happy, and whether they would not have consulted their eternal interests still more effectually, by retaining their original position.

It is an undoubted fact, that many, who have left the Wesleyan Connexion in hope of improving their circumstances, have signally failed, and their subsequent career has been lamentable and disastrous. Let those, however, who, though nursed in the cradle of Methodism, are now found in other Christian folds, ever entertain kind and respectful sentiments towards the Wesleyan section of the universal church. Let them give the right hand of fellowship to her Ministers and members; acknowledging them as fellow-servants of one common Lord and Master; and if they will not directly encourage and promote the spread of Methodism, let them do nothing to injure it, nothing to prevent its progress and prosperity.

You, who are conscientiously and affectionately attached to Methodism, I would exhort to seek increasing measures of personal piety. For this, be it ever remembered, nothing whatever will avail as a substitute. Without a sound conversion to God, without a steady and persevering improvement in the divine life, all our helps and privileges, our means and ordinances, are worse than useless; and will only contribute to increase our final condemnation and woe. Be careful, therefore, to grow in grace, in knowledge, in humility, in heavenly-mindedness, in love to God, and to all mankind. Seek the highest attainments in holiness that the word of God authorizes you to expect, and labour to adorn your Christian profession in all things.

Support the various institutions of Methodism cheerfully and liberally. They are all important and indispensable auxiliaries in perpetuating and extending this work of God; and by your generous contributions to its funds, you may in some degree repay it for what it formerly expended on you.

While you give a decided preference to your own section of the church, carefully avoid all bigotry. Cherish a kind and catholic spirit towards the Ministers and members of all other Christian communities; and readily co-operate with them, as far as circumstances and opportunities allow, in promoting the great and glorious objects of our common Christianity. Labour to do all the good you can in your respective families, and in the neighbourhood in which the providence of God has cast your lot. Let your light shine in the church and in the world, at home and abroad: so shall you be a blessing to all with whom you are connected.

Thus shall the prophecy in our text receive its fulfilment continually from age to age. While the fathers and mothers pass away into the invisible world, their places shall be supplied by the children; emulating, and even surpassing, the piety, the zeal, and the usefulness of their predecessors. And thus shall Methodism, as one important form of genuine Christianity, be perpetuated in all its purity and power,. diffusing its benignant influences through the dominions and depend

encies of Great Britain; and, wherever opportunities are presented, through foreign countries, even to the most distant parts of our globe. And never shall this blessed process stop, till the little leaven shall have leavened the whole lump; till Christianity shall triumph every where, and the whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord!

FALLACIOUSNESS OF ATHEISTIC SOCIALISM.

WHILE man is the moral and physical being which he has been created, such a condition of things as warm or enthusiastic imaginations have conceived, can never occur. As far as the contemplated happiness is physical, it must proceed from wealth, which must therefore be universal. Universal wealth, which is not universal poverty, it would be hard to define. Wealth, without labour, demands miracles; and wealth, capable of indefinite self-multiplication to meet the consequent multiplication of mankind, demands a perpetuity of new miracles. And he, too, who would abolish labour, must abolish man ; for they are inseparable. Without it, he is a carcass; without it, his mind would be that of a beast of the field: for, by labour are both his mind and his body formed. That education, like wealth, is to be attained without the evil of labour, is but another of the inconsistencies of a system, in which knowledge is to be a prime source of happiness. But if universal knowledge is to be diffused through some miracle, another miracle must be exerted to find recipients for it; since the power of receiving and of using knowledge is, now, created by the labour of the acquisition. Under such a visionary system, it must be given even to infants: it must be given equally to unequal intellects; and it must be perfect, almost even as Omniscience is perfect. Less than this must hazard evil to gain good; and the evil will not be wanting. Nothing less than this can prevent physical evils; not even this, while deprived of Omnipotence. Less than both would not eradicate the human passions; which is, for man to cease to be. The system too is the happiness of all; and it forgets that the good of one is the evil of another. It is a system of universal benevolence, where none can be exerted; since no one can want it, when, under such an hypothesis, each suffices to his own happiness. It is the universal happiness in which all the social affections disappear; and the state of perfection is universal solitude, universal idleness, universal nothingness. If the waters of oblivion are the waters of death, the perfected happiness of this fantastical system is man's extinction.

But the radical error of every system of perfectibility in this world, is of more moment than all this folly. Such views are irreligious. They presume that the intentions of God, as to man's happiness, are to be fulfilled here; whereas they can only be accomplished in a future and immortal life.-Macculloch.

THE WESLEYAN METHODIST. (No. LXXXVIII.)
WESLEYAN BIOGRAPHICAL PUBLICATIONS.
(Concluded from page 828.)

(To the Editor of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine.)

I AM now coming to the end of the task which I prescribed to myself, and which I have found both so pleasing and so profitable, that I am willing to believe, and when I consider the excellent sources from which the pleasure and profit have been derived, I am encouraged to believe, that what the investigation has been to me, the statement of its results has likewise been to the reader. What remains for the full accomplishment of my object will not, I think, be found either less instructive, or less interesting, than the portion which has been already considered. Some of the volumes, indeed, that have yet to be noticed, will be placed, by the Wesleyan reader at all events, in the very first class of religious biography, showing, as they do, the character and the labours of the men whom it pleased God to employ as instruments of the great religious revival which commenced in the early part of the last century, and whose results, after a hundred years have elapsed, are becoming every year more impressively apparent. The other volumes, though not occupying such a high position, will be found to be instructive, not only in themselves, but as illustrating that work of God in particular instances, which the former narratives described on a larger scale. Both classes declare to us what God hath wrought, his work in the world, and his work in the soul.

The first volume calling for notice is" The Life of the Rev. John Wesley," by the late Rev. Richard Wat

son.*

This is properly a miniature

The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Founder of the Me

representation of Mr. Wesley's life and labours. There are many who have not leisure for works written on a larger scale; and among general readers, not immediately connected with Methodism, minuter details might not be, at least not in the first instance, so interesting as to those who wish to note every movement in his remarkable progress. Such readers-together with the young, for whose earlier reading, more general sketches, provided they be orderly and lucid, are best suited-Mr. Watson appears particularly to have contemplated. Nothing important, however, is omitted. To use Mr. Watson's own words, in his prefatory advertisement," it will be found sufficiently comprehensive to give the reader an adequate view of the life, labours, and opinions of the eminent individual who is its subject, and to afford the means of correcting the most material errors and misrepresentations which have had currency respecting him."

Mr. Watson's volume ought always to form part of the Wesleyan family library. A grateful respect for the memory of the man whom God so highly honoured, as well as a pious desire to understand more clearly the nature of the wonderful work of God, and the character of the principal instrument employed in accomplishing it, will always make the Life of Mr. Wesley a pleasing (and, at the same time, an advantageous) study, for the societies and congregations of which he was, in the first instance, the founder.

But upon this memoir, distin

thodist Societies. By Richard Watson Sixth Edition. Royal 18mo. Pp. 485. 1839.

guished and eminent as was its subject, for that very reason little observation is necessary. Mr. Watson's "Life of Wesley" is well known; and nothing more is said than what public judgment will confirm, when it is added, that much gratification and improvement await them who have not yet read the volume. Those Methodist parents scarcely perform their duty to their children who do not (if they have the opportunity) put Mr. Watson's volume into their hands.

Praise my every hour employ:

All my life be spent in praise!

Most

These are naturally followed by the three volumes of Lives of early Methodist Preachers." * of them are auto-biographies, which appeared first in the Arminian Magazine, and which have now been collected, and published separately, we believe to the gratification, as well as to the instruction, of many. To say that they are curious, is to mention the lowest of their attractions. Along with this should be assoWhile they refer to the same great ciated Mr. Benson's Life of Mr. subject, it is presented under very Fletcher. To say that a more de- agreeably varying aspects. The incided human example of Christian fluence of religion is shown upon holiness was never furnished, than minds of different order; the intelthat which is found in "Fletcher lectual, the affectionate, the logical, of Madeley," is only repeating the the philosophical, the imaginative. judgment of all who are acquainted The work of God is seen in the earwith his life. His devotion was lier stages of its progress, struggling scripturally correct; it was enlight- with difficulties, and yet surmountened and fervent; it was deep and ing them. Apostolic efficacy and exalted; it was accurate and comapostolic success lead us to the prehensive; it produced zeal without apostolical character of the great bitterness, charity without indiffer- principles which the preaching emence, humility without meanness, bodied, and evince that the Preachers themselves could not be far from an ever-professed religion without Multitudes the ostentation of the Pharisee, and apostolic succession. a desire to please, undeniably sinthere were to whom they could say, cere, and yet unequivocally separate with the holy triumph which gave from conformity to the world, and all the praise to Him who had so concealment of the cross of Christ, evidently made them able Ministers of the New Testament, Ye are our for escaping its reproach. Did any one our hearts, ever read, even a few pages only, of epistle, written in the Life of Fletcher, without feeling known and read of all men manihimself the better for the occupation, festly declared to be the epistle of without imbibing something of his Christ ministered by us, written not heavenly spirit, or having the holy with ink, but with the Spirit of the flame on the altar of the heart quick-living God; not in tables of stone, ened into brightness and activity? Can one of his favourite hymnverses be read without some degree, perhaps a high degree, of profitable sympathy?

but in fleshy tables of the heart." And these multitudes of converts

God

gave them wherever they went. It was indeed the day of the Lord's power. Their work they believed to be, not to meddle with questions of ecclesiastical discipline,-nor even with questions of doctrine, considered merely as such, but to call sinners to repentance. Their preaching, therefore, was not controversial, but practical: or, so far as it was con

The Lives of early Methodist Preachers, chiefly written by themselves. Edited by Thomas Jackson. In three volumes. 12mo. Pp. 452, 439, 471. 1837-1838.