nuance of it, I thank God, I can rejoice." He then talked of the strangeness of his deliverance, when betrayed, as it appeared, on all sides, and without human support; and he condemned himself for his late conduct, imputing it, however, to want of time for consideration, and the state of his mind. "I longed, Sir," said Charles, "to see you once more, that I might tell you some things before we finally parted: but then I considered that if you died, you would know them all in a moment." Oglethorpe replied, "I know not whether separate spirits regard our little concerns; if they do, it is as men regard the follies of their childhood, or I my late passionateness.”—pp. 104-106.

Charles was even an earlier convert to the doctrine of Boehler than his brother, and preceded him in obtaining those feelings of 'assurance' for which they both sighed so earnestly. He had, during John's absence in Germany, attended some condemned criminals in Newgate, and given to them that comfort and spiritual help which the ordinary (such as ordinaries were in those days) was not likely to administer. And in London, as formerly in Oxford, he had collected a small society of devout persons who were sufficiently disposed to place themselves under his brother's spiritual direction. But a far mightier instrument had also been at work to open the path before him. Among the original Methodists of Oxford was a youth named George Whitefield, of humble parentage in Bristol, whose mother had been enabled to gratify his zeal for learning, and ardent desire to become a minister of the church, through the help of the little profits afforded by a servitorship at Pembroke College, and some presents made him from time to time by a kind-hearted tutor. During the continuance of that society in the university which we have already described, he surpassed them all in the greatness of his austerities, the intensity of his devotion, and the vehemence with which he laboured after that religious peace, which, in one so truly pious as he was, would have been his portion from the beginning, but for the erroneous notion which he had formed of its nature.

'He describes himself as having all sensible comforts withdrawn from him, overwhelmed with a horrible fearfulness and dread, all power of meditation, or even thinking, taken away, his memory gone, his whole soul barren and dry, and his sensations, as he imagined, like those of a man locked in iron armour. “Whenever I knelt down," he says, “ I

up

It is, we believe, one of the Wesleys who is represented in Hogarth's execution of the idle apprentice, with long lank hair, praying in the cart with the criminal, while the ordinary follows in a hackney-coach. The poor ordinary, when Charles Wesley thus officiated, seems to have been willing to do his duty if he had known how. He would read prayers,' says Charles, and he preached most miserably.' And when he offered to get on the cart at the place of execution, the prisoners begged he would not and the mob prevented him. • What kind of machine,' says Mr. Southey, a Newgate ordinary was in those days, may be seen in Fielding: the one who edifies Jonathan Wild with a sermon before the punch comes in, seems to have been drawn from the life.'

felt

felt great pressures both on soul and body; and have often prayed under the weight of them till the sweat came through me. God only knows how many nights I have lain upon my bed, groaning under what I felt. Whole days and weeks have I spent in lying prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer." In this state he began to practise austerities, such as the Romish superstition encourages: he chose the worst food, and affected mean apparel; he made himself remarkable by leaving off powder in his hair, when every one else was powdered, because he thought it unbecoming a penitent; and he wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes, as visible signs of humility. Such conduct brought upon him contempt, insult, and the more serious consequence, that part of that pay on which he depended for his support, was taken from him by men who did not chuse to be served by so slovenly a servitor. Other excesses injured his health: he would kneel under the trees in Christ Church Walk in silent prayer, shivering the while with cold, till the great bell summoned him to his college for the night he exposed himself to cold in the morning till his hands were quite black: he kept Lent so strictly, that, except on Saturdays and Sundays, his only food was coarse bread and sage tea without sugar. The end of this was, that before the termination of the forty days, he had scarcely strength enough left to creep up stairs, and was under a physician for many weeks.

'At the close of the severe illness which he had thus brought on himself, a happy change of mind confirmed his returning health;-it may best be related in his own words. He says, "notwithstanding my fit of sickness continued six or seven weeks, I trust I shall have reason to bless God for it through the endless ages of eternity. For, about the end of the seventh week, after having undergone innumerable buffetings of Satan, and many months inexpressible trials, by night and day, under the spirit of bondage, God was pleased at length to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold on his dear Son by a living faith, and, by giving me the spirit of adoption, to seal me, as I humbly hope, even to the day of everlasting redemption. But oh! with what joy, joy unspeakable, even joy that was full of and big with glory, was my soul filled, when the weight of sin went off, and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God, and a full assurance of faith, broke in upon my disconsolate soul! Surely it was the day of my espousals,-a day to be had in everlasting remembrance. At first, my joys were like a spring tide, and, as it were, overflowed the banks. Go where I would, I could not avoid singing of psalms almost aloud; afterwards, they became more settled, and, blessed be God, saving a few casual intervals, have abode and increased in my soul ever since.-vol. i. pp. 138-140.

He was ordained, at an unusually early age, by Benson, then Bishop of Bristol, an excellent man, who was inspired with much regard for him by his general character, his demeanour at church, and his attention to the poor and the prisoners. The bishop accompanied his ordination with a present of five guineas, a 'great supply,' says Whitefield, for one who had not a guinea in the

world,'

world.' His first sermon was preached to a crowded audience in the church of his native parish. He had, when a boy, been no contemptible actor, a circumstance which, in his journals, he wishes to be able to record in tears of blood, but which was, probably, of great advantage to him on his first appearance in the pulpit. He had, indeed, many natural advantages.

'He was something above the middle stature, well proportioned, though at that time slender, and remarkable for a native gracefulness of manner. His complexion was very fair, his features regular, his eyes small and lively, of a dark blue colour: in recovering from the measles he had contracted a squint with one of them; but this peculiarity rather rendered the expression of his countenance more rememberable, than any degree lessened the effect of its uncommon sweetness. His voice excelled both in melody and compass, and its fine modulations were happily accompanied by that grace of action which he possessed in an eminent degree, and which has been said to be the chief requisite of an orator. An ignorant man described his eloquence oddly but strikingly, when he said, that Mr. Whitefield preached like a lion. So strange a comparison conveyed no unapt a notion of the force and vehemence and passion of that oratory which awed the hearers, and made them tremble like Felix before the apostle. For believing himself to be the messenger of God, commissioned to call sinners to repentance, he spoke as one conscious of his high credentials, with authority and power; yet in all his discourses there was a fervent and melting charity, an earnestness of persuasion, an outpouring of redundant love, partaking the virtue of that faith from which it flowed, inasmuch as it seemed to enter the heart which it pierced, and to heal it as with balm.—vol. i. p. 150.

With all these engaging qualities he had neither the talents nor the learning, nor, we may add, the ambition of Wesley. His printed works are miserable trash, both in style and argument. In judgment he was, through life, a mere child; and it should be said to his honour, that, amid all his popularity, no desire of power, or self-aggrandizement, was ever discernible in him. It was, perhaps, this simplicity of character which mainly contributed to the success of his eloquence. His sermons, both in Gloucester, Bristol, and London, were attended by crowds, such as no other preacher ever brought together; he was invited to officiate in every church where a charity sermon was wanted, and when he delivered his farewell sermon, on being appointed chaplain in Georgia by the same patrons who had nominated Wesley, the whole congregation are said to have wept and sobbed aloud; while, as his connexion with the methodists of Oxford was well known, and as Wesley was universally regarded as the head of the community, the success of his oratory had a natural effect to excite the curiosity of the world, and to impress them favourably towards the master himself, whose

pupil was so widely popular. It was remarkable too, that though Whitefield was already a Calvinist and an enthusiast, he was not yet a fanatic; his sermons, though sometimes they touched on unpopular topics, were not calculated in general to offend any description of persons, and he went to Georgia with the unabated approbation, not only of his friend Bishop Benson, but of Gibson, Bishop of London, and Archbishop Potter. The vessel which carried him out passed Wesley's ship in the Downs. The friends could have no personal interview, but Wesley, who had some reason for disliking America, was anxious to keep the other back from his voyage thither, and, having had recourse to his usual presumptuous custom of sortilege, sent him a note declaring, as from God, that he ought to turn back. Whitefield disregarded the omen, and found so much reason to be pleased with the people of Savannah, that he afterwards, in the course of a printed controversy with Wesley, reproached him with this failure of his divination, as a good proof of the vanity of thus tempting God. He, however, remained in Georgia only three months; he then returned to England to raise money for the erection of an orphan house in the colony, and arrived in time to co-operate in Wesley's plans, and to carry them to an extent which Wesley himself had never contemplated.

The two brothers, in the mean time, had been advancing rapidly in popularity and influence. There were, indeed, some churches where, having been once admitted to preach, John Wesley gave so much reasonable offence by the sort of new birth which he insisted on as necessary to salvation, that he was informed that he must preach there no more. And he was well and wisely warned by his ancient monitor William Law, to whom he now, in turn, addressed a letter of reproof for not having taught an 'efficient faith,' that 'the head can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood of Jesus, as with any other notion, and the heart, as being the seat of self-love, is more deceitful than the head.' But he was not now in a state of mind to be reasoned with, and treated with equal neglect the sensible remonstrances of his brother Samuel, and the advice of the Archbishop and Bishop of London, two wise and good men, whose counsels (those of the latter particularly) John Wesley, in his old age, was accustomed to look back to with considerable respect, and, perhaps, with some little compunction. But among the lower and middling orders of society, Wesley's popularity was great, and the effects which he produced were well calculated to encourage him in the course which he was pursuing.

The meetings of which we have already spoken, soon became numerous and crowded. They were not new in London; since

something

something of the same kind had been previously set on foot, under the name of Religious Societies, to promote an adherence to the church, and the practice of Christian duties, of which the pious Nelson had been, in his day, a distinguished promoter and defender, and which the Bishops and the greater part of the London Clergy for some time continued to favour. But the meetings of the Methodists were prolonged till midnight, and even through the night; they had adopted the old exceptionable name of Love Feasts, and they encouraged each other in excesses of devotion, which, if they found the mind sane, were not likely long to leave it so. The consequence was, that not only the Governors of the Church, but many pious and moderate men among the inferior Clergy, who would have gladly promoted any unobjectionable scheme for the revival of piety, withdrew their co-operation and countenance from men who avowedly set all decorum at defiance, and who exclaimed, as John Wesley does in his journal, God deliver me and all that seek him in sincerity, from what the world calls Christian prudence.' It is strange, however, that at the moment when the brothers were thus gradually detaching themselves from the Church, they were still, in theory, such excessive High Church-men that they endeavoured to make the.revival of the weekly fast on Friday obligatory on all their disciples, and quarrelled with Bishop Gibson because he did not approve of rebaptizing Dissenters.

By men so fully impressed with the truth and importance of those doctrines which they had to deliver, while their conduct had a necessary tendency to deprive them of any regular opportunities of delivering it, the establishment of separate places of worship could not have been long delayed; yet neither the erection of chapels, nor field-preaching, nor itinerancy had their commencement with Wesley himself. Whitefield had already, for some time, been practising something like the last, in his frequent visits to Gloucester and Bristol. The possibility of preaching in the open air had been suggested to him by the crowds which vainly attempted to gain entrance into the churches where he officiated; and a deep sense of compassion for the neglected ignorance of the poor colliers at Kingswood, near Bristol, a populous district without either place of worship or minister, determined him, on Saturday, February 17, 1739, to address as many as came together on a Mount called Rose Green. The congregation the first day was small; a beginning was, however, made, and the novelty of the practice, added to the previous popularity of the preacher, brought the neighbourhood together in thousands.

The deep silence of his rude auditors was the first proof that he had impressed them; and it may be well imagined how greatly the consciousness