intimate than ever before, is highly favorable. Many Greek scholars completing their studies at foreign universities imbibe, if not superior religious conceptions, at least stricter theories of ethics. The faithful and devoted American missionaries, laboring with little immediate and visible fruit of their toil, have not established schools and preached the Gospel in vain. Their converts have been few, but when they have passed from the scene of their self-sacrificing devotion they will leave valued native laborers to carry on the work. One of these, Dr. Kalopathakes, has already maintained an excellent family religious newspaper for nearly four years, besides distributing many copies of the Scriptures. Through the instrumentality of the missionaries also the Bible has become a text-book of instruction in the public schools of the kingdom. Its introduction into the course of education augurs well for the future of the Greek people.

ART. III.-JOHN WESLEY AND "THE CHURCH."

It is no longer a matter of surprise, but it is still a matter of curious interest to Methodists, that writers of other religious denominations, especially "Churchmen," should exhibit so much solicitude for them, with so much depreciation of their peculiarities if not of their character. Pursuing their humble and somewhat peculiar methods of usefulness to the world, and singularly isolated from these denominations by repellant aspects of the latter toward them, they have nevertheless, during the more than a hundred years of their history, been called, almost incessantly, by admonitory or entreating voices, to heed this edifying example of fraternal concern. From "Deacons " and "Presbyters," and even from the high places of Bishops, they have been exhorted, often with a marvelously patronizing dignity and self-conscious condescension, "to return to the Church," assured that they might do much good therein, and would be received very lovingly to its maternal and luxurious bosom. It would seem even that John Wesley were already canonized by "the Church" which treated him for so many years with the most motherly strictness, not to say severity, banishing him with his

heroic Itinerants from its communion altar, doubtless only as a parental and tender chastisement for his better discipline. Wesley is in fact now the chief authority for the admonitory entreaties of "Churchman" to his present numerous but unfilial disciples. He was, according to many of these writers, a saint; a truly great man; a chief character in the history of "the Church." Church dignitaries and Church writers fervently commemorate him as a conspicuous honor to their ecclesiastical household; kindly conniving at his ecclesiastical peccadilloes, though these were once denounced as intolerable flagrancies. The Bishop of Ripon has given to the world a life of him, and the Bishop of London has enjoined the study of this, or some other memoir of him, upon young candidates for holy orders. The committee on the New Parliament House even suggested a statue of him for one of its niches; and there is certainly no character of the last century more imposing in English ecclesiastical history, according to these admiring Church authorities, than the son of the good old Rector of Epworth-the man who, when he was awakening England to a moral resurrection, was turned away not only from the pulpit but from the sacramental table where he and his father had ministered, and was virtually placed under ecclesiastical ban throughout the United Kingdom. History has indeed a divine office; it is the invincible redeemer of great men. It would appear, in fine, that enlightened Churchmen generally begin to think as highly of the arch-heretic as Robert Southey himself did, who, though he wrote malicious anonymous review articles, and a caricatured memoir of him, declared in his private correspondence with Wilberforce: "I consider him as the most influential mind of the last century—the man who will have produced the greatest effects centuries, or perhaps millenniums hence, if the present race of men should continue so long."*

During Wesley's own day no little churchly and even prelatical concern for Methodism was displayed, and his replies to Warburton and Lavington are historical documents. Scarcely was he in his grave when a number of clergymen sent forth, through a lay Churchman, a new constitution for his societies, compassionately designed to save them from "wreck and ruin" by bringing them within the protecting embrace of the Church.

*Wilberforce's Corr., vol. ii, p. 388.

Church writers assiduously interfered in the controversies which, after his death, periled the denomination respecting its subsequent government. The ample nourishing bosom of the Church was the only refuge to which they pointed the robust but toddling young Hercules. When they saw that these tender counsels were not duly respected, they took in hand the rod of chastisement, laying it on lustily; and finding his obstinacy invincible, they at last held up before him the fasces of the law, in terrorem, determined to correct and save him whether he would or not. But he promptly turned upon them, broke the fasces, and in the struggle made a memorable revolution in the law, if not in the very Constitution of England; securing religious liberty not only for himself but for the British people generally. Old Methodists who witnessed that energetic struggle of 1810-11 can never forget it, for the whole United Kingdom was shaken by it. The Quarterly Review for November, 1810, contained an extraordinary paper on Methodism, showing the necessity of subduing it to the Establishment in order to prevent the destruction of the latter. The article was attributed to the pen of Robert Southey; it charged the Wesleyans with the design of subverting the national Church, and predicted that they would sooner or later be competent to such a design. It showed that the denomination had grown from nearly thirty thousand members in 1770, to nearly one hundred and ten thousand in 1800; and that its average increase per annum was about seven thousand. "It is no light evil for a state," it argued, "to have within its bosom so numerous, and active, and increasing a party. How long will it be before this people begins to count heads with the Establishment?" The reviewer intimated that the Wesleyans were even aiming at a revolution of the supreme government of the country.

Public attention being thus called to the rapid growth of Dissent, and the declension of the national Church, Lord Sidmouth, in about seven months after the publication of the Review, introduced into Parliament a bill which, if it had been adopted, would have struck the dearest rights and most effective labors of all evangelical dissenting Churches, but especially of the Methodists. The regular Wesleyan ministry would have been broken down by it. Subordinate laborers of the Connection would have been

practicably disabled. Its local preachers, exhorters, prayer-leaders, Sunday-school teachers, many thousands in numbers, would have been either silenced or forced into the prisons of the kingdom. Sidmouth and his associates in the measure had obtained statistics which could not fail to afford alarming arguments to Churchmen. They had ascertained that the number of preachers licensed by the magistrates in the half century from 1760 to 1810 was three thousand six hundred and seventy-two; that during this time no less than twelve thousand one hundred and sixty-one chapels and rooms had been licensed for public worship; that of country churches and chapels, in all parishes which included a thousand persons or more, the Dissenters and Wesleyans had a majority of nine hundred and ten over the Establishment, the latter having two thousand five hundred and fortyseven, the former three thousand four hundred and fifty-seven, not including private places in which preaching was maintained. The facts were significant enough, but the remedy proposed was preposterous, and destructive of the religious liberties of Englishmen. The whole Methodist Connection was aroused by the danger, and the Dissenters generally joined in their remonstrances. The Wesleyan ecclesiastical arrangements offered the best conveniences for eliciting public opinion on the question. The Districts notified their preachers and people, and petitions were rapidly signed and sent to Parliament. The "Committee of Privileges" met in London, and sent a deputation, of which Thomas Thompson (who was a member of Parliament) was chairman, to consult with Lord Sidmouth. Sidmouth persisted in his course, but the committee secured a speech from Lord Erskine against the proposed law. He presented the Methodist petitions. An attempt was made to push the bill with indecent haste; it was introduced on the 11th of May, and its second reading ordered for the 17th; but on the latter day, by the agency of Lord Stanhope and Earl Grey, it was postponed to the 21st. During the delay the whole religious population of the kingdom was stirred with agitation. Stanhope, in presenting a petition bearing thousands of signatures, declared that if the intolerant party would not yield the thousands would be multiplied to millions. Other peers presented memorials against the measure. Erskine on the 21st made a powerful speech against it, and moved that it be read six months from

that day, which meant that it be read not at all. The motion prevailed without a division, and the oppressive measure was defeated.

Failing in this egregious scheme, an attempt was made by its advocates to so interpret and apply the Act of Toleration as to accomplish, to some degree, their aims. An applicant for license was required to show that he was the pastor of a particular or single congregation. The law thus construed would be fatal to the Wesleyan itinerant ministry, to candidates for the ministry, and to all preachers beyond the Establishment who had charge of more than a single church. Ellenborough and other judges put this construction upon the act, and many instances occurred, in various parts of the kingdom, in which Wesleyan preachers, itinerant and local, were refused licenses. The Committee of Privileges waited upon Percival, the prime minister, to remonstrate against this oppression, and the Connection was again constrained to defend religious freedom. An act of Parliament (Act of 53 Geo. III., c. 155) was obtained which defeated their oppressors. This act, one of the most important events in the history of English religious liberty, was procured directly by the exertions of the Methodists, though they were powerfully aided by their Dissenting brethren generally. It swept away the old barbarous "Five Mile Act," and the "Conventicle Acts" under which Wesley and his helpers suffered so often; it also repealed another offensive act which oppressed the respectable body of Christians called Quakers, and it was so liberally constructed as to meet alike the wants of Wesleyans and Dissenters. The Conference voted its thanks to its Committee of Privileges for the success of their labors in securing this "invaluable law." It also issued an Address to its people commemorating the event. "In contemplating this measure," it said, "we cannot but adore the goodness of God, who hath remembered us in our time of need, for his mercy endureth forever!"

The arithmetical figures of Southey and Sidmouth have grown at an amazing rate since this contest. The Registrar General shows that now only about one-third of the population are connected with the Establishment, and Mr. Bright assures the British public that this minority cannot and ought not to continue to control the religious affairs of the realm.