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their Surety, he had satisfied every demand of justice; and such love to their Deliverer sprung up in their hearts, as made it delightful to follow and serve him—a new, inward power, by which they were enabled to keep his commandments with their whole heart.

This rescue from sin and death appeared to them so wonderful, so timely, so suited for all lost sinners, and, withal, so easy, though so little understood, that it was most natural for them, in the simplicity of their hearts, to begin to tell others what they felt, and preach the doctrines, by which they had been saved from misery. We can not conceive of their doing any thing else. No thought of founding a sect, or of separating from the Church, entered their heads for an instant; they honestly told their own history, and preached the Gospel, as they had been led to understand it. The doctrine seemed new, though in reality it was old; the fervor of the preachers was new; in whatever church they preached, crowds came to hear them.

Whitefield was the first to make an impression. At his first appearance, in Bishopsgate Church, he was only twenty-three, and very young looking, so that he was regarded almost with contempt. But contempt was succeeded by attention, and attention by admiration; so that in two years he became the most popular preacher in London. At this time he rigidly adhered to his manuscript. His deliverance from this, and his discovery of the secret of his wonderful power, is due to the Young Men's Associations before mentioned. Among them he found a few kindred souls, and began, with many fears and much hesitation, to pray extempore, till, at length, having gathered confidence, he went forth one day-little dreaming that he was com mitting an ecclesiastical irregularity, and still less that he was inaugurating the greatest religious revival of modern

times and preached abroad, on an eminence near Bristol, to nearly two thousand persons.

A great awakening now began. These young clergymen little thought of what was to follow. They had not ventured to hope that the holy and happy influences, which descended on them, as they prayed and expounded in rooms, before the young men of the city, were, as Elijah's little cloud, precursors of a rain that should refresh the whole land. It is time now to take a somewhat fuller view of these men, as they afterward appeared.

Whitefield was a born orator. He was not remarkable as a scholar, or as a theologian; but he was the most wonderful, and the most successful, preacher that England ever saw. His face was a language; his gestures of themselves said more than most men's aptest words; his fluency was unequaled; his voice was so wonderfully modulated, that Garrick said he could make men either laugh or cry by pronouncing the word Mesopotamia; and such was the ardor of his spirit, as to sustain him through twelve or fourteen of his wonderful efforts, every week, for months together. He could quell the most savage, fire the most listless, interest the most stupid, and charm the most philosophic. When a crowd of ten or fifteen thousand people was assembled on Kennington Common, his unrivaled voice would enable every one to hear every word; stillness prevailed like that of death, interrupted now and then by a piercing outcry, or an irrepressible halleluiah. All opposition, for the time, quailed before him. At Exeter a ruffian came prepared to knock him on the head with a great stone. The sermon affected him so, that the stone dropped from his hand. Then his heart melted. After the service he went to Whitefield, and said, with tears, "Sir, I came to break your head, but God has given me a broken heart." Persecution, in

high quarters, only stimulated his energies and increased his usefulness. In one week, when shut out of the churches entirely, he took the fields, and received not fewer than a thousand letters, from persons who had been awakened or comforted under his preaching. No building could afford full scope for his powers; field preaching was his delight and glory. He went into Bartholomew fair-a Quixotic undertaking, as it was thought, even for him. The shows and booths were deserted, and he records, "Soon after, three hundred and fifty awakened souls were received into the society in one day; and numbers that seemed, as it were, to have been bred up for Tyburn, were plucked as brands from the burning." Four times he visited America, where his labors and success were as great as in England. When he became Lady Huntingdon's chaplain, many leading personages came to her drawing-room to hear him; such as Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, David Hume, Walpole, Selwyn, and Pitt. He made a deep impression upon almost all these illustrious men. Lord Bolingbroke-who will not be suspected of any leaning toward religion-said of him, "He is the most extraordinary man of our times. He has the most commanding eloquence I ever heard in any person; his zeal is unquenchable, and his piety unquestionable." Yet he was not himself on these occasions. The mighty herald could not blow his trumpet in a drawing-room; and, accordingly, after a month of such work, we find him too ill to hold a pen. Instead of consulting a doctor, he starts for Portsmouth, preaches on the day after his arrival to some thousands of people, and is himself again. Whitefield was truly and thoroughly a good man. He combined the fervor of a seraph with the humility of a little child. Few men have been more misrepresented; but, though his temper was warm, no instance is on record of his returning evil for evil. He

fully understood his mission, which was that of a voice crying in the wilderness. He had not Wesley's genius for organization, and attempted little in that way. "If I formed societies," he said, "I should but weave a Penelope's web. Every thing I meet with seems to carry this voice with it, 'Go thou and preach the Gospel; be a pilgrim on earth; have no party or certain dwellingplace.' My heart echoes back, 'Lord Jesus, help me to do or suffer thy will. When thou seest me in danger of nestling, in pity-in tender pity, put a thorn in my nest, to prevent me from it."" He died in America, worn out by thirty years' exhausting and incessant labors. He seems to belong equally to us all; and his name is cherished, as that of a brother, by men of every section of the Church, to this day.

John Wesley was a very different man from Whitefield. He had less passion and more logic; less power of awakening in men a sudden impulse, but more power of exercising a permanent control over them. His mind was thoroughly disciplined, and amply stored with various knowledge. In scholastic attainments he was before most men of his age. He had a ready wit, a refined taste, and a cheerful temper. He was a pattern of neatness and order in his dress, in the management of his papers, and in his personal habits. Yet underneath this kindly and polished surface lay concealed such strength of will, such steadiness of aim, such uncompromising conscientiousness, such undaunted courage, such invincible perseverance, and such prodigious power of work, as few men, in any sphere of life have possessed. At the time of his conversion he had no preferment in the Church; he had refused a parish, and was living on the income of his fellowship at Oxford. He began to preach wherever he had opportunity, greatly to the scandal of more orderly Churchmen; visited Bristol, Newcastle, and other places,

and preached to the colliers with unheard-of success. Societies were collected in each town, who were exhorted to attend church and sacrament with perfect regularity. The consequence was, that the churches in these towns became crowded, the Lord's supper was attended by hundreds, the clergy complained of the trouble and annoyance, repelled the people, and denounced the preachers by whom they had been awakened as Papists, heretics, traitors, and conspirators against their king and country.

We here see the second step in the revival processhow Wesley was driven to the employment of lay agency. He, and his two or three coadjutors, could not personally superintend all the societies; the resident clergy would not; and he must, therefore, either see them dispersed, or appoint some suitable person to advise and encourage them in his absence. His prejudices, as a Churchman, gave way before the wants of the people and the finger of Providence. A new principle began to be developed : that ordained ministers, though the chief, are not the only Church agents.

The time will not allow us to follow this devoted servant of Christ through his itinerant life of unexampled labor, protracted beyond the usual age of man. No man, perhaps, ever accomplished so much. He rode, chiefly on horseback, five thousand miles, and preached five hundred sermons every year, for nearly fifty years; arranged and governed the affairs of the Methodist societies, which numbered, before his death, seventy thousand members; was appealed to in innumerable private concerns; kept up an immense and varied correspondence; contrived to read every noticeable book as it issued from the press; wrote or abridged two hundred volumes; yet he always had a little time to spare, spent many an hour in cheerful conversation with his friends, and was never known to be in a hurry.