are many other inexplicable occurrences, similar to the Epworth rectory noises and disturbances, to be thought of as touching any religious question. In truth, there is nothing in these facts of a celestial complexion; nor are they grave enough to be reputed infernal. We can incur no risk of committing sacrilege when we deal with occult folk, such as "Jeffery," huffingly and disrespectfully. Almost, while intent upon these quaint performances, one seems to catch a glimpse of a creature half-intelligent, or idiotic, whose pranks are like those of one that, using a brief opportunity given it by chance, is going to the extent of its tether in freaks of bootless mischief.

Why may not this be thought? Around us, as most believe, are beings of a high order, whether good or evil, and yet not cognisable by the senses of man. But the analogies of the visible world favour the supposition that, besides these there are orders, or species, of all grades, and some, perhaps, not more intelligent than apes or than pigs. That these species have no liberty, ordinarily, to infringe upon the solid world is manifest; nevertheless, chances, or mischances, may, in long cycles of time, throw some (like the Arabian locust) over his boundary, and give him an hour's leave to disport himself among things palpable.

In Wesley's mind all instances went on to their utmost limits, and with him the preternatural was equivalent always to the supernatural; nor does he seem to have noted the distinction between what is supernatural and what is miraculous; and thus every thing not ostensibly natural, he was prone to interpret in a sense wholly religious. This credulity did not sensibly impair a mind so high-toned and vigorous as his; but, beside that it gave the world an occasion against him, and lowered his influence out of the pale of his own communion, it

set a premium within it upon marvels, and tended to throw confusion upon the popular notion of religious faith. Besides, in minds of a relaxed temperament, credulity is a leakage through which all belief, sooner or later, oozes out and is lost. But we shall see presently in what way Methodism at length shook off this illadjunct, which had sprung from the infirmity of its founder.

It is characteristic of the man, that Wesley's selfpossession, his ardour in study, and the powerful instinct of order within him, so operated to render him unconscious of outward ills, that he could look back upon his boyish days at Christchurch, not merely without horror, but with delight! If, as a general truth, it be good for a man "to bear the yoke in his youth," indispensable is this severe condition in the training of those who are born to command. Wesley learned, as a boy, to suffer wrongfully with a cheerful patience, and to conform himself to cruel despotisms without acquiring either the slave's temper, or the despot's. If an ill consequence resulted from the severities of his school course, it appeared long afterwards, in those misunderstandings of human nature which he embodied in the code of the Kingswood school: he seems to have imagined that little boys, as a species, are much like what, as he remembered, John Wesley was at twelve and thirteen, a prodigy of energy, assiduity, and unconquerable patience.

Oxford at once brought out the robustness of Wesley's intellectual structure. To speak of that ability which enabled him, with ease, to make himself master of any subject to which he directed his attention, is saying little; for the same may be affirmed of hundreds of men of whom the world hears nothing after they have won for themselves their academic status.

Wesley was thus almost intuitively master of all arts or of all but the highest, to which the predominance of secondary faculties bars the way. Many facts characteristic of himself, and of the system he gave to the world, are explicable on this ground of that energy of the intuitive reason which precludes the philosophical faculty. Yet this intellectual characteristic in Wesley is not to be spoken of with regret, if we are thinking of the work he was to accomplish; for it is certain that while the power which was his characteristic fits a man to lead and command others, the. philosophic faculty - its opposite, shows itself to be a peremptory disqualification in any one who would sway the multitude. The mass of men follow, or think they follow, the well-forged chains of reasoning which logicians deal in ; and they delight to find themselves ferried over a stream they could never have forded, and safely landed upon some irrefragable conclusion. The very populace like to be reasoned with, and to be forcibly driven in upon a definite doctrine; but no graces of illustration, no powers of oratory, ever avail to induce the crowd to think, or to tread the bottom of a subject.

Yet in speaking of Wesley as a master of technical logic, we must screen him at once from the imputation of ever having played the part of a scholastic sophist, or wordy wrangler. The high tone of his mind, and the thorough seriousness which belonged to him, and his reverence for truth, and, afterwards, his religious awe, forbad him to engage as gladiator in any disputation. Such an imputation he resented warmly. Many indeed were the sophisms (logically compacted) which he himself bowed to, but never did he defend one, the fallacy of which he secretly discerned.

Writers who, of late, have spoken of Wesley's want of the philosophic faculty — a topic easy to enlarge upon

and illustrate-have, as if by way of compensation, allowed him the praise of being an accomplished logician. And so perhaps he was, or seemed to be, while dealing, from the moderator's chair, with scholastic sophisms. But it is inaccurate, or unphilosophical to make the logical faculty, that is to say an expertness in technical reasoning, the intellectual contrary of the philosophic faculty. In that order of mind to which Wesley belonged, it is the irresistible force, or one might say, the galvanic instantaneousness of the intuitions, which forbids and excludes the exercise of the abstractive and analytic power. With him the grasp of what he thought to be a truth, was so sudden, and so spasmodically firm, as ordinarily to preclude two mental processes to which minds of a higher order never fail to submit whatever offers itself for acceptance as a verbal proposition or conclusion: namely, first, a ridding the terms, so far as may be possible, of the ambiguities that infest language; and secondly, the looking through the medium - the verbal proposition, into the very midst of the things so presented. Wesley's habits as a logician stood him in some stead as to the first of these processes; but he scarcely seems to have been capable of that equipoise of the mind which the second demands.

At the time when Wesley was acting as moderator in the disputations at Lincoln College, there was no philosophy abroad in the world—there was no thinking that was not atheistical in its tone and tendency, and the whole energy of his moral nature would have drawn him off from any commerce with it, even if the structure of his mind had allowed him to tread at all on that path. But while thus officiating in a scholastic chair, that preparation was in progress which, in due time, was to issue in the peremptory and categorical style which became the marked characteristic of the Wesleyan minis

trations. The fervour of Methodism, carrying upon its surface, as it did, so well defined a character of dialectic precision, might suggest the idea of a sharply-struck medallion, retaining its nicest features while molten and incandescent. In this feature we find what was to constitute a main distinction between the Wesleyan and the Whitefieldite Methodism; and it is curious to note the fact, that while, as we shall see, the former exhibited at its commencement ostensible extravagances and distortions which in a much less degree attached to the latter, it was Wesley's community that crystalised itself in geometric figure; while Whitefield's followers passed into an organised condition very slowly and very imperfectly. Wesley's Methodism excelled in external order; Whitefield's in a deep and more true harmony. But what we have just now to do with is, that training in verbal precision, which was to give life and form, both to the theology of Wesley, and to his institutions.

EARLY STAGES OF WESLEY'S RELIGIOUS COURSE.

AT Oxford, Wesley's religious feelings went through a two-fold transmutation, which, however, brought him very little way forward toward the position whence he was to exercise his ministry. At each step of his progress he had yielded, after some resistance, to a force partly logical, and partly suasive; and his so yielding might, by a bystander, have been anticipated as certain to ensue. Nevertheless, his conversion, taking place as it did in this manner, by successive vanquishments, gave to his own religious opinions, and so afterwards to Methodism, a marked character of abruptness and antagonism.

The conversion of several of his companions was less, or not at all, interrupted by distinct epochs; and