"The church supposes they have already been born again, and so does not command them to be baptized, or born again, a second time." These are assertions from a "fellow of Clarehall, Cambridge." A sermon was published by Dr. Stebbing, chaplain in ordinary to the king, against Whitefield, in which he endeavors to prove that regeneration is but another word for "the new man," and the latter but a figurative name of "practical righteousness." This sermon was indorsed and sent to Whitefield by the bishop of Gloucester. In his reply to the bishop's letter he justly says that the author" seems to know nothing more of the true nature of regeneration than Nicodemus did when he came to Jesus by night." The bishop of London, (Gibson,) in a pastoral letter, accused the Methodists of "professing to plant and propagate a new gospel, unknown to the generality of ministers and people in a Christian country." The charge referred to justification by faith, and no doubt the bishop's testimony can be relied on, that it was "unknown to the generality of ministers and people." Indeed, many of the leading prelates of the day entered the lists against Wesley and Whitefield, and most of them opposed the very doctrines which are now received as vital in the Christian sys

tem.

"Gibson compromised the apostolic doctrine of regeneration; Lavington caricatured it; Smallbroke all but denied the work of the Spirit, and Warburton evaporated divine influence."* To the reformers of Oxford, therefore, the Christian world owes, in a great measure, the revival of those cardinal truths which the church has subsequently distinguished as pre-eminent, by calling them evangelical. It was the vitality of these truths that rendered so efficacious their ministry, and that still quickens all evangelical Christendom. Being the apostolic doctrines, they reproduced the apostolic spirit, and, since the date of Methodism, the primitive idea of missions has reappeared. Indeed, nearly all the plans of Christian enterprise, which now engage the attention of the church, have been adopted since. The Bible, the Sunday school, the tract, the temperance societies, as well as the principal missionary schemes of the church, have subsequently arisen. I do not assume that we owe them directly to Wesley, but that they sprung from the revival of the vital doctrines of Christianity: that Wesley was the leading agent in this revival and Methodism its organized form.

Salvation, free, full, immediate, attainable by "Philips' Life of Whitefield.

all, and experimentally known, these are the substance of Methodist theology. They are wholesome doctrines, and very full of comfort; blessed be God that we know them, and are commissioned to spread them through our sinful and sorrowful world. Let us preach, and emphasize, and reiterate these truths; they are full of gracious efficacy; the common sense of men will recognize them as the appropriate tenets of God's word, and their anxious spirits will find in them repose. Some of us have the impression that our special work is done; that other evangelical churches have become revived; and have so far adopted our views of experimental religion as that we need no longer feel the peculiar responsibility for the spread of these views, which devolved upon our fathers. Would that it were so; but we fear that it is far otherwise. We acknowledge that they have generally approximated our standard, but they have not yet reached it. They believe more than formerly in spiritual confidence and a higher standard of piety; but in how many of their vestry meetings can you hear the laity declaring their assurance that "the Spirit itself beareth witness with their spirits that they are the children of God," or that the blood of Christ "cleanseth them from all unrighteousness?” VOL. II.-6

In Methodist prayer meetings these are the perpetual topics; in other churches they are scarcely matters of allusion. Two of what we consider vital truths of religion are yet almost peculiar to us, namely, the witness of the Spirit, and Christian perfection. While we lament that they are not received by other churches, let us rejoice that they are household sentiments among ourselves, and bear in mind that on us devolves the responsibility of spreading them. While these views are peculiar to Methodism, it will be a peculiar privilege to be a Methodist, and those who owe to the Methodist Church their conversion, and yet join other communions, from the impression that all are now alike evangelical, mistake seriously. The late Dr. Fisk, though, while in a backslidden state, strongly inclined to the Protestant Episcopal Church, felt, when he received the blessing of "perfect love," the precious privilege of membership in a church where this doctrine was taught. "O, my brother," he writes, "I could write pages on this subject, but I must forbear. I thank God that I ever saw this day. I love our church better than ever. How glad am I that I never left it, and how thankful that they never cast me off when backslidden from the cause !"-Life, p. 73.

THE PRAYING MOTHER.

"He heareth the prayer of the righteous."-Solomon. MRS. L. is a remnant of the first generation of Methodists in B. She is still wending her heavenward pilgrimage, after many years of trial and change. Her husband was a sea captain, of French origin, a Catholic in his earlier religious education, but a decided skeptic in his maturer years, tolerating, with affability, the religious opinions of others, but utterly reckless of his own.

Mrs. L. consecrated her house to God; she erected the family altar and guarded its hallowed fire with the fidelity of a vestal priestess. Even her infidel husband was compelled to admire her Christian integrity, and during his stay at home, as well as his absence on the seas, she faithfully gathered her little ones in daily domestic worship. Skeptic as he was, he felt that that family altar shed a cheering and hallowed light on his hearth-stones, that it was a moral mooring to his household during his frequent and long absence-an affecting, though, it might be, an illusive reminiscence of their early home to his children, when, in after years, they might be dispersed in the world. Nay, often, in for