LTHOUGH the emotional is fast giving place to the practical in Methodism, the least sentimental among us may well say: Let the spikenard of a reverent and devout remembrance fill the homes of all the people called Methodists in commemoration of Wesley's birth two hundred years ago. I was in some such spirit one day recently in the city of Washington. Included in the programme was a visit to the library of Congress. Among the quotations and mottoes interweaving the mural and ceiling decorations in somewhat overwhelming profusion, this from Carlyle stood conspicuous :

"In books lies the soul of the whole past time."

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I thought, Let me, this bicentennial year, choose a book of Wesley's time. The book was John Wesley's sermon on Ezekiel i. 16, containing some account of the late work of God in North America." In the silence of the magnificent rotunda, the holy place of that temple, shrine, and monument of literature, worthy a great and progressive nation, I read that in the years preceding the War of Independence the trade, wealth, and plenty of the colonists had been increasing at a prodigious rate. These prosperous conditions had begotten and nourished pride, luxury, sloth, and wantonness, so that the results of the work of grace begun in 1736 had almost wholly disappeared. The sermon filled a twenty-page tract "Sold at the Foundry in Moorfields." It was however, the disas

trous result of prosperity that chiefly arrested my attention.

The most obscure follower of Wesley engaging in such a quiet little celebration of the anniversary might claim the Methodist privilege of this practical application expressed interrogatively after the manner of our illustrious founder himself. What will safeguard the progress in trade and wealth which Methodists in Canada are making to-day?

(1) A Sense of Stewardship.

Using wealth not for selfish and vulgar display, but for the service and uplift of our fellows. Especially in helping the hundreds of thousands of new settlers that will yearly be added to the population of this country, assisting them to kindle the altar fires of a simple, spiritual worship in their western homes. Thus may Methodism continue the hardy pioneer work which for a hundred years has been her chief strength and glory on this continent.

(2) Co-operation Rather Than Competition

ought to mark the regirding of our strength as we begin the third century since Wesley's birth. Let individual churches cultivate the spirit of it. May it spread and grow, and at length prevail where it is so much needed from the standpoint of economy, as well as of brotherly love-in our home missions and pioneer work. Methodists will find that the truths Wesley emphasized-specific conversion, assurance, and sanctification-have permeated the whole lump of evangelical Christendom. New men in Christ Jesus are everywhere serving

God with full purpose of heart. They may describe their experience by other means than ours, or, haply, may let it be known by fruit rather than by definition. Shall we not co-operate with them for the advancement of the Kingdom, rather than compete with them? Here are two verses from Wesley's hymn on Catholic Love. It is curious-and is it not significant?-that this hymn is not in use in any Methodist hymn-book :

"My brethren, friends, and kinsmen these Who do my Heavenly Father's will; Who aim at perfect holiness

And all Thy counsels to fulfil, Athirst to be whate'er Thou art,

And love their God with all their heart.

"For these howe'er in flesh disjoin'd,

Where'er dispersed o'er earth abroad, Unfeigned, unbounded love I find,

And constant as the life of God: Fountain of life from thence it sprung, As pure, as even, and as strong.'

(3) An Educated Ministry.

The sermon was "by the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., sometime fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford." Methodist preachers in the nine

teenth century have been as a rule the peers or superiors of the people to whom they ministered. To their spiritual children they often became united in bonds of close and lasting friendship. Canadians who grow rich give their sons and daughters the best education obtainable. Methodist children, cultured and refined, will be more surely held in the Church and influenced by the pulpit if from their college associates and friends come the candidates for the Methodist ministry. If a generous share of increasing wealth be consecrated to higher education, the preachers of the future converted, capable, and cultured-will not be less influential for good in the pulpit and in Methodist homes than those we have known and revered, and the name of John Wesley, gentleman, scholar, poet, prophet, reformer, philanthropist, preacher, founder, and law-giver, will be a perpetual fragrance as of ointment poured

forth.

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IKE a star, unhasting, unresting," John Wesley made his luminous way across the dark night of an age when vital religion was almost dead; and still the light of his life and work shines on with wondrous thousandfold illumination, vivifying every branch of that new evangelism which he was born to proclaim. He was a voice from the unseen Heaven interpreting and unfolding the inner spirit of the Word, calling mankind to repentance, faith, and holiness.

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And what a life was his, great and altogether beautiful! grave, sedate child, enjoying the sweet home-life at Epworth, the young collegian with "the finest classical taste and the most liberal and manly sentiments," the university man with his larger views of men and books and affairs, the open-souled, fearless legislator, reformer, and preacher of righteousness-a radiant personality in whatever light we view him.

The secret of the immense labours which marked John Wesley's long life of almost tragic earnestness, was his profound sense of the value of time. He was wont to say,

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"Leisure and I have parted company." One would need to go through the long list of his writings to realize the wonderful mental as well as bodily energy of the man. At the age of eighty-six we find him exclaiming :

"Man was not born in shades to lie!

Let us work now, we shall rest by and by."

Not the least of his labours was the opening of the long-disused portal into that wide pathway of blessed opportunities for the employment of womanly activities. Wesley went back to the days of primitive Christianity when the Order of Deaconesses formed so important an element in the life of the Church. With far-sighted vision he saw that the organization of women as an ecclesiastical force must always lead to the largest success in the evangelization of the people.

As the great Methodist movement advanced, the conviction steadily grew in Wesley's mind that woman's gifts might be put to service beyond even that of visitors of the sick and needy, class-leaders and prayer-meeting exhorters. The irresistible eloquence of women like Mary Fletcher and Dinah Evans compelled their recognition as lay preachers. Many of these consecrated women itinerated throughout the country and became Wesley's right hand by active co-operation. in almost every phase of the work. A gentleman "to the manner born" and possessed of great delicacy of feeling, he could not fail in a just and sympathetic appreciation of wo

men; no doubt the influence of his mother's life went far to create his lofty ideal of Christian womanhood.

What a fair picture comes up before us with the name of Susannah Wesley A being all sweetness and light, of whom one said Solomon must have seen her from afar when he drew the portrait of the perfect woman. How touching the eagerness with which Mrs. Wesley followed the life-work of her boy "Jacky," encouraging and counseling him with rare tact and wisdom at every crisis of his career ! Well might Isaac Taylor say, "The mother of the Wesleys was the mother of Methodism."

Christianity emancipated woman: John Wesley gave to her the sublime vision of her possibilities. While the women of Methodism gratefully join in the paean of praise which now encircling the earth for the gift to the world of this Christ-absorbed life, may their hearts be stirred and thrilled with the same consuming passion for souls that are everywhere going out into the dark.

-J. R. Miller, D.D.

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In estimating the character and work of Wesley we must take into account the environment in which he lived. Few periods of English history have been less favourable to religious revival than that eighteenth century, whose most prominent figure John Wesley was. Spiritual religion seems to have almost died out of the land. The Established Church is described by Archbishop Leighton as "a fair carcass without spirit." Even the clergy who came up for examination for holy orders were often deplorably ignorant of the very essentials of religion. cold deism or a blank atheism pervaded the higher ranks of society. In the rural districts the utmost ignorance and indifference were rife. Hodge and Giles were considered to have fulfilled their religious duties if they "ordered themselves humbly and lowly toward their betters." Between the squirearchy and the hierarchy the few Dissenters of the period were ground as between the upper and the nether millstone. In London and the larger towns the condition was even worse. The popular amusements were coarse, and vile, and cruel. Drunkenness was the prevailing vice." The habit of profane swearing was frightfully common. The judge swore on the bench; the lawyer swore at the bar; fine ladies swore over their cards; and it is said that even the parson swore over his wine. "The nation," says Mackenzie, was clothed with cursing as with a garment."

Amid these deplorable conditions the Wesleys and Whitefield and their fellow-helpers began to preach everywhere the glad evangel of salvation by faith. And the nation, dull, sodden, and insensate, heard that cry. Deep down in the souls of men a yearning for pardon and purity, happiness and heaven, responded to the touch. The divine spirit was abundantly poured out, and many were transformed by the power of grace from the condition of beasts to the dignity of men and to the fellowship of saints. They gathered by thousands on the moorfields of Middlesex, at Gwennap-pit in Cornwall, on the Yorkshire wolds, and at village fairs, to hear the words of life. The trembling plumes of weeping court dames and the tear-washed furrows on

the dusky faces of the Durham miners alike attested the power of the message. The Methodist revival was a providential antidote to the current scepticism of the times and to the invasion of French atheism and anarchism. It is due to its influence more than to anything else that Great Britain was saved from a social and political cataclysm like that which in France overthrew the throne and altar in the dust, which shore off the heads of the loftiest in the realm, which raised the vilest of men to heights of power and deluged the country with blood. More than this, it was the providential preparation for withstanding the materialistic scepticism of the present day and for resisting the destructive assaults which are made upon the Word of God. the old evidences of Christianity, the arguments of Paley and Whately have failed, it furnishes a new apologetic and its conscious experience of salvation is a perpetual evidence that cannot be gainsaid. Amid the driftings from the old creeds this furnishes an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast, entering into that within the veil, and that anchor holds. Amid the shakings of the old foundations the things that cannot be shaken remain.

ITS ADAPTATION.

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Nothing is more remarkable in the genius of John Wesley than the facility with which he laid hold of every agency which could be employed for the advancement of the cause of God, and the welfare of his fellowmen. He was really the absolute pioneer in the way of cheap printing, and in circulating good literature, not for the leisured few who could afford costly volumes, but for the toiling masses who had neither time nor money to devote to books. Hence he condensed whole commentaries and large volumes into pamphlets and tracts. He was one of the first who recognized the importance of the great Sunday-school organization -that lever of more than Archimedean power to lift the world up nearer to the heart of God. Indeed, forty years before Robert Raikes gathered the children into Sunday-schools in Bristol, John Wesley had gathered a catechetical class on Sunday afternoons in the parish church at Savannah, Georgia.

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In few things was Wesley's sound judgment so strikingly in advance of his day as in his relations to temperance reform. No one ever brought a more tremendous indictment against

the liquor traffic than did he. No one ever more strongly rebuked the agents of that traffic in burning words which echo across the country. How marvellous that one brought up in the ascetic traditions and stereotyped principles of the High Church of the day should exhibit such flexibility in adapting varied means to advance this new evangel of the word of God. His adoption of field preaching, his co-operation with lay helpers, his appointment of women as leaders, his ordination of preachers and American superintendents, are striking examples of the boldness with which he broke away from all the traditions of his early life. Indeed, if the Methodist Church throughout the past century had maintained this flexibility of character and adaptation to circumstances which he did, it would doubtless have been spared many of those divisions which constitute one of the most painful chapters in its history. "With

charity to all, with malice to none (the phrase used by John Wesley long before it was made historic by Abraham Lincoln), we may look upon the progress of other Churches with appreciation of their merits and of their presentation of important aspects of divine truth. We may also feel that God has given Methodism a mission to accomplish, and has blessed her efforts in its accomplishment. One hundred and forty years ago it came to this continent poor, despised, almost unknown. It has grown with the years, till it is now the predominant form of belief from Mexico to Hudson Bay, from Newfoundland to Puget Sound.

METHODISM IN CANADA.

Nowhere has Methodism made greater progress relatively than in the Dominion of Canada, and especially in the Province of Ontario. It is just one hundred and twelve years since the organization of Methodism in this land. Notwithstanding the solid Roman Catholic population of Quebec of nearly one million and a half, one-fifth

of the population of the Dominion is identified with Methodism, and onethird of the most prosperous and wealthy province of Ontario is similarly identified. It is moulding the community in this Dominion for the higher civilization of the future more widely than any other agency. The Methodist pioneers laid the foundations of empire broad and deep in those principles of righteousness and truth which are the pledge of the stability of our institutions, and which are the corner-stone of our national greatness. Wherever the ring of the woodman's axe or the crack of the hunter's fire was heard the pioneer preacher, with his Bible and hymn-book in his saddle-bags, followed the adventurous settler to preach the word of life to those who were perishing for lack of knowledge.

The seal of the divine approval has been signally stamped upon the union of the Methodist Churches of this land. The increase of the last seven years has been thirty-eight per cent. In the Methodist Episcopal Church alone for the last one hundred years churches have been erected for the worship of God at the rate of one and a half every day, and at the present time they are being erected at the rate of four churches for every day in the year. We rejoice at the adaptation of Methodism to the most advanced culture and highest civilization of the times. Few things would have pleased more the heart and mind of John Wesley than the organization, to use the words of Bishop Newman, "of the young life and the young blood of Methodism" in the Epworth Leagues which are everywhere springing up. As these derive their name, they also derive their spirit from the old Epworth rectory in Lincolnshire, where Susannah Wesley trained up in piety and virtue the children whom God had given her; that was the first, the ideal Epworth League. Let us, in the broad-minded spirit of John Wesley, form a league and covenant with every soldier of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us join hands and hearts in loving rivalry as to who most shall promote the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

-Ruskin.