches. The supply of these numerous meeting-houses was little less homely than their construction:

"In all these chapels in their turn, and in many of them scattered over the country, often the officiating minister was a local preacher of the district; and meagre, too often, was then the preacher's part of the service! The sermon was, indeed, a heavy trial of patience and candour to the casual visitor: the prayer was a much heavier trial ! But, at the worst, the soul of Charles Wesley-lofty, tender, pure, intense was there present in the hymn; and, like a summer's shower in a time of drought, was this hymn sung on such occasions and in such places. If that breadth of country be thought of over which Methodism had then stretched itself far beyond the proportion of its itinerant ministry, and which it could occupy in no other way than by its system of irregular and uninstructed ministrations, then it must be to Charles Wesley that we should assign the place of honour as the everywhere present soul of Methodism. In communities that have laid aside liturgies, in every other sense, the HYMN BOOK which they use, especially if psalmody be a favoured part of public worship, rules,

as well the preacher as the people, to a greater extent than is often thought of, or than would perhaps be acknowledged. The Hymn Book to such bodies comes in the stead of creed, articles, canons, and presiding power......... The robust in body and mind, the earthly, the frivolous, and the sordid, know nothing of that solace, of that renovation of the heart, which sacred poetry is every day conveying to the spirits of tens of thousands around them. It is not merely when sickness has slackened the cords of life, but also when the heart has become benumbed by the toils and cares of a common day, and when even the understanding is rendered obtuse-it is then that the hymn and psalm, at a late hour, restore the spirit and give renewed clearness by giving consistency to the distracted intellect, and so lead the soul back to its place of rest in the presence of things unseen and eternal. Among those to whose compositions millions of souls owe inestimable benefits, Charles Wesley stands inferior to few" (94).

To ourselves, however, by far the most interesting feature of the Methodist movement is the indirect but important bearing which it undoubtedly had upon us by the new life and spirit which it became instrumental in imparting to the Episcopal Church. Fortunately for this object Wesley and Whitefield were Oxford men, and they retained through life their early predilections, and never at any time took an attitude of hostility to the Church :

"Reviled, pelted, and hooted by mobs, as they were-sometimes mistreated by magistrates, and generally unwisely and unkindly dealt with by the Church authorities-they themselves had no quarrel either with Church or State: in all points they were loyal men: they cherished also a filial regard towards the Church, and they themselves were of it. We may well recognise that providential ordering of the Methodistic revival which kept it clear of all sympathy with the bitter vestments and gesture' feeling of the preceding century; and, if required to name that one adjunctive circumstance which most favoured its progress as a proclamation of the Gospel, we should not hesitate to say the Church training and the Church feeling of the Wesleys and of Whitefield" (137).

In the revival of spirituality in the Church of England and among the aristocracy of our land, the women had a distinguished share and are deserving of honourable mention. Like as the women of Galilee ministered to our Lord of their sub-. stance, and women were last at the cross and first at the sepulchre-and to women the Lord first appeared after his resurrection-so women were among the earliest and most zealous of the converts to Methodism; and such women as Lady Huntingdon, and Miss Bosanquet (afterwards Mrs. Fletcher of Madeley), and Hannah More, have greatly aided in recommending vital Christianity among the higher classes of society :

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