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On John Wesley's return, he and his servancy of their purity and zeal constituted brother, convinced that they had now found an episcopacy as burdensome as that of the the true light, began to preach immediate re- Apostle Paul. On his head, for forty years, pentance and immediate salvation. Very beat storms of opposition, which never fully shortly the churches were closed against spent their force until both brothers were them, and on April 2nd, 1739, John Wesley gathered to their rest. Nor was the charge went forth into the highways and hedges, and of schism, which was persistently brought crossed the ecclesiastical Rubicon by preach- against him, the least of his afflictions, as ing from a little hill near Bristol, to an audi- several of his letters, and a hymn wrung out ence of 3,000 persons. The courage which of intense mental suffering, distinctly evicould lead a forlorn hope, or give the word of dence. Throughout his career, he shrank command in a sinking ship, is inferior to that from the reproach, both for himself and his which led the two Wesleys, with the refined followers, of being other than dutiful sons and scholarly atmosphere of Oxford about of the Church.* Yet if his own "fieldthem, to mount waggons or tables by the preaching" could have been forgiven by roadside, give out hymns, and address mobs. the dignitaries of the Establishment, his The very doctrines they taught were known reluctant authorisation of the preaching of only as fanaticism." The mode of teach- unordained men would have been the signal ing was obnoxious to cultivated natures. for his virtual expulsion. Perhaps the least The hymns, which were already beginning felt of the many trials to which he was exto assert their power, were classed with posed, was the storm of persecution which "the song of the drunkard." Yet it was the preaching aroused. Throughout the "field-preaching," and that alone, that land, the appearance of either of the brothcould raise the dead in sin; and when out ers was the signal for disorder and violence. of every thrilled and tumultuous assembly Preaching-houses were gutted and burned, Christ rescued his own, and robust men fell the preachers assailed with stones and other down in mortal agonies out of which great missiles; they were waylaid and beaten, joy and holiness were born, and a Gospel their property destroyed, their clothes torn free from metaphysical shackles was preached to pieces. Even in Cornwall, where their to the poor, the whole land was roused. labours made the desert places glad, their While the Wesleys shot their fiery arrows meeting-houses were burnt as bon-fires, and direct into the consciences of men, wound- the gentle poet, Charles, on several occaing their obtuse moral sense, and bring- sions narrowly escaped with his life. A ing them to bay in more savage mood singular entry still remains in the parishthan that of the beasts of Ephesus, they book in the vestry of Illogan church. Exwere themselves clad in the panoply of penses at Ann Gartrell's for driving the a majestic calmness, the result of a per- Methodist, 9s.!" This is the enduring fect benevolence. So, whether abiding the record of the fact that the churchwarden, coarse onslaught of a furious rabble, or the placing himself at the head of an infuriated more studied insults of magistrates and inob, drove Wesley and his congregation other minions of the law, the brothers bore beyond the parish boundary, and afterthemselves at all times with the dignity and wards regaled his followers with drink at courtesy of gentlemen. the old ale-house at Pool. In Staffordshire, the story of the bloody and brutal assaults made upon the Wesleys, year after year, is still told among the regenerate descendants of the assailants. In Yorkshire, the fanaticism of the people, hounded on by the clergy, rose to such a height that for many a year the brothers itinerated among its fierce population at the peril of their lives. Even in the metropolis, the fury against

From the day when John Wesley violated the proprieties of ecclesiastical conventionalism, by preaching on the Somersetshire hill-side, his life became one long marvel. There was not only the tacit abandonment of his intensely High Church associations and partialities, the renunciation of his cherished schemes of religious retirement, or a learned seclusion within college walls, and the adoption of a course of living of which some of the leading features were, harassing anxieties, superhuman labours, and vulgar indignities, but their was the grand trial of the desertion of nearly all the friends who stood beside him at the outset of his career, but who, ere many years had passed, were ranged in the hostile attitude of foes. On him devolved the care of all the infant Methodist societies, and the con

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*In 1766 he wrote these remarkable words: "We are not dissenters, we are not seceders. . the

seceders laid the very foundation of their work in judging and condemning others. We laid the foundation of our work in judging and condemning ourselves. They begin every where with showing the people how fallen the church and ministers are. how fallen they are themselves. We will not, dare We begin everywhere with showing our hearers not separate from the Church for reasons given several years ago." If the Wesleyans occupy an altered position at this time, it is not Methodism, but the Church of England which has changed.

these uncompromising evangelists for long made by the Wesleys upon the lifelessness defied the authority of the law. There is a of the church, and the wickedness of the triumphant hymn, very dear to Methodists, world, their violations of ecclesiastical orassociated with one memorable day in der, and their uncompromising speech, Whitechapel, when the word on Wesley's should fill the land with tumult, and array lips being sharp as the sword of the Spirit, both church and world against them. For a mob, after vainly endeavouring to dis- the rise of Wesleyan Methodism was the perse the enthralled crowd by driving cattle true English reformation. The old truths among the women and children, assailed which had blessed men's souls, and which the preacher with stones, one of which cut were hidden from the multitude in musty him severely on the forehead. Yet all the folios and forgotten controversies, were more earnestly discoursed he of righteous- brought out once more, instinct with the ness, temperance, and judgment to come, life of the Gospel of Christ. The jargon of as he wiped the flowing blood away. For the theological schools was abandoned. thirty years the history of Methodism is the Men who had struggled through the gloamhistory of unremitting brutal violence, ac-ing of a lofty but obscure mysticism, into companying Gospel triumphs such as have never been witnessed in our land.* Amidst evil report and good report the brothers continued to preach. Never since Pentecostal days had the Spirit so manifestly attended upon the word. Multitudes were awakened to a sense of sin and pardon, and from this throng of the regenerate many came forth to preach that faith by which they were saved. Wesley's authorisation of these evangelists was the great advance point in his career. Methodism rose rapidly in power. All through the land the sinners who were seeking and finding salvation entered into a bond of brotherhood, the main object of which was to perfect holiness in the fear of God. Reprobates, formalists, godless and brutal persons, were converted, and brought forth the fruits of righteousness, one and all joyfully testifying in psalms and hymns that God had delivered them from the power of darkness, and had translated them into the kingdom of his Son. Stongholds of vice, of an arid orthodoxy, a wintry formalism, and a destructive heterodoxy, were carried by storm. When " the strong man" could no longer keep his goods in peace, it is not marvellous that the persevering aggressions Among the many organized persecutions of the Wesleys which are referred to in their hymns, the worst was that at Calne, in Lancashire, inasmuch as it was raised by a clergyman of considerable

learning and ability. On hearing that the Wesleys were expected in the neighbourhood, he preached a sermon with the avowed object of inflaming the populace against them. The proclamation afterwards issued is a singular proof of the fanaticism of which the defenders of moderatism were capable in that day:-"Notice is hereby given, that if any men be mindful to enlist into his Majesty's service, under the command of the Rev. G. White, Commander-in-Chief, and John Banister, Lieut.-General of his Majesty's forces, for the defence of the Church of England and the support of the manufactory in and about Calne, both of which are now in danger, let them repair to the drum-head at the Cross, where each man shall have a pint of beer for advance and other proper encouragement." The mob thus pastorally led not only savagely beat Wesley and his companion Grimshaw, but threw many of the Methodists from a rock twelve feet high into the river.

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the full daylight of salvation, whose hearts burned with love, and whose lips were touched with coals of fire, carried God's truth through the land, and at the sound a spiritual brotherhood sprang up, banded together for God's glory and man's salvation, against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Called by the Holy Ghost, and baptized with the baptism of the Spirit and of fire, the cry from their lips, Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out," broke the slumber of the whole nation. It was not under the force of direct attack that the effete religious systems of the day winced and trembled. The Wesleys took the very truths which had become palsied and lifeless in the hands of other men, and gave them forth to famishing crowds as the very bread of life of which they themselves had eaten. So wherever religion had sunk into formalism and apathy, it was awakened and vivified, while the chaff was burnt up with fire unquenchable. Libelled as enthusiasts," fanatics," "disorderly persons; " dreaded, despised, persecuted, they sinote the rock whose living waters have followed the company of the faithful ever since, blessing the church which, in a moment of blind irritation and panic, rejected them, and the Nonconformist bodies, which regarded them with coldness or distrust.

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In the forefront of this mighty religious Round revival the two Wesleys stand. them as a nucleus, revived Christianity clusters, in them the interest of the student of the past and present of Methodism culminates.

That Providence which called the Methodist societies into being, and blessed the world through them, endowed them at once with a brain and a heart. John, the Brain, was rich in the power which governs men, and in the faculty of organizing, both essential qualities for the organization and harmonious operation of the discordant elements composing the Methodist societies. Deaf to the many

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voices which accused him of despotism and away, leaving its glorious fruits, but the the stirrings of personal ambition, he be- hymns are imperishable - forming the queathed to his followers a rule and prac- character of the Methodist societies, shaptice of wisdom, which saved them from ing their creed, and tinging their sentidrifting into the strong antagonism of Dis- ments. Without the hymns, Methodism sent, and has preserved them in the hon- would not be the living force it is among ourable via media which they now occupy. us, capable of transforming savage, unculA slight sternness, and a latent asceticism, tivated natures into loving, holy Christians. were elements in John Wesley's character. The place of worship may be nothing but Without the first he could scarcely have re- an upper room furnished," in one of our pressed the ignorant zeal of some of his mining districts, the preacher insignificant, followers, or pruned the undue luxuriance the smooched, rough appearance of the of his brother's poetry; without the last he men on the one side auguring as ill for would have faltered in his career as a leader poetic or devotional enthusiasm, as the of men. On his calm, lofty features, at hard visages and tasteless attire of the once delicate and classical, in his piercing women on the other; but no sooner is such eye and compressed lips, self-control was a hymn as Jesus, Lover of my soul" anlegibly written. There was a glory on his nounced, than a burst of animated song face brightening in his later years, but it arises, and the gleaming faces, the tearful was the steady light of summer noon, not eyes, and the trembling voices, tell that the the sunshine of an April morning, glimmer- tenderest emotions of the Divine life, and ing through tears. There were no weak, the poet's own deep meaning, are experisoft places, about him; no domesticity, and enced by those who in times past knew no scarcely, indeed, such tenderness as would higher poetry than the coarse ballads which lead the trembling and fearful to seek his find favour among the uneducated. So in counsel or sympathy. This man, who re- the Southern States of America, when the cognised the social intentions of the Gospel old bonds were loosed, and men expected as none had done before him, must have that a carnival of blood would celebrate failed, from his very idiosyncrasy, to create the occasion, the sweet notes of Wesley's and promote it among his followers. He hymns came up on the soft southern might have transplanted Moravian rigidity breezes, along with to British soil; he could not have induced Methodist love and freedom. these new societies, and to send the pulses of an intense love and life throbbing through and Wesley's triumphant strains were the their most remote extremities, was the work true Marselaise of that marvellous revoluof Charles Wesley. This was the mission of the Poet, himself an evangelist scarcely second to John. Preaching awakened sinners; the hymns edified believers and built up churches. In the hymns the message of life was ever bursting forth warm and fresh. In these the truths which set the land on fire, and were as a hammer breaking the rock in pieces, are mingled with something of the yearning of Him who came to seek and save the lost. These hymns embodied the poet's own experiences, and all the phases of the Christian life, and breathe forth the truths of the Word in language which touches the hearts of all men. Through them the influence of a high order of poetry is brought to bear upon a great part of the population of this country. Watts created a people's hymnal; Wesley created a people of hymn singers. The Wesleyan hymns are undoubtedly one of the most powerful agencies which scriptural truth has ever possessed, and are equally above sectarian praise and sectarian blame.

To warm

The preaching of the Wesleys passed

"The long stern swell,

Which bade the soldier close,"

tion. It is certain that Wesley's tuneful prayers for patience, forgiveness, and likeness unto Christ, had so melted themselves into the African soul, as to make Christ's law of love supreme over the excitements and temptations of the hour.

The hymns of the Wesleys are the glorious liturgy of Methodism, a liturgy which not only engages the feelings of the people, and gives tone and direction to the other and variable parts of the worship, but moulds the spirit, emphasizes truth, gives wings to prayer, and adds the joyous excitement of rhythm and music to the solemnity of worship. In the Methodist preaching-houses throughout the Englishspeaking world, heavy, ill-considered, or grotesque addresses may occasionally be heard, but this liturgy is ever present; and all round is breathed the influence of Charles Wesley's saintly spirit, linking every truth of the Gospel, and all heights and depths of Christian feeling, with lofty, pure, and intense poetic expression. So Methodism has been saved from becoming a religion of preaching, and remains a re

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ligion of devotion; and so, in Isaac Tay- odism to diverge so far from the staid, lor's words, Charles Wesley, richly gifted nonconforming type of Watts and Dodas he was with graces, genius, and talents, dridge, as to show that the modern hymn draws souls, thousands of souls, in his was capable not only of paraphrasing Bible wake from Sunday to Sunday, and he so truths, but of uttering the most joyous as draws them onward from earth to heaven well as the most agonized feelings of the by the charms of his sacred verse. So, by heart; to combine devout spiritual thought music and poetry he is ever taming the and personal experience with profound roughness of unlettered minds, renovating reverence and adoration, and so to bring worn-out spirits, bringing hearts benumbed the spirit of the old Hebrew poetry into by sordid cares and worldly prospects, into harmony with the brighter songs of the that bright atmosphere in which his own new covenant, as to blend in one the spirit dwelt, and winning every where a lis- voices of all who are by faith the children tening ear for the higher harmonies of | of faithful Abraham. heaven." It was for the founders of Meth

ISABELLA L. BIRD.

Part of an article in The Spectator, 5 Dec. THE INCOMING ADMINISTRATION.

Ar length we have got at the head of affairs in this country one of the noblest minds and largest hearts which have belonged to any English prime minister since English Prime Ministers We do not expect always to be satisfied with what he does, for Liberals cannot help criticizing, while Conservatives uniformly fall into

were.

But

a trance of admiration before their chief. whether we criticize or approve what Mr. Gladstone does, we shall never doubt anything but its expediency. We shall never have to fear that his attitude towards Ireland will be adopted in deferences to the exigencies of a tottering administration, or that a great principle will be suddenly conceded while the House is dining, as a sort of after-dinner joke. The country may trust the incoming Administration, may at least implicitly trust its chief,- for a Liberalism that will not be disfigured by the slightest taint of that jaunty indifference which Mr. Disraeli has anxiously copied from Lord Palmerston; --for a Liberalism that has its roots deep in sympathy for the whole people, British and Irish, and in respect for their divergencies of genius and gifts; for a Liberalism that will be grave, conscientious, and compassionate; for a Liberalism broad from equal esteem for the many sides of the popular character,- broad not through indifference to moral and religious distinctions, but through respect for them; for a Liberalism founded on the determination to be just to wishes and qualities we do not share, firmly resolved to make the political equality we have accepted as the basis of our Constitution a reality in other spheres beside the electoral, and, moreover anxious to crown measures of justice with measures of compassion, to sift to the bottom the administrative aggrevations of pauperism, and so far as possible to attack them at the root. This is what we look for from Mr. Gladstone without any misgivings,-an Administration which its enemies may call puritanic, but which will be puritanic in the first instance in its steady resistance to the bigotry of Puritans,—an administration which its enemies will very pos

sibly call rash, and possibly imperious, but which will be admitted by all to show its rashness and imperiousness, if rash and imperious it should be,-not on behalf of dominant races life before the children of the despised Celts, and or traditional privilege, but in opening a new of the poor, the wretched, and the ignorant in our own kingdom. This is to be, we trust, a middle-class Government earnestly bent on extirpating the worst and rankest growths of the middle-class prejudice and selfishness of these latter days.

NATIONAL COURTESY.-Speaking broadly, and from the widest stand-point of national characteristics, we would say that the Italians, of all European nations, have most solid courtesy throughout; not a stately, but a good-tempered courtesy-by no means chivalrous in the way of the stronger protecting the weaker, and for self-respect keeping watch and ward over the fiercer enemies within the soul, but rather deferential as assuming that everyone is better than themselves. When an Italian does give way to passion he is dangerous; but when in good fair-sailing humour nothing can well exceed the almost feminine sweetness of his courteous demeanour. The French have a coarser core, that comes through the veneer on occasions when you touch their self-love or their jealousy; and the core of French discourtesy is very coarse indeed when really got at. We English have not a very fine veneer at any time, and the rougher grain below even that not over-polished surface rubs up without much trouble. But then we pride ourselves on this rough grain of ours, and think it a mark of honesty to let it ruffle up at the lightest touch. Indeed, we despise anything else, and have hard names for a courtesy that is even what the Americans call "clear grit" throughout; while as for that which is only veneer, stout or slender, there is no word of contempt foo harsh for the expression of our opinion there-anent.

Dickens's "All the Year Round.'

bodies more systematically or expresses more clearly what readers beyond the pale of special or technical culture are likely to be desirous of knowing.

From The Saturday Review. VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES.* NATURE has of late been calling attention, in her most emphatic accents, to the Without pretending to the depth or prepersistence and the intensity of her subter-cision of a scientific treatise in the stricter ranean fires. What had come to be re- sense, this little manual comprises a rapid garded as the exaggerations, if not the historical survey of the principal recorded mythical inventions, of an age when science earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The was yet unborn, have been forced upon us compilers have not indeed carried back with a reality, and even a degree of dread, their historical ken to the remote and often to which the most advanced science of our seemingly fabulous range of the Indian or day has to lend an ear, half of curiosity, Chinese chronicles. They have contented half of bewilderment. Those who are for themselves with the nearer and safer ground ever agape for novelties and marvels, of Greek and Roman antiquity. The frontwhether on the part of nature or of man-ispiece forms a vivid and speaking ackind, may find daily stimulants to sensation companiment to the well-known words in in so many villages overrun by the lava of which the younger Pliny depicts the most Vesuvius, or so many scores of thousands memorable of all catastrophes of this kind.. swallowed up alive by the rending soil of The list of eruptions from that fixed date Peru. Now we may expect the prophecy- is carried down almost to the margin of the monger to have it all his own way. What striking series of outbreaks which just now with earthquakes telegraphed every morn- keep scientific expectation on tenter-hooks. ing in divers places, and the palpable shak-Upwards of a dozen eruptions of what may ing of the stars of heaven witnessed to us in be termed the first class can thus be enuthe reports of the November meteors, we merated. Since that of A.D. 79, the most ought surely to see Dr. Cumming bestir remarkable epochs were those of 204, 472, himself, if he would not have some junior 512, 685, 993, 1036, 1136. After the vioaspirant to prophetic honours finally fix for lent one of 1136, Vesuvius remained inhim the date of the coming of the End. active for nearly 500 years. At the openMeanwhile people of less imagination, or ing of the seventeenth century the summit less impatient for the drawing of the veil of had the form of a large basin, which, acthe future world, will give studious and cording to the testimony of travellers, was careful heed to the grand, and in many re- covered with old oaks, chestnuts, and maple spects mysterious, phenomena which are trees. In December, 1631, the volcano just now manifest in nature. Numbers will opened anew below the Atrio del Cavallo, be interested in the causes which science is the great depression which separates the prepared to assign for these unusually stu- crater from the Somma. A great portion pendous displays of physical force. Fall- of the mountain fell in, and the stream of ing in opportunely with this state of inter- lava sweeping away houses and villages est and expectancy in the public mind, the ran into the sea near Portici. In 1685 and little work which Mrs. Norman Lockyer 1737 the cone underwent repeated changes has just given us has a claim to favourable of form. In 1797 the river of lava described consideration. Volcans et Tremblements de by Sir W. Hamilton, 1,500 feet wide and Terre by MM. Zurcher and Margollé, forms 14 feet deep, flowed three miles and a half, one volume of the well-chosen and agreea- and extended into the sea 600 feet. Humbly-written series, the Bibliothèque des Mer-boldt in 1822 has described the tremendous veilles, whereby Messrs. Hachette are wont to cater with judgment and success for the growing appetite of the public for a knowledge of nature's more striking phenomena. The clear and graphic illustrations in wood, by M. Riou, have been employed in the embellishment of the English version. As a popular summary of the more prominent facts and theories connected with this sublime branch of terrestrial physics, we cannot readily point to a publication which em

Volcanoes and Earthquakes. By MM. Zurcher and Margollé. From the French, by Mrs. Norman Lockyer. With 62 Woodcuts by E. Riou. London: R. Bentley. 1868.

falling in of the cone, which rose to a height of 218 yards above the floor of the crater, when for days the air for miles round was darkened by clouds of ashes and lapilli, and people walked about with lanterns as at Quito during the eruptions of Pichincha. In 1850 large blocks of granite were borne down the mountain side by the torrent of lava. Not having the original at hand, we are at a loss whether to charge upon the authors or the translator the amazing exaggeration of making the plateau formed by this stream a kind of cyclopean rampart raised more than five miles above the plain where the torrent stopped." The authors