equipped that the Founder sent forth his ship upon its transit of the great deep,--his preachers were, all of them, to be itinerants; and as movement was the law of his own existence, bodily and spiritual, so -this manifestly was his feeling-must perpetual movement be the law and the practice of his Institute; but if so, then must we not accept the double conclusion that Wesleyanism is an economy for a time; and that the Christianity it teaches will always be immature and superficial, precisely defined-not merely in a horizontal direction, that is to say, as to its bordering upon other systems-but not less sharply shaped beneath and above, or toward those heights and depths which it is the part of devout meditation to explore.

"When, as we have now done, the whole amount of its probable, or even possible advantages, are freely allowed as the recommendations of an itinerating ministry, liberty may fairly be taken for placing these advantages in contrast with those of a settled or located ministry. We must not be told, to deter us from attempting such a comparison, that these happy and important results of a fixed pastoral residence are far from being uniformly realized: does an itinerant ministry always, or in a larger proportion of instances, reach its own point of ideal perfection?

"The permanently located Christian minister, if he be not broken down by over much pastoral labour, and if conscientious in the devotion of his whole energies and time to his high calling, will, in the first place, find leisure, more or less, for perpetually extending, and for retaining also, his acquisitions as a Biblical expositor, and for availing himself continually of that influx of critical apparatus which, from year to year, is laid at his feet by the unwearied industry of accomplished scholars-German especially. If this advantage may now, by some, be set at a low price, the time is coming which will teach the rising ministry a serious lesson, on this ground, and will convince them that any such disparaging opinion of Biblical accomplishments involves nothing less than a fatal inobservance of the present tendencies of opinion.

"Grant it, that signal industry and an unquenchable thirst of knowledge, may enable an errant biblical scholar to prosecute his studies; but, man for man, taken alike, has not the resident scholar, with his own treasures-his Lexicons and his Commentaries, and his idolized folios, in their own places, on their own shelves, in his little study the blessed place of his converse with all minds and with heaven-has not this settled minister and student an advantage which his brother, the like-minded itinerant preacher, will sigh to enjoy?

"Yet this is only the beginning, only the preparation-only the apparatus of a full ministerial acquaintedness with those inexhaustible treasures of thought which invite our advance when the Book of God opens before us the portals of eternity! Even if it might be alleged concerning any passing period of time, that habits of profound meditation are rarely cherished, and that, at any such time, the pulpit does not give evidence leading the reflective hearer to suppose that a souldeep communion with that which is unseen and eternal has much been

sought after, or has actually been enjoyed by preachers; even should it be so, it will remain certain that a life of intense meditation, grounding itself upon an exact biblical scholarship, and observant always of the written revelation, that a life of heart-thoughtfulness, a life the product and issues of which will impart force and freshness to public services, and will supply nourishment to hungry souls-such a life of industrious biblical rumination can scarcely be possible, except under the conditions of a tranquil ministerial fixedness. If ever again the habit of counting the days of the week until Sunday comes, is to grow up in congregations, (not a giddy eagerness for the intellectual luxury of a fine sermon,) if sermons are to be remembered beyond the moment when the foot reaches the last step at the church-doors, if it is to be thus with us, preachers must not be those who shall have it to say, at the close of a weary life of labour, that, in the service of the Gospel, they have travelled half a million of miles!

"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; and if the man of incessant journeyings may become a pastor, such as the people need, then also may oaks, in full growth, be had from a nursery ground, and set down before your window. We must have been used to trifle with our own souls, and we must have become regardless of the spiritual welfare of our families, children, and servants, if we have not often desired those influences, for ourselves and for them, which a Christian minister, not a sermon-maker, but a pastor, may shed around him. But shall he do this who has been two years on our station,' and who will be gone the next, and who, while he stays, is called upon to despatch countless public services, and to rid himself well of a thousand formalities of office? This will not be: 'Do men gather grapes of thistles?' The vine, laden with ripened clusters, is a plant that loves its own spot, clings to its wonted holdings, sends its fibres throughout its own plot of soil, and may not be torn up, and set elsewhere: the vine draws its sap from the ground it knows, and yields its juices to those who keep it.

"What we are now thinking of, as the fruit, the fruit most of all precious, of the pastoral office, when sustained through a course of years by a resident minister, is not the frequency of domiciliary religious visits in the families of his congregation, nor the pointedness, the fervour, the faithfulness of those instructions which this shepherd of his flock may address to assembled families, or to youths in vestry classes; it is not that species of service which may be acquitted in so many hours of each week, and which may be duly entered in the columns of a register; it is not this, but it is that which, beyond every other means of religious influence, and beyond all other means put together, is felt and known to be effective in diffusing a Christian temper, and in securing Christian conduct, within the circle where it is found. It is the exhibition, from year to year, of fervent consistent piety, in its aspects of wisdom, meekness, self-command, devotedness, in the person of the loved and revered father of his congregation—the man

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who is greeted on the threshold of every house by the children, and whose hand is seized as a prize by whoever can first win it—the man who is always first thought of in the hour of domestic dismay or anguish the man whose saddened countenance, when he must administer rebuke, inflicts a pain upon the guilty, the mere thought of which avails for much in the hour of temptation. It is the pastor, an affection for whom has, in the lapse of years, become the characteristic feature of a neighbourhood, and the bond of love among those who, otherwise, would not have had one feeling in common.

"If it be said, pastors such as this are not found on every side among resident ministers, we grant it; yet some such, in their various degrees of excellence, are found, and may always be found within a Church which fixes its ministers in their spheres; but it is not within the range of possibility that Christian eminence of this species can be nurtured, or can find its field of exercise under the stern and ungenial conditions of an itinerant ministry.

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May we not safely adopt aphorisms such as these: First, where there is no itinerancy, there will be no aggression on the irreligious masses, no wide spread of the Gospel; and again, this,-where there are no resident pastors, there will be no CHURCH, no deep-seated Christian love, little diffused reverence, little domestic piety, and much more reliance will be placed upon means of excitement than upon means of influence; regulations, established orders, conventional usages, will take their course, but those impulses and motives which supersede law will scarcely be known."-Pp. 239–245.

One important question discussed under this head, and frequently adverted to in the course of the volume, is the probable permanence of the Wesleyan Institute. Mr. Taylor is very decidedly of opinion that Methodism, in the form which Wesley gave it, and which it still bears, is not fitted or destined for permanence. In this conclusion we feel ourselves irresistibly constrained to concur with him; while, at the same time, we can cordially sympathize in the feelings with which he contemplates the prospect of its probable dissolution.

"If, in fact, a free and unprejudiced criticism of the Wesleyan Church system should seem to issue in throwing a shade of doubt upon the perpetuity of the body, in its actual integrity, and present form, the writer must take his place among those who would entertain any such forebodings with extreme reluctance, and would witness the fulfilment of them with a lively and profound regret. One must be strangely insensible toward that which touches the most momentous interests of mankind, and be accustomed to regard the wellbeing of our fellow-men under the very narrowest aspects, not to be dismayed at the thought of the breaking up, the suspension, or the alienation, of those means of good which, up to this time, have been effective to an incalculable extent toward millions of men. How can a Christianhearted man take his course, on a Sunday morning, through the streets of a manufacturing town, and not fervently desire the undamaged

continuance, and the further extension, of Wesleyan Methodism ?"— Pp. 204, 205.

Ever since we became acquainted with the constitution of Wesleyanism, we have been convinced that, notwithstanding all the extraordinary skill with which it was organized, and the great apparent compactness which it has exhibited, it would not last for any great length of time without being remodelled; and we have been much interested in finding some vague notions upon this subject, which had long floated in our minds, brought out by Mr. Taylor with admirable wisdom and eloquence. The main grounds on which we have been shut up to the conclusion that Methodism, in the form which Wesley impressed upon it, will not have a very lengthened existence, are these :—1st, The inconsistent character of its theological system, a point on which we have already dwelt at as great length as our limits admit of. 2d, The want of a fixed ministry. An itinerant ministry, however well adapted to certain conditions of society, and however valuable as an appendage to a different system, tends powerfully, as we think Mr. Taylor has shewn, to a position of inferiority to a fixed ministry of regular pastors,-inferiority in several respects, fitted to co-operate with other obvious results of itinerancy, in diminishing the influence of the system to which it attaches, and undermining its hold of men's minds in a country such as ours now is. We can scarcely conceive of the possibility of an itinerant ministry keeping possession permanently, or for a succession of many generations, of a large community in a civilized and peaceful country. The principles of human nature seem to preclude this; and we know of nothing, either in the authoritative constitution of the Christian Church, or in the general obligation to promote Christian objects according to circumstances and by all lawful means, that warrants or requires us to aim at resisting and counteracting, in this respect, the tendencies of natural principles and social influences. Wesley, in his Deed of Declaration, has strictly tied down the Conference, to appoint no minister to officiate in any one of the chapels of the connexion for more than three years successively, and this provision seems to have been regarded by some of the ablest of his successors as of very doubtful wisdom, so far as concerns the permanence of the body. This feeling is, we think, intimated, not very obscurely, in the following extract from Watson's Life of Wesley, chap. xii. :-" In this important and wise settlement of the government of the connexion by its founder, there appears but one regulation which seems to controvert the leading maxim to which he had always respect, viz., to be guided by circumstances in matters not determined by some great principle. I

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allude to the proviso which obliges the Conference not to appoint any preacher to the same chapel for more than three years successively, thus binding an itinerant ministry upon the societies for ever. Whether this system of changing ministers be essential to the spiritual interests of the body or not, or whether it might not be usefully modified, will be matters of opinion; but the point ought, perhaps, to have been left more at liberty." (Watson's Works, vol. v. p. 260.)

3d, The leading ground on which Mr. Taylor bases his conviction that Wesleyan Methodism, in its present form, will not have a very protracted existence, is embodied in the position, that it is not, in its constitution and arrangements, a church. We believe this position to be true in itself, and quite adequate to support the conclusion which Mr. Taylor deduces from it. This position, as maintained by Mr. Taylor and ourselves, is of course essentially different, in the meaning attached to it, in the grounds on which it is based, and in the spirit in which it is advocated, from the common unchurching doctrine of Romanists and High Churchmen. The principle of these men is, that a church consists of, or at least is constituted and characterized by, its officebearers, and that no society is entitled to the name of a church unless it has a threefold order of office-bearers, bishops, priests, and deacons, all deriving their official authority by an unbroken series of ordinations from the Apostles. With these views we have no sympathy. We believe them to be inconsistent with the doctrines of Scripture, the dictates of common sense, the testimony of history, and the voice of experience. We are persuaded that Wesley and his successors, the Wesleyan ministers of our own day, are just as fully authorized to preach the Word, and to administer the sacraments, as any other ecclesiastical functionaries in Great Britain. We believe that Wesley was as well entitled to make bishops as Luther was, and that the men whom the Methodist and his associates appointed in that character for the United States, were just as good bishops as those whom the Reformer and his friends appointed for Denmark. Mr. Taylor, indeed, in a striking and important passage, adduces the case of Methodism as conclusively fatal to the High Church view of Prelacy and apostolical succession.

"Yet there is one plea on the ground of which, if it be valid, the Methodistic company might be cast down from the place of honour which is now claimed for it. This ground of exception is that occupied by those who, with strictness and consistency, hold the doctrine that, apart from the line of episcopal ordination, unbroken in its descent, there is and can be no Church, no ministry, no sacraments, no salvation. It is much to be desired that those who profess thus to think would take up the case of Methodism, and deal with it thorough