1847.] His Power. 13 "To what cause can I impute this, that I am as I am? First, doubtless, to the power of God fitting me for the work to which I am called, as long as he pleases to continue me therein; and next, subordinately to this, to the prayers of his children. "May we not impute it, as inferior means, -1. To my constant exercise and change of air? 2. To my never having lost a night's sleep, sick or well, at land or at sea, since I was born ? 3. To my having sleep at command, so that, whenever I feel myself almost worn out, I call it, and it comes, day or night? 4. To my having constantly, for about sixty years, risen at four in the morning? 5. To my constant preaching at five in the morning for above fifty years? 6. To my having had so little pain in my life, and so little sorrow or anxious care ? "Even now, though I find pain daily in my eye, or temple, or arm, yet it is never violent, and seldom lasts many minutes at a time. Whether or not this is sent to give me warning that I am shortly to quit this tabernacle, I do not know; but be it one way or the other, I have only to say, 'My remnant of days I spend to his praise Who died the whole world to redeem ; Be they many or few, My days are his due, And they all are devoted to him!'" So it proved three years afterwards. In 1791, March 2d, at the age of eighty-eight, he breathed his last, with a hymn of praise on his lips. With the little strength remaining, he cried out to the friends watching his departure, 66 The best of all is, God is with us"; and could only whisper the first two words of a favorite psalm, — “ I 'Îl praise, I'll praise." His friends were left to finish the lines, for Wesley's voice was to be heard no more. He died, but a work remained such as no other man of his century left behind him. At the time of his death, more than a hundred thousand persons looked to him as their guide to heaven, and now the hundred thousand has become a million. Whence this vast power? We reply, from the age, the man, and the method. ers. The age was cold and skeptical. The common people were neglected by those who should have been their teachA tongue of fire was needed none the less for the philosophy and scholarship that distinguished the eighteenth century. The metaphysics and ethics of sages like Berkeley and Butler, the learning of scholars like Lardner and Warburton, were little successful in awakening faith; nor were the well written and sensible sermons of Secker and Sherlock, Paley and Blair, very powerful in rebuking sin, even in the select class of their admirers. Fire was wanted, and it came. The It came in a peculiar man, and a peculiar method. man was a combination of elements usually deemed incompatible. We cannot accord to him any remarkable depth of intellect. To philosophical insight or metaphysical faculty he laid small claim. Neither was poetic genius one of his gifts; nor any remarkable power of fancy or imagination. George Fox, his forerunner in practical reform, notwithstanding his narrower compass of gifts and attainments, strikes us as having a deeper mind; and original thoughts once in a while shine out from his rhapsodic medleys, that startle the reader more than any thing in the great Methodist's pages. But as uniting practical judgment and efficiency with burning enthusiasm, Wesley is unequalled, certainly on this side of the age of St. Ignatius. His head was as clear and utilitarian as Franklin's, without the least particle of mysticism or extravagance; whilst his heart flamed with a zeal like Loyola's, and glowed with a charity like Fénelon's. At once an acute reasoner and an enthusiastic devotee, he carried out his thoughts and emotions with a determination of purpose worthy of being mentioned with the mightiest, even with that mighty will already preparing, at the close of Wesley's life, to show itself in France in the young officer from Corsica. It cost him little to say that least and hardest of words, -that countersign to the gate of virtue,"No." He could readily resist the entreaties of father and brother. He was proof against the irritations of the fireside, and swerved not a jot from his course to propitiate the peculiar companion, who, it was more than whispered, enabled him to sympathize with Job, the patriarch, and Socrates, the sage. He carried out his plans without regard to opposition on the part of others, or to the sacrifice of his own time or ease. As an instance of his disposition, he coolly ascertained, by experiment, how much sleep would do for him, and the result became the rule of his subsequent life. Not a few of our readers, doubtless, from remembrance of many vain attempts to form the habit of early rising, will be ready to say that the man who could do this need not fear difficulty in any quarter. 1847.] His Method. 15 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 1847.] ers. Prospects of Methodism. 17 method, accomplished a vast amount of work, and lived ten lives in one. As he ruled himself, so he legislated for othThe 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! - He 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. 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 |