The Reverend Profesor S. Burvain of the Method ist Churn of Canada and Professor of Thering à the Calveraty of Vetora College, ʼn is insćama -Taey's Standard Sermons 62TS:

*Ize preme form with the standards of any Chama i take its naturally depend on the aromatizioa f its origin A Charm aring ons of a great intelledel movement, Eke the Churches of the Kruzion, will naturally fortify itself with creeds, unteuna, and catechisms; inasmuch as its existence and success depend so largely upon the logical rality of its teachings A Church arising out of a great ecangelistic movement quite as naturally finds its standard in a grand distinctive norm or type of preaching; and, in like manner, every Church driven to justify itself by final appeal to the Word of God, must have its canon of interpretation. The growth of all the great Christian symbols will furnish illustrations of these principles. The Church of the Apostles was an evangelistic Church. Its standard of doctrine was first of all a type of preaching, of which we doubtless have a compressed yet faithful exhibit in the synoptic Gospels. The Pauline and the Petrine, Luke and Mark, set forth one Christ, in essentially one gospel, of which John, a little further on, sets forth the more perfect unification and expansion-just as Matthew had given the foundation. To this consensus of preaching, this normal or standard gospel, Paul makes constant reference in his Epistles, although it had not been reduced to written form. But it was well known to all the Christian Churches. No one can read, especially in the original, such expressions as another gospel,' 'the gos pel of Christ,' the gospel which was preached of me,'

(see Gal. i. 6, etc.,) without feeling that even then there was a familiar form of preaching (A. D. 56 or 57). In the pastoral epistles this fact becomes still more manifest in such phrases as, 'no other doctrine,' 1 Tim. i. 3;, 'according to the glorious gospel,' v. 11; 'words of faith and good doctrine,' iv. 6; 'the doctrine,' v. 16; 'the doctrine which is according to godliness,' vi. 3 ; 'that which is committed to thy trust,' v. 20; 'the form (URWTURWOLY) of sound words,' 2 Tim. i. 13. See also 2 Tim. ii. 2, and iii. 16, in which last passage the norm of preaching is carried up to its fountainhead in the Word of God.

"The first standard of doctrine was the substance of what the Apostles preached; and even the first Creed, the so-called Apostles', was but a memorized brief of the same.

"We, therefore, claim for the 'Sermons' and 'Notes' a foremost place among the Christian symbols. The sermons set before us that great, distinctive type and standard of gospel preaching by which Methodism is what she is as a great living Church. When she ceases to preach according to this type and standard she will no longer be Wesleyan Methodism. No other Church of modern times can boast of such a standard of preaching, so mighty and pervasive in its power to preserve the perfect doctrinal as well as spiritual unity of the entire body. God save us from the day when the Methodist ministry shall cease to study this standard, and to preach according thereto !" 1

1

Of the Notes on the New Testament, by Mr. Wesley, and on the Articles of Religion, Doctor Burwash also points out that

1 Professor Burwash: Introduction, pp. viii-x.

"The Notes have also their peculiar and unique value. They open up to us the mode of interpretation by which the grand type of preaching contained in the bermons was derived from its fountainhead-the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. They are thus the link which binds our subordinate standards with the original apostolic standard Without that link our form of preaching would be deprived of its divine authorization.

"But the Articles of Religion have their own appropriate place in our doctrinal foundations. They indicate that which we have received as our common heritage from the great principles of the Protestant Reformation, and from the still more ancient conflicts with error in the days of Augustine and Athanasius. They represent the Methodist Church in its unity with Christendom and Protestantism; but the 'Sermons and Notes' represent it in its one completeness as a living form of religion, called into being by the Spirit and Providence of God."

Doctor Burwash makes the distinction that Wesley's first Fifty-two Sermons constitute the standard of preaching; his Notes on the New Testament, the standard of interpretation; and the Articles of Religion, the standard of unity with the Churches of the Reformation.

Thus he arranges the threefold standards of Wesleyanism :

"I. The Standard of Preaching-the fifty-two sermons embraced in the four volumes.

"II. The Standard of Interpretation-the notes on the New Testament.

1 Professor Burwash: Introduction, p. x.

"III. The Standard of Unity with the Sister Churches of the Reformation-the Twenty-five Articles." 1

Thus Methodism is not limited to a single formulation, as is the case with many Churches, but has different presentations of its doctrines and they differ in their method, so that one standard is the complement of another, and all the standards are complemental to each other, and in this, Methodism may claim a decided advantage over Churches which have but one doctrinal standard.

'Rev. N. Burwash, S. T. D., Introduction, p. xi.

J

XXII

INTERPRETING WESLEY

OHN WESLEY lived a long life in which he said

much, wrote much, did much, and engaged in myriad forms of activity, and continued his work up almost to the very end.

In such a life with its copious utterances and varied activities, with its variation in circumstances at different times, might, on particular points, start questions as to the exact explanation of acts or as to the meaning and intention of certain opinions.

A growing man would naturally reach maturer views as the years went on, and, when statements made at different periods were placed side by side they might show some degree of divergence in phrase or fact that would call for elucidation.

So, even in a life like that of John Wesley, there might be a call for critical and judicious interpretation, and it may appear that sometimes he claimed the right to interpret himself. So his students may interpret Wesley, but remembering that a seeming inconsistency may sometimes be the best kind of consistency.

John Wesley was a voluminous writer and an extensive publisher. Indeed it would be difficult to find any single man throughout the centuries who, by his own writings and the books he published, exerted a greater influence than John Wesley, or, indeed, as great an