self-government, and an important means of usefulness. Rev. J. S. Balmer spoke of the physical, intellectual, and moral waste that may be traced to the use of intoxicants, and showed how they would be checked by the adoption of total abstinence. Rev. S. Beavan spoke on the harmony between abstinence principles and Holy Scripture. A vote of thanks to chairman, speakers, &c., was moved by Mr. E. P. Ridgway, seconded by Rev. S. Chester, and cordially adopted. The evening meeting was enlivened by a juvenile choir, who sang a number of pieces in very good style. The audience was most appreciative and enthusiastic, and the prospects of the League seem to be of a cheering kind. OUR OLD METHODIST PREACHERS. JOHN WESLEY. "A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich on forty pounds a-year." Vicar of Wakefield. EAR old Wesley! How I venerate his honoured name. Three DEAR his honour canonisation less than he. By the force of contrast I can hardly help reverting to Simeon Stylites, when speaking of Wesiey. Poor Simeon, standing on the top of his pillar, 60 feet high, with a chain about his emaciated body-now drenched with rains and now scorched by the sun's rays, bowed down with fierce pains, and always, from the rigour of his asceticism, upon the brink of starvation-for thirty years; what a spectacle to angels and to men. Absurd? Yes, my friend, it was absurd enough; but was it not also very courageous? Did it not display intense earnestness and devotion to the ideal, even though the ideal was a false one? It was heroic, but, alas! it was the heroism of a useless self-sacrifice. What a mighty contrast there is between poor Simeon, the "pillar-saint," and John Wesley! And the greatness of the contrast may serve to show both the direction and the distance which the religious world has gone since Simeon's day. Wesley was the embodiment of sound, common-sense. His great ambition was to be useful to his fellow-men. That was a beautiful prayer which he so often used to breathe from the inmost depths of his soul-"Lord, let me not live to be idle." It must have been a fine sight to see the good old man as he sung his favourite verse: His life was laid out by rule and square, like some stately piece of architecture. To bed at ten o'clock, up again at four, and every hour of the day marked out for some useful work, so that at night he could lay his journal at the foot of the Throne and say, "Lord, is it well done?" Oh, my friend, was it not wonderful? This man could not only lay down plans, but he could carry them out. This latter is the difficult point, is it not? Ah! do not you and I know that? How many of our plans for a noble life have got no further than paper ? This good man could actualise his purposes. Seldom have I met with anything finer in its way than the answer which he gave to one who asked him what he would do if he knew he would die that night. "I should do," said he, "just what I have planned to do; go to bed at ten, fall asleep, and wake up in glory." He knew the immense value of minutes. When ordering the carriage to be ready at five o'clock one morning for a journey, he added, "When I say five, I don't mean ten minutes past; I mean five o'clock exactly." This man's steps were all counted, measured, and timed; he moved with the regularity and precision of machinery. "Don't be in a hurry, sir," said a person to him on one occasion. "My friend," he replied, "I have too much to do to be in a hurry." And the marvel is that, with all this exactness and precision of movement, he never became a mere piece of mechanism. There was a cheerfulness, a hallowed gaiety, a sweet affectionateness, a thorough genial humanness about him, which charmed all who approached him. A truly apostolic man. the outward calmness and placidity there glowed an enthusiasm so intense that no trials however severe, no difficulties however great, no disappointments however saddening, could quench it—a living fire of Divine love, which burnt brighter and brighter till the end of his life. "There is no travelling to-day," said his companion to him on one occasion; "the roads are all snowed up." "At least we can walk twenty miles a day with our horses in our hand," he replied. "So in the name of God, we set off." Oh, my friend of the kid gloves and fancy walking-stick, whom a smart shower of rain keeps from a preaching appointment, and who finds it a great hardship to have to walk half a dozen miles to proclaim salvation to a few poor rustic sinners, what shall we say to this man? Was he not rather a strange sort of person? Not altogether an ordinary kind of man this. "Thank God for blackberries," he said once to John Nelson, when there was no other food to be got. Evidently, the elegancies of life were very minor things to this man. A vulgar man? No, not by any means. On the contrary, he was a highly cultivated man ; had a keen relish for all literary and scientific pursuits; was fond of the society of the ablest men and women; and to the end of his days was so eager to obtain fresh light that "he intermeddled with all knowledge." He was "the most influential mind of the last century" in Robert Southey's judgment. He was more than an intellectual man, however, he was a spiritual man. "To know God, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with him the chief end of existence," as Macaulay said of the Puritans. "Reputation," said he once to his brother Charles, when urged by him to answer a scurrilous pamphlet in which he had been cruelly slandered, reputation is nothing to me; I serve God." Oh, my friends, the hymns which we are singing every Sunday so languidly now, had life in them then; they were the embodiment of the experience of those who wrote and of those who sung them. Do you wonder that people sometimes walked miles in order to hear this man and his followers sing, while every fibre of their souls vibrated with such sentiments as these: "My life, my blood, I here present, 'Tis done, I can do all through Thee." Is it any wonder that Methodism spread like fire among stubble? No, my friend, you are quite in the wrong if you suppose that the success of Methodism was due to "the spirit of the age," or to " 'the peculiarities of the times," or to "the novelty of the thing." Nothing of the kind. It was due, under God, to the truth of it, as exemplified in the lives of its members; to the deep, impassioned earnestness, the spirit of self-sacrifice which characterised them. Its power was not in the circumstances which environed it, but in itself. It lived because it was alive with the power of God. Nothing more beautiful in its complete self-abnegation was ever penned than the Act of Dedication which Wesley appended to his account of the sufferings of the Methodists in the Wednesbury riots, which was published in the year 1743. It runs thus: "Lo I come!'-if this soul and body can be useful to anything— to do Thy will, O God.' ... If Thou please to visit me either with pain or dishonour, I will humble myself under it, and through Thy gracebe obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.' Hereafter no man can take away anything from me, no life, no honour, no estate, since I am ready to lay them down, as soon as I perceive that Thou requirest them at my hands," &c., &c. Wesley was a great organiser. Macaulay says that "he had a genius for statesmanship not inferior to that of Richelieu." He understood men, and was able to exert over them a commanding influence to the end of his life. A despot? Yes, but a despot of the highest kind, whose creative touch turned chaos into cosmos. Pawson says: "I am persuaded that, from the creation of the world, there never existed a body of men who looked up to any single person with a more profound degree of reverence than the preachers did to Mr. Wesley; and I am bold to say that never did any man, no, not St. Paul himself, possess so high a degree of power over so large a body of men as was possessed by him." Was he a lover of power? Probably; yet remember that his power was altogether personal, and then calculate, my friend, what must have been the quality of the man who could acquire and maintain to the end of his life such a commanding influence over a multitude of strong men. This man was no weakling. He was born to rule and command. "Do not mend our rules, but keep them." Carlyle himself could hardly wish for anything better. Liberty? Yes, there was liberty, but not of the do-asyou-like sort. It was the liberty which consists in the stern suppression of the elements of lawlessness, both in the individual and in the societies, in submission to right rule and to duly-constituted authority. These were the terms of Methodist life under Wesley. There was no communion with the societies for you, except upon these terms. No; the bands, love-feasts, classes, sacraments, preachings, and prayermeetings must all be diligently attended; both private and public life must be reduced to the scriptural order; or else "he has no more place among us." It was a severe rule, but a salutary one. In other hands it degene rated into harshness, but in Wesley's hands it was tempered by his paternal wisdom and love. Even the dress was placed under regulations. "I give no band-tickets to any woman that wears either ruffles or a high-crowned cap." Absurd? Yes, my friend, it does seem absurd enough; but what strikes me so forcibly is the marvellous power which the man must have had who dared to draw up such a regulation and to act upon it. Scarcely less am I astonished at the earnestness, the intense vitality, of the societies that could submit to it. For these rules, and this one among the rest, were actually reduced to practice by hundreds and thousands of the early Methodists. That is the marvel. Well do I remember one of Wesley's own members and correspondents, Miss Susan Knapp, of Worcester, who, far into this century, carried the habits and the style of the early Metho dists; dear old lady-intent upon doing gocd, to the last neat as a new pin, straight as an arrow, plain in dress as a Quakeress-she was one of the pleasant visions that flitted across my childhood's path. Yes, the discipline was severe, but under it was bred a race of spiritual heroes and heroines. We smile at these old regulations, call them obsolete, and in our self-flattery are apt to speak condescendingly about them. "Very well for those times, you know; would never do now, never." Well, my friend, it may be even so; and yet, but for these disciplinary methods, Methodism would never have become the vigorous thing it was. It was by these that the mighty spiritual forces which the labours of its earliest preachers evoked became trained forces, and worked beneficently for the world's good. Methodism was, then, steam under scientific regulation; enthusiasm under the restraints and guidance of severe law; it was the lightnings harnessed. Have we in our wisdom discovered better methods for extending and conserving the work of God among men? Let those among us who would sweep away class-meetings and prayer-meetings first honestly answer the question, "Have you anything better to put in their place?" The flavour of the old wine, to my taste at least, is better than that of the new. But Wesley made serious mistakes? Mistakes! oh yes, my friend, and have not we made mistakes? Would we be willing for every part of our poor lives to be passed under the burning focus of some highly magnifying-glass? Oh, my friend, let us extend to others the charity we so sorely need ourselves. Wesley's life for nearly sixty years was passed in the fierce glare of publicity. His sayings and doings have been represented to us by himself, by his friends, and by foes, so that we know him almost better than we know our own contemporaries. Yet how few blemishes can be found in him. In his "Journals " he introduces us to the interior, the sanctum sanctorum of his life, and yet we rise from the reading of them deeply impressed by the greatness and the goodness of the man. The "Journals" are among the most wonderful literary productions of any age of the world. They are as interesting as one of George Elliott's novels, affording quite as deep an insight into human nature, while they possess a spiritual enlightenment to which that lady's works can lay no claim. It is a pity they are not better known by the present generation of Methodists. But what a sad blunder his marriage was? Yes, my friend, it seems so to us; not without pathos either. Ought he not to have remained a celibate? Yes, we think so; but then Wesley himself did not think so, and before the event was he not quite as capable of judging as we are? Wesley thought the time had come when he could serve God |