his bed from one part of the room to another in order to avoid the droppings of the tempest which filtered copiously through the defective roof. Whilst another in similar circumstances had additional bedding provided in the shape of a counterpane of drifted snow. They were decidedly irregular at their meals, and the intervals between them were often longer than was agreeable to the flesh, however profitable they may have found fasting to the spirit. Few would venture into such a ministry unless through love to God and to souls. Their earnestness was greatly helped by one of their peculiar doctrines, that it is the duty of every Christian to posses a full and perfect assurance of divine love, and forgiveness of sins; and that immediately upon conversion. The true Wesleyan preacher in those times knew nothing about "doubts and fears," but could truly say, "We walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance." It is singular to notice how often extremes meet. The old Calvinistic Puritan by belief in his personal election, and the final perseverance of the saints, attained a similar assurance and joy with the Arminian Methodist, which rendered him serene and happy, when on fields of battle, amidst deadly smokewreaths and steel glancings, he fought out the liberties of England. Thus the early Wesleyan preacher was raised superior "to hunger and thirst, fastings, buffetings, weariness and painfulness;" and enabled to work on stedfastly to a peaceful or triumphant end. (3.) Their organisation was to them a source of strength. Wesley's penetrating mind admirably suited his system to the work to be done in his day, although we think it wants adaptation in many respects to the present times. It was, however, a guide to both preachers and people in the minutest points of doctrine, conduct, and ecclesiastical system. Much of the system has now become obsolete, at least in the spirit and aspect in which Wesley and his compeers held it, and must be considered inapplicable to the deeper wants of this new and unresting age. We may suppose no Wesleyan preacher would now refuse a society ticket to any Methodist young lady on the ground of this stern rule by which their fathers walked :-" Give no ticket to any that wear calashes, high heels, or enormous bonnets." Still the great element of concentration is, and has been, their tower of strength, without which the early movement would have died out with the Wesleys. The class system was more especially the nourishing root of their system; now, indeed, it has degenerated into a form, but then it bound them together as brethren in the conflict they waged against sin and error. They acted on the principle that always and everywhere "union is strength," and the want of it infallible ruin and discomfiture. Happy would it be for some dissenting churches and communities in these days if they would bear this fact in mind! (4.) Their great strength, however, lay in the essential truth they preached. It was the grand old doctrine of justification by faith alone. This was no new doctrine, nor were they its only preachers. Not a few good men in those days preached it to their own people every Sunday, but too often in a cold, dull, dry, uninteresting manner. No effort of any consequence was then made to affect the masses of the people, and in this, as well as other respects, as Jay puts it, "the Establishment was asleep in the dark, and the Dissenters were asleep in the light." The Wesleys and their compeers were undoubtedly the first to take the lead in modern times in the great work of preaching to the masses of the people, and on the whole they found them, as if rightly approached they will always be found, prepared to receive the "truth as it is in Jesus." Their work was like casting fire amidst ripe prairie-grass, and on all sides the fire spread; brightly it burns still, and we believe will never be quenched again. It is fashionable for philosophical sceptics and Unitarians, to sneer at this doctrine and to account for its acceptance and effects by speaking of it as gross and stimulating, and suited to the coarse and vulgar taste of the common people. We take leave to say, however, that the average sense of human nature is dead against both them and their theories; and if the common people be not so highly educated as are their critics, still their sense and natural abilities are quite as good, and often better, than those who thus despise them. What, for instance, have Unitarians, with all their preaching and teaching, done for the human race? or what are they likely to do? We know that in modern times they have veered round to some extent from the bald, coarse views of Priestley and the Socinians of that day, and assume a refined, sentimental, semi-poetic, semi-philosophic respect for the Saviour, yet preach and work as they may, what fruits, what results have they to show? By the last census accounts we learn, that in this country the Unitarians have 229 separate buildings for worship, whilst the Wesleyans have 6,579. The largest number of attendants in these Unitarian places on March 1st, 1851, amounted to 27,612 of Wesleyans 654,349. We now ask how is the strange power of faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ to be accounted for, over the human mind? The reply is obvious-the vicarious sacrifice of the Saviour meets satisfactorily a deep and universal need of the human soul. This we find pointed out in the words of the compiler of the last "Census of Religious Worship," who, in showing that the masses are not inaccessible to religion, observes that "there still remain within them that vague sense of some tremendous want, and those aspirings after some indefinite advancement which afford to zealous preachers a firm hold upon the conscience, even of the rudest multitude.” We contend that personal faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ can satisfy fully this "tremendous want," and that nothing else can. Theories of possible human excellence, however beautiful, and yearnings after the future and infinite, however poetical, are all vain to replenish the need of a guilty human soul. These, though often most eloquently and touchingly expressed by modern Unitarians are felt to be like the Arctic Northern lights, beautiful but cold, and as incapable of melting the human heart into penitence, tenderness, and joyful hope, as the cold glittering moonbeam is powerless to dissolve an iceberg, however much it may sparkle on its surface in hues of beauty. John Foster, in his dying hours, touchingly expressed what every human soul in some awful crisis or another of its history is sure to feel; when confronting eternity and near its solemn margin, he said, "What should I do without an atonement now?" And again, "How dreary would old age and illness be without the great doctrine of the Atonement!" This, the central doctrine of the Gospel, without which Christianity is reduced to a bare system of ethics, the study of which only aggravates our sense of sin and wretchedness, without affording one ray of relief-this the early Wesleyans preached with earnest purpose, with glowing hearts, and with rich results. Souls the most unlikely to yield to religious influence were brought "out of darkness into marvellous light." There was Thomas Oliver, "a most abandoned miscreant and clever thief," who was brought to repentance by a sermon of Whitefield's, and, like Zaccheus, restored his own to every man he knew he had wronged, and at the same time asked parden of those he had defrauded. He became a most successful preacher, and was author of the hymn "Lo, He comes with clouds descending," and of one which Montgomery pronounced to be one of the most glorious odes in our language, of which we quote the first verse:— The God of Abraham praise Jehovah, great I AM! By earth and heaven confessed: He was but a single specimen of many more who appeared hopelessly and deplorably lost, but by the preaching of that doctrine of Christ crucified which is "the power of God" over the spiritual world, were brought to holiness and happiness and God. Beautifully does Martineau, in his "Christian Life" (vol. ii., p. 78), contrast the period we write of, with the colder love and zeal that too much characterises many in the present, though, as we think, he fails to see that doctrine of justifying mercy through faith in Christ, which was the secret of the great strength of these wonderful men, and which lit up those days with heavenly splendours of power and grace. Martineau writes :- In contact with every grand era in the experience of mankind, will be found the birth of a religion;;-a fresh discovery of the preternatural and mysterious; a plenary sense of God; the descent of a Holy Spirit on waiting hearts; a day of Pen tecost to strong and faithful souls, giving them the utterance of a divine persuasion, and dispersing a new gospel over the world. We, alas! are far enough,-far, at least, as the days of Wesley,-from any such period of inspi ration in the past; perhaps, however, the nearer to it in the future, as there is no night unfollowed by the dawn. It is not permitted us too curiously to search the hidden providences of our humanity; but one thing we cannot fail to notice; that a return to simple undisguised affections-to natural and veracious speech -to earnest and inartificial life-has characterised every great and noble period and all morally powerful and venerable men." We regret that this eloquent writer could not see his way to add-in analysing the nature of the causes which led to such happy results-the simple, earnest, general preaching of the mystery of incarnate love, manifested in the sacrificial death, and vicarious sufferings of the sinless " Lamb of God, which taketh away (¿ atpwv, beareth away) the sin of the world"-apart from the proclamation of which truth no truly great, noble, spiritual epoch can now be hoped for in the history of the world-and without its reception, the deepest want of human consciousness, rest from a haunting sense of sin, can never be satisfactorily met. When we think of the final rewards of eternity, when those shall be distinguished as "stars" who "have turned many to righteousness," what multitudes of souls shall glitter in the "crown of rejoicing" of such men as the Wesleys, Whitfield, and their compeers. What greetings they shall have in heaven from multitudes from the collieries of Kingswood, the mines of Corn. wall, the potteries of Staffordshire, the dingy factories of the North, and from myriads more whose faces they never saw on earth, but who, touched more or less by the instrumentalities they set in motion-(and which move powerfully still)-shall, by the Divine blessing on their heroic self-denying labours, be brought to glory in heaven. When the proudest eulogy of the world's heroes shall be forgotten, and the decisions of time reversed, these men, and such as these, "shall be had in everlasting remembrance." We would earnestly point the attention of living preachers to a renewed study of the "work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father," which these true "successors of the Apostles" exhibited, not in vestments, and confessionals, and wax candles, and genuflexions, and intonings, and similar mummeries, but in going out into the "high-ways and hedges," and there by the manifest outpouring of the Holy Spirit on their labours, "opening" man's darkened spiritual vision-"turning them from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God." From such a study in this day, when there seems a revival of their spirit in the efforts being made by all denominations to bring the Gospel home to the more neglected masses of the people, much good would accrue, and many competent men be animated to "go and do likewise." Newport. W. AITCHISON. THE BLUE BOOK ON SPIRITUAL DESTITUTION. A PARLIAMENTARY Blue Book* on "The Deficiency of Means of Spiritual Instruction" in England is, we believe, an absolute, and it is certainly far from being an unimportant or an uninteresting novelty. The world is indebted for it, not to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom, as primate of all England, such a movement might have seemed most appropriate, but to that energetic prelate, the Bishop of Exeter, who moved the appointment of the Committee, and, as chairman of it, generally conducted the examination. The volume is interesting in two ways: on the one hand it opens to us rather broadly the somewhat unquiet condition of our neighbour; and on the other it affords us glimpses of the view which our neighbour takes of our own. We shall briefly notice it in both these aspects. According to the evidence here given, the Church of England may be said to be in a transition state. Wakened up in some degree from its chronic lethargy, and startled into a kind of spasmodic action by the unwelcome revelations of the census of 1851, she exhibits a partial display of new energy, and a local adoption of new methods, avowedly tentative. The whole thing, however, has its characteristic aspects. The fact which has startled the church into its new life being stated-not in the form that one-half the people of England are in a state of spiritual ignorance and vice, but in this, that one-half the people of England do not go to church-the remedy naturally accords with the alleged mischief, and the object aimed at is, not to render the people religious, but to get them to church. In pursuing this object some new features present themselves, not unworthy of notice. Entirely novel is an inquiry into "the fittest means of meeting the difficulties of the case;" inasmuch as hitherto it has always been assumed, without inquiry, that the only thing wanted was more churches, each with its clerical staff, and the due performance of the ecclesiastical ritual. It was in accordance with this assumption that, about thirty years ago, first one million sterling, and then an additional half million, were voted by * Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the Deficiency of Means of Spiritual Instruction and Places of Divine Worship in the Metropolis, and in other Populous Districts in England and Wales, especially in the Mining and Manufacturing Districts, and to consider the fittest means of meeting the difficulties of the case; and to report thereon to the House; together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 2nd July, 1858. the House of Commons for the purpose of church building, and that such gorgeous and costly buildings were erected with the money as the new churches of St. Pancras and Marylebone. It was in accordance with the same assumption, also, that the late Bishop of London (Dr. Blomfield) put forth his benevolent plan of building ten new churches in the district of Bethnal Green. It is something to say that this vast expenditure is now denounced by church people themselves as waste, and the principle on which it was undertaken as a blunder. The cry is reiterated by all the witnesses who spoke to this point, that the great want of the church is, not more churches, but more clergy. And more clergy too of a peculiar cast. Not men who shall occupy an incumbency for its emoluments, and content themselves with the routine performance of ecclesiastical functions, but a working clergy, consisting of men who shall be continually going among the population, and carrying to them, in every persuasive form, the elements of ecclesiastical influence. We lay before our readers a sample of the evidence on this point:— 1309. To the Rev. T. F. Stooks.] Is it necessary, in your estimation, as the best course, to try to procure additional clergymen, rather than additional churches?-Cer tainly, in the first instance. 1310. You feel that the great want is that of clergy?—Yes, the crying want is that of clergy. 1311. With an increase of the clergy the auxiliary buildings would be much better filled?—Yes, and I also believe that the new ones would follow more easily. 1560. To the Rev. T. Evans.] If you had two curates to make visits to the people, and to talk with them, and induce them to see their duty, do you think it would have a better effect?—That seems to be the only hope; to bring the poor more into personal contact with the clergyman. 1561. That is a more hopeful way of Christianising a population like yours than merely building a church ?-Yes, certainly; we want a large body of clergy to act upon the people, and to act upon them simultaneously in all parts. one of the hono 2237. To the Rev. Bryan King.] Was this experiment [his parochial mission] one that occured to your own mind, or was it suggested to you?-I have for years past been most anxious to make such an experiment. I had taken a very active part in building churches in Bethnal Green, and I acted as rary secretaries for the Bethnal Green Church Building Society. I was one of those that originated that scheme. I was disappointed with the results of it; and I was convinced that we had begun at the wrong end; that to build churches in such neighbourhoods was beginning entirely at the wrong end. I was convinced that the proper way was to begin with the exercise of the more strictly pastoral office. So unanimous is the testimony borne upon this matter by all the witnesses called before the Committee, that their lordships, in their Report, recommend the raising, by voluntary subscription, of a fund of three millions sterling for the endowment of additional clergymen! They do not recom mend an application for a grant of public money to that amount, they tell us, "for obvious reasons." We are glad that the " reasons" operating against such a recommendation were so "obvious" to their lordships; as to voluntary efforts, if it so please our liberal neighbours, we of course, can have no objection to them." As to the practical principle here involved, the importance of "bringing the poor into personal contact with the clergyman," there can be no doubt that the clergy have at last (to use a familiar expression) hit the right nail on the head. We honour the zeal which some worthy and rightminded men among them have shown, and rejoice in the success with which their self-denying labours have been crowned. We should be glad to see the whole of England covered with such ministers of Christ as some whose names will readily occur to our readers without our making specific mention of them. The only drawback to our gratification in the |