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compelling story. Her body was brought from Cumnor Hall, only four miles distant, to Oxford, and lay in state in Gloucester College.

In this venerable church the University sermons are preached and the celebrated Bampton Lectures are delivered.

During many years of toil and persecution John Wesley maintained his connection with Oxford University as one of the Fellows of Lincoln College. Indeed, the thirty pounds a year which he derived from his fellowship, was his only fixed income. One of the duties arising from his relationship was that of preaching in his turn before the University, even after his name was cast out as evil and everywhere spoken against. It was in the pulpit of the venerable Christ Church, from which Wycliffe, the Morning Star of the Reformation, and the martyr-bishops Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer had preached, that he in turn proclaimed the Word of Life. The last time that he preached before the University was an occasion of special interest. It is thus described by Dr. Stevens:

"Oxford was crowded with strangers, and Wesley's notoriety as a field preacher excited a general interest to hear him. Such was the state of morals at the time, that

clergymen, gownsmen, and learned professors shared with sportsmen and the rabble the dissipations of the turf. Charles Wesley went in the morning to the prayers at Christ Church, and found men in surplices talking, laughing, and pointing, as in a playhouse, during the whole service. The inn where he lodged was filled with gownsmen and gentry from the races. He could not restrain his zeal, but preached to a crowd of them in the inn courtyard. They were struck. with astonishment, but did not molest him. Thence he went to St. Mary's Church to support his brother in his last appeal to their Alma Mater. Wesley's discourse was heard with profound attention. The assembly was large, being much increased by the races.

"In his journal of that day John Wesley says, 'I preached, I suppose, the last time at St. Mary's! Be it so. I am now clear of the blood of those men. I have fully delivered my own soul.' Such was the treatment he received from the University, to which he has given more historical importance than any other graduate of his own or subsequent times, and more perhaps than any other one ever will give it."

BICENTENARY HYMN.

One song of praise, one song of prayer,
Around, above, below;

Ye winds and waves the burthen bear:
"Two hundred years ago."

"Two hundred years ago!" What then?
There rose the world to bless,
A little band of faithful men,
A cloud of witnesses.

It looked but like a human hand;
Few welcomed it, none feared;
Yet as it opened o'er the land,

The hand of God appeared.

The Lord made bare His holy arm,
In sight of earth and hell,

Fiends fled before it with alarm,
And alien armies fell.

God gave the Word, and great hath been
The preachers' company;
What wonders have our fathers seen!
What signs their children see!

One song of praise for mercies past,

Through all our courts resound;
One voice of prayer that to the last,
Grace may much more abound.
All hail "two hundred years ago!"
And when our lips are dumb,
Be millions heard rejoicing so,
Two hundred years to come.

WESLEY'S DEATH-BED.

BY THE REV. MARK TRAFTON, D.D.

Tread softly! He is dying, on his pillow worn and pale;
His weary feet are treading now alone death's shadowed vale;
His fondest wish is granted-that heaven might please to give
His servant this last boon, at once to cease to work and live.

Speak low! His busy thoughts are now with all the varied past,
As from life's well-exhausted glass the sands are slipping fast.
List! His pale lips are moving as he murmurs faint yet free,
"Yes, I the chief of sinners am, but Jesus died for me!"

He moves; he lifts his withered hands, his eyes catch heaven's own rays,
He summons all his failing powers for one last burst of praise.
"Now, thanks," he cries, "for all His gifts; but this of all the best,
Is, God is with us! Fare ye well!" he enters into rest.

No warrior ever dropped at once his sword, and lance, and shield,
And sinking down in death at last upon the well-fought field,
Has left a name that shall outlive his own there silent laid,
Who never called retreat, or halt, or sheathed his trenchant blade.

The silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is crushed,
The magic tones of that sweet voice for evermore are hushed;
Yet still its cadences shall ring and spread from pole to pole,
While human hearts shall swell with hope, and time's swift tide shall roll.

Cold are those lips; those eyes are closed-loved hands upon them laid-
Whose flash could quell the savage heart, whose tones the torrent stayed;
The eyes that caught the vision of the Gospel triumph clear,

With faith that grasped the promise, and brought the triumph near.

The savour of that deathless name fills all the ambient air;
Wherever human tones are heard, lo! Wesley's voice is there;

This "brand" plucked from the burning lodge of Epworth feeds the flame
To kindle which upon the earth the great Redeemer came.

For such a man no limits were of diocese or kirk;

"My parish is the world," he cries, "and life my day for work;

My call is to humanity, now crushed and cursed by sin;

My mission to the outcast poor, for Christ the lost to win."

Oh, what to him were effete forms of cope, or stole, or beads-
Dead substitutes for Christ-like life and loving, Christ-like deeds!
His life by deeds vicarious, for men to live and die,
Not honour here he sought, or rest-his recompense on high.

Dead for a century, still he speaks, and shall while yet is time;
That life shall prove a potent force in every land and clime;
And unborn millions cheerful give all honour to his name,
While souls redeemed in heaven above shall swell the joyous strain.
-Zion's Herald.

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Preaching at Bath in 1739, Wesley had Beau Nash and other fashionable people among his audience. Nash accused Wesley of frightening the people out of their wits by his preaching. "I desire to know what this people come here for," asked the dandy. "Leave him to me," cried an old woman. "You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we take care of our souls; and for the food of our souls we come here." He walked away without say ing a word.

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24, 1790, when in the morning he explained to a numerous congrega

It is a very gratifying recognition of the great work accomplished by the founder of Methodism-"the most amazing record," Mr. Birrell says, "of human exertion ever penned or endured"-that a great secular monthly has published a ten-page article in unstinted eulogy of the man and his work, by a writer not himself a Methodist. We have pleasure in abridging from the striking article in Scribners' Magazine the following appreciation of John Wesley. It appears more fully in "The Heart of Wesley's Journal," reviewed elsewhere in this maga zine.-ED.

tion in Spitalfields Church "The Whole Armour of God," and in the afternoon enforced to a still larger audience in St. Paul's, Shadwell, the great truth, "One thing is needful," the last words of the journal being, "I hope many even then resolved to choose the better part."

Between these two Octobers there lies the most amazing record of human exertion ever penned or endured,

John Wesley contested the three kingdoms in the cause of Christ during a campaign which lasted forty years. He did it for the

land-places which to-day lie far removed even from the searcher after the picturesque. In 1899, when the map of England looks like a gridiron of railways, none but the sturdiest of pedestrians, the most determined of cyclists can retrace the steps of Wesley and his horse and stand by the rocks and the natural amphitheatres in Cornwall and Northumberland, in Lancashire and Berkshire, where he preached

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most part on horseback. He paid more turnpikes than any other man who ever bestrode a beast. Eight thousand miles was his annual record for many a long year, during each of which he seldom preached less frequently than five thousand times. And throughout it all he never knew what depression of spirits meant-though he had much to try him, suits in chancery and a jealous wife.

In the course of this unparalleled contest Wesley visited again and again the most out-of-the-way districts the remotest corners of Eng

his Gospel to the heathen. Exertion so prolonged, enthusiasm so sustained, argues a remarkable man, while the organization he created, the system he founded, the view of life he promulgated, is still a great fact among us.

No other name than Wesley's lies embalmed as his does. Yet he

is not a popular figure. Our standard historians have dismissed him curtly. The fact is, Wesley puts your ordinary historian out of conceit with himself. How much easier to weave into your page the gossip of Horace Walpole, to en

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