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Prospects of Methodism.

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method, accomplished a vast amount of work, and lived ten lives in one. As he ruled himself, so he legislated for others. The Methodist system illustrates the man, and an acquaintance with its workings is the best key to his character. Many of its features we must regard as too dictatorial for our Protestant freedom, and far from being an improvement even upon the hierarchy which it displaced. But under his administration it appears to have been admirably adjusted and balanced. We cannot but say, Honor to the man who in himself exalted so rigid a method with so earnest a soul, and combined in his policy such elements of order and freedom, control and aspiration!

Faults he doubtless had. Who has them not? He may have been too set and notional, a little imperious, somewhat credulous and superstitious. Some of his opinions were whimsical. He believed in ghosts and evil possession. He recognized the future existence of brute beasts. He trusted important actions to lot, and ascribed peculiar authority to the passages of the Bible upon which he might chance to open. But he should be judged by the rule of his life, not by the exception. Surely, what he calls true religion or catholic love was the inspiration of his life. Of the convulsions, shrieks, trances, groans, and shouts of his converts. we make small account, as he comparatively did at last. The deepest groanings of the spirit are those "that cannot be uttered." It is for the warmth of his Christian love, and the hearts without number inflamed by him with the like sentiment, that we honor him. To us his name is fragrant among the saints and fathers of modern Christendom. With some of our readers, at least, his name will be greeted more cordially from the fact, that he did not regard the gate of heaven as closed against the pious believer in a creed not Trinitarian, and recognized a Unitarian, like Firmin, as a genuine Christian.

What is to be the destiny of the religious order formed by him we do not undertake to predict. The symptoms of return to the Establishment among some of the more wealthy and cultivated Methodists of England, and the dissensions upon reform topics in the denomination in this country, present omens not very encouraging to the champions of the Wesleyan hierarchy. We apprehend, moreover, that the progress of Christian liberty, in its best sense, will not be favorable to the permanence of the rigid discipline and des

potic polity with which the successors of Wesley have continued to burden their churches, under circumstances so different from those existing in the days of their founder. Time is a severe commentator upon every religious reform. Enthusiasm is apt to end in license or tyranny. To which issue Methodism is more likely to tend, grave history must ere long record. That record, whatever it may be, will leave no stain upon the memory of Wesley. If Whitehead gives the true view of the rise of Methodism, Wesley's better genius would be as much honored by the prevalence of a more independent spirit, as by the continued or increasing consolidation of the order.

Wesley's death took place, as we have seen, March 2d, 1791. England little appreciated the man whom she had lost. The Established Church, of which he continued a minister to the last, and in the bosom of which until shortly before his decease he had desired his people to remain simply as a religious society, gave him little benediction, shutting against him the pulpits that were open to clerical Nimrods and Bacchanals.

Look from Wesley's death-bed towards France; and on the morrow the streets of Paris exhibited a scene that should have proved to the conservatives of England the worth of him who could impress upon the neglected masses the sentiment of religion. The sacred vessels of the Parisian churches were carried to the mint to be coined into that which is called the "sinew of war." England followed not France in the desecration. A sentiment of reverence guarded, and still guards, her altars. The tombs of her saints and sages were not to be violated as were those of France, nor their ashes to be scattered to the winds, that the lead of their coffins might be moulded into bullets. Hearts, by thousands, once rude and violent, were now at peace with God, living in recognition of a heavenly kingdom, and chanting holy hymns instead of shouting fiendish curses. Myriads once crushed beneath poverty and toil had been rescued, and, with the faith and love of the Gospel, every good gift had been given. America, too, had shared the blessing; her remote borders had been visited by the missionaries of Methodism, and her forests had rung with their thrilling hymns.

The founder of the great society rested not in St. Paul's nor Westminster Abbey. The ruling powers did not desire it, although they did not deny such consecrated ground to a

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Lesson of his Life.

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Nor did

profligate man of genius, or a blasphemous soldier. Wesley desire to be buried away from his people. His remains were laid beneath the chapel in which he had so often preached.

Rest in peace, soul of John Wesley! we are all ready to say. May the English race, in all its branches, bless that name. As for us, we take leave of his memory now by applying to him his own tribute to Whitefield in the sermon upon his death, in 1770

"Who is a man of a catholic spirit? One who loves as friends, as brethren in the Lord, as joint partakers of the present kingdom of heaven and fellow-heirs of his eternal kingdom, all, of whatever opinion, mode of worship, or congregation, who believe in the Lord Jesus; who love God and man; who, rejoicing to please and fearing to offend God, are careful to abstain from evil and zealous of good works. He is a man of a truly catholic spirit who bears all these continually upon his heart; who, having an unspeakable tenderness for their persons, and an earnest desire for their welfare, does not cease to commend them to God in prayer, as well as to plead their cause before men; who speaks comfortably to them, and labors by all his words to strengthen their hands in God. He assists them to the uttermost of his power in things temporal and spiritual. He is ready to spend and be spent for them; yea, to lay down his life for them. How amiable a character is this! How desirable to every child of God!"

This portrait came from the painter's own soul. It might have been extravagant praise to bestow on George Whitefield. It is no more than truth, when applied to John Wesley.

Thoughts many and important are suggested by the survey that we have hastened through. This thought is most obvious, and is all that can be added: What an idea the history of Wesley and his work gives of the capacity of an individual, and of the productiveness of a single life! It is a great question, in our day, How may the largest crop be derived from an acre of ground? Far greater the question, How much efficient power can a life produce? Wesley's story is a stern homily on persevering, devoted, cheerful labor. "Work! work!" it cries, trumpet-tongued. "Work on, work ever, in faith and love!"

His method we know; what is ours? Let every conscience answer.

S. 0.

ART. II. ON THE NEGLECT OF THE LORD'S SUPPER.

Is the number of church members, or regular partakers of the Lord's Supper, in our religious societies, such as ought to satisfy us, as Christians, that all is right? If not, what is the general extent of the neglect, what are its evils, the causes from which it proceeds, and the means to which we may resort for its removal?

That there does exist a very great neglect of the communion is a point which appears, unhappily, only too easy to prove. If a person unacquainted with the customs of Christian countries, a Mohammedan or an Asiatic Jew, were to enter one of our churches, and to be told that he was about to witness the rite commemorative of the founder of our religion, he would experience some surprise at the spectacle presented. Having just heard the whole assembly addressed in language implying that they were all believers in Christianity, having seen them all not only listening respectfully to the instructions of the preacher, but expressing by their posture that they united in the prayers which he offered, — he now sees them, before the memorial rite is administered, retiring in such numbers as to leave for the moment a doubt whether any will remain to join in it. And when, on a second glance, he discovers some persons, mostly advanced in years or of the gentler sex, occupying seats at wide intervals in the pews which were but a moment before so crowded, he asks in surprise, Are these all the Christians in the assembly? And, if these be all the Christians present, he might continue, of what religion are the others? He has seen no mosque, no synagogue, no pagoda, in the city or the village. Is it possible that three fourths or more of the inhabitants are of no religion at all, believers in no God, and followers of no prophet?

The representation just given cannot be thought to be over-colored. We trust that there are churches among us, the aspect of which would be more encouraging. But in its general features, we believe that the representation we have given describes the true state of things in the worshipping assemblies of our own denomination.

Before inquiring into the causes, let us look for a moment at the evils of this neglect of the communion among us. Some, perhaps, may think that it would be a matter of little

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consequence, if the non-observance of the rite were carried even farther than it is, that it is but one of the externals of religion, and may be dispensed with, as it is by the Society of Friends, while the spirit of Christianity is still pervading the hearts and influencing the lives of men.

To this we reply, that though the rite is undoubtedly, as all rites are, external, it by no means follows that it is of slight importance. Not to insist on the ground of positive requirement by our Saviour, it is an institution which beyond all others serves to connect the disciple with Christ as his Master. Our religion-the religion we profess to believeis not simple Theism. It is Christianity; Theism as taught, developed, and proved by Jesus Christ. This is a distinction not always kept in view in addresses from the pulpit; and even if the preacher remember it, the hearers are sometimes in danger of forgetting it, of substituting a general and very indefinite belief in a God, for that beautiful delineation which the Gospel presents to us, in which we are made to understand the character of the Father by seeing it reflected in the Son. In order to avoid this danger, to remain living branches of the sacred vine of which Christ is the root, we need something to remind us continually of him, to bring before us in vivid representation the traits of that perfect character which is to be the model of ours. The communion effects this in a way in which nothing else can. It effects it in part even for those who do not approach the table, as it generally suggests as the subject of the accompanying discourse something suited to lead the hearers to contemplate their Master. But to the faithful communicant it does far more. It recalls him from the wanderings of vague speculation, to sit an humble learner at the Saviour's feet. From cold reasoning it recalls him to warm feeling. It places before him the world's great pattern of forgiveness, patience, love, and devoted obedience, and tells him, This is thy Master; go and be thou like him.

By the prevalent neglect of the communion, all this is lost to thousands who ought to share its advantages. Nor is this all. An evil perhaps still greater exists in the supposed relaxation of the demands of duty, in favor of those who are not communicants. Highly as we value the influence of the Lord's Supper, we have sometimes been tempted for a moment to indulge the thought, that it were better not administered at all, than to be made, as it is, the privilege of a few.