dual men, it is easily explicable; and it is so even if the office of professed candour be undertaken by a Gibbon. But the Gospel itself is a truth of the upper world, and in its very substance it wholly eludes the perceptions of those who have not bowed to it. From every other ethical or religious system Christianity differs absolutely -in its first principles, in its superstructure, in its tone, in its tendency, and in its issue. Individually we either deeply feel his dissimilarity; or, if we do not feel it, we labour to extenuate whatever seems to declare it.

Thus it is that Wesley and Methodism so sorely try the ingenuity of those who, if they knew how, would gladly be just toward him, and his communion-saving their "philosophy." This will never be done; nor can it be well to proffer aid toward effecting that which, in the nature of things, is impracticable.

If he had moved in a private sphere, that for instance of a parish priest, Wesley's flock would not have known that their minister had so much as one fault; and the admiration and love of his intimate friends would only have been a more emphatic expression of the feeling which would have pervaded the little world whose happiness it was to live within sight and hearing of him. His was a personal virtue that was not merely unblemished, for it was luminously bright. His countenance shone with goodness, truth, purity, benevolence: a sanctity belonged to him, which those near him felt, as if it were a power with which the atmosphere was fraught. If we may imagine-what could not have been-so much energy pent within a narrow circle, how would it have filled that space with abounding labours of evangelic charity! It might indeed have happened that some quiet and discriminating parishioner would sometimes whisper so much fault-finding as this "Our dear Rector is too apt to think other people as honest as himself; he trusts

himself too easily to any who tell him a fair tale; and he is too fond of wonders." Another, perhaps, would have asked leave to think awhile before he should assent to some points of the minister's theology. With some such slender abatements as these, Wesley's praise would have been warmly uttered by every tongue in his neighbourhood. Friends would have regarded him with a deep reverential love: foes- he could have had none.

It is a sort of axiom with opticians, that, whereas natural objects (the works of God) will bear enlargement to any extent, and excite always the more wonder in proportion as you apply to them, in the solar microscope, a higher and a higher power; it is otherwise with the products of human skill, which, the more they are magnified, the less are they to be admired. This illustration may aid us a little in the present instance. John Wesley as to his intellect, and as to his views had his faults and his infirmities: grant it; but we should not have known so much as this if what was individual in him had not repeated itself, and become a feature of a community that now fills half the world. When thus magnified, each ruggedness or want of finish on the surface of his mind, who cannot see it? as to this or that misadjustment of the intellectual mechanism, who may not point the finger at it? These things were of the man; but his virtues were God's own work, perfectly finished and how well they look, although the bright spectrum has spread itself out to a diameter as wide as the empire upon which the sun never sets! It was Wesley's virtues and piety that gave form and tone to his teaching, and his teaching has embodied itself in the Christianlike behaviour of tens of thousands of his people, on both sides the Atlantic.

CHARLES WESLEY.

As his brother's friend, adviser, and colleague, Charles exerted an influence that was almost always corrective and salutary. Less credulous than John, less sudden in his apprehensions, and proportionately more discriminative and cautious, his mind reached its maturity earlier; and this maturity was itself of a riper sort. But then his prejudices, as a Churchman, were less flexible; his reserve and modesty were greater, and unless the superior force of his brother's character had carried him forward beyond his own limit, he must soon have withdrawn himself from public life; and then he would have been known only, if at all, as the author of some sacred poetry of rare excellence. But these very hymns, if the writer had not been connected with Methodism, would have shown a very different phase; for while the depth and richness of them are the writer's, the epigrammatic intensity, and the pressure which marks them, belong to Methodism. They may be regarded as the representatives of a modern devotional style which has prevailed quite as much beyond the boundaries of the Wesleyan community, as within it. Charles Wesley's hymns on the one hand, and those of Toplady, Cowper, and Newton on the other, mark that great change in religious sentiment which distinguishes the times of Methodism from the staid nonconforming era of Watts and Doddridge.

Better constituted than his brother for domestic enjoyment, Charles had a happy home, where the gentle affections of a gentle nature found room to expand; and it was thus that he became qualified to shed into the Methodistic world something of a redeeming influence,

which John could never have imparted. Charles Wesley's mind was an ameliorating ingredient, serving to call forth and cherish those kindlier emotions with which a religion of preaching—a religion of public services, so much needs to be attempered. His personal ministrations, no doubt, had this tendency in some degree; but it was by his sacred lyre, still more than as a preacher, that he tamed the rudeness of untaught minds, and gained a listening ear for the harmonies of heaven, and of earth too, among such.

Ought not then the disposing hand of God to be acknowledged in this instance, remarkable as it is, that, when myriads of uncultured and lately ferocious spirits were to be reclaimed, a gift of song, such as that of Charles Wesley, should have been conferred upon one of the company employed in this work? To estimate duly what was the influence of this rare gift, and to measure its importance, one should be able to recall scenes and times gone by, when Methodism was much nearer to its source than now it is, and when Hymn 147, page 145," announced by the preacher in a tone curiously blending the perfunctory with the animated

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"O Love Divine, how sweet thou art!"

woke up all ears, eyes, hearts, and voices, in the crowded chapel. It was, indeed, a spectacle worth the gazing upon! It was a service well to have joined in (once and again) when words of such power, flowing in rich cadence, and conveying, with an intensity of emphasis, the loftiest, the deepest, and the most tender emotions of the divine life, were taken up feelingly by an assembly of men and women, to whom, very lately, whatever was not of the "earth-earthy," had neither charm nor meaning.

Rugged forms were those that filled the benches on the one hand; nor were they the fairest in the world

that were ranged on the other; but there was soul in the erect posture when the congregation rose to sing, as well as in the glistening eye; and it was a cordial animation that gave compass to the voices of these, the ransomed of Methodism. Perhaps it was little more than a particle of meaning that some gathered from the hymn. But to the hearts of many, its deepest sense -the poet's own sense of the words-was quite intelligible, and was intimately relished. Who could doubt it, that had an eye to read the heart in the beaming countenances around him? Thus it was that Charles Wesley, richly gifted as he was with graces, genius, and talents, drew souls-thousands of soulsin his wake, from Sunday to Sunday, and he so drew them onward from earth to heaven by the charm of sacred verse!

It may be affirmed that there is no principal element of Christianity, no main article of belief, as professed by Protestant Churches-that there is no moral or ethical sentiment, peculiarly characteristic of the Gospel-no height or depth of feeling, proper to the spiritual life, that does not find itself emphatically, and pointedly, and clearly conveyed in some stanza of Charles Wesley's hymns. These compositions embody the theory, and the practice, and the theopathy of the Christian system; and they do so with extremely little admixture of what ought to be regarded as questionable, or that is not warranted by some evidence of Scripture. What we have here before us is a metrical liturgy; and by the combination of rhythm, rhyme, and music, it effectively secures to the mass of worshippers much of the benefit of liturgical worship. Such a liturgy, thus performed by animated congregations, melted itself into the very soul of the people, and was perhaps that part of the hour's service which, more than any other, produced what, to