heard again. The prospect of a better future lies in the hope that for God's sake, for his neighbour's sake, each man will one day consider his ways. It shall be so. One day we shall waste neither scrap of paper nor army of soldiers, we shall neither patronise the poor nor flatter the rich, because we shall think first of what is right, we shall hear before we act or speak, as Fox heard 'the voice of the Lord.'

3. The Quakers taught that there is a light in every man which will enable him here on earth to reach perfection. This doctrine has ever and anon broken through the dull records of the world's history. Moses protested against the ceremonies and priestcraft of Egypt, 'This people shall be a kingdom of priests.' The prophets declared in opposition to those who claimed to speak for God, 'The spirit of God shall be poured out on all flesh.' Socrates escaped from the jargon of the Sophists to commune with the deity within him. The doctrine which thus feebly struggled in the world was made manifest by Christ. He proclaimed that the Life, the Light, which the world saw in Him was in each man. That light, call it conscience, call it inspiration, by which men guide their ways, is Christ, whose life was love. Christ

is within each man, He in them and they in Him, waiting to be inquired of, waiting to guide them into all truth. It is the great Christian doctrine which the Quakers preached—a doctrine which our indolence and selfishness make it hard to learn. It is so much easier to go to Bible or minister than to the spirit within, so much easier to obey a rule than seek a principle. Who shall say that this age does not need the preaching of a Fox? We who, gazing at what seems useful, condemn our fellows to days of weary toil that they may make a cannon with which to destroy our neighbour, or build a warehouse which shall hide the sun's light, need the Quaker's gospel that we are a kingdom of priests, and that we may inquire of the God within. We who, weary with the mistakes and sin of men, turn to death for rest and to heaven for happiness, need to be told, as Fox told our fathers, that the kingdom of heaven is within us, and that here people may be made like unto God. We who suffer being alone and ignorant, whose prayers have grown cold and selfish, need to hear again the Quaker truth that God's Spirit maketh intercession with our spirit, that prayer not the repetition of words, but the silent, continual, and unbroken repose of our will on God's will.

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Let me conclude with words which when first heard, the power of the Lord seized on all in the room.'

'In that which convinced you, wait. And all my dear friends, dwell in the life, love, power, and wisdom of God, and the peace and wisdom of God fill all your hearts, that nothing may rule in you but the life which stands in the Lord God. The good will overcome the evil, the light darkness, life death, virtue vice, and righteousness unrighteousness. So be faithful.'

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64

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THE METHODISTS.1

BY THE REV. R. H. HADDEN.

'Mind not high things; but condescend to men of low estate.'ROMANS xii. 16.

To realise accurately and adequately the meaning of the rise of Methodism, we must cast our thoughts back to the state of England in the early part of the eighteenth century. It was indeed deplorable. The most ordinary precepts of morality were disregarded by high and low. The government was corrupt, the legislature venal, the private lives of ministers of state often simply scandalous. The lower stratum of society was ignorant and brutal beyond all telling. Unjust and unequal laws encouraged and sanctioned among the masses of the people the coarsest and most revolting excesses and crimes. Churches

1 I am indebted for some of the matter of this sermon to Mr. J. R. Green's Short History, to Dr. Stevens's History of Methodism, and to Canon Curteis's Bampton Lectures. It was, in fact, the last volume which suggested this course of sermons.

were few and schools fewer. Mob-law asserted itself at every opportunity. The recent introduction of gin had given a new impetus to drunkenness, and 'in the streets of London gin-shops invited every passer-by to get drunk for a penny, or dead drunk for twopence.'

The religious sentiment, if not quite dead, seemed to be fast dying. In the higher circles 'everyone laughs,' was the observation of Montesquieu, if one talks of religion.' 'Such are the dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world,' says an archbishop of the period, and the profligacy, intemperance, and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. Christianity,' he goes on, ‘is ridiculed and railed at with very little reserve, and the teachers of it without any at all.' The teachers of it, in truth, were its greatest hindrance. Many of the bishops rarely lived in their dioceses, and one of them admitted that he had visited his but once. The clergy, as a class, were profoundly ignorant. 'Our Ember-weeks,' mourns Bishop Burnet, 'are the burden and grief of my life.' Candidates for holy orders could not often give a tolerable account even of the Catechism; the

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