shape and body in the large movement of which her son John came to be regarded, and is still regarded, as the patriarch. Thus Isaac Taylor says, "The Wesleys' mother was the mother of Methodism in a religious and moral sense, for her courage, her submissiveness to authority, the high tone of her mind, its independence, and its self-control, the warmth of her devotional feelings, and the practical direction given to them, came up, and were visibly repeated in the character and conduct of her sons." Later on in life she became one of the wisest advisers of her son, in his employment of the auxiliaries to his own usefulness. Perhaps, if we could see spirits as they are, we might see in this woman a higher and loftier type of life than in either of those who first received life from her bosom; some of her quiet words have all the passion and sweetness of Charles's hymns. Our space will not permit many quotations, but take the following words, and the sweet meditation in prose of the much-enduring, and often patiently suffering lady in the old world country vicarage, which read like many of her son's notes in verse: "If to esteem and have the highest reverence for Thee; if constantly and sincerely to acknowledge Thee the supreme, and only desirable good, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE! If to rejoice in Thy es

sential majesty and glory; if to feel a vital joy overspread and cheer the heart at each perception of Thy blessedness, at every thought that Thou art God, and that all things are in Thy power; that there is none superior or equal to Thee, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE! If comparatively to despise and undervalue all the world contains, which is esteemed great, fair, or good; if earnestly and constantly to desire Thee, Thy favour, Thy acceptance, Thyself, rather than any, or all things Thou hast created, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE!" At length she died as she had lived, her last words to her sons breathing the spirit of her singular life: 'Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God!"

66

Thus, from the polite circles of London, from the obscure old farm-like vicarage, the rude and rough old English home, events were preparing themselves. John Wesley was born in 1703; the Countess of Huntingdon in 1707 near in their birth time, how far apart the scenery and the circumstances in which their eyes first opened to the light. Whitefield was born later, amidst the still less auspicious scenery of the old Bell Inn, at Gloucester, in 1714. These were undoubtedly among the foremost names in the great palpitation of thought, feeling, and holy action the country was to experience.

Future chapters will show a number of other names, which were simultaneously coming forth and educating for the great conflict. So it has always been, and singularly so, as illustrating the order of Providence, and the way in which it gives a new personality to the men. whom it designs to aid its purposes. In every part of the country, all unknown to each other, in families separated by position and taste, by birth and circumstances, a band of workers was preparing to produce an entire moral change in the features of the country.

CHAPTER III.

OXFORD: NEW LIGHTS AND OLD LANTERNS.

IT is remarkable that one of the very earliest movements of the new evangelical succession should manifest itself in Oxford-many minded Oxford-whose distant spires and antique towers have looked down through so many ages upon the varying opinions which have surged up around and within her walls. Lord Bacon has somewhere said that the opinions, feelings, and thoughts of the young men of any present generation forecast the whole popular mind of the future age. No remark can be more true, as exhibited generally in fact. Thus it is not too much to say that Oxford has usually been a barometer of coming opinions: either by her adhesion or antagonism to them, she has indicated the pathway of the nearing weather, either for calm or storm. It was so in the dark ages, with the old scholastic philosophy; it was so in the times immediately succeeding them : in our own day, the great Tractarian movement, with all its influences Rome-ward, arose in Oxford; later still, the strong tendencies of

high intellectual infidelity, and denial of the sacred prerogatives and rights of the Holy Scriptures, sent forth some of their earliest notes from Oxford. Oxford has been likened to the magnificent conservatory at Chatsworth, where art combines with nature, and achieves all that wealth and taste could command; but the air is heavy and close, and rich as the forms and colours are around the spectator, there is depression and repression, even a sense of oppression, upon the spirits, and we are glad to escape into the breezy chase, and among the old trees again. This is hardly true of Oxford; no doubt the air is hushed, and the influences combine to weigh down the mere visitor by a sense of the hoariness of the past, and the black antiquity and frost of ages; but somehow there is a mind in Oxford which is always alive-not merely a scholarly knowledge, but a subtle apprehension of the coming winds-even as certain creatures forebode and know the coming storm before the rain falls or the thunder rolls.

We may presume that most of our readers are acquainted with the designation, "the Oxford Methodists ;" but, perhaps, some are not aware that the term was applied to a cluster of young students, who, in a time when the university was delivered over to the usual disso