all. It is in our day regarded as a proper theme for the polite essayist; and a late Poet Laureate discovered in its history gems which he deemed worthy of a rich literary setting; and hence we are treated to Southey's "Life of Wesley." Another finds it a tempting subject for philosophical analysis; and the result is Taylor's "Wesley and Methodism." Others of less elevated mien, whose calling is to cater for the popular taste, and live by their employment, have found in Methodism a subject for a "People's Lecture ;" and their treatment of it has been in harmony with their calling.

From all this we fear nothing for Methodism, but anticipate much good both to it and to everybody. Most of its critics have derived some benefit from the acquaintance which they have been obliged to make with the real facts of its history, and the evangelical character of its teaching; while the prejudices which survive are just such as lie against Christianity itself, rightly interpreted. And we regard it as no unfavourable sign of the times, that the attention of minds so diverse in their character, should continue to be directed to that great revival of religion which commenced in the beginning of the last century, in the United Kingdom, and America, and which has extended its blessed influence to the most distant regions of the earth, and which now, like a mighty river, is irrigating and fructifying its vast moral deserts.

There is no indication at present that the origin of Methodism is likely to be lost to the knowledge of mankind. At the time we write, there are two elaborate and independent histories of Methodism issuing from the English and American presses; the former by Dr. G. Smith, and the latter by Dr. Stevens. These works contrast favourably with some of those productions to which we have referred. They are at once comprehensive, impartial, and friendly in their tone and spirit. Their

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authors, with other high literary qualifications, possess that which is essential to a true historian of Methodism; namely, an enlightened, fervent piety. These histories are the production of men who possess the power of religious discrimination, and are, in consequence, able both to recognise and defend that work of God whose origin and progress they record.

The readers of the "Miscellany" are very numerous. Upwards of two hundred thousand minds come monthly in contact with it; and though we are glad to know that it finds its way into various religious circles, yet the majority of its readers belong to the Methodist family, and many of them are numbered among its youth. All these, from their position, know more or less of Methodism; but how many of them have read the Journals of the Wesleys, John and Charles, or the Lives of the two brothers, or those of the early Methodist Preachers? Yet, the subject is fraught with interest to every one who takes pleasure in the progress of Christ's Gospel, to whatever denomination he may belong; and it should certainly be more especially so to the minds and hearts of those whom Providence has connected with the Methodist branch of the church of the Redeemer. Now no one is competent to form a correct view of the great religious revival to which the name of Methodism has been given, who does not know something of the religious state of the nation prior to its commencement. Individual Christians undoubtedly existed, and here and there little bands of those who feared the Lord, and thought upon His Name, spake often one to another in words of sympathy and encouragement; but as to the people generally, they were wholly uninfluenced by religion. There was a prevailing ignorance of the doctrines of the Gospel, and its morals were all but universally discarded, and that by high and low. After the restoration of the King to the throne, the flood

gates of iniquity were opened, and the desolation was general. "Under the last of the Stuarts, the Court became a royal brothel, and the play-house the temple of England. The drama of the day could not now be exhibited; nor even privately read, without blushes. Many of the most learned and devoted Clergymen, whose writings are imperishable in our religious literature, were either silenced or displaced. The ministrations of the Church grew formal and ineffective; the Puritan churches themselves at last fell into general decay; while the masses of the people sunk into incredible vice and brutality. England had lapsed into virtual Heathenism, when Wesley appeared."

On the Continent, infidelity prevailed, decked out in all the tinsel show that poetry and eloquence could give it; and at home, the most popular writers were sceptics and infidels. The Clergy of the day had neither learning nor heart to cope with the antagonists of Christianity; nay, many of themselves were deeply tainted with Socinian error, while the rest cared not for any of these things. Public worship was in a great measure neglected; and where it was observed at all, it was degraded into a mere empty, lifeless form. The higher classes laughed at piety, and prided themselves in being above its fanaticism: the lower classes were grossly ignorant, and abandoned to vice. Wesley himself, in his "Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion," asks, "What can an impartial person think concerning the present state of religion in England? Is there a nation under the sun which is so deeply fallen from the very first principles of all religion? Where is the country in which is found so utter a disregard to even heathen morality, such a thorough contempt of justice and truth, and all that should be dear and honourable to rational creatures? What species of vice can possibly be named, even of those that nature itself

abhors, of which we have not had for many years a plentiful and stillincreasing harvest? Such a complication of villanies of every kind, considered with all their aggravations; such a scorn of all that bears the face of virtue; such injustice, fraud, and falsehood, we may defy the whole world to produce. Just at this time, when we wanted little of 'filling up the measure of our iniquities,' two or three Clergymen of the Church of England began vehemently to call sinners to repentance."" It was at this very period, when ungodliness was the universal, constant, peculiar characteristic of the nation, that the Lord sent forth a few of His servants, as with trumpettongues, to proclaim the everlasting Gospel to a fallen Church, and a guilty land.

This testimony of Wesley, as to the state of the kingdom in reference to religion, is confirmed by the direct statements of both Churchmen and Dissenters, and admitted on all hands. Both Southey and Taylor not only admit it, but confirm it; the latter acknowledging that, beside its direct effects upon the masses of a people fast lapsing into Heathenism, Methodism reanimated the languishing Nonconformity of the last century, which, just at the time of the Methodist revival, was rapidly in course to be found nowhere but in books.

Never, in any country nominally Christian and Protestant, was a living, earnest, and fearless preaching of the Divine doctrines of the Gospel more needed than in England, about a century and a half ago. Without the Church, all was darkness; and within it, all was death. The nation seemed gradually hastening to a perilous crisis, and yet none appeared alive to its danger; or, if at all apprehensive of approaching ill, knew not the remedy, and were not able, therefore, to apply it.

But, loudly as the sins of the people cried to heaven for judgment, God did once more, in wrath, remember mercy; and from one of the most degraded,

licentious, and godless periods of our country's history, since the Reformation, we date the beginning of one of the most glorious and extensive revivals of religion which the annals of Christianity record. And notwithstanding the discredit that for a long time was attempted to be thrown upon Methodism, and the dishonour put upon its supporters and adherents, the present generation has almost universally come round to acknowledge it to have been the work of God. There are still those who quibble at some of the attendant circumstances, the mere accidents of its history; but it is generally admitted that it imparted life to the Church, and salvation to the nation.

A DREAM.

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Coming nearer, we found it to be our old friend B., a true Christian, but one who had been unfortunate in business. T., a malicious man and a creditor, had got him arrested; and here he was in a woful plight.

"A forlorn-looking man !" we heard a rich neighbour mutter, as B. passed his door. "A shiftless fellow," chimed in a thrifty retail grocer. But suddenly, our strange companion passed through the crowd, and asked the officer to stop for a moment with his prisoner. Then, stooping, he reverently kissed B.'s hand, as if doing homage. What he said, we were too utterly bewildered with amazement to hear distinctly. We caught the words, however, "More than conqueror!" as the stranger stood gazing, with the deepest interest, on poor B. The officer, half dumb with astonishment, here asked, timidly, whether he objected to B.'s imprison"No," said the stranger, light affliction, but for a moment;" and, as the crowd passed on with their prisoner, we seemed to hear a rustling as of wings, and a whisper from my singular companion, "Sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation."

AND a most singular dream it was. We had been listening to a smart debate between two friends, on somewhat peculiar question. One of them insisted that our countrymen have now been so long familiar with Christianity, and the views which Christianity teaches, that, however faulty in practice, they are substantially right in their estimates of the good things both of this life and the life to come. The other stoutly affirmed that we are generally and practically ignorant of the simplest truths; and that one who should apply the principles of the Scriptures to life, would be stared at as altogether beside himself.

That debate tinged our dreams the next night; and we here recount some portion of them, hoping the reader will take them for what they may be worth.

We seemed to be walking along a busy street, with a stranger, whose whole mien impressed us as something more than human. Presently we met a crowd of street-idlers following a distressed-looking man, whom an officer was conducting to prison.

a

We had not walked more than through one square in another direction, when the stranger's attention was drawn toward the senior partner in one of the largest wholesale houses in the city. He was a man of fair character, though of no special religious profession, who had risen from nothing to become a millionaire. He happened to be sitting at this moment, with a party of brother-merchants, in his splendid establishment, discussing a plan for a new railroad. All eyes turned to him, as if his words were conclusive. His splendid equipage stood waiting for him at the door. In a corner, one youth was whispering to another, "If I'm ever worth a twentieth part as much as he is, I shall indeed be made." Just then, without

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ado, the stranger walked into the very centre of the busy circle, exclaiming, as he fixed a sad, pitying look on the millionaire, "Miserable man! there may possibly be hope yet remaining." There was a general commotion, of course. One of the company cried, "Insolence!" another, Crazy! another was lifting his hand, as if about to seize the intruder; when a second glance at the stranger awed them all into silence. "Wretched creature," he continued, "your life is a pitiable failure. You have never yet really begun to live: downward, every hour, you sink, while deeper gloom gathers over your future. Why will you make of yourself the utter wreck that you are?" And, wonderfully enough, the great capitalist seemed suddenly struck through with a conviction of the truth of it all; and, bowing his head, he sobbed aloud in anguish.

Our next adventure was at a cheerful fireside, to which, dream-fashion, we seemed transported in an instant. An amiable and devoted motherquite wanting, however, in the "one thing needful"-was caressing her only daughter, while the husband and father sat near, watching them thoughtfully. "How beautiful a picture," we inwardly exclaimed, "of domestic peace and maternal love!" Imagine, then, our amazement as the stranger approached the mother, saying in a tone of mingled sternness and sadness, "Do you know, O woman, that the daughter you love has no deadlier enemy on the earth than yourself? In all this guilty city is there no tempter so fatally, so steadily leading her astray as you are. In some coming day she may remember no other name with so deep and lasting an execration as your own." Shocked by his words, we here broke in with the question, "Is this literal truth? How can these things be?" "How can it be otherwise ?" he replied: "no other being on the earth

has an influence over this child to be compared for a moment with that of her mother. And that influencethe silent, steady power of unChristian example-is moulding her into a worldly character, leaving her without hope, without God, for eternity. Whoever does most to mislead the soul, is the soul's most fearful foe." As he ceased, his words seemed to have fallen like a sentence of death on the unhappy mother. Long as she had listened to the Gospel, the state of her case, thus unfolded, was as new to her as a direct revelation from heaven.

So, as the stranger passed from place to place, his every action and word startled and confounded all whom he met, as if the truths and bearings of Christianity had been something unheard of. We awoke, pondering and wondering; and have since found in the vision abundant food for reflection.

NEGLECT OF THE BIBLE.

MANY Christians have weak characters and barren lives, because they have little acquaintance with the word of God, and rarely search it as for hid treasure. There is a moral in the following incident :

A few months ago a man told his Leader that he was losing power over daily temptation, and that his peace was not so abiding as it used to be, and that altogether he was much cast down. The Leader thought there must be some cause for this. He considered a moment, and then asked,-"Do you read your Bible every morning before you begin your day's duties ?"

He had hit the nail on the head. The member acknowledged that he did not. Of course he was told that there was no need to wonder over his loss of power and peace, when he was neglecting a plain duty. If that member had spoken correctly of his

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"Well, I have been trying the experiment of rushing into the thick of worldly cares and temptations without looking into my Bible, and I find it won't do. I am losing ground; my peace is almost gone, and temptation sometimes proves too strong for me; and I am going the wrong way. That is my experience."

Every one sees that such a statement would have been admonitory to all who heard it, and infinitely better adapted to answer the end of class-meetings, than a bare recital of present feeling, without any reference to the fact of which such feeling was the fruit.

A CUP OF SORROW.

AN eminent Divine tells us that, soon after the death of his wife, his two children were taken from him within a few hours of each other. "My cup of sorrow," he says, was filled to the brim. I stood a few moments, and viewed the remains of my two darlings. I felt, at first, as if I could not submit to such a complicated affliction. My heart rose in all its strength against the government of God, and then suddenly sunk under its distress; which alarmed me. I sprang up, and said to myself, 'I must submit, or I am undone for ever.' In a few moments I was entirely calm, and resigned to the will of God. I never enjoyed greater happiness than during that day and the next. My mind was full of God; and I used afterwards to look towards the buryingground, and wish for the time when I might be laid by the side of my departed wife and little ones."

There is great beauty in such religion as this; for the grace of submission to this great and bereaving Father is the hardest and rarest of Christian

tion to angry rebellion when the blow cuts deep. A wife is suddenly taken; a crib is left empty, or a cradle deepens into a grave. A noble, gifted son is cut off in the prime of life; a son who was all the world to her who leaned upon him. A lovely daughter withers and droops; her beauty falls off like the rose-leaves, and presently she goeth down to darkness and the

worm.

Beside such new-made graves, unbelief utters its reproaches, "not loud but deep." But submission whispers, with faltering lips and choking utterance, "The cup that my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" The will of the Lord be done.

PRAYER, SHORT AND LONG.

A PRAYER may be short for two reasons: it may be because he who prays is simple-hearted, and will not say more than he feels; and it may be because he is in haste to be about his worldly business or amusements, or does not like to tarry long alone with God.

A prayer may also be long for two reasons; either because he who offers it makes a merit of long prayers, or because his heart is so full that it cannot quickly unburden itself. Let not one who goes thus to his closet fear to stay there until he has told all that is in his heart in the indulgent ear of his Father in heaven; until he has spread out the whole detail of his cares, his sins, and his wants, under the eye of Him "who seeth in secret."

There is nothing in the words or in the example of our Lord which forbids you staying alone before the throne of grace just as long as, in the simplicity of your heart, you feel disposed to stop there. But the laborious effort to prolong secret prayer is, perhaps, to be avoided.