awakening them from the pursuits and vanities of this world, to a salutary and hopeful contemplation of that which is to come. And there was the heavier evil, that the greater part of the nation were totally uneducated;-Christians no further than the mere ceremony of baptism could make them, being for the most part in a state of heathen, or worse than heathen, ignorance. In truth, they had never been converted; for at first one idolatry had been substituted for another: in this they had followed the fashion of their lords; and when the Romish idolatry was expelled, the change on their part was still a matter of necessary submission ;-they were left as ignorant of real Christianity as they were found. The world has never yet seen a nation of Christians.

The ancient legislators understood the power of legislation. But no modern government seems to have perceived, that men are as clay in the potter's hands. There are, and always will be, innate and unalterable differences of individual character; but national character is formed by national institutions and circumstances, and is whatever those circumstances may make it-Japanese or Tupinamban, Algerine or English. Till governments avail themselves of this principle in its full extent, and give it its best direction, the science of policy will be incomplete.

Three measures then were required for completing the Reformation in England: that the condition of the inferior clergy should be improved; that the number of religious instructers should be greatly increased; and that a system of parochial education should be established and vigilantly upheld. These measures could only be effected by the legislature. A fourth thing was needful,-that the clergy should be awakened to an active discharge of their duty; and this was not within the power of legislation.The former objects never for a moment occupied Wesley's consideration. He began life with ascetic habits and opinions; with a restless spirit, and a fiery heart. Ease and comfort were neither congenial to his disposition nor his principles: wealth was

not necessary for his calling, and it was beneath his thoughts: he could command not merely respectability without it, but importance. Nor was he long before he discovered what St. Francis and his followers and imitators had demonstrated long before, that they who profess poverty for conscience-sake, and trust for daily bread to the religious sympathy which they excite, will find it as surely as Elijah in the wilderness, and without a miracle. As little did the subject of national education engage his mind: his aim was direct, immediate, palpable utility. Nor could he have effected any thing upon either of these great legislative points: the most urgent representations, the most convincing arguments, would have been disregarded in that age, for the time was not come. The great struggle between the destructive and conservative principles,-between good and evil, had not yet commenced; and it was not then foreseen that the very foundations of civil society would be shaken, because governments had neglected their most awful and most important duty. But the present consequences of this neglect were obvious and glaring; the rudeness of the peasantry, the brutality of the town populace, the prevalence of drunkenness, the growth of impiety, the general deadness to religion. These might be combated by individual exertions, and Wesley felt in himself the power and the will both in such plenitude, that they appeared to him a manifestation, not to be doubted, of the will of Heaven. Every trial tended to confirm him in this persuasion; and the effects which he produced, both upon body and mind, appeared equally to himself and to his followers miraculous. Diseases were arrested or subdued by the faith which he inspired, madness was appeased, and, in the sound and sane, paroxysms were excited which were new to pathology, and which he believed to be supernatural interpositions, vouchsafed in furtherance of his efforts by the Spirit of God, or worked in opposition to them by the exasperated Principle of Evil. Drunkards were reclaimed; sinners were converted; the peni

tent who came in despair was sent away with the full assurance of joy; the dead sleep of indifference was broken; and oftentimes his eloquence reached the hard brute heart, and opening it, like the rock of Horeb, made way for the living spring of piety which had been pent within. These effects he saw,they were public and undeniable; and looking forward in exultant faith, he hoped that the leaven would not cease to work till it had leavened the whole mass; that the impulse which he had given would surely, though slowly, operate a national reformation, and bring about, in fulness of time, the fulfilment of those prophecies which promise us that the kingdom of our Father shall come, and his will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

With all this there was intermingled a large portion of enthusiasm, and no small one of superstition; much that was erroneous, much that was mischievous, much that was dangerous. But had he been less enthusiastic, of a humbler spirit, or a quieter heart, or a maturer judgment, he would never have commenced his undertaking. Sensible only of the good which he was producing, and which he saw produced, he went on courageously and indefatigably in his career. Whither it was to lead he knew not, nor what form and consistence the societies which he was collecting would assume; nor where he was to find labourers as he enlarged the field of his operations; nor how the scheme was to derive its temporal support. But these considerations neither troubled him, nor made him for a moment fore, slack his course. God, he believed, had appointed it, and God would alway provide means for accomplishing his own ends.

CHAPTER X.

WESLEY SEPARATES FROM THE MORAVIANS.

BUT the house which Wesley had raised was divided in itself. He and the Moravians had not clearly understood each other when they coalesced. Count Zinzendorf moreover looked upon the society which had been formed in London, as a colony belonging to his spiritual empire; and if he was incapable of bearing with an equal, Wesley could as little brook a superior. A student of Jena, by name Philip Henry Molther, having been detained by various causes in London on his way to Pennsylvania, took upon himself the care of the brethren. The Moravians had their extravagancies, and of a worse kind than any into which Methodism had fallen; but these extravagancies had not been transplanted into England: their system tended to produce a sedate, subdued habit of mind, and nothing could be more contrary to this than the paroxysms which were exhibited under Wesley's preaching, and the ravings to which he appealed exultingly as proofs of the work of grace. Molther maintained that there was delusion in these things; that the joy and love which were testified in such glowing language were the effect of animal spirits and imagination, not joy in the Holy Ghost, and the real love of God shed abroad in their hearts. They who, whether owing to their strength of mind or of body, had not experienced such emotions, were disposed to listen to his opinion, and congratulate themselves that they had escaped a dangerous delusion; and it was yet more willingly embraced by those who had become languid and spiritless in consequence of over-excitement, felt in themselves an abatement of zeal, had relaxed in any degree from the rule of life which they had begun, or returned to any of those practices which

were really sinful or which they had been taught to think so. "I observed," says Wesley, "every day more and more the advantages Satan had gained over us. Many of those who once knew in whom they had believed were thrown into idle reasonings, and thereby filled with doubts and fears from which they now found no way to escape. Many were induced to deny the gift of God, and affirm they never had any faith at all, especially those who had fallen again into sin, and, of consequence, into darkness."

That which has so often happened in theological disputes, and sometimes with such lamentable effects, occurred in this. In opposing Wesley's error, the Moravian advanced opinions equally erroneous; he maintained that there are no degrees of faith; that no man has any degree of it before he has the full assurance; that there is no justifying faith short of this; that the way to attain it is to wait for Christ and be still, but not to use the means of grace, by frequenting church, or communicating, or fasting, or engaging much in private prayer, or reading the Scriptures, or doing temporal good, or attempting to do spiritual good, because, he argued, no fruit of the Spirit can be given by those who have it not, and they who have not faith themselves, are utterly unable to guide others. These positions were strenuously opposed by Wesley; and when Molther maintained that since his arrival in England he had done much good by unsettling many, from a false foundation and bringing them into "true stillness," Wesley insisted, on the contrary, that much harm had been done by unsettling those who were beginning to build good works upon the right foundation of faith, and bewildering them in vain reasonings and doubtful disputations.

Molther however produced a great effect, while he had the field to himself; and Wesley was informed that the brethren in London had neither wisdom enough to guide, nor prudence enough to let it alone; that the Moravians seemed to consult about things as if they were the whole body, that they made a