preaching after its long disuse ;* and yet he cannot perceive how, like refreshing showers to a thirsty land, it alone suffices to appease the immortal longings of the human mind. But the good effected by Methodism is indirect as well as direct. And where it has not

emptied the churches, it has in general succeeded in reviving the preaching of those truths in their pulpits which had become obsolete, and as his lordship tells us, unsuited to a polite age.' The increasing prevalence of evangelical principles among the clergy, therefore, is another testimony in favor of that system which made the reform of doctrine and discipline in the Establishment one of its leading objects from the beginning. The circumstances, also, under which the experiment of Methodism has been made, yield another illustration of the truth of the principle for which we contend. We are told, 'it was a polite age' which witnessed the labours of a Wesley; and from that time knowledge has continued to spread more and more through the mass of the community. With this fact Lord John Russel's parliamentary career has made him most familiar. Methodism therefore having put forth her claims in an age of philosophical scrutiny and religious inquiry, her success is highly honorable to her principles, and a test of the validity of her pretensions. Such are a few of the proofs, that Methodism is precisely that which the spirit of the time' called for; and that in her apostles we behold the very missionaries which sprung up in obedience to its summons. After mentioning Mr. Wesley's rules for their direction, his lordship concludes in a manner which well harmonizes with our own view of their functions in the commonwealth :

- With such rules he founded, not a religious order whose discipline acts only in the retirement of the cloister; not a rich church, whose worldly possessions form the chief object of their care; but a community of active teachers, spread into every corner of society, whose power and distinction rested solely on the efficacy of religious persuasion.'t

In aid of the leading design to account for the spread of Methodism on principles which do not recognise its value, besides reciting the causes of its success already adverted to, his lordship devotes an entire section to the professed enumeration of the chief circumstances which attended the progress of its Founder. His management of this part of the subject displays but little ingenuity or tact. And as he mentions only four of these circumstances, the ore is neither abundant nor enriches any deep vein of thought. His remarks on 'field preaching,' and on 'miracles,' need no comment. His assertion, that the Methodists are a rare example of a sect who have flourished without persecution,' is a striking proof of his Lordship's want of information on the subject about which he writes. What else, indeed, could be expected from an author who never appears to have read a line of Mr. Wesley's works, but has derived whatever knowledge he has of Methodism from the * Memoirs, &c, vol. ii, 4to, p. 560. † Memoirs, &c, vol. ii, p. 570.

productions of its enemies?* The boasted 'tolerant spirit of the age, as represented in the conduct of the majority of the clergy and the country magistrates, was not even restrained by the enactments of purer times in favor of civil and religious liberty, from frequently breaking out into overt acts of persecution. To the determination of the House of Hanover to throw its ample shield over the rights of conscience, Methodism mainly owes its existence. We have Mr. Wesley's authority for the fact. The storm rose higher and higher,' says he, till deliverance came in a way that none expected. God stirred up the heart of our late gracious Sovereign to give such orders to his magistrates as, being put in execution, effectually quelled the madness of the people. It was about the same time, that a great man applied personally to his Majesty, begging that he would please to "take a course to stop these runabout preachers." His Majesty looking sternly upon him, answered without ceremony, like a king, "I tell you, while I sit on the throne, no man shall be persecuted for conscience' sake.'"+ But this deliverance of the early Methodists from the oppressor's wrongs,' was awarded to their long and patient endurance of severe personal insults and injuries, loss of property and employment, imprisonment, and degradation of character. The agonies and joys' and the convulsions' which attended them, the last of the early accompaniments of Methodism, his lordship has honored with an elaborate description. But his picture gives a caricatured representation of the facts, by the selection of extreme cases only; and by giving a revolting prominence to extravagancies which ought to have been thrown into the shade of extenuating circumstances. In reprobating the occasional convulsions which resulted from powerful mental emotions, he forgets to suggest what, even on philoso

*‘On these subjects, of course, his lordship does not speak from his own personal knowledge; and we regret to say, the only authorities to which he refers, and which he appears to have thought it worth his while to consult, are Southey's "Life of Wesley," and Nightingale's "Portraiture of Methodism." Every thing advanced by the former of these writers, on the peculiarities of Mr. Wesley's character, and on the institutions and tendency of Methodism, in the shape of allegation and censure, is fairly met and triumphantly refuted in Mr. Watson's "Observations on Southey's Life of Wesley." Of this work, which has been upwards of seven years in extensive circulation, his lordship takes not the slightest notice; but repeats, with the most perfect confidence, as if they were undeniable truths, several of the misrepresentations to which Mr. Watson's replies are especially directed, and which we believe the candour and justice of the Poet Laureate will induce him to expunge from his book, if it should ever pass to another edition. As to Mr. Nightingale, he lived long enough bitterly to lament that he ever wrote the scurrilous and contemptible libel which Lord John Russel quotes as authentic history. He published to the world his "solemn protest against the light spirit in which the Portraiture of Methodism was written;" and added, "I am truly sorry for having published that foolish book; and for the vile and wicked use which, on many occasions, has been made of the publication." After this recantation of his work, Mr. Nightingale sought admission into the society of the people whose principles and character he had attempted to ridicule and vilify; and died in the profession of that faith which he had formerly held up to public scorn.'-Wesleyan Magazine, N. S. vol. viii, p. 115.

+ Wesley's Works, vol. vii, p. 210, third edition.

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phical principles, might be supposed to be the effect, on minds so circumstanced, of those astounding truths which made even the accomplished Felix tremble. But here his lordship's principles are in fault. Denying as he does the necessity of the new birth,' all the anguish of that momentous mental conflict, he treats with ineffable contempt. We need no other proof, how widely the new kind of spiritual food' differs from the ancient and genuine, but more unpalatable, fare provided for us by the Founders of the English Church. The deep pathos of many parts of the Book of Common Prayer, the affecting importunity and thrilling repetition of its addresses to Heaven, assume the existence of an intenser feeling in the worshippers, than Lord John Russel's easy and self-complacent creed can explain. And the language of the Homilies is a complete justification of all the 'agonies' which his Lordship affects to hold in derision. This sorrowfulnesse of heart, joyned with fasting, they uttered sometimes by their outward behaviour, and gesture of body, putting on sackcloth, sprinkling themselves with ashes, and dust, and sitting or lying upon the earth. For when good men feele in themselves the heavy burthen of sinne, see damnation to be the reward of it, and behold with the eye of their mind the horrour of hell, they tremble, they quake, and are inwardly touched with sorrowfulnesse of heart for their offences, and cannot but accuse themselves, and open this their griefe unto Almighty God, and call unto him for mercy. This being done seriously, their mind is so occupied, partly with sorrow and heavinesse, partly with an earnest desire to be delivered from this danger of hell and damnation, that all desire of meate and drinke is layd apart, and lothsomenesse of all worldly things and pleasures cometh in place, so that nothing then liketh them more, then to weepe, to lament, to mourne, and both with words, and behaviour of body, to shew themselves weary of this life."* Of course the 'joys' of deliverance will be proportioned to the previous agony of soul, and to Lord John Russel's apprehension, equally excessive.' But the fastidious taste which is so much outraged by the rhapsodies' of an innocent girl, is not in a mood to admire even those warm impulses of gratitude in the pardoned woman who had been a sinner,' which prompted her so extravagantly to kiss her Saviour's feet, to wash them with her tears, and to wipe them with her hair. That deep emotion, however produced, will occasion an abstraction of mind which makes us indifferent to surrounding objects, and forcibly dissevers the links of our habitually associated ideas, is agreeable to observation in ordinary affairs. And this effect will bear a proportion to the nature and intensity of the exciting cause. Nor are the coolest and most philosophic minds exempted from its influence; of which the extravagant demonstrations of joy attributed to Archimedes on making his well-known discovery are an example. But perhaps no case of this sort approaches nearer to the effects of supernatural impulse, * Certaine Sermons or Homilies appoynted to be read in Churches, p. 83, 1635.

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than the following:-Dr. Rush, in his able account of the Epidemic Fever of Philadelphia in 1793, favors his readers at the close of his professional task, with a sort of episode, (very unusual in medical productions,) which portrays what were his feelings and reflections during the appalling prevalence of 'a pestilence that walked in darkness, and a destruction that wasted at noon-day.' After describing most pathetically the swiftly successive deaths of relatives, pupils, friends and citizens, useful in public or amiable in private life, while consternation suspended the general movements of society, he represents how his own mind was stunned by these melancholy events into a sense of utter estrangement from his accustomed feelings. The ordinary business and pursuits of men appeared to me in a light that was equally new. The hearse and the grave mingled themselves with every view I took of human affairs. Under these impressions, I recollect being as much struck with observing a number of men employed in digging the cellar of a large house, as I should have been, at any other time, in seeing preparations for building a palace upon a cake of ice.** Now when excessive ignorance and barbarism of manners are taken into account, in our attempt to explain all the phenomena of the case before us, the occasional 'convulsions' even of early Methodism ought not to be accounted so ridiculous as to discredit the genuineness of that work of God of which they were confessedly the accompaniments. And as the bulk of the people were not prepared to relish the delicate banquet' of 'the new kind of spiritual food,' and as a coarser religious fare was not provided for them, his lordship ought to have settled the account of these extravagancies between the Establishment of the country and the new missionaries. For they were clearly quite as chargeable on the defective instruction of the former, as on the attempts of the latter to dispel, though at the expense of a breach of order and decorum, so gross an ignorance. But to elucidate the case more fully, we will furnish his lordship with a specimen of true philosophy on this subject from a work which, we fear, he has not had the candour to consult. Mr. Wesley,' says Mr. Watson, had seen real good consequent upon these circumstances; but he never believed that good to flow from them as its cause. He went higher than that. Those emotions might be the collateral or the secondary effects of the same cause, or they might result from a different one. In every case he hoped for good, and therefore sought it; one great secret of his success. He did not stay to contend with circumstances, even when they were not agreeable to him; he applied himself directly to the heart. He instructed the ignorant; pointed the sorrowful to the only source of comfort; explained the scriptural method of salvation; and gradually drew off the mind from what was visionary, and in truth extravagant, (and both occasionally did occur,) to the sober realities of * An Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever, as it appeared in the city of Philadelphia, in 1793. By Benjamin Rush, M. D., p. 245.

religion, taught in his own sound doctrine, and enforced by his prac tical discipline. This was the way in which Mr. Wesley treated all cases of extraordinary emotion; and he judged better than a thousand sciolists when he concluded, that, in ignorant and inexperienced persons, much good principle may be mixed with fancy and oblique feeling. He acted, too, in the right spirit of a Christian minister; he had "compassion on them that were ignorant," as well as "out of the way." From a frigid philosophy and a callow formality such persons would have derived nothing; their errors had remained with them, and their latent virtues perished under the load. Many a spirit, in danger both from ignorance and its own peculiar constitution, was saved by his confiding charity which thought no evil; and if in some cases there were deceptions, and in others an insuperable obstinacy, they neither impugn the sobriety of his judgment, where perhaps he himself appears most enthusiastic, nor can they dim the lustre of that benignity of mind which ensured to every inquirer patient attention and sympathizing counsel; forbearance with their weaknesses, and yet respect for their sincerity.** Lord John Russel tells us, that Mr. Wesley at length 'discovered that many of these frenzies were mere tricks.' And he quotes in proof of this, a passage from which an unprejudiced mind would have drawn an inference in the highest degree honorable to Mr. Wesley's piety and wisdom. Careful as he habitually was, not to allow the accidental and separable associations of a real work of God with what is little and degrading, as opposed to its essential and inseparable ones with all that is holy and elevating, to have an undue influence on his feelings, he yet adopted, as the quotation proves, the most judicious, because innocent methods of detecting imposture. The indulgence which every candid mind will exercise toward this part of the history of Methodism, under a full consideration of all the circumstances, is warranted by the fact, that such extravagancies are not peculiar to it, but characteristic rather of the human mind when aroused by the Gospel under a similar melancholy deprivation of light and knowledge. Hence similar phenomena are recorded by Dr. Gillies and others, as having occurred under similar circumstances at various periods, and in different countries. But Lord John Russel's object was not to widen our sphere of psychological knowledge; but to degrade Methodism, while attempting to explain its diffusion among the lower orders, on the hypothesis of its operating, by these means, on a love of the marvellous, and a sympathetic excitement of the passions. For that more sober course of events which recommended the system to general attention he has no eye. Like the Pagan who forms his notion of the Deity from the extraordinary convulsions of nature, uncorrected by his observations of the sunshine and the shower in the noiseless revolution of the seasons, his lordship has wholly overlooked, in his description of the accompaniments of

* Watson's Observations on Southey's Life of Wesley, p. 99.