another, while the nation, in the person of Mr. McKenna, has to come in to protect the child. Again and again we hear it stated that we are to save the children from ecclesiastical dispute. As a matter of fact throughout the whole of this controversy so far as we know the children have suffered very little, as it has not invaded the schools. But in any case our controversy is quite clearly for the wellbeing of the child. To every thoughtful person, whatever his opinions may be, nothing can be more vitally important to the country than that the children may be brought up on sound religious and moral principles. Nothing can be more important than that the principles of religious liberty, equality and toleration should prevail. Those are the principles for which we contend. There may be deplorable aspects of this controversy, there always are in all controversies in which fallible human beings are involved; but the points at issue are great, and of vital importance-far more important, we believe, than many other political questions; and we should strongly impress all those who believe in the value of education, of religious liberty and of truth, to exhaust every effort until they have obtained, so far as is possible under existing conditions, a fair and just treatment of the education question.

ART. II.-JOHN WESLEY AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REVIVALS.

1. Wesley and His Century. A Study in Spiritual Forces. By W. H. FITCHETT. (London: Smith, Elder & Co.,

1906.)

2. The Life of John Wesley. By G. T. WINCHESTER. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1906.)

3. Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals. By F. M. DAVENPORT. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1905.)

4. The Psychology of Religion. By E. D. STARBUCK. 2nd edition. (London: W. Scott, 1901.)

5. The Varieties of Religious Experience. By W. JAMES. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902.)

IN the religious life of nations as in that of individuals, the wind bloweth where it listeth, and we cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. The history of the Church's progress is a record of unexpected advances, and of the display of unsuspected reserves of life and strength. After a period of enervated listlessness comes the revival, unforeseen and unpredicted, baffling the calculations and belying the forecasts of the most sagacious and the most far-sighted observers. The ultimate cause of the movement lies deep in the mysterious activity of the Spirit of God whose workings are past our searching out. When the Giver of Life moves, the face of the earth is renewed under His operation. The revival is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes. If this be undisputed, no possible disparagement of the marvel can be involved in the attempt to investigate the secondary causes, whereby the Divine intention has been carried into execution. The more profoundly the student is convinced that here God is at work, the more closely will he seek to interpret the inner meaning of the movement, to discover its natural origin, to recognize its critical moments and turning-points, to understand its drift and tendency. We need not, therefore, wonder at the undiminished attention which continues to be bestowed on the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century.

While the movement initiated by John Wesley numbers within its ranks so many millions of adherents, and is the vehicle of so much religious activity, it is only natural that the problem of its origin, together with the life and character of its founder, should be the subject of unremitting study. It is significant that of the two lives of Wesley which have recently appeared, the one should come from the pen of the Australian writer, the Rev. W. H. Fitchett, the other from that of Prof. Winchester of the Wesleyan University in the United States. East and West contribute their share to the discussion of these questions of world-wide interest.

It is not our purpose to attempt any general appreciation of the movement, or to touch on any of the vexed questions of controversy connected with it. Our object will be rather to take note now of certain characteristics which render the eighteenth century revival a field of investigation exceptionally attractive and stimulating to students of the comparatively new science of the Psychology of Religion. Here, if anywhere, we have to do with a movement positively and distinctively religious, deriving its impetus from the prompt and eager response of multitudes to appeals addressed exclusively to their religious instincts. It is a feature favourably distinguishing this movement from others of earlier times. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though the religious motives may have been in the ascendant, yet there were simultaneously other factors at work which seriously complicate the problem of analysis. When the streams of politics and religion mingled together, so that religious convictions shaped themselves under the influence of such alien forces as the desire for national independence or the struggle for civil liberty, cross currents were produced, the direction and relative force of which it is perhaps impossible to determine with accuracy. But the strong tide of religious feeling which flowed over England in the eighteenth century was free from any such turbid admixture. The movement was religious through and through. It was independent of the disputes of any political parties, and unconnected with any of the class antagonisms which

were already beginning to be disturbing elements in the life of England. In all departments of knowledge a necessary condition of successful investigation is the exclusion from consideration of extraneous and immaterial circumstances, in order that the attention may be directed solely upon facts of significance. The student of religious psychology may congratulate himself that in the eighteenth century revival he finds this task of elimination done for him. With some very slight reservations it is fair to say that the movement was not even partly political or partly social. It was purely religious.

The explanation of the course followed by revival movements is to be sought not only in the laws which govern the psychical development of the individual, but also in those other and in some respects widely different laws that determine the 'psychology of the crowd.' The action of both may be studied at large in the history of the Wesleyan movement. In Wesley's Journal alone no less than sixty cases of individual conversion are separately described, and the records of his encounters with excited crowds are full of interest. It would be difficult to discover more instructive examples of the startling and apparently inexplicable reversals of the current of feeling in a multitude than are to be found in the plain, straightforward descriptions given by Wesley himself of his experiences among the mobs of the Midlands and of Cornwall. That the movement rightly deserves to be called a Revival will be an obvious truth to those who are not debarred by a total lack of sympathy from any true appreciation of its character. The agnostic historian of the period, Sir Leslie Stephen, consistently with his own principles, prefers the somewhat invidious term, reaction. Yet such a designation seems curiously out of keeping with the facts. Movement cannot properly be represented as a reaction from a state of rest, nor restored animation as the natural outcome of a condition of torpor. And it stands out as a fact beyond all question that under the influence of Wesley multitudes of Englishmen attained what may fairly be termed a new life. They gained an entrance into new fields of experience. Their horizon

expanded, until they became conscious of powers, the very existence of which they had never hitherto suspected. It was, taken at the lowest estimate, a forward movement, and must be so acknowledged even by those who are least in sympathy with the religious principles of its leaders.

Among the conditions which determine the occurrence of a revival the most important beyond all comparison is the personality of the revivalist. However fully he be acknowledged to be the instrument of a higher power, and to be doing only what it has been given him to do, yet his idiosyncracies cannot be disregarded as though they had little or no bearing on the work accomplished through him. A revivalist like John Wesley is in some sort a prophet of modern times, and the problem of his influence deserves to be studied along the same lines as the inspiration of the great prophets of old. That due account must be taken of the human factor in inspiration is now universally admitted. Moreover, this human factor must not be represented as merely so much weakness over against heavenly power-as water mingled with the wine, not destroying but diluting it, reducing its strength and detracting from its efficacy. The humanity of the inspired man has a nobler part to play, a part which can only be understood in the light of the great Christian truth, that God's chosen instrument in the education and restoration of the world is Personality. Of this principle the supreme manifestation is the Incarnation, but its operation is to be recognized not only in the Life of our Lord, but throughout history. As the character of Christ, revealed under the conditions of earth, provides us with the interpretation of the universal movement of which He was the author, so in the characters of His most heroic servants we look for the interpretation of those partial movements to which under His inspiration and guidance they have given the impetus.

John Wesley stands forth as one conspicuously gifted with the aptitude for wakening into life the religious activities of the listless and the indifferent, the ignorant and the hardened. Yet the more his life is studied, the more