bid his chains fall off." He returned at the close of the sermon, confessed himself to be a disguised smuggler on his way to his unlawful work, and vowed that he would seek God. Wesley certainly believed the devil to be a terrible personality. The places of early Methodism were not only marked by wonderful revival scenes, but also by stern and unrelenting discipline on incorrigible offenders against Society rules. Look at this record: "Sixty-four were expelled: two for cursing and swearing; two for habitual Sabbath-breaking; seventeen for drunkenness; two for retailing spirituous liquors; three for quarreling and brawling; one for beating his wife; three for habitual Sabbath-breaking; four for railing and evil speaking; nine-and-twenty for lightness and carelessness; and one for idleness and laziness." If we should begin to thin out in these days on such lines, especially the two last named, what a vast reduction we should have in the numbers of modern Methodism !

The centers from which the great evangelists thundered against sin were, for Wesley, the Foundry; for Whitefield, Tottenham Chapel, and for Lady Huntingdon, besides her West End residence, her Spafield's Chapel among poor watchmakers and other artisans. Tottenham Chapel stands yet, though somewhat modernized. It was called in derision "Whitefield's soul-trap." Hundreds were turned away on Sunday mornings for want even of standing room. People of rank and of every profession crowded to hear the wonderful preacher. Even Hume, the infidel, could not withstand the desire to hear him. To a friend who asked his opinion of Whitefield he said: "Sir, he is the most ingenious preacher I ever heard. It is worth while to go twenty miles to hear him." He then actually repeated the following passage from one of his grand perorations: "After a solemn pause, Mr. Whitefield thus addressed his numerous auditory: The attendant angel is just about to leave the threshold and ascend to heaven. And shall he ascend and not bear with him the news of one sinner among all this multitude reclaimed from the error of his ways!' To give the greater effect to this exclamation, he stamped with his foot, lifted his hands and eyes to heaven, and with gushing tears cried aloud, 'stop, Gabriel! stop, Gabriel! ere you enter the sacred portals, and yet carry

with you the news of one sinner converted to God!' He then, in the most simple but energetic language, described what he called a Saviour's dying love to sinful man, so that almost the whole assembly melted into tears. This address was accompa nied with such animated yet natural action that it surpassed any thing I ever saw or heard in any other preacher."

But, unhappily for the cold, infidel philosopher, he heard and received all only as the word of man. Even the play-actors went to hear this master of eloquence and to study his tones and action. The Tabernacle is there still; the great city has stretched to and far beyond it, covering all the once vacant fields; but the memories can never die. Alone one day I walked through its aisles, ascended the pulpit whence the thunder-bolts of truth were hurled amid the cowering thousands that packed the spacious house from door to pulpitstairs and all the wide galleries. I went into the vestry where in marble and from canvass the full round face of the great revivalist looks upon you; sat in his spacious arm-chair, and sought to catch somewhat of the seraphic spirit that bore him triumphantly across oceans and continents as a mighty herald of the everlasting kingdom. Surely the bones of Whitefield ought to rest near or beneath the Tabernacle, as do those of his great compeer near City Road Chapel. But it is well that his dust rests in the soil of the New World, for he was as much the apostle of America as he was of England. From New England to Georgia he swept as a flame of celestial brightness, kindling holy fires which are destined to burn on forever. The man who preached 18,000 sermons, more than ten a week, for the thirty-four years of his ministerial life, who ten times crossed the stormy North Atlantic in slow sailing-vessels, who so impressed the infidel Hume that he thought it worth a man's while to go twenty miles to hear him preach, who so stirred such a nature as Franklin's by his appeals for his or phan house as to empty his pockets of the last coin when the philosopher had predetermined not to give a copper-such a man can never perish out of the heart of God's people.

From the London throne of Whitefield I went to the humble chapel where that holy woman, Lady Huntingdon, scattered the richest blessings among the wretched poor of the great city. Just as I reached the door of a house next to the

quaint-looking chapel an elderly man of benignant face was coming out. On telling him my mission he courteously informed me that he was the minister in charge, and at once conducted me to his parlor. We sat and talked of the countess and her work in the very room in which she had held counsel with the leaders of the Calvinistic branch of Methodism. The chapel is a circular building, and the arrangement of every thing is very nearly as the countess had it in her day. A private passage led from the dwelling into the chapel by which she always entered, and there may still be seen the large square pew occupied by her ladyship and her special guests. "The countess died here," said the minister, and not at her costly West End residence; would you like to see the room in which she died? follow me and I will show it you." We passed out of the parlor into a narrow passage; he opened a door on the right, and we entered a small room not more than twelve feet square. "Here," he said, "that noble woman ended her great life-work in her eighty-fourth year. Truly the death scene in that little room, amid its squalid surroundings, was sublime. Weary and worn the saintly woman awaited the word of release. When a blood-vessel broke, as soon as speech returned, she said: "I am well, all is well-well forever. Wherever I turn my eyes I see nothing but victory. The coming of the Lord draweth nigh. My soul is filled with glory. I am in the element of heaven itself. I am encircled in the arms of love and mercy. I long to be at home." Just before the golden gates opened she exclaimed: "I shall go to my Father this night;" and the last words were, "My work is done, I have nothing to do but to go to my Father." Such were the words that had filled the little one-windowed room from which the soul of this "elect lady" ascended to a mansion not made with hands.

But of all places in London to which the thoughts and affections of Methodists turn, City Road Chapel, its preacher's homes, and the little burying-ground in the rear of the chapel, are the most noted. Here Wesley established his head-quarters when compelled to give up the lease of the Foundry. The place and its surroundings are historic. Directly opposite is Bunhill Fields, made sacred by the dust of thousands of heroic Non-conformists. There lie the remains of Bunyan, Isaac

Watts, Susanna Wesley, Daniel De Foe, Henry Cromwell, the notorious John Wilkes, and a long line of others renowned in English annals.

On either side of the chapel stands a modest three-story. brick house for the use of the circuit preachers. That on the right is known as Wesley's house. He occupied the suite of plain rooms on the second floor, consisting of a small front room used as a parlor; back of this was his bedroom, not more than 12x14 feet, and beyond this a narrow room, 6x10 feet, used as a study. A few pieces of his furniture are in the rooms, sacredly preserved; among these is his arm-chair, used during the Ecumenical Conference by the presidents of that body, a little writing-table and a book-case with paneled doors, on the inside of which may be seen the engraved faces of some of his leading preachers, such as adorned the pages of the old Methodist Magazine, pasted there by Wesley's own hands. In this book-case is kept the huge china tea-pot, a present to Wesley from the celebrated Wedgewood, in which tea was made for the Sunday breakfast of the preachers whenever a large company of them met there, as they often did-never for Wesley himself, as he was no tea-drinker. In these modest little rooms Wesley showed in the smallest matters that love of order and neatness that so strongly marked his character.

In his chamber and study not a book nor a scrap of paper was ever allowed to be out of place. He was always ready to move, and lived like a man who had only an hour to stay in one place. Beyond any man of his day he knew the value of small things, and so caught them up and bound each in its proper place as to build a system of aggressive spiritual warfare second to none in the history of the world.

If a man may be remembered by germinal plans of benevolence that come to him as inspirations from heaven as he stands on higher summits and gazes farther into the future than others of his times, then will John Wesley and his works live forever in the memory of mankind. Cheap literature is the boast of this age, but Wesley wrote for the million a hundred years ago; we boast of our dispensaries that give free. medicine to the sick and helpless poor, but Wesley had a dispensary in the old Foundry, and actually studied medicine that : he might prescribe for body as well as soul. What a grand FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXV.-45

institution the Sunday-school is! But Wesley had such schools in Savannah; Miss Ball, a Methodist, held them at High Wycomb, in England, long before Raikes opened his school at Gloucester, and even to him the idea was suggested by a Methodist girl.

Though once despised and ridiculed, John Wesley is now recognized as in the front rank of the great benefactors of mankind. And so, when the pilgrim tires of looking at the lowly historic places of Methodism, he may rest him in Westminster Abbey, and thank God that the life-work of the Wesleys is now deemed worthy of record in monumental marble in the national mausoleum among England's noblest sons.

ART. V.-SUPPORT OF CONFERENCE CLAIMANTS. THE proper support of an itinerant ministry, called of God to the exclusive work of preaching the Gospel, is one of the most important problems of our Methodist economy. To secure the best results, the preachers must be free from all care except. that of soul-saving. When the people detect the outcroppings of a secular spirit in the pulpit, they become jealous and mistrustful. Pastors who seem to doubt the willingness or ability of their flock to provide the necessary sustenance are sure to suffer loss, even in the meager allowances originally offered. Our ministers cannot supplement their salaries by engaging in any secular pursuits without being suspected of neglecting the chief of all concerns, the redemption of human souls. However, if the preachers are to be preserved from temptations to secularity, it is plain that the Church must remove all occasions of fear that an adequate living will not be furnished when conscientious and competent service has been rendered.

It may be comparatively easy to command a fair living for a pastor and his family while he is vigorous in health and efficient in service. So long as he can maintain the interests of a charge in our system always so dependent on the minister's work-he is reasonably sure of some kind of temporal support; but by and by his power of acceptability wanes, and there is