JOHN WESLEY was the most influential man of the eighteenth century. He had in his veins the best blood in England. On both sides he "belonged to an unbroken ancestral succession of English gentlemen." He was a fellow and Greek lecturer in Lincoln College when he was twenty-three years of age. Zeal and enthusiasm in behalf of men led him into disregard of ecclesiastical rules. He was unsophisticated and simple, and human enough to think that

men were SO

valuable as to be worthy of saving at the cost of precedent. This was too much for the clergy of the time. They closed upon him the door of every church in England. Nothing was left him but the open air, the fields, and the wide encompassing sky. He lost the pious light that comes through stained windows, the soft music from the solemn organ, and the sentiment inspired by the effect of lofty vaultings and exquisitely carved columns, but he gained commerce with nature and the secret of winning men to a better life. His work began to take on something of the immensity of his new surroundings. The world became his parish, and the human race was embraced in the sweep of his sympathy and enthusiasm. But, nevertheless, this radical departure from the prescribed lines ordained by ecclesiastical consensus for the life and work of a clergyman in the Church of England did cut him off from the university and cultivated circles of English social life. Because of this, the prodigious amount of work performed by Wesley between the years 1738 and 1791 was not noticed or considered by the upper and educated circles of Great Britain. He had accomplished more

perhaps than any man ever did before in the same number of years, but it was hidden beneath the indifference and conceit and contempt of the ruling and thinking classes of his countrymen.

It may furnish a theme for the speculation of the curious, however, to understand how it were possible for a man like the late Mark Patteson, the distinguished rector of Lincoln College, not to know anything scarcely of Wesley or his work, when Wesley had been a fellow of his own college. This was brought out one day when Hugh Price Hughes expressed his surprise to Mr. Patteson that even his college had no adequate memorial of the most distinguished fellow that ever adorned its common room. "What other fellow of Lincoln," added Mr. Hughes, " or, indeed, of any Oxford college, had twenty millions of avowed disciples in all parts of the world within less than a century after his death." Twenty millions!" exclaimed Mr. Patteson, with a start, "twenty millions! You mean twenty thousand!" Mr. Hughes had to repeat it three times over to him before he could persuade him that he meant it. "I had not the faintest conception," said the illustrious rector of Lincoln, "that there were so many Methodists." Yet the figures given by Mr. Hughes to Rev. Mark Patteson were really too low. The Ecumenical Methodist Conference, which met in Washington in 1891, developed the fact that Wesley had a constituency in all branches of Methodism throughout the world of twenty-six millions.

Journeying never less than 4,500 miles in any year, and always until his seventieth year on horseback,

before turnpike or macadamized roads were known, we would suppose that Wesley gave himself up to horseback riding. In the fifty years of his ministry he travelled thus 250,000 miles. When we are told that he preached forty thousand sermons in the fifty years of his apostolate an average of over two each day—we wonder how the man had any time left for anything but preaching. When we take down his works, and see that he wrote an English grammar, a Greek grammar, a French grammar, a Latin grammar, and a Hebrew grammar, we are led to conclude that he must have given his life to the study of the structure of language and the writing of grammars. But, in addition to all this, Wesley wrote a compendium of logic; he prepared extracts for use in Kingswood School and elsewhere from Phædrus, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Martial and Sallust; he wrote an English dictionary; commentaries on the whole of the Old and New Testaments; a history of England from the earliest times to the death of George II.; a short history of Rome; a compendium of social philosophy, in five volumes; a concise ecclesiastical history from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the last century, in four volumes; a Christian library, in fifty volumes, consisting of extracts from all the great theological writers of the universal Church. He prepared also many editions of the "Imitation of Christ," and of the principal works of Bunyan, Law, Baxter, Madame Guyon, Principal Edwards, and Rutherford, besides a great number of short biographies, with an edition of a famous novel of the time, "The History of Henry, Earl of Moreland." He wrote a curious book on medicine, entitled, "Primitive Physic, or an Easy, Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases." He prepared numerous collections of psalms and sacred songs, with works on music

and collections of tunes. He published his own sermons and journals, and started, in 1778, one of the first magazines ever published in England, and which continues to this day. Though he wrote in an age when books were not circulated as they are now, he received for his publications not less than $150,000, all of which he distributed in charity during his lifetime. It was his desire, he said, to distribute his money so fast that when he died it would be found he had not left £50 behind.

Yet in this enormous amount of literary work the energy of John Wesley was not exhausted. He founded an orphans' house at Newcastle, charity schools in London, and a dispensary in Bristol. He made experiments in electricity, and believed he had found in it a surprising medicine, and had an hour appointed every day when anyone might try the virtues of it. He established a lending fund, from which many men got the money that enabled them to lay the foundations of vast commercial enterprises. He had a room in connection with one of his preaching places in London where poor women were invited to come and card and spin cotton. He employed women who were out of work in knitting, and also sought to lessen distress by opening workshops.

But with the opening and during the progress of the nineteenth century the Wesleyan movement took on such proportions that the tremendous significance of Wesley and his work could no longer be kept in a corner. Macaulay went so far as to administer a withering rebuke to the literary charlatans of England who proposed to write the history of the eighteenth century without taking notice of Methodism and prophesied that the breed would die out. Mr. Lecky, one of the best English historians, put himself on record as to the Wesleyan move

ment in the following declaration: Although the career of the elder Pitt, and the splendid victories by land and sea that were won during his Ministry, form unquestionably the most dazzling episode in the reign of George II., they must yield, I think, in real importance to that religious revolution which shortly before had begun in England by the preaching of the Wesleys and Whitefield."

M. Edmond Scherer was so impressed with the work of Wesley that he wrote to the Revue Des Deux Mondes of Paris that Meth

odism was a religious movement that had changed the face of Eng. land, and that "England as we know it to-day is the work of Methodism." A distinguished professor of theology in a German university writes, "Methodism is on the point of becoming in evangelical Christianity practically, if also unknown to many, the ruling power, like Jesuitism in Catholic Christianity." He was by no means a Methodist, for he regarded this fact as in many respects one of the gravest signs of modern Christianity. Hugh Price Hughes quite agrees with the German professor, and declares that all modern religious history is summed up in the two momentous facts that Ignatius Loyola has captured the Catholic

churches, and that John Wesley has captured the evangelical churches. John Henry Newman came to the conclusion that there was no middle way some years ago, and became a Catholic. John Wesley, also, in his day, believed there was no middle. ground, and became a Methodist. Wesley was afraid of nothing in heaven or in earth but doing wrong.

Orthodoxy, with Wesley, consisted in a holy, consecrated life, and he took delight in quoting a piece of advice which the Archbishop of Canterbury gave him: "If you desire to be extensively useful, do not spend your time and strength in contending for or against such things as are of a disreputable nature, but in testifying against open, notorious vice, and in promoting real, essential holiness." Having read the life of Ignatius Loyola, he spoke of him as "one of the greatest men who ever lived." It is reported of him that he quoted with approval the words of an author who said: "What the heathen call reason, Solomon wisdom, St. Paul grace, St. John love, Luther faith, Fenelon virtue, is all one and the same thing the light of Christ shining in different degrees under different dispensations." Northwestern Christian Advocate.

"YES, sir, I remember that voyage quite well, and if you would like to hear the story, I will try to tell it just how it happened. You see I was only ship's boy in those days. I had signed articles on board the Hope, Captain Wardrof, for a trip from Harbour Grace to Liverpool and back. The brig was in the Harbour yonder with her anchor under foot, as we sailors say. Her topsail yards were mastheaded, and the clewlines and buntlines were loose, so that the sails hung in great bags from the yards, all ready to be sheeted home. I was forrard, looking away towards the old home on the hill, that I was a-leavin' for the first time to go on a long trip. I had been used to going to Labrador for the summer, but father and mother went along too. I was standing there, when Mr. Curtis, the mate-isn't it queer, sir, that every one of the officers on board is Mister when he is spoken to, while the crew is Bob!' or 'Tom!' or You lubber you!'

"As I was a sayin', Mr. Curtis he sung out to me: You, Bill Thompson there, come aft here and stand by the gangway, the captain is coming aboard.'

I jumped as if I was shot, and rubbed the sleeve of my gansey across my eyes, for I had been crying I was only a boy, sir, you know-and ran aft, and throwed the end of the fore-brace to Pat Cleary, who was pulling the bow-oar of the jolly-boat. A board of her was the captain, and another man I had never seen before. The captain helped the strange gentleman up the side-ladder, and showed him the way to the cabin, telling him he would find the steward there to look

after him. Turning round to the mate the captain says:

"Mr. Curtis, you may man the windlass, and get the anchor away, and hoist up the jib to swing her head around.'

In a minute all hands of us was heaving all we knew on the windlass, while the shanty-man was leading us in a regular sailor's chorus. I never hear the sailors singing their shanty songs now that they heave up their anchors and hoist their heavy sails with them steamwinches. It did not take long, I assure you, to point her head out the harbour. Just after the men had sheeted home the tops'ls, dropped the fore-course, and a man was sent aloft on each top-gallant yard to loose the sails, I heard the captain ask where that lubber of a boy was. Knowin' that it was me he wanted, I went aft and I says:

"Here I be, sir; did you want me?'

"He told me to go down into the cabin and clear away the everlastin' mess there was there, for, says he:

“All the cabin stores and everything else is higgledy-piggledy, so there's not floor room enough for a fly to stand on while he kisses his sweetheart.'

find a place for his dishes, and a locker or some other spot to stow the parcels in.

"I didn't see the strange gentleman for awhile, but by-and-bye I saw him come out of a cubby hole of a state-room on the port side. That cabin and them state-roomsthere was three more like the one he came out of-wasn't a bit like the saloons and state-rooms of the big liners, like the Etruria. I was down in her main saloon once, sir, with a passenger. It was a lovely place, all bright with white paint and gold, and cut glass glistening in the racks, and great big looking. glasses-mirrors, I think they called

them

here and there, and a beautiful pianny by one of the bulkheads. The state-rooms was nice roomy places, with plenty of light and lots of fresh air, and clean sheets and things in the bunks

"That state-room out of which the parson come-I knew he was a parson by this time from his white choker and black clotheswas a very different kind of place, I can tell you. It was scarcely six feet long, and not more than four feet wide, and was lit by what we call a deck-light-a bit of thick green glass set in the deck planks. The narrow bunk was against the brig's side. There was no side-light nor any other way to let a breath of fresh air into the stuffy little concern unless it came between some slats in the upper part of the door.

"The parson looked as if he had been sick for a long time-pale and kind of weak, you know. I pitied him, he looked so washed-out like, and says I:

"Can I do anything for to help you, sir?' as I saw him looking around the cabin as though he was searching for something he could not find.

"He smiled at me, and says he: 'Yes, my boy, I'd be glad of a drink of water, if you could get me one, but do not leave your work for it.'

"The steward says to me: 'Go, Bill, and get the parson what he wants. Here's a jug to get some in from the cask by the long-boat.'

"I ran up on deck with the jug— they call them pitchers nowadays, I think and brought down some fresh water and gave it to the parson, in a white mug the steward passed out to me.

"Thank you, my boy,' says he, 'we'll know each other better by the time we get to Liverpool.'

"That's the way I began to know parson A-————. We soon got fairly to sea; everybody found his place, and we had, first along, a very pleasant time. The brig was just deep enough in the water to sail well, and the old man-that's the captain, sir, begging your pardonliked to crack on. My eye! how he used to carry sail. The masts would bend like fishin'-poles, and the windward shrouds and backstays would hum like fiddle-strings, they would be so taut. We had mostly fine weather and fair winds till we were halfway across the herring pond. Then the wind chopped round and blew half a gale from the east'ard.

"Every day the parson used to walk up and down the quarter deck, and in the dog-watch, when all hands would be mostly on deck, he would come forrard and talk to the men and to me. On Sundays he used to get the ensign spread on a quarter-cask, and, with his Bible on that for a pulpit, would preach us a sermon. In those days he taught me to read out of the Testament-a thing I could never do before, having had no chance to go to school when I was a little chap, and not caring to go when I came to be a hunk of a lad. While he was teaching me to read he told me about my sins and my Saviour, and tried hard to get me to be a Christian. He did the same to the men-so they used to tell in the fo'castle. Some of them used to laugh about it, but some was serious like, and two or three times,