were actuated in their self-denying and exhausting labours; and happy will it be if we should catch the same spirit. And indeed why should we not? They were made what they were by the anointing of the Holy One which was upon them; and the same prayer of faith will bring upon us an unction equally rich and sanctifying. The present times are somewhat differ. ent from those in which these men of God lived: but the duties of both are substantially the same; and there never was a period when there was greater need of that plain, faithful, and rousing ministry, of which the Wesleys set the example, than there is at this day.

True evangelical preaching is not to be attained by a superficial aequaintance with the mere elements of divine truth, nor does it consist in the endless repetition of favourite phrases; but in a sound and faithful exposition of God's own word, and an application of it to the understandings and hearts of the people. Greatly is this wanted. Mammon is still the god of a large portion of our men of business. It cannot, perhaps be said that a godless philosophy is a leading characteris. tic of our literary and scientific men; but in a majority of cases philosophy is separated from revealed truth. Never was so much attention paid to “natural theology;" but some of the men who make the greatest noise on this subject, by their silence concerning the Bible, which contains the principles of all that is really valuable in their speculations, too strongly intimate that they have no faith in that holy and inspired book. Mighty efforts are now made, especially by means of the press, to circulate what is called "useful knowledge," but in the publications which are sent forth avowedly for this purpose, the doctrine of " Christ crucified" is not found. This is a sufficiently obvious intimation that there is, in the estimation of the parties concerned, no real "use" in this " knowledge," even though St. Paul prized it above every other, and preached it to both Jew and Gentile, as the most important of all acquirements.

In the manufacturing districts, and some of the large provincial towns, infidelity, in a form more malignant and diabolical than it ever previously assumed in

England, is making rapid progress. Every effort is tried, not only to alienate the popular mind from all faith in the revelation which God has made, but to establish principles subversive of all morality, and of all domestic and social order. The rights of property, and the perpetuity of the marriage relation, are peremptorily denied, and the worst passions of our fallen nature are freed from all effectual restraint, by a denial of the moral government of God. Presumptuous and bad men propose to introduce a new order of society, without religion, without morality, without God. In many places they are labouring with all their might to corrupt the children and youth of our land, by instilling into their minds the worst principles, and by urging them to the actual perpetration of the foulest deeds.

The attempts which are now made to revive the interests of popery in Great Britain are more strenuous and extended than those of any former period since the Reformation. Romish places of worship, and several of them imposing by the magnificence of their architecture, are rising in almost all parts of the land. Schools are opened, and gratuitous education is offered to Protestant children, for the purpose of training them in the old idolatry and superstition. In some parts of the country, priests are going from house to house, among the peasantry, to bring them back to the Church of Rome. In the first instance, they refuse to converse with the people on the subject of religion at all. They visit them merely as friends, and offer little accommodations to such as may be suffering from affliction. When suspicion is removed, and confidence in some degree gained, the peculiarities of popery are gradually introduced and recommended. Their " coming," as St. Paul expresses it, is "with all deceivableness of unrighteousness."

The most dangerous power with which the emissaries of Rome are at present armed, is that which they derive from those misleading publications entitled, "Tracts for the Times," which are sent forth by men who sustain the office of clergymen of the Church of England, but who, in fact, inculcate some of the worst

errors of popery. Their doctrine is indeed "another gospel," different in its essential principles from that which is laid down in the New Testament, and expounded in the writings of the reformers, particularly in the homilies of the National Church. These "Tracts," with other works of a similar kind, are exerting a most mischievous influence in various directions, by holding up the corrupt and idolatrous Church of Rome to public confidence, as the true medium of ministerial authority; and, what is still worse, by describing the Christian salvation, not as consisting in justification and a new and holy nature, obtained by faith in the perfect sacrifice of Christ, but as an indefinite and mysterious something which is received through the sacraments, administered by men, whether holy or wicked, who have received their appointment in a direct line from the apostles. Almost every Protestant community in Europe, not excepting even the Church of Scotland, these men condemn, and stigmatize by opprobrious names, simply because they do not hold diocesan episcopacy as a divine ordinance; while they fawn upon the papal church, as their dear and beloved "sister," and the "holy home" of the Lord Jesus; though the Scriptures declare her to be "the mother of harlots and abominations," whose skirts are steeped in "the blood of the saints." Upon their principles of apostolical succession," the words of our Lord, " By their fruits ye shall know them," applied to false teachers, are not true. Teachers of religion, it seems, are not now to be judged of by their "fruits," but by the hands that have been laid upon them. Their knowledge, their sanctity, the effects of their ministrations, are of little or no account; for the Romish prelates, many of whom were monsters of superstition, ungodliness, and cruelty, we are told, were true ministers of the Lord Jesus, and possessed the exclusive power of conveying the ministerial character. But upon these principles, what becomes of "the truth," which God is pleased to employ as the instru ment of human salvation? According to the New Testament, "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God," Rom. x, 17; men are regenerated,

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sanctified, and built up in faith and love, by means of "the truth," faithfully delivered in his name, James i, 18, 1 Peter i, 23; Ephes. iv, 11, 12; whereas these men, in effect, teach that the true regeneration is that of baptism, and that mankind are savingly united to Christ by the sacramental bread and wine, invested with supernatural efficacy to this end by the act of priestly consecration.

These are not matters of mere opinion. They affect the very substance of Christianity. The man who teaches people that they are regenerated, and are therefore the children of God, that they are one with Christ, and Christ one with them, because they have been baptized, belong to "the church," and receive the holy eucharist, while at the same time they are manifestly living in impenitence, unbelief, and sin, misleads them to their endless ruin. If the doctrine of the men in question be true, the Reformation was a crime, and the best excuse that can be made for the martyrs of Smithfield is, that they were insane. But even this plea will not be allowed them. One of the writers of whom we are speaking, Mr. Froude, himself a young man, has had the audacity to speak in language of bitterness and contempt of even the wisest and best of that noble band of Protestants who, in the dark and horrible reign of Mary, studied, and preached, and wrote, and yielded their bodies to be burned, for the spiritual freedom of Englishmen and of Christendom.

The boast of "apostolical succession," in the absence of true evangelical knowledge, of personal godliness, and of the divine and inward call to the Christian ministry, of which the ordination service of the Church of England speaks, is a vain delusion, if the New Testament is to decide the question. Our blessed Lord, and his evangelists and apostles, acknow. ledge no man as a true minister and pastor of souls, who is destitute of the piety and gifts which qualify him to guide mankind in the way to eternal life.

Under present circumstances, there is no room for the slightest relaxation of effort in any section of the Protestant community. It becomes the Wesleyan body especially, in common with all who value the Re.

formation and the pure doctrines of Christianity, to redouble their exertions to preserve the people of England from the corrupt leaven and secular dominion of papal Rome. This may be done by a more general distribution of the holy Scriptures; for popery can never succeed among a people that pray, and that study the Bible. It withers to the very roots under the direct rays of revealed truth. By preaching justification by faith, Luther shook the papal throne, and by the same means the Protestant churches of England have been raised into new life. Mr. Wesley did not attempt to guard the people against some particular errors and vices merely, but against these evils in every form; and he secured this by instrumentally making them Christians. He declared to them the entire sinfulness of their nature, the fearful amount of their guilt, and their continual exposure to the miseries of hell. Having succeeded in convincing them of sin, and in bringing them to repentance, he directed them to Christ as their Saviour, and encouraged them to believe in him with the heart unto righteousness. Thus believing, the love of God was shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost which was given unto them. They were made both happy and holy; and while they held fast their confidence, it was in vain that the abettors of error tried to perplex them, by saying, "Lo, Christ is here!" or, "Lo, Christ is there!" They felt him to be within them, the hope of glory; and hence arose their stability.

With nothing short of this should we ever be contented. This will preserve the people effectually against the sorceries of Rome, come from what quarter they may; and, above all, it will prepare them to die in peace, and to enter into heaven.

The centenary will afford a suitable opportunity for the entire body of Wesleyan Methodists, both ministers and societies, to bind themselves afresh to God and to one another, in the steadfast purpose that they will more earnestly than ever aspire to the full possession of the mind that was in Christ, and labour to bring all around them into the same state of purity and spiritual enjoyment. Mr. Wesley declared himself