garden they revel in the harmonies of colour, or when the mantelpiece and walls of their dwelling exhibit to them the choicest forms of art, or those scenes of the picturesque and the sublime with which modern science can so cheaply supply them.

The pleasures of the Eye and the Ear are the cheapest and the sweetest of our luxuries; and when they shall be equally appreciated by the classes whom no common sympathy had previously blended, or whom the usages of a barbarous age had too widely severed, society will be welded together by more enduring bonds, and new buttresses added to the social fabric. The artisan or the labourer who devotes his leisure hour to the observation of Nature, or the admiration of Art,-who gathers for his family the curious plant, or the tiny organism, or the travelled pebble, or who presents to them the elegant flower-vase or graceful statue, is not likely to seek for excitement in village revels, in political clubs, or in dishonest combinations. His moral nature will rise with his material tastes; and while his less instructed neighbour will look up to him as a model for imitation, his more educated superior will appreciate his acquirements as a companion or a friend.

It is only in those studies where the Eye becomes our teacher, that we can expect to unite in a common pursuit the dissevered classes of society. It is in the Galleries of Art,-in the rich Museums of our cities,-in our Botanical, Zoological, and Horticultural Gardens, or in our Crystal Palaces, where Art and Science are rivals, that the children of wealth and of toil can assemble in the common admiration of all that is beautiful in Art and Nature; and if our rulers should listen to the appeals which have been so long and so urgently made to them, they would establish Museums in every town, and furnish them from the hoarded treasures of the Metropolis.

The extension of education, the improvement of our schools and universities, and the advancement of science, are all objects worthy of a great nation; but it is not through their agency that we can refine and elevate and unite the various masses of the community. The depths of science are not to be sounded, nor the heights of philosophy attained, even by the most favoured classes, and still less by the uneducated and neglected sections of society. Science and philosophy, therefore, can afford no common ground of study or of converse to the rich and the poor. It is among the remains of ancient, and the achievements of modern Art, and amid the beauties which we daily appreciate, and the lovely forms of organic life which are ever before us, that we can all, high and low, breathe the same pure air, and rise to a higher morality and a nobler civilization.

ART. VII.-The Life of Jabez Bunting, D.D.; with Notices of Contemporary Persons and Events. By his Son, THOMAS PERCIVAL BUNTING. Vol. I. London: Longmans, 1859.

IN the year 1785, well nigh half a century after the rise of Methodism, a sapient society in London discussed, for three nights in succession, this question :-" Have the Methodists done most good or evil?" The disputants do not appear to have been either a company of free-thinkers, or a set of frolicsome and reckless young men. It seems to have been a grave and earnest affair. Thomas Olivers, of whom Southey, in the Life of Wesley, gives such an interesting sketch, joined the society to be present at the debate, and his speech on the occasion was published long afterwards in the form of a pamphlet. How the question was decided we do not know; nor is it of any consequence. It is the discussion, not the decision, of the question that is at all curious. That serious men should at that date have made this a subject of prolonged debate, is not a little remarkable. We cannot but think that, in our own day, Methodism is better understood and better appreciated. Looking at its extensive labours at home and abroad, and estimating-if it can be estimated the value of its services to the human race, we might smile at, but should never think of discussing, the question which the London sages so laboriously debated. Doubtless, there are still whole classes of men who would promptly give their vote against Methodism. Infidels would do so; so would Papists; so would the enemies and revilers of evangelical religion; and so, we fear, would many who consider themselves zealous Christians in that church which the Wesleys loved so well and treated so tenderly. We are told by John Wesley, that up till the time when he commenced field-preaching, he thought it "almost a sin to save souls out of a church;" so there are some who seem to think that it is almost a sin-if, indeed, it be not an impossibility-to save souls out of the Church of England; and that it is both almost and altogether a sin to detach them from her communion. But among intelligent and earnest Protestants, who will, of course, treat such pretensions with derision, there can, we imagine, be only one opinion as to the debt which the world owes to Methodism. That debt we cordially acknowledge, without qualification or reserve. We do not say, of course, that we are prepared to subscribe all its dogmas, or to approve of all its ecclesiastical regulations. It might be easy enough to find things in the Wesleyan creed and organization to which we should be disposed to take exception; but this does not hinder

us from expressing our hearty admiration of the zeal and devotedness with which Methodism has prosecuted the great work of promoting the best interests of mankind.

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Our readers will have no difficulty in discerning, that the cial ground of our esteem for this branch of the Church of Christ is the amount of good which it has done to the souls of men. Indeed, it is only when we look at man as an immortal being, and take eternity into our reckoning, that we can duly appreciate the services of Wesleyan Methodism. We cheerfully admit that it claims our respect and gratitude upon other grounds. It has done much to elevate and civilize the lower orders of society in England and elsewhere, and thus to diffuse elements of order and stability through our social system. By its efforts multitudes in heathen lands, who, a few years ago, were debased and brutal savages, are now "sitting clothed, and in their right mind." It has produced many men of distinguished talent, and the literature emanating from its book-room has neither been scanty in amount nor contemptible in quality. But we strongly feel that Wesleyan Methodism would be unfairly treated if it were tried by such standards of judgment as these. For however great may have been the material, or social, or intellectual benefits flowing from its labours, these were rather the incidental accompaniments of the Christianity which it sought to diffuse than the direct object of its efforts and aims. If it were the main business of a church to polish and refine human society, to add extensively to the stock of general literature, to maintain a body of dignified, well-bred, and scholarly ecclesiastics, or even to frame an orthodox creed, and construct symmetrical systems of divinity, and exhibit a stately and harmonious development of correct ecclesiastical order, we might probably be of opinion that Methodism must retire from competition with some other denominations. But it was not any of these things which it set before it as its leading object. "Your business is to save souls," was Wesley's pointed and oft-repeated admonition to his preachers. And if this be, in truth, the primary and principal mission of the Church of Christ, then we cannot but regard Methodism as having, from the first, done the great work of the Church vigorously and well. And the more adequately we realize the incalculable value of immortal souls, the higher will be our estimate of all that Wesleyanism has done, and is still doing for their welfare.

It is not necessary that we should affirm that the erection of the Wesleyan Institute was the very best thing that could have occurred in England at the time when it arose, that it was better, for example, than would have been an extensive revival of true religion in the Establishment, or better than if some one

or more of the Non-conformist bodies had taken the place and performed the part which fell to Wesley and his coadjutors. But, if the religious condition of the Church was such as to call for supplementary efforts for the Christianization of the people, and if none of the other ecclesiastical systems afforded them, then we are surely not only at liberty, but bound to rejoice in the rise of Methodism, and to look with complacency upon its progress.

The annals of Methodism form a curious chapter in the ecclesiastical history of England. The reign of the second George is a singularly dreary and uninviting period to contemplate, both as respects the political, and social, and religious, character of the nation. Corruption rioted in all the public departments of the state; a withering Socinianism infested the Church, and, as a consequence, gross immorality and avowed irreligion widely prevailed. Nor did evangelical religion fare much better among the Dissenters in England than in the Established Church. The fervent piety of the early Non-conformists had grievously declined; and many of the ministers had lapsed, or were fast lapsing, into a virtual and practical, if not an open and professed Socinianism, and many of the people into utter ungodliness. It was at the time when the gloom seemed to be deepening all around, and every source of illumination becoming hopelessly obscured, that a light dawned at Oxford, which, faint and struggling at first, soon shed its rays into the surrounding darkness, and ultimately did not a little to dispel it.

The Wesleys sprang from a good stock. The parents had been educated as Puritans, though they subsequently "conformed." The father-the rector of Epworth-was a diligent and conscientious minister. The mother-like so many mothers of eminent men—was remarkable for strong sense, high principle, deep piety, uncommon natural talent, energy, and force of character. It is easy to prophesy after the event; but one feels disposed to say, that the sons of such a woman could hardly turn out mere ordinary men.

Under deep religious convictions John and Charles Wesley, with three or four kindred spirits, formed at Oxford about one hundred and thirty years ago, what was called, in derision, the "Holy Club," and were nicknamed "Methodists." Braving the storm of ridicule, that most formidable of all modes of assault against educated young men,-they resolutely held on their course. Prominent even then, as ever after, was the distinctive aim of Wesley, to which we have before adverted. And, as their work went on, the broad and placid surface of ecclesiastical routine was stirred; the waters were put in motion, and though there might be here and there, a turbid eddy visible,

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yet even the wildest rush of the torrent was infinitely preferable to the sluggishness and stagnation which reigned before. The Wesleys and Whitefield were soon surrounded by listening thousands, many of them men for whose souls no one had hitherto cared, and on whose ears now fell, for the first time, the warnings and offers of the Gospel. Church dignitaries fretted and fumed at these disorderly proceedings; though they might have remembered that, as Wesley says, one pretty remarkable precedent of field-preaching" is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount. But with all their reverence for the Church, these fervid evangelists were not to be driven from their labour of love, even by a bishop's frown. "You have no business here," said the Bishop of Bristol to Wesley, "you are not commissioned to preach in this diocese." "My Lord," said Wesley, "my business on earth is to do what good I can. Wherever, therefore, I think I can do most good, there must I stay so long as I think So. At present I think I can do most good here, therefore here I stay." The pulpits were generally shut against them; but this, instead of silencing, only drove them the more to preach in the open air, where tens of thousands listened to their message, who never would have entered within the walls of a church to hear it. But the frown of the regular clergy, was far from being the only or the most formidable opposition, which the early Methodists had to encounter. They were violently persecuted, and the narrative of these persecutions is one of the strangest chapters in their history. It is sad to think that, in a Christian land, those who were preaching the Gospel of the grace of God, and who could have no other aim or object than the good of their hearers, should be assailed and put in peril of their lives by fierce and brutal mobs, composed of men and women who had themselves been baptised into the Christian Church, and who called themselves Christians. We read, till we are absolutely sickened with the details, of Methodist preachers being hustled, pelted with stones and filth, dragged by the hair of the head through the streets, and trampled bleeding in the mire; of men and women plundered and maltreated; of soldiers sentenced, one to receive two hundred, and another five hundred lashes, for attending a Methodist meeting, when off duty, etc., etc. We might fill pages with the hideous recitals, and yet the worst would remain to be told. No honourable mind can learn, without indignation and disgust, that these abominable atrocities were, in many cases, openly encouraged by the gentry and the clergy; not unfrequently by some of both these orders who were in the Commission of the Peace, and occasionally by some of both these orders, who were at the moment in a state of intoxication. "We find and present," said an English jury, when