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His Method.

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Wesley's sharp mind and determined will remind us often of old Wickliffe, although that father of the Reformation distanced him far as an independent Protestant and Scripturalist. Wesley was a rigid disciplinarian, and came near being a sad formalist. That he was tyrannical, we see no proof. His great power came to him from the necessity of his position. We cannot say that the sectarian sceptre was as disagreeable to him as it would have been to many of his contemporaries, although we can name none who would have borne it with greater mildness and self-denial. Benevolent, just, persevering, courageous, indomitable, he stands, beyond question, first in achievement among the Christian men of his century.

--

Such was the man. From the man came the method. It was part and parcel of himself, the method of doctrine, and of discipline. The doctrine came from his clear head and religious experience, in connection with his study of the Bible in itself and its interpreters. His creed pointed to immediate effect. The Christian life, according to him, begins at once in repentance and faith. Thus the need of immediate salvation must be urged, and men exhorted to lay hold of acceptance at once. Thus begun, the Christian life continues in peaceful assurance progressively to perfect love. Religion being thus progressive, and man being gifted with ability to advance or retreat, hence the need of a system of instruction and discipline that shall have constant watch over the converts. Accordingly, if the readiness with which present salvation through faith was offered to the listening thousands savored too much of enthusiasm, the fear of their abuse of the doctrine ceased the moment the ably adjusted mode of discipline appeared, by which the convert was led on, by patient steps, from his new raptures to maturer knowledge and more sober piety.

The force with which Wesley insisted upon the doctrine of free-agency, in opposition to Calvinism, his statement, that every man can lay hold of salvation for himself, and afterwards lose his hold by negligence, gave him great power in appealing to men to repent and believe, and strive to continue in well-doing when once upon the right ground. The cheerful, affectionate temper of his faith, the hope and love expressed in the hymns and general devotions of the Methodist worship, gave the cause of which he was the leader great popularity in an age of heavy formalism. He owed

much to his brother Charles, his constant helper, less resolute than himself, indeed, in action, and sometimes weary of innovation, but far his superior in poetical gifts. To Charles Wesley Christendom owes a lasting monument, as one of her most gifted psalmists, uniting, as he does, the great excellences of a writer of hymns, fervor, point, simplicity, and dignity.

Measured by the classic standards, Wesley was by no means a great preacher. His sermons show little genius, but great good sense, coherence, practical knowledge, and force. Some of them are very remarkable for worldly wisdom in connection with Christian aim. All of them show the same single purpose, to win men to Christ, and keep them there. They are, by universal consent, greatly superior to Whitefield's; yet they do not, in the printed form, exhibit sufficient power to enable us to understand their singular effect. The power was in the man. The spirit that was in him struck fire from the simplest words.

As a theologian, he was learned, lucid, and forcible, although by no means the first in this department in his denomination. The superiority of Fletcher, in point of depth, is, we believe, generally admitted. If as he himself would have deemed it no slander to call him- he were the Montanus of the movement, determined and fervent, like that bold Phrygian, Fletcher was the Tertullian, mightier with the pen, and the master in theological wisdom.

As a disciplinarian, he was very strict; yet he imposed upon others fewer burdens, by far, than he assumed himself. A stickler for due subordination, he abhorred slavery, and cried out against it at a time when it was an heroic thing so to do. Partial to Episcopacy, he detested its too frequent formalism, regarded bishops, not as a distinct order by themselves, but simply as superintending presbyters, and had no faith in the doctrine of the Apostolic succession as held by Churchmen. His method of discipline, reaching, as it did, from the small bands of a few persons up to the General Conference, was characteristic of himself. He was a paragon of systematic order. When, a boy at school, he ran every morning thrice round the garden for exercise, he showed a trait that marked his whole life. His day was divided with a precision that is amazing. He would not yield a jot from his plans, even to keep friendship with Whitefield, or to enjoy the society of Dr. Johnson. He thus, by his rigid

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Prospects of Methodism.

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method, accomplished a vast amount of work, and lived ten lives in one. As he ruled himself, so he legislated for others. The Methodist system illustrates the man, and an acquaintance with its workings is the best key to his character. Many of its features we must regard as too dictatorial for our Protestant freedom, and far from being an improvement even upon the hierarchy which it displaced. But under his administration it appears to have been admirably adjusted and balanced. We cannot but say, Honor to the man who

in himself exalted so rigid a method with so earnest a soul, and combined in his policy such elements of order and freedom, control and aspiration!

Faults he doubtless had. Who has them not? He may have been too set and notional, a little imperious, somewhat credulous and superstitious. Some of his opinions were whimsical. He believed in ghosts and evil possession. He recognized the future existence of brute beasts. He trusted important actions to lot, and ascribed peculiar authority to the passages of the Bible upon which he might chance to open. But he should be judged by the rule of his life, not by the exception. Surely, what he calls true religion or catholic love was the inspiration of his life. Of the convulsions, shrieks, trances, groans, and shouts of his converts we make small account, as he comparatively did at last. The deepest groanings of the spirit are those "that cannot be uttered." It is for the warmth of his Christian love, and the hearts without number inflamed by him with the like sentiment, that we honor him. To us his name is fragrant among the saints and fathers of modern Christendom. With some of our readers, at least, his name will be greeted more cordially from the fact, that he did not regard the gate of heaven as closed against the pious believer in a creed not Trinitarian, and recognized a Unitarian, like Firmin, as a genuine Christian.

What is to be the destiny of the religious order formed by him we do not undertake to predict. The symptoms of return to the Establishment among some of the more wealthy and cultivated Methodists of England, and the dissensions upon reform topics in the denomination in this country, present omens not very encouraging to the champions of the Wesleyan hierarchy. We apprehend, moreover, that the progress of Christian liberty, in its best sense, will not be favorable to the permanence of the rigid discipline and des

potic polity with which the successors of Wesley have continued to burden their churches, under circumstances so different from those existing in the days of their founder. Time is a severe commentator upon every religious reform. Enthusiasm is apt to end in license or tyranny. To which issue Methodism is more likely to tend, grave history must ere long record. That record, whatever it may be, will leave no stain upon the memory of Wesley. If Whitehead gives the true view of the rise of Methodism, Wesley's better genius would be as much honored by the prevalence of a more independent spirit, as by the continued or increasing consolidation of the order.

Wesley's death took place, as we have seen, March 2d, 1791. England little appreciated the man whom she had lost. The Established Church, of which he continued a minister to the last, and in the bosom of which until shortly before his decease he had desired his people to remain simply as a religious society, gave him little benediction, shutting against him the pulpits that were open to clerical Nim

rods and Bacchanals.

Look from Wesley's death-bed towards France; and on the morrow the streets of Paris exhibited a scene that should have proved to the conservatives of England the worth of him who could impress upon the neglected masses the sentiment of religion. The sacred vessels of the Parisian churches were carried to the mint to be coined into that which is called the "sinew of war." England followed not France. in the desecration. A sentiment of reverence guarded, and still guards, her altars. The tombs of her saints and sages were not to be violated as were those of France, nor their ashes to be scattered to the winds, that the lead of their coffins might be moulded into bullets. Hearts, by thousands, once rude and violent, were now at peace with God, living in recognition of a heavenly kingdom, and chanting holy hymns instead of shouting fiendish curses. Myriads once crushed beneath poverty and toil had been rescued, and, with the faith and love of the Gospel, every good gift had been given. America, too, had shared the blessing; her remote borders had been visited by the missionaries of Methodism, and her forests had rung with their thrilling hymns.

The founder of the great society rested not in St. Paul's nor Westminster Abbey. The ruling powers did not desire it, although they did not deny such consecrated ground to a

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Lesson of his Life.

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Nor did

profligate man of genius, or a blasphemous soldier. Wesley desire to be buried away from his people. His remains were laid beneath the chapel in which he had so often preached.

Rest in peace, soul of John Wesley! we are all ready to say. May the English race, in all its branches, bless that name. As for us, we take leave of his memory now by applying to him his own tribute to Whitefield in the sermon upon his death, in 1770:

"Who is a man of a catholic spirit? One who loves as friends, as brethren in the Lord, as joint partakers of the present kingdom of heaven and fellow-heirs of his eternal kingdom, all, of whatever opinion, mode of worship, or congregation, who be lieve in the Lord Jesus; who love God and man; who, rejoicing to please and fearing to offend God, are careful to abstain from evil and zealous of good works. He is a man of a truly catholic spirit who bears all these continually upon his heart; who, having an unspeakable tenderness for their persons, and an earnest desire for their welfare, does not cease to commend them to God in prayer, as well as to plead their cause before men; who speaks comfortably to them, and labors by all his words to strengthen their hands in God. He assists them to the uttermost of his power in things temporal and spiritual. He is ready to spend and be spent for them; yea, to lay down his life for them. How amiable a character is this! How desirable to every child of God!"

This portrait came from the painter's own soul. It might have been extravagant praise to bestow on George Whitefield. It is no more than truth, when applied to John Wesley.

Thoughts many and important are suggested by the survey that we have hastened through. This thought is most obvious, and is all that can be added: What an idea the history of Wesley and his work gives of the capacity of an individual, and of the productiveness of a single life! It is a great question, in our day, How may the largest crop be derived from an acre of ground? Far greater the question, How much efficient power can a life produce? Wesley's story is a stern homily on persevering, devoted, cheerful labor. "Work! work!" it cries, trumpet-tongued. "Work on, work ever, in faith and love!'

His method we know; what is ours? Let every conscience answer.

S. 0.