into words? "They appear to have been," he says, "neither 'celestial' nor infernal,' but extra-terrestrial, intruding upon our sphere occasionally, as the Arabian locust is sometimes found in Hyde Park." From the Charter-House School, John Wesley went to Christ Church, Oxford; Charles Wesley reached the same goal through Westminster School.

The following curious incident is related:

Garret Wesley, of Ireland, who seems not to have been related to the family, offered to adopt Charles Wesley. The latter declining, Richard Colley, afterwards Richard Colley Wesley, was adopted in his stead. This gentleman became Baron Mornington, and was the grandfather of the Marquis of Wellesley and of the Duke of Wellington. The Duke's name, in the Army List of 1800, is "The Hon. Arthur Wesley, Lieutenant Colonel of the 33d Regiment." "The world might have been different without the battle of Waterloo and the hymns of Charles Wesley."

The "Holy Club," at Oxford, was at first composed only of John and Charles Wesley, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. Kirkham. They received the Lord's Supper weekly, and fasted twice a week. Hervey, the author of the Meditations, joined them in 1732, and Whitefield in 1735. Methodism is, in a very important sense, the child of Moravianism. Enough has hardly been made of this point. Dr. Stevens frankly acknowledges the facts. John Wesley learned almost the whole of evangelical piety from the Moravians, which afterwards, indeed, he put to a vastly wider use than the simple-hearted Germans have ever done. He crossed the Atlantic with Moravians, and lodged with them in America, and on his return to London, he constantly consorted with Peter Böhler, a Moravian pastor, and from him learned the true nature of faith. Charles Wesley, too, conversed with Zinzendorf, and had been in one of the Moravian assemblies, where, he says, "I thought myself in a choir of angels." Subsequently, a member of their Church named Bray "taught him the way of God more perfectly." After "the feet of both the brothers," to use Dr. Stevens' language, "had been directed into the way of life by the instrumentality of the London Moravians," John Wesley, with seven others, visited Herrnhut, and spent two weeks. At Marienborn they met Zinzendorf. He and Christian David taught them free salvation by the blood of Christ. Not only did the Wesleys owe their conversion and their best doctrinal views to the Moravians, but their system of "little churches within churches," the class and band meetings and love feasts came from them. Not only so, but there were forty Moravian Societies in London and its neighbourhood, besides several in the country, and nine in Ireland.

The Wesleys found refuge there, and "they afforded the nucleus and form of the more thoroughly organized Methodist 'Societies' in several parts of the kingdom."

The corner stone of the first Methodist Chapel was laid at Bristol, May 12th, 1739.

We should be almost amused with the following, did it not imply a grave error as to the nature of evangelical obedience: "The doctrine of Assurance, or the Witness of the Spirit had always been admitted by the Puritan divines; but it had not been considered the privilege of all true believers. It was a logical consequence of the Calvinistic theology, that it should be assurance of eternal as well as of present salvation, and the perilous liabilities of such an inference rendered it a rare and almost esoteric opinion in Calvinistic churches. Arminian

ism alone could therefore safely restore this precious truth as a common privilege to the Church!" What does all this imply but that the Christian who is sure of his eternal salvation will fall into licentiousness, and that we are kept safe, not by the love of Christ, but by the fear of hell?

Dr. Stevens is very explicit in stating that Wesley was an Arminian. "Arminianism, as stated by the Remonstrants at the Synod of Dort, he did heartily receive." "He commenced the Arminian Magazine,' in 1778." He states also very explicitly the settled Calvinism of Whitefield. It is not very impartial that he blames Whitefield for insisting upon preaching on Calvinism, while he approves of Wesley's course in previously preaching against it.*

Dr. Stevens finds it hard to manage Scotland so as to bring it within his foregone category and winds up in this amusing way, in which impartiality makes a notable struggle against theory: "If Methodism regrets its little progress in Scotland, it may at least console itself that there is less reason for this regret there than in any other country in the world."

The first Methodist Conference met in the Foundry, London, June 25th, 1744.

The minuteness of the inspection of the Methodist brethren is extraordinary:-"In 1745, Wesley carefully examined the Society in London one by one, and wrote a list of the whole with his own hand, numbered from 1 to 2008. In 1746, he repeated this operation, (sic) and wrote another list, in which the number was reduced to 1939."† Wesley's visits to Scotland are amusing. "Their cold courtesy denied to Methodism even the stimulus of riots. They did not persecute

him, but they would not follow him. On another occasion he remarked

that they know every thing and feel nothing. It became, indeed, a problem to him 'why the hand of the Lord, who does nothing without a cause, was almost entirely stayed in Scotland.'"

Here is an interesting anecdote:

John Pawson, a very holy man, had charge of City Road Chapel after Wesley's death, and occupied the adjacent parsonage, Wesley's London home. He expurgated its library with iconoclastic zeal. Wesley's intimate friend and executor, Rev. Henry Moore, says that among the books which Mr. Pawson laid violent hands on and destroyed, was a fine quarto edition of Shakspeare's Plays, the margin of which was filled with critical notes by Mr. Wesley himself."

Wesley had been much attached to a lady named Grace Murray, who, however, married a lay preacher named Bennet. Wesley's marriage was most unfortunate. He lived wretchedly with his wife, and she deserted him during the last ten years of her life. As a specimen of her, Dr. Stevens says: "She opened, interpolated, and then exposed to his enemies his correspondence, and sometimes travelled a hundred. miles to see, from a window, who accompanied him in his carriage."

Dr. Stevens takes the strongest ground in favour of perfection as attainable in this life, as the doctrine of Wesley, and as his own opinion. He adds, that "the doctrine of personal sanctification was the great potential idea of Methodism. Wesley claimed it (entire sanctification) as, like justification, an attainment of faith, and practicable at any moment." His own words in 1678, are: "Meaning thereby, as we did from the beginning, salvation from all sin by the love of God and our neighbour filling the heart." He also maintains that it is instantaneous.*

It was long before Wesley would consent to ordain his lay preachers. He resorted in 1762 to the expedient of obtaining ordination for them from a Greek bishop named Erasmus, who was travelling in England. Charles Wesley was an extraordinary stickler for Episcopal "church order," and opposed almost every thing tending to the establishment of Methodism as a distinct denomination.

It is only necessary to say, in a word, that Dr. Stevens gives full credit to Whitefield as a preacher.

The History of Methodism is not only readable, it is interesting. The biographies of the noble men who were raised up in its progress, both Calvinistic and Arminian, are wrought with skill into the substance of the work. With some such abatements as we have indicated, we can very cordially express our pleasure at its appearance.

* Pp. 406, 439.

VI.-MEMOIR, SELECT THOUGHTS AND SERMONS of the late Rev. Edward Payson, D. D., Pastor of the Second Church in Portland. Compiled by Rev. Asa CUMMINGS, Editor of the Christian Mirror. In three volumes. Philadelphia: W.

S. & Alfred Martien. 1859. Pp. 606, 608, 608.

Dr. Stowe says of Payson: "No one can form an adequate conception of what he was from any of the productions of his pen. Admirable as his written sermons are, his extempore prayers and the gushings of his heart in familiar talk, were altogether higher and more touching than any thing he ever wrote. It was my custom to close my eyes when he began to pray, and it was always a letting down, a sort of arude fall, to open them again when he had concluded, and find myself still on the earth. His prayers always took my spirit into the immediate presence of Christ, amid the glories of the spiritual world; and to look round again on this familiar and comparatively misty earth, was almost painful. At every prayer I heard him offer, during the seven years in which he was my spiritual guide, I never ceased to feel new astonishment at the wonderful variety and depth and richness, and even novelty of feeling and expression which were poured forth.

"He never favoured himself. Whatever he did, he did it by a 'dead lift.' The painful paralysis of which he died was the extreme exhaustion of a naturally strong body, perpetually driven by a stronger mind which allowed it no repose.

"We can almost say, that he gave to his people his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, till it was all gone; and they, in return, gave back gratitude as warm, and mourning as poignant, as ever a dying pastor received from his surviving flock."

Dr. Payson was but forty-four years old at his death. He was in the ministry but twenty years.

The first volume contains the well-known Memoir; the Select Thoughts, collected by Dr. Payson's daughter, Mrs. Hopkins, and Six TreatisesChristian Experience, Blessed Reciprocity, Searching Retrospection, The New Jerusalem, God in the Midst of His Church, Address to Seamen.

The second and third volumes contain Ninety-seven Sermons.

The whole is brought out in a very beautiful and appropriate manner by the Messrs. Martien of this city.

Dr. Stowe makes the elements of Dr. Payson's mental character to be-spontaneous intellectual activity, exuberant fancy, and great energy of feeling.

Dr. Cummings makes him at once philosophic, poetic and eloquent. Dr. Peters has contributed a very interesting letter on Dr. Payson, for Dr. Sprague's work. He says: "The leading characteristics of his preaching were affectionateness, earnestness and sincerity; an eloquence

which is ever destined more to be felt by the hearer, than to be admired. His people did not know that he was eloquent, but they loved to hear him preach.

"His holiness did not impose that restraint upon my own freedom in his presence that I had expected. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. There was no austerity, no affectation of goodness, no wrapping of himself up in cautiousness. His whole heart appeared open and transparent, while his manner was meek, cheerful and inviting, putting one wholly at ease by its unostentatious familiarity and kindness."

His powers of conversation, all describe as remarkable. We are inclined to think that the Church will settle upon the impression that Dr. Payson was not so much profound or philosophic, as full of feeling, earnestly pious, versatile, with that kind of imagination which is not so much a direct creative power as in Shakspeare, Milton and Shelley, as an aesthetic influence exalting, colouring, and adorning.

One should not be concerned with Payson, even as a critic, without gathering some spiritual instruction. We quote one or two of his beautiful thoughts:

What God calls a man to do, he will carry him through. I would undertake to govern half a dozen worlds, if God called me to do it; but I would not undertake to govern half a dozen sheep, unless God had called me to it.

Anticipated sorrows are harder to bear than real ones, because Christ does not support us under them. In every slough we may see the footsteps of Christ's flock who have gone before us.

Our best rule is, to give God the same universe. We must make him all in all. the universe but God and ourselves.

place in our hearts, that he holds in the We should act as if there were no beings in

He went to see a sick person, who was afraid she did not love her Saviour, because she could not keep her mind fixed upon Christ, on account of the distracting influences of her sufferings, and the various objects and occurrences of the sick room. Payson said:

Dr.

"Suppose you were to see a little sick child, lying in its mother's lap, with its faculties impaired by its sufferings, so that it was, generally, in a troubled sleep; but now and then it just opens its eyes a little, and gets a glimpse of its mother's face, so as to be recalled to the recollection that it is in its mother's arms; and suppose that always, at such a time, it should smile faintly with evident pleasure to find where it was, should you doubt whether that child loved its mother or not?"

The sufferer's doubts and despondency were gone in a moment.

VII.-FANKWEI, or The San Jacinto in the Seas of India, China and Japan. By WILLIAM MAXWELL WOOD, M. D., U. S. N., late Surgeon of the Fleet to the United States' East India Squadron, Author of "Wandering Sketches in South America, Polynesia," &c. New York: Harpers. Philadelphia: for sale by Lippincott & Co. 1859. Pp. 545.

VIII.-THREE VISITS TO MADAGASCAR during the years 1853, 1854, 1856. Including a Journey to the Capital; with Notices of the Natural History of the Country and of the Present Civilization of the People. By the REV. WILLIAM ELLIS, F. H. S., Author of "Polynesian Researches." Illustrated by Wood-cuts from Photographs, &c. Same Publishers. 1859. Pp. 514.