peasants and persons of neglected education might have the means of acquiring useful knowledge at the smallest possible expense of time and money. In providing cheap literature, he anticipated the movements of more modern times by many years; and in this kind of service he laboured almost alone for nearly half a century. Moral and sacred poetry he strongly recommended, and published selections of this kind in three volumes; and portable editions of Milton and Young, with notes explaining the difficult passages, and directing attention to the finest paragraphs.

Desirous of promoting in all his societies the study of the holy Scriptures, as the source and standard of divine truth, he published, in a quarto volume, an amended translation of the New Testament with Explanatory Notes, remarkable for their spirituality, terseness, and point. A similar work, but less original in its character, he published on the Old Testament in three quarto volumes. We hazard nothing in saying, that no man ever lived who placed a larger mass of evangelical and useful literature within the reach of the common people. The works which he published were not merely harmless, but beneficial; calculated and intended to make men wise and holy.

Mr. Charles Wesley was an elegant scholar, and possessed a fine classical taste; but as a literary man he engaged in a kind of service very different from that which occupied the more versatile genius of his brother. Prose composition he almost entirely neglected; except that he wrote two sermons for the press,- -one on, "Awake, thou that sleepest," and the other on Earthquakes,-and for many years kept a daily record of passing occurrences. Above almost

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all men that ever lived, he was the child of feeling; and from the time of his conversion, till his fires were quenched in death, he thought and breathed in sacred verse. His was not "made poetry," but poetry that made itself." It flowed from the depth of his heart in a perennial stream, as clear as it was full and strong. He supplied the Methodists with hymns suited to every occasion, and on all possible subjects connected with their spiritual concerns; and that with an energy, a purity, and a copiousness of diction, and with a richness of evangelical sentiment, of which the Christian church had perhaps never before seen an equal example. There is scarcely a feeling of the heart in the entire process of salvation, from the first dawn of light upon the understanding, and the incipient sorrows of penitence, to the joys of pardon, the entire sanctification of the soul, and its triumphant entrance into paradise, which he has not expressed in genuine poetry. All that he and his brother taught from the pulpit, of the evil of sin, the glory of Christ, the efficacy of the atonement, the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, "the good fight of faith," the peace and joy of believing, and the ecstatic anticipations of hope, he enabled the people to sing in strains worthy of the brightest days of the primitive church, when she had received the pentecostal baptism of fire. Never were people so favoured with respect to the substance of their psalmody as the Wesleyan Connexion has always been.

To some persons it may perhaps appear incredible, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that, independently of his own original works, which occupy fourteen large octavo volumes, Mr. John Wesley abridged, revised, and printed no fewer than one hundred and seventeen distinct publications, reckoning his Christian

Library, his Histories, and his Philosophy, as only one each; and that the brothers, separately and unitedly, published forty-seven poetical tracts and volumes, most of which were the compositions of Mr. Charles Wesley, and adapted to the use of public, domestic, and private devotion; besides a large number of psalms which were inserted in the " Arminian Magazine." Apparently without design, Mr. Charles Wesley has anticipated every want of the Connexion, so far as devotional poetry is concerned. Notwithstanding the difference between his times and the present, there is not a religious service, whether relating to Missions, the Christian sacraments, or the ordination of Ministers, for which he has not most appropriately provided.

Mr. Charles Wesley was critically acquainted with the holy Scriptures, and had a profound knowledge of theology, as must appear to every attentive reader of his poetry. To a great extent, it forms a beautiful commentary on the Bible.

THE ADOPTION OF A SIMPLE AND IMPRESSIVE MODE OF PREACHING.

WHEN Messrs. John and Charles Wesley, having found what they had long sought,-the peace and holiness which are consequent upon the true Christian faith, began to exert themselves to effect a revival of religion in the nation, they employed a mode of preaching adapted to this end. They laid aside the practice of reading their sermons, and addressed the people from the fulness of their hearts; yet without the slightest approach to rhapsody. The subjects of their ministry were, at first, comparatively few, but immensely important. True religion, they strenuously maintained, does not consist

in right opinions, nor in correct morals, nor in harmlessness of conduct, nor in attendance upon Christian ordinances, necessary as these things are in their several places; but it is the life of God in the soul of man; a conformity to the divine image; the love of God and of all mankind for his sake, constantly expressing itself in acts of piety, benevolence, and righteousness. They contended, that of this all mankind are naturally destitute; and that they can attain it in no other way than by believing in Christ. Love to God, which they described as the root and principle of all holiness, they declared to be a grateful affection, arising, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, from an assurance of God's love to us; so that justification, and the inward witness of our adoption, precede sanctification, though they are inseparably connected with it. This happiness and purity they declared to be attainable by all men, and attainable now; and hence they offered to the most unworthy of mankind, as the free gift of God, a present salvation from the guilt, the power, and the misery of sin. All believers they exhorted to go on unto perfection; assuring them, upon the testimony of holy Scripture, that they might be saved in this life from all inward as well as all outward sin; and love God with all their heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. The necessity of a holy life, as the fruit of faith, and as emanating from the principle of divine love, they enforced with unceasing earnestness, and with a constant reference to the strict account which every one must soon render to the Judge of quick and dead. The offices of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, in their direct connexion with the present and everlasting salvation of mankind, formed the prominent, subjects of their

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ministrations. In Christianity they found a perfect remedy for all the miseries of our fallen world; and hence they preached under a plenary conviction of the absolute truth of the doctrine which they inculcated, and felt it to be worthy of all acceptation. In these respects, their fellow-labourers were likeminded with them. They described the new birth as consisting in an entire change of heart from sin to holiness; and with peculiar earnestness they declared it to be absolutely and universally necessary in order to final salvation. On this vital subject their ministry was marked by an especial solemnity and force.

The principles by which Mr. Wesley was guided in the formation of his theological views, and the manner in which he endeavoured to teach mankind, he has distinctly stated in the incomparable preface to his sermons, which he first published in the year 1746.

"To candid, reasonable men," says he, "I am not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit, come from God, and returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf, till a few moments hence I am no seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity. I want to know one thing, the way to heaven, how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way for this very end he came down from heaven. He hath written it

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down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! is knowledge enough for me. one book.

Here then I am, far

I have it. Here Let me be a man of from the busy ways