exalted grace. Perhaps no single fact affords a better explanation of the marvelous success of Methodism. Wesley observed and declared that wherever it was preached revivals usually prevailed. "It is," he said, "the grand deposi tum which God has given to the people called Methodists, and chiefly to propagate this, it appears, God raised them up. Their mission was not to form a religious party, but to spread holiness over these lands.' The doctrine of personal sanctification was, in fine, the great potential idea of Methodism. It not only gave it life and energy, by inspiring its congregations with devout and transforming aspirations, but it was the precise sentiment needed as the basis of its ministry. Nothing short of entire self-sacrifice could consist with the duties and privations of that ministry; and according to their doctrine of Perfection, entire consecration was the preliminary of entire sanctification. These holy men, then, in making an entire public sacrifice of themselves, did so as a part of an entire consecration to God, for the purpose of their own entire personal sanctification, as well as their usefulness to others. What ideal of ministerial character and devotion could be more sublime or more effective? And this ideal they realized in the exceeding labors and purity of their lives, and the martyr-like triumphs of their deaths.

Wesley defined this Scriptural truth more clearly than any other modern writer. Evangelical theologians cannot deny his definition of the doctrine. They can dissent from him only in respect to the time in which entire sanctification may be practically reached by the believer. All admit it as at least an ideal, yet Scriptural standard of spiritual life, to be habitually aspired to by good men, though attained, with rare exceptions, only at death. Wesley claimed it as, like justification, an attainment of Faith, and practicable at any moment."

Alexander Knox, Esq., the friend and correspondent of Bishop Jebh, says, (Thirty Years' Correspondence with Bishop Jebb, Letter XIX.,) "Nay, the very point you aim at in them, I mean their view of Christian Perfection, is in my mind so essentially right and important, that it is on

The "enthusiasm " to which Wesley alludes as having marred this special revival, was mostly limited to London, where George Bell, a life-guardsman and an honest madman, had become one of his local preachers. Bell supposed he had effected a miraculous cure; he attempted another on a blind man, but pronounced in vain the Ephphatha. His failure in the last case did not correct his delusion respecting the first. It arose, he argued, from the patient's want of faith. His language became fanatical in public meetings. He asserted that his "Perfection" rendered him infallible, above temptation, and superior to the instructions of all persons who were not perfect, and to the rules of the Bands and of the United Society. Wesley admonished him, and visited London repeatedly to restrain him. His forbear

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ance shows the kindness of his heart, but was injudicious. Fanaticism is always infectious. In this instance it spread rapidly, and Wesley was surprised to learn that Thomas Maxfield was allied with the enthusiasts. Maxfield was converted under his preaching at his first visit to Bristol. He ranked as his earliest lay preacher, and Wesley had promoted his welfare in all possible respects. He introduced him, in London, to a social position above his birth, by which he had secured an advantageous marriage; and obtained ordination for him in Ireland from the Bishop of Londonderry, who favored Wesley's labors in that country, and who, in laying hands on Maxfield, said: "Sir, I or

this account particularly I value them above other denominations of the sort. I am aware that ignorant individuals expose what is in itself true by their unfounded pretensions and irrational descriptions; but with the sincerest disapproval of every such excess, I do esteem John Wesley's stand for holiness to be that which does immortal honor to his name. . . . In John Wesley's views of Christian Perfection are combined, in substance, all the sublime morality of the Greek fathers, the spirituality of the Mystics, and the divine philosophy of our favorite Platonists. Macarius, Fenelon, Lucas, and all of their respective classes, have been consulted and digested by him, and his ideas are essentially theirs.” See also Knox's Essay on Wesley's Character, addressed to Southey. Appendix to Southey's Wesley.

• Wesley's Journal, February, March, and April, 1763.

dain you to assist that good man, that he may not work himself to death." Maxfield was not naturally an enthusiast, and how far he shared the fanaticism of Bell and his associates it is difficult to ascertain. He seems to have been, perhaps unconsciously, inclined to side with them more from discontent with Wesley's authority, than from any sympathy with their errors. Being now an ordained clergyman, well married, and with good resources, it was natural that he should dislike his subordinate position and wish an independent one. Whatever was his motive, he took side with the enthusiasts and really became their head, though Bell continued to afford by his ravings the chief stimulus of their extravagances.

Wesley was compelled at last to expel the latter, and to disclaim, in the provincial newspapers, a prophecy which he had spread that the world would end on a given day. A great panic arose from this prediction. The news of it extended into the interior, injuring the reputation of the Methodists, till Wesley's disclaimer could follow and counteract it. George Story, one of Wesley's best itinerants, reached Darlington on the predicted day, and found many of the people terrified, and others indignant and threatening to tear down the preaching-house and kill the first preacher who should appear in the neighborhood. Story was a dispassionate man, and telling the mistress of the house that it she would venture the building he would venture himself, he confronted the mob with the newspaper containing Wesley's advertisement in his hand. He could not otherwise have prevailed over the uproar and deliver his sermon.

In London, meanwhile, the terror of the people was too great for the logic of even Wesley, though he endeavored day and night to dispel the delusion. Scores of members withdrew from the societies, giving up their tickets. "Blind John," they exclaimed, "is incapable of teaching us; we will keep to Mr. Maxfield." On the dreaded day Wesley preached against the prophecy, but many, he says, were afraid to go to bed. Some betook themselves to prayer-meetings

which were continued through the night; and others went out into the fields, believing that if the world was not destroyed, London at least would be by an earthquake.

The failure of the prediction did not wholly disconcert Bell's party, for insanity in the form of fanaticism has a subtle shrewdness at sophistry. Prayers might have prevailed to avert the threatened doom, or it might have been postponed for some new reasons; or the prophecy might have been designed as a trial of the faith of believers, like the demand for the sacrifice of Isaac. In the course of time, Bell lost his religious ardor. From being a fanatic, he became a skeptic; he turned politician, was rampant for ultral opinions, and died at an extreme age a "Radical Reformer."

Maxfield gathered round him the alienated members of the London Society, and opened an independent chapel in Moorfields, where he continued to labor for about twenty years. He became Calvinistic in his opinions, and published a severe pamphlet against Wesley. Some of the Methodists who seceded with him continued with him to the last, but most of them returned. Wesley treated him throughout this disturbance with extreme forbearance, and when he chose the alternative of preaching for the followers of Bell, rather than for the Methodists at the Foundry, went thither himself from Westminster, and preached with deep affliction from the text, "If I am bereaved of my children I am bereaved."

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If Wesley's treatment of these disturbances was at first too indulgent, his final course was characteristically decisive, and soon extinguished the evil. He then went forth traversing the land, and found the societies flourishing, the revival extending into many new places, and his congregations larger than ever before. In some towns even his five o'clock morning assemblies were so great that he had to leave the chapels for the open air. The Birstal hill was thronged with twenty thousand hearers. At Leeds his out-door assembly was almost as large, and surpassed all preceding congregations there. At Newcastle, he says, he knew? Coke and Moore's Life of Wesley, II, 4.

not that he had ever preached to three such congregations in one day as met him at, the outside of Pandon Gate; he was obliged to speak to the utmost reach of his voice from the first to the last word. On Calton Hill, at Edinburgh, he addressed the largest throng he had ever seen in the kingdom, and the most deeply affected. Throughout Cornwall the interest of preceding years was unabated. His congregations, in some instances, were too large to be able to hear him, and in his favorite amphitheater at Gwennap he preached to thousands, whom he supposed no human voice could reach on any level ground.

In Ireland he was greeted with similar encouragements. At Cork many of the chief of the citizens, clergy as well as laity, were present at his street preaching. "What a change," he writes; "formerly we could not walk through these streets but at the peril of our lives." At Kilfillan nearly all the town, Irish, English, Germans, Protestants and Papists, gathered around him in the market-place, and many followed him to his lodgings, where he continued to pray with and exhort them till bedtime; and the next day, as early as four o'clock, the "town seemed all alive," and audible sobs and ejaculations were heard from "old and young, on the right hand and on the left." At Limerick he addressed," amid a solemn awe," the largest congregation he had ever seen there; and in Dublin he preached, in Barracksquare, to "such a congregation as he never saw in Dublin before." "What a change," he adds, "since Mr. Whitefield a few years ago attempted to preach near this place !”

He visited Scotland several times during this period, with better success than in former years, but with none comparable to that which attended him in other parts of the realm.

Christopher Hopper had not labored in vain in Edinburgh, "Many poor sinners," says this noted lay preacher, "were converted to God," and a society was formed. He extended his labors to Dundee, Musselburgh, Leith, Aberdeen, and other places, and when Wesley arrived he saw a better prospect for Methodism in the North than at any earlier