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in which they have impressed that orthodoxy on the English Prayer-Book, notwithstanding the questionable influences to which it has been subjected. We should, of course, like it all the better, if the traces of the struggle it has come through were removed. But we cannot think that Mr. Forbes at all adequately weighs the difficulties which lie in the path of amendment. Those who use the book are thankful for what has been preserved, but, with Bishop Andrews, pray for the supply of what is wanting. Mr. Forbes does not flatter us. He is a rigid Primitivist. He sees in the Roman Church the mother of all the abuses of Western Christendom. As a Nonjurer in theology, he has no very warm side to the Anglican Communion; so, as we have said, his testimony is valuable when he praises; and as his test is the early Church, we have every reason to feel satisfied. No reformation of our Offices can be complete, which does not consult his pages.

ART. XXV.-The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. London. 1836.

WHEN Englishmen congratulate themselves upon being on the whole a religious nation, and indulge in not a little insular complacency at the thought that other nations with all their contempt for "the Protestant faith" are on the whole irreligious nations, they do not remember that it is only when the Church practically upholds a low standard of holiness that it will be accepted in this world by the majority of its inhabitants. When the requirements are high, there will be a few very good people, a good many more who are trying with more or less earnestness to attain such an amount of holiness as they can understand, or find not too dearly purchased, and the rest will ignore altogether a religion which they have decided to be unattainable or objectionable. In a low state of civilization and intellect they will be contented with rejecting it, as a murdering baron in the middle ages would have done, until his fears, or the pressure of public opinion, extorted from him a few conventional acts which charity might hope were not altogether devoid of the spirit assumed by the Church to accompany them. In a higher state of civilization and intellect the same persons will set themselves to construct a code of faith and morals which will suit them better, and be less exacting. When the standard is low, it will doubtless leaven the masses, keep up a fair average of decorous and devout public opinion, and greatly tend to the general prosperity and well-being of a country. But it will form no saints, it will blunt the perceptions of the highest part of man, and lower his conceptions of God and of his own destiny. It will develope his fleshly, not his spiritual nature, though scarcely in any actively repulsive form. Protestantism has a very strong idea of its duty to its neighbour, and a very slight and imperfect one of its duty to God. This is manifest enough in all the popular writings of the day. The hero who spends his life in relieving distress and teaching dirty people to be clean, who pays everybody honestly, and magnanimously resigns his lover to his enemy; who bears with other people's tempers, and sacrifices his life at last for somebody else, is not only the model saint of the modern Protestant writer, but there is an evident impossibility of imagining that anything can be wanting in his portraiture. In real life this model is acknowledged to exist even in the benighted Papist. S. Vincent de Paul spent his life in doing good, therefore he was a true Christian of the

highest stamp; so did Mrs. Fry, therefore she was one also. This is real religion. S. James says so, and what does it matter whether the practisers of it go to mass or to meeting? If they worship God, and believe in our Saviour, it is enough; by the side of those mighty points of union all pitiful differences about forms, and ceremonies, and creeds, and observances sink into their real insignificance. Practical charity is all that signifies. Sometimes, perceiving and reacting from this mistake, Protestantism will lay hold of the subjective side of our duty to God, but its fundamental errors and almost universal Nestorianism cut it off from all possibility of perceiving either the greatness of the gift of God, or man's corresponding duties and privileges. It takes this form among really pious dissenters; it was the result at length of the remarkable work, so fair at its outset, and so deeply founded among the true realities, which will make John Wesley's name to be remembered, and his influence felt, as long as England retains her Christianity. We have so associated his name with the sectarianism and heresy which grew up under its shadow, that we have great difficulty now in conceiving of his course as it was, and realizing its outset. We do not think of him as a staid priest of the English Church, taking the highest honours at Oxford, Resident Fellow, Greek Lecturer, and Moderator, forming his spiritual life by the aid of the "Holy Living," the "Imitatio Christi," "Law's Serious Call," and "Christian Perfection;" severe in ascetic mortification, communicating weekly, observing all the fasts of the Church, with others in addition, and, as he himself says, studying the Holy Scriptures with the aid of the writings of the earliest ages, that we might not lean to our own understandings." This is the true, but not the usual idea of Wesley's Oxford life. He, Mr. Charles Wesley, and a few more, about fifteen in number, founded there a kind of confraternity or brotherhood. Its inner rule bound the members to fasting, self-discipline, and frequent communion, while its outer acts included visiting the prisoners in the jail and the sick poor of the town.

"Being so strict in their deportment, so constant in the means of grace, and so zealous of good works, they soon began to be noticed and ridiculed by the young gentlemen of the University, under the appellation of Sacramentarians, and the Godly Club, and afterwards of Methodists. This last title was given them in the first instance by a Fellow of Merton College, in allusion to an ancient college of physicians at Rome, who were remarkable for putting their patients under regimen, and were therefore called Methodiste."

A strict form of self-examination was agreed upon and used by them, which, though it bears marks of inexperience in its minute construction, yet would help to lay the foundation of a high-toned Christian character :

"Love of God and Simplicity.

"Have I been simple and recollected in everything I said or did ?

"Have I prayed with fervour? At going in or out of church? In the church? Morning and evening in private? Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with my friends? At rising? Before lying down? On Saturday noon? All the time I was engaged in exterior work? In private? Have I, wherever I was, gone to church, morning and evening, unless for necessary mercy ? And spent from one hour to three in private? Have I every hour prayed for humility, faith, hope, love, and the particular virtue of the day? Considered with whom I was the last hour, what I did, and how? With regard to recollection, love of man, humility, self-denial, resignation, and thankfulness? Considered the next hour in the same respects, offered all I do to my Redeemer, begged His assistance in every particular, and commended my soul to His keeping?

"Have I used a Collect at nine, twelve, three? Have I duly meditated? From six o'clock to prayers? From four to five? On Sunday, from six to seven, with Kempis? From three to four, on Redemption, or God's attributes? Wednesday and Friday, from twelve to one, on the Passion?

"Love of Man.

"Have I been zealous to do, and active in doing, good? Have I embraced every probable opportunity of doing good, and preventing, removing, or lessening evil?

"Have I, in speaking to a stranger, explained what religion is not (not negative, not external), and what it is (a recovery of the image of God), searched at what step in it he stops, and what makes him stop there? Exhorted and directed him? Have I persuaded all I could to attend public prayers, sermons, and sacraments? And, in general, to obey the laws of the Church Universal, the Church of England, the State, the University, and their respective Colleges ?

"Have I, when taxed with any act of obedience, "avowed it, and turned the attack with sweetness and firmness?

"Have I disputed upon any practical point, unless it was to be practised just then?

"Have I, after every visit, asked him who went with me, did I say anything wrong

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"Have I thought or spoken unkindly to my neighbour? Have I repeated any evil of any one, unless it was necessary ? Have I then done it with all the tenderness of phrase and manner consistent with that end?

"Have I duly used intercession? For my friends on Sunday? For my pupils on Monday? For those who have particularly desired it on Wednesday and Friday?"

These are but some of the rules adopted by the little society, and binding them to a life of monastic strictness, order, and devotion. Some of their requirements must have made them at times interfering and meddlesome, and contain the germ of their subsequent mistake-that of "doing good" without and against lawful authority. It will be seen how thoroughly Catholic was the order of obedience assigned to each of the powers that be; and a fundamental error will be seen also in the definition of the work of religion as "the recovery of the Image of God," instead of the corporate union between our nature and that of the God-man. Had Wesley once realized this, he would never have fallen into his subsequent errors. He could never have so mistaken the nature of Holy Orders, and he would have clung to a due administration of the Sacraments from a higher belief than that they were simply "means of grace."

The times in which he began this life were degraded indeed. England had subsided into a languid quiet after its civil wars and revolutions, and, except the descendants of the old puritans, had thankfully succumbed in externals to the Church. The Church, weakened by the loss of the Nonjurors, and completely Hanoverianized, had sunk her practice to the merest formality, and her doctrinal teaching to the lowest Establishmentarianism, and so offended by its requirements not even the most worldly. Religion was imagined to consist in being a good subject, and eschewing any kind of doctrine or practice that was suggestive of either Oliver Cromwell or Guy Fawkes; in so much devotion as might be consistent with decorum and time-honoured forms; in a study of the "Whole Duty of Man," and carrying out its principles so far as might be consistent with making or saving a fortune; in avoiding all irregular prayers, and all whose language departed from the conventional standards; in receiving "the Sacrament" at stated times as an extra solemnity appropriate to special occasions, and regarding all changes and innovations of all kinds as indicative of a revolutionary spirit. This was religion for the educated. The poor then were much what the unlettered agricultural poor are now, dull and misty in their religious notions, with an idea that great crimes were offences not only against the state but against a Higher Power, and that a man's respectability was the test of his Christianity. There was "a simple faith in the efficacy of

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