special reason to the contrary to Charles (For particulars on this point, see Creamer's Methodist Hymnology, pp. 18-26 et al.). In their first publication, 1739, John's translations, adaptations, and selections occupy more room than Charles's originals; but to no subsequent volume does John contribute more than six or eight pieces. This first, and the two which followed it, in 1740 and 1742, were of the general character indicated by their common title: "Hymns and Sacred Poems."

In or before 1745 the Wesleys began to publish with reference to special subjects and occasions. Among the first and largest of these productions was "Hymns on the Lord's Supper," founded on Dr. Brevint's "Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice." This was one of their most popular books, and is valuable as an extensive, systematic, and well-versified collection of all that can be said on the subject; but not many of the hymns are in use, and a few only afford fair samples of the genuine Wesleyan power. Here is a sensible and pious acknowledgment of the mystery in the ordinance:

How he did these creatures raise, And make this bread and wine
Organs to convey his grace To this poor soul of mine;
I cannot the way descry, Need not know the mystery;
Only this I know, that I Was blind, but now I see.

Yet Charles's views of the rite were very churchly. Whatever he meant by the following, the sentiment is sufficiently high, and the language more than sufficiently strong:

Did thine ancient Israel go, With solemn praise and prayer,
To thy hallowed courts below, To meet and serve thee there?
To thy body, Lord, we flee: This the consecrated shrine;
Temple of the Deity, The real house divine.

His "Hymns on the Trinity" (1767) is a book of exceeding value and interest. Mr. Jackson is within the truth when he says: "There is not in the English language a volume that, in so small a compass, shows more clearly the scriptural doctrine of the Trinity, with its practical impor tance; and it has this peculiar advantage, that it proposes the subject, not as a matter of controversy, but of faith and

adoration, of prayer, thanksgiving, and praise." The contents are arranged under five topics; through four of these, which are essentially doctrinal, each hymn has one or more texts of scripture prefixed, to which it is supposed to bear some more or less intimate relation. Thus, on Matt. xxxiii.

9, "Call no man your Father," etc.

Our heavenly Father is but one With that paternity

In which the Father and the Son And Holy Ghost agree:
Each person of the triune God May his own creature claim,

For each impressed the earthly clod With his own awful name.

His distinctions are usually sound. 1 Cor. xi. 3, "The head of Christ is God."

inferior is to God;

The partner of our flesh and blood, As man,
The lower part of Christ, the heel, Was bruised, and did our sorrows feel;
But though he would his life resign, His part superior is divine,
And doth, beyond the reach of pain, God over all forever reign.

Very rarely, in this volume, does he use an incorrect expression. The last three lines of the following are perhaps the only instance:

How could God for sinners die? How could man the pardon buy?
When thy human nature bled, Then the blood divine was shed,
Blood of him who was in thee, God from all eternity.

These expressions - "blood of God," " death of God," and the like, which not unfrequently occur in Charles Wesleyare themselves, and the ideas which they represent, popish and unjustifiable. The man Jesus alone suffered and died for us. The divine nature which was in him, mysteriously conjoined with his humanity, gave an infinite merit and atoning power to those agonies; and there we must stop. How the Godhead "made of infinite avail the sufferings of the man," is the mystery; and the mystery is not explained, nor any good done, by the use of language justified neither by reason nor scripture.

But this is an exception. For the elucidation of difficult passages, the harmonizing of seemingly contradictory ones, and the systematic and satisfactory presentation of a great doctrine in all its various phases, this would be a most valu

able manual. It appears never to have been appreciated or reprinted. The last of its five divisions contains "Hymns and Prayers to the Trinity:"

Full credence we give, And exult to believe

What our reason in vain would aspire to conceive :
Not against but above Our reason we prove
Three persons revealed in the essence of love.

No distinction we find Of will or of mind
In the Maker, Inspirer, and Friend of mankind;
But one God we proclaim, In nature and name
Indivisibly one, and forever the same.

Having thus outlined the scheme of orthodox doctrine, he is
anxious to guard against formalism and mere intellectual
belief; and he expresses himself as strongly as usual:
Right notions have their slender use,

But cannot a sound faith produce, Or vital piety.
They cannot make the Godhead known,

Or manifest Jehovah one In co-eternal three.

The orthodox, renowned in fight,

Fierce champions for opinions right, May reason's strength display;
Their Arian and Socinian foes,

And Heresy's whole household knows The truth as much as they.

He insists earnestly on the necessity of spiritually discerning spiritual truths:

Creeds and books can nothing do, Unaccompanied by grace;
Grace must form my heart anew, Give me to discern thy face,
Bring my faithful heart the power God in persons three to adore.

Our faith is but a shadow vain, Unless it works by love,
And, saved from sin and born again, We seek the things above;
Unless we have the sacred Trine Into our hearts received,
And I can call each person mine, I have not yet believed.

Having thus satisfied his intellect, his orthodoxy, and his conscience, he, in a short hymn near the end of the volume, allows his innate poetry full swing. The piece is a fine example of that singularity of style and sentiment which he sometimes indulged without restraint:

Thy divinity's adorer, Thee that I may truly know,
Jesus, be my soul's restorer, Bleeding Lamb, appear
God, expiring on the tree, Love, be manifest in me.

below:

Sharer of thy dereliction, Joining in thy plaintive cry,

Pained with thy extreme affliction, Let my broken heart reply:
O let all within me moan, Echo back thy dying groan!

Here would I maintain my station; Never from the cross remove,
Till I, in my last temptation, Pay thee back thy dearest love, —
Faint into thy arms away; Die into immortal day.

As a polemic poet, it is probable Charles Wesley has never been equalled. He possessed the combative qualities abundantly intensity of thought and feeling, thorough sincerity and earnestness, unqualified devotion to his principles, a hearty hatred of whatever he thought unscriptural, false, and dangerous, outspoken and fearless honesty, keen wit, and unsurpassed vigor of language. He could be very satirical when he chose, and he sometimes chose. The wretched formalism which everywhere prevailed, the deadness of the established church, the cruel bitterness of clergy and rulers against evangelical religion and its professors, aroused his wrath, and he frequently used words which must have been more true than pleasant. In his "Hymns of Intercession" (1758) occurs a picture, taken from life, of "the universities":

Teacher divine, with melting eye

Our ruined seats of learning see,
Whose ruling scribes thy truth deny,
And persecute thy saints and thee,
As hired by Satan to suppress
And root up every seed of grace.

Where knowledge vain, unsanctified,

Fills every synagogue and chair;

Where pride and unbelief preside,

And wage with heaven immortal war:
The prophets' nursing schools are these,
Or sinks of desperate wickedness?

The English Wesleyan Collection, and that of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, still contain part of a poem on Jer. vii. 4: "The temple of the Lord are thesc," headed in the latter collection: "Before Preaching to Formalists." Our readers may be surprised to find so much irony in a hymn book.

The men who slight thy faithful word,

In their own lies confide,

These are the temple of the Lord,

And heathens all beside!

The temple of the Lord are these,
The only church and true,

Who live in pomp and wealth and ease,
And Jesus never knew!

The temple of the Lord- they pull

Thy living temples down,

And cast out every gracious soul

That trembles at thy frown;

The church-they from their pale expel
Whom thou hast here forgiven;

And all the synagogues of hell

Are the sole heirs of heaven!

But the most powerful, combative, and controversial poems that we have ever seen, appeared in "Hymns on God's Everlasting Love," published in 1741, and greatly enlarged in 1756. People seem to be shy of this polenic region: Mr. Jackson and Mr. Creamer pass the volume with very brief remarks; but it is one of the most able, interesting, and remarkable among the Arminian poet's publications. It preaches an unlimited, universal atonement, and attacks the doctrines of reprobation and unconditional election. Calvinism in that age was a somewhat different thing from that which bears the name now: the doctrine supposed to be taught that infants in great numbers were lost, and that most souls were arbitrarily predestined to endless misery, came sharply into conflict with Wesleyan views; and Charles thought he had a fair field for the exercise of spiritual archery. The famous controversy waged by Fletcher and John Wesley against Shirley, the Hills, Toplady, etc., was some years later; but John had already published his sermon on "Free Grace," and war was declared. We had better let the poet tell his own story; premising merely that it is the extreme and inhuman tenets of old-fashioned hyper-Calvinism which he is attacking, and that by the "hellish doctrine" and similar mild terms he means the dogma that Christ did not die for VOL. XXI. No. 82.

37