12

of counsel and purpose your children should be trained for Christ; that you should have common consolations with which to cheer each other's hearts in the sorrows of life; and that, when the last parting comes, as the survivor gently lays down the hand which has been so long linked with his own, but which can return its pressure no more, it may be with the certainty that they will be linked together again in that world where separations are unknown! "Only in the Lord!" How thankful numbers have had reason to be that they obeyed that precept! What a sorrow it has been to others that they set it aside! I have seen some sad failures of Christian principle, some sad shipwrecks of faith through the neglect of this rule; and where there has been neither failure nor wreck, I have seen grievous disquietude, and much spiritual hindrance. Does any one say-"But I am not a Christian, as you use the word, and I am, therefore, at liberty to choose from the wide world." Then I say, "Be a Christian, and then make a Christian choice. You can expect a truly happy home only as it is a Christian home; but such a home, gladdened as it will be by the presence and love of Jesus, will be like "Paradise regained!"— The Christian's Penny Magazine.

EJACULATORY PRAYER. EJACULATIONS are short prayers darted up to God on emergent occasions. If no other artillery had been used, this last seven years, in England, I will not affirm more souls had been in heaven, but fewer corpses had been buried in earth. O, that with David we might have said, "My heart is fixed," being less busied about fixing of muskets! The principal use of ejaculations is against the " fiery darts" of the devil. Our adversary injects bad.

notions into our hearts; and, that we may be as nimble with our antidotes as he with poisons, such prayers are necessary. In hard havens, so choked up with the envious sands, that great ships, drawing many feet of water, cannot come near, lighter and lesser pinnaces may freely and safely arrive. When we are time-bound, place-bound, or person-bound, so that we cannot compose ourselves to make a large, solemn prayer, this is the right instant for ejaculations, whether orally uttered, or only poured forth inwardly in the heart. -Thomas Fuller.

THE PRESENT DUTY OF

METHODISM.*

IN doctrine we possess one characteristic which is almost peculiar to ourselves. I refer to the remarkable agreement, upon all essential points of theology, which exists in the preaching of our Ministers throughout the world. Everywhere among us there is not merely the same general system of doctrine, but a uniformity even in most of the minor details of that system.

can.

In an

age marked by the re-adjustment of creeds, we hold to the standard of our fathers. Believing the Bible to be a collection of writings "inspired of God," we endeavour to interpret it as logically and as strictly as we We feel we have no right to depart from the letter of such a book. In our interpretation we try to avoid a merely intellectual religion on the one hand, and a merely emotional one on the other. If a definition of our creed in relation to other creeds be asked for, we can, perhaps, best give it by saying that we adopt the theology of the Church of England as taught by Wesley. Of course it is not possible

*From a Sermon by the Rev. A. Ransom, London: Elliot Stock.

age.

13

In Church - constitution we are among the most compact, and, in discipline, among the strictest, of the Churches. There is a most intimate relationship kept up between our Societies, however remote. The affairs of all our Circuits, both at home and abroad, are yearly reviewed by Conference; and what is felt by one part of our body corporate, is felt by every part. There is every opportunity afforded by our various Churchcourts for the exercise of discipline among Ministers, officers, and members; and neither Conference nor the lower courts have often shown themselves slack in reproving and punishing the "unruly." But, whilst our constitution is compact, and our discipline strict, there is a remarkable elasticity about the Methodist Church. Our Church originated in an attempt to adapt the services of religion to the wants of the age. Hence the genius, as it were, of Methodism is seen in its adaptability to changing circumstances. Whenever any new social development has appeared, Methodism has hitherto been able to meet it. Whilst this power of adaptation has been one of the principal causes of our past success, it is also one of our chief grounds of hope for the future. And if we would have, and keep, as strong a hold upon the present generation as we have had upon the past, we must take care that, in our reverence for our Methodist fathers and their practices, we do not stereotype into a lifeless form that system which ought so to combine a firm adherence to old principles with a perpetually changing form, as to make itself a

Whilst regarding the past with grateful surprise, and the present with feelings of encouragement, let us determine to make the future career of our Church yet more honourable and successful, so far as such success depends upon our exertions. It would be idle to speculate as to what the future will be, as to how much our present system may need modifying to suit the requirements of future generations, even of the generation now growing up. But we can safely and usefully inquire what is our present duty.

The end at which we ought to aim should be to make the plain teaching of the Bible as powerful over the present generation as our fathers did over the past. Our work now is the same as theirs then; but that work can scarcely be done exactly in the same way. Like them, we have to preach to a people who are unconcerned about religion. Like them, we have to endeavour to bring back, to the form of Christian worship, the life and power that can alone make that form really valuable. But we have to meet men of a different character intellectually,-men of more knowledge, men of more mental culture, men better acquainted with the world, and more thoroughly absorbed in its pursuits, and especially men who have more of the questioning spirit which makes it difficult to convince them, than had those to whom our fathers preached. Not that there were no religious questionings in the last century and in the beginning of the present, but it was only indirectly that the scepticism of that age came into contact with the preaching of the early Methodists.* We cannot, in

*The following passage from Professor Farrar's "Bampton Lecture" for 1862 (pp. 227, 228) may be taken as showing the

14

this day, content ourselves with meeting the spirit of denial simply by a declaration of the truth. Our fathers addressed themselves chiefly to the emotions of their hearers, trying to excite in their hearts a love for the truth, which they were supposed to have disregarded rather than disbelieved. We have not only to do the same, but also to meet the prevailing scepticism on the battle-field of argument. There has been more than enough of a kind of supercilious contempt for infidelity, as though the whole thing was a question of badness of heart rather than of badness of logic. To do as much work as our fathers did, we must make more

relation not only of Wesley himself, but also of his immediate followers, to the scepticism of the period referred to :-"It might seem strange .. .... to institute a comparison between the two contemporaries, Bishop Butler and John Wesley. Yet there are points of contrast which are instructivé. Each was one of the most marked instruments of movement and influence in the respective fields of the argumentative and the spiritual; the one a philosopher writing for the educated, the other a Missionary preaching to the poor. Butler, educated a Nonconformist, turned to the Church, and, in an age of unbelief, consecrated his great mental gifts to roll back the flood of infidelity: . . . Wesley, nursed in the most exclusive Church principles, kindled the flame of his piety by the devout reading of mystic books, when our University was marked by the half-heartedness of the time; and afterwards, when instructed by the Pietists of Germany, devoted a long life to wander over the country, despised, ill-treated, but still untired; teaching with indefatigable energy the faith which he loved, and introducing those irregular agencies of usefulness which are now so largely adopted even in the Church. He, too, was an accomplished scholar, and possessed great gifts of administration; but whatever good he effected, in kindling the spiritual Christianity which checked the spread of infidelity, was not so much by argument as by stating the omnipotent doctrine of the Cross, Christ set forth as the propitiation for sin through faith in His blood."

Therefore we must have an educated ministry. Much as has been done in this respect among us, much more needs doing. Doubtless the theory, according to which our ministry is organized, is a scriptural one; viz., that God calls men to preach the Gospel from all classes and conditions. But, if God gives to the Church a poor, untaught man, a man full of faith and grace, and with every natural qualification for the ministry, it is certainly the duty of the Church to educate that man. It is unfair to himself, to his hearers, to the world around him, to send him forth uneducated, to do a work the right performance of which taxes to the utmost the highest education a man can receive.

proved that there is nothing miraculous in the establishment of Christianity. Pardon this little digression. I go straight to the work. There is a religion called the Christian, whose founder was Jesus, named the Christ. This religion, which has lasted eighteen centuries, and which calls itself the natural development of that Judaism which ascends near to the cradle of the world, had the Apostles for its first propagators. When these men wished to establish it they had for adversaries

"The national pride of the Jews; "The implacable hatred of the Sanhedrim;

15

said to you, 'Join with us, for we are going to the conquest of the world; before our word Pagan temples shall crumble, and their idols shall fall upon their faces; the philosophers shall be convinced of their folly; from the throne of Cæsar we shall hurl the Roman eagle, and in its place we shall plant the Cross; we shall be the teachers of the world; the ignorant and the learned will declare themselves our disciples ;' as you are tolerant from nature and principle, you would have defended him before the Sanhedrim, and have counselled it to shut up the fisherman of Bethsaida and his

"The raileries and attacks of the

philosophers;

yet, Sir, what you would have thought a notable madness, is today a startling reality, with which I

"The savage and cruel ignorance of the masses;

"The faggot and bloody games of

cal Witness.

USELESSNESS OF BODILY
PENANCE.

If the ways of religion are ways of pleasantness," then such as are not ways of pleasantness" are not truly and properly ways of religion. Upon which ground it is easy to see what judgment is to be passed upon all those affected, uncommanded, absurd austerities so much prized and exercised by some of the Romish profession. Pilgrimages, going barefoot, hair-shirts, and whips, with other such Gospel artillery, are their only helps to devotion: things never enjoined, either by the Prophets under the Jewish, or by the Apostles under the Christian, economy; who yet surely understood the proper and the most efficacious instruments of piety as well as any confessor or friar of all the Order of St. Francis, or any casuist whatsoever. It seems that with them a man sometimes cannot be a penitent unless he also turns vagabond, and foots it to Jerusalem; or wanders over this or that part of

16

the world to visit the shrine of such or such a pretended saint; though, perhaps, in his life, ten times more ridiculous than themselves: thus, that which was Cain's curse is become their religion. He that thinks to expiate a sin by going barefoot does the penance of a goose, and only makes one folly the atonement for another. Paul, indeed, was scourged and beaten by the Jews; but we never read that he beat or scourged himself and if they think that his keeping under of his body imports so much, they must first prove that the body cannot be kept under by a virtuous mind, and that the mind cannot be made virtuous but by a scourge; and, consequently, that thongs and whipcord are means of grace, and things necessary to salvation. The truth is, if men's religion lies no deeper than their skin, it is possible that they may scourge themselves into very great improvements. But they will find that bodily exercise touches not the soul; and that neither pride, nor lust, nor covetousness, nor any other vice, was ever mortified by corporal disciplines. It is not the back, but the heart, that must bleed for sin; and, consequently, in this whole course they are like men out of their way. Let them lash on never so fast, they are not at all nearer to their journey's end; and, howsoever they deceive themselves and others, they may as well expect to bring a cart as a soul to heaven by such means.—South.

TRIFLE S.

"Who hath despised the day of small things?" WHY do we speak of "a little thing," And "trifles light as air?"

Can aught be a trifle which helps to bring

One moment's joy or care? The smallest seed in the fertile ground Is the germ of a noble tree; The slightest touch on a festering wound, Is it not agony?

What is a trifle ?-a thoughtless word,

Forgotten as soon as said! Perchance its echo may yet be heard When the speaker is with the dead. That thoughtless word is a random dart, And strikes we know not where; It may rankle long in some tender heart: Is it a trifle there?

Is it a trifle-the first false step

On the dizzy verge of sin? 'Tis treacherous ground-one little slip May plunge us headlong in. One light temptation, and we may wear Death's galling chain for aye; One little moment of heartfelt prayer May rend those bonds away.

Drops of water are little things,

But they form the boundless sea;
'Tis in little notes the wild bird sings,
Yet his song is melody.
Little voices, now scarcely heard,

In heaven shall bear their part; And a little grave, in the green churchyard,

Holds many a parent's heart.

This world is but little, if rightly weigh'd, And trifling its joy or care;

But not while we linger beneath its shade

There are no trifles here. The lightest burden may weigh like lead On the faint and weary soul: In the uphill path it perforce must tread Before it reach the goal.

Cease, then, to speak of "a little thing,"

Which may give thy brother pain;
Shun little sins, lest they haply bring,
The greater in their train.
Seize each occasion, however small,

Of good which may be given;
So, when thou hearest thy Master's call,
Thou shalt be great in heaven:
-Observer.

CORNWALL, AND CORNISH
METHODISM.

CORNWALL is the most western county in Great Britain. It is entirely bounded by the sea, excepting on its eastern side, which is separated from Devonshire by the Tamar, and an artificial boundary of a few miles in length at its northern extremity; so that it almost forms an