Wesley) which a protracted life of unrivalled benevolent activity could never entirely remove.

Preaching religion so eloquently in their lives, they were better prepared to preach it with effect in the pulpit. Perhaps no two ambassadors of Christ ever accomplished such an amount of useful preaching as Wesley and Whitefield. To the last day of their lives, it was their great element. No public speakers ever drew, for so great a length of time, such numerous audiences. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty thousands were but common ones.* Neither did these masses grow weary of the preachers. It was no fitful and fleeting emotion which thus aroused the people. The excitement was kept up through a long course of years, and the crowds still assembled in congregated thousands. It was not confined to any particular district. East, west, north and south, presented similar scenes.

Something of this was owing to the new practice of "field-preaching," a thing so novel, and so thoroughly unclerical, that numbers were doubtless influenced by mere curiosity. Many, too, assembled to mock and jeer, of whom not a few remained to pray. Larger numbers, however, were probably attracted to listen to what they rightly deemed the great truths of the gospel, which had all but died out in the pulpits, both of the Establishment and dissenters.

But the preaching powers of Wesley and Whitefield, attended, as they were, with a true evangelic spirit and overwhelming manifestations of divine influence, had much the largest share in exciting so deep and extensive an interest. They were men not to be found in every parishchurch; and it would have taken a long search to find their equals in our splendid cathedrals, In that age, even as preachers, there was but one Wesley and one Whitefield, and there had been but few before, and none since. The people of England and America soon saw this, and their good sense taught them to take the advantage of so valuable a privilege. They hung, now with rapture, and then with trembling, on the lips of these apostles of the Truth.

Although the effects of the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield were very much alike, yet was there a marked difference in their persons, their manner, and their mental constitutions. There is less difficulty in realizing Wesley and Whitefield, as preachers, than most other popular speakers of their time. We hear, indeed, of the pleasant strains and touching pathos of Dr. Watts, and of the forcible and persuasive harangues of Doddridge; but we cannot see these preachers so clearly as Wesley and Whitefield. There is some identity about the latter of which you cannot escape the observance. How often have we regretted our thoughtless insensibility, since we entered that venerable "Tabernacle" in London, without once associating Whitefield with its ample area! Had we not been inexcusably careless, we should have seen him in every aisle, watched him ascend the pulpit, and held communion with his sacred shade. We should have seen his commanding form and beaming countenance, we should have listened to his majestic voice and startling descriptions, we should have watched him trembling over the brink of eternity with impenitent sinners, we should have beheld his uplifted arm, felt his melting eloquence, and perhaps wept

* Between thirty and forty bottles of wine, on some occasions, were used at the Sacrament, so numerous were the communicants.

But we

at the recalled images of his weeping and anxious listeners. blindly lost the opportunity, and could only attempt to compensate the loss at the distance of two hundred miles. Let those who in future enter the hallowed sanctuary remember that it is the Temple which Whitefield reared, and in which he preached, and where, if they will only devoutly listen, they will still hear the gentle tread of his soft footsteps and the solemn echoes of his angelic voice. Honoured is the man who is distinguished as his successor, who, we venture to say, seldom enters that pulpit without Whitefield's silent whisper in his ear, "Preach for Eternity.'

In the pulpit, Whitefield stood like a messenger come direct from heaven to warn the people to "flee from the wrath to come." His tall figure, proportionably stout, his bright eye and his authoritative air seemed to say "No compromise." He did not, like Jonah, give "forty days" to repent: now was the only time, because in ten minutes every sinner might be hurried into hell. His gesture, his voice, his deep earnestness, his bursts of passion gave the impression that there was no time for lengthened consideration. He seemed as if he had just come with trembling emotion and agonizing spirit to tell them their awful doom, and that he was about to leave them, probably for ever, in order to hasten with the warning to others. The eager multitude failing to take alarm, his agitation would increase, his whole frame would be half convulsed, his eye would kindle and then flash, his arms began to play, the pulpit was struck with fists and feet, he weeps profusely, he pictures in bold and rugged forms their imminent danger, he works up alternately terrible and beautiful scenes, now a bottomless pit, with its furies and despair, and again a blissful heaven, with its innumerable angels and the "Bleeding Lamb of God." Seldom did he close these sermons without seeing the larger portion of his audience bathed in tears, many of them frequently the subjects of deep spiritual anxiety. He did not dwell on trifles. There was no polish about his diction, no rich and elegant sentences, few fine figures, and fewer engaging antitheses: but there were force, and passion, and fire, and exclamation, and hyperbole, and apostrophe; there was solemnity mixed with fervour, and all this was blended with a strong affection and a yearning solicitude which penetrated often the stoutest hearts, and led them to cry out, " Sirs, what must we do to be saved?" Whitefield succeeded principally because he constantly kept his hearers just on the brink of another world. He dealt mainly with the spiritual and unseen; and because no one ever brought these so near to the palpable and the present, no one has equalled him in this direction. It availed nothing that his hearers attempted to steel themselves against his appeals; he broke down their resolves, and effectually won their attention and respect. Hume, though he died Hume after witnessing that solemn address to Gabriel, heard him with mingled wonder and admiration. And many of the nobility, who had before thought little about religion, felt for once that it was a solemn and serious question. Whitefield did not pronounce his discourses unimpressed with his own responsibility. He preached like a man who believed what he said, and who was intensely anxious that others should believe, and feel it too.

As a preacher, Wesley was another man, and owed his popularity and success in some respects to entirely different causes. In stature

he was below the middle size, and had more of amiableness and sim

plicity in his countenance and mien than of pomp and majesty. He did not attempt so much by means of mere gesture, and voice, and passion, nor by engaging and awful pictures of the imagination. He was not made for the same kind of work as Whitefield. He had an iron frame, but it had less of muscle; he had a good voice, but it had less of volume. He seldom hallooed, or stamped, or wept to the same extent as Whitefield. He appealed more to the reason than to the passions. He turned the mind inward on itself. He was more of a logician, and carried along with him men's understanding as well as their feeling, and a way to the heart was always effected by his Christian spirit and benignant countenance. Few could listen to him without feeling they were in the presence of a master spirit, sometimes bearing them onward as on the bosom of a gentle stream, and then moving along with the swell and force of a strong current. But you never find him turbulent and noisy, as a stormy ocean, nor roaring and fearful, as Niagara Falls. In Wesley you saw not that convulsive passion which was so decided a characteristic of Whitefield, but you saw a mind that was bent as earnestly on a purpose, and that was swayed by the same grand motive-the "salvation of souls." Wesley was not without strong emotion, but he did not burst upon his hearers with the suddenness and fury of a thunderstorm. Whitefield attempted either to alarm men from hell, or to entice them to heaven. Wesley frankly showed them the roads, and then began to reason the point, not indeed with the smartness of the philosopher, but with the calm and successful ratiocination of the logician.

Tremendous were the results of their preaching. They were overwhelmed with notes containing applications from penitents for spiritual advice and direction. Sobs and tears, and cries and groans, evidenced that their work was "not in vain." Hundreds and thousands were awakened, and truly converted to the faith of Christ. Lions became lambs, and the mental and spiritually dead began to live, and the empires of knowledge and virtue commenced their inroads on the domains of ignorance and vice. These were the fruits at which they uniformly aimed. They lost themselves in their intense solicitude to "pluck brands from the burning." Whitefield did not call up his abrupt and moving images that the people might see what a fine imagination he had; and his agitations and weepings were not efforts to display his own sympathetic tendencies. Every one saw that he forgot himself in his anxiety for others. The same spirit and aims are equally true wheu affirmed of Wesley. Under the preaching of the latter, numbers fell suddenly to the ground, and writhed and struggled, as if suffering from some excruciating bodily pains. Violent convulsions ensued, and the subjects of them, in many cases, resembled not a little the demoniacs of primitive times.

Various have been the opinions as to the nature and causes of these convulsions. Whitefield always stood in doubt as to whether they were the results of spiritual influence. Wesley, at first, took them as unquestionable marks of the presence of divine power; but observation and experience at length taught him to receive them with caution. There was, doubtless, mixed up with these occurrences something of fear, produced by the peculiar action of the mind, but chiefly an intense religious concern for the salvation of the soul.

Of the oratory of Wesley and Whitefield we shall say little. White

field's appearance in the pulpit must have been prepossessing, especially in his compassionating and sympathetic moods; and he never spoiled his looks by affectation. In him the natural predominated. It may, however, be imagined that his action and passion gave him the appearance of a person trying to make an effect. Though he did study dramatic effect out of the pulpit, yet no one, while he was preaching, dreamed that he had given half a moment's attention to it: not, indeed, because he failed, but because his success was so complete that the acquired was all absorbed in the natural. In his utterance he was ready; he never stumbled on a word, much less was he fast set for an idea. His voice, though loud, was his own. He did not first roar, and then suddenly squeak or scream, nor produce the impression that he would make a better ventriloquist than a preacher. There was none of that marred, overweening tone of voice, which we have heard in some very popular modern preachers, followed at the end of every passionate sentence by a kind of feeble hiccup, alike painful to utter and to hear. There was art in his preaching, but it was not the art which taught him to sing his sermons. He, in fact, knew the art of being thoroughly natural.

When Demosthenes was asked which was the first great requisite in an orator, he replied, "Delivery!" when asked for the second he said, “Delivery!" and when asked for the third he still said, "Delivery!" If this be true, then was Whitefield Wesley's superior; but if Dr. Johnson's reply would be the more correct, then must Wesley bear the palm. Whitefield had eloquence, but it was in his face, in his action, in his passion; and, indeed, there are some eloquent passages, but of the rougher sort, in his printed sermons. But Wesley understood something of the art of rhetoric; he knew how to work upon the feelings and the judgment by a train of eloquent reasoning, embellished with the beauties of a forcible, and at times, graceful diction. Whitefield's sermons are now neglected, and almost forgotten by all; the sermons of Wesley are still read, and continue to engage and interest the most educated classes. In the intellectual structure of Whitefield, we find no single quality, and, indeed, no combination of qualities, that does not come immeasurably short of accounting for the grand results of his successful preaching. But in the case of Wesley, this cannot be affirmed.

We do not say this in order to lead to the inference that the excitement produced by Whitefield's preaching was always the consequence of spiritual influence, and that his preaching was on the whole more signally blessed of God than Wesley's. We would simply be understood to mean that he was, mentally, by far Wesley's inferior, and that the secret of his success, as far as himself was concerned, must be sought for elsewhere.

While we are here, we may just remark that we have no sympathy with the fuss made by Watson in reference to the intimation of Dr. Southey, that Wesley chose for his "field-preaching," in order to produce the greater effect, the best scenery he could find. Even if Wesley had thus much of the philosopher about him, and if his preaching on some occasions gained a little by this means, it was perfectly legitimate, and Wesley can well afford to concede this, and still have abundant evidence of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The philosopher and the theologian should scarcely "fall out" in settling the respective claims of nature and the Spirit, in relation to their distinctive and precise influence on converted sinners. Watson appears to

fear, that if Southey's statement be true, it must necessarily follow that Wesley was playing a trick on his audiences and the world. But such a fear is utterly groundless. If Dr. Southey be correct (and it is a question of small importance whether he is or is not), it can only teach that the trees and hills, the rocks and streams, the singing birds and outstretched universe, had a voice, and a voice, too, which sang in unison with Wesley's own evangelic strains.

As private Christians, they were both without a stain. They were scrupulously Christian in their general deportment, humorous and communicative in company, and in private, serious and devout. They were early risers, seldom in their slumbers at five, often preaching before six. They were remarkably systematic and methodical. They well deserved the name of Methodists. Whitefield said he thought he could not die easy if he thought his gloves were out of place. Their time through the day was regularly divided, each duty or exercise being apportioned with its due allotment. They had a time for devotion, a time for study, a time for conversation, a time for preaching, a time for visits, and a time for meals. The books in their libraries were distributed in rank and file order, and every paper in their studies was arranged with the care and precision of Bank of England notes. Order and system are excellent means for despatch; but we have seen characters who looked upon them, not as means, but as ends. They are good servants, but bad masters. Wesley and Whitefield were sometimes under their intolerant sway, especially the former. Dr. Johnson at least thought so, when Wesley abruptly left him in the middle of a conversation because his time was "up." He appeared to think that it said, “My rule is of more consequence than your company." In our opinion, unless Wesley had some other positive engagement at the time—and it is a question whether it was respectful to tie himself so closely in prospect of an engagement with a man like Johnson-Wesley committed a slight on him. In their persons, Wesley and Whitefield were particularly neat and clean. There was neither show nor foppishness about them, but just what you would expect in a sensible gentleman. There was more of domestic simplicity, too, about Wesley than Whitefield. The latter had no pride, but he could have done with a finer carpet, or a gold ring, or a large attendance of liverymen better than the latter. We do not mean that he indulged in these things, but that he had more of this spirit than had Wesley. The latter was extremely plain in this sense. He had absolutely no starch in his manners, nor fine Macassar-oil on his head, nor any latest Paris fashionism in his dress. He was not exactly a Quaker in this latter respect, but he had a little of that spirit. He certainly had his tastes for costume, and he was so extremely fond of one kind, that he was inclined to stereotype it. This might not be pride, but it was hardly indifferentism. We are not exactly indifferent, for we neither like a tinselled dandy nor a complete obsolete. In Wesley there was a little of the "Friend" tendency. His wish to stipulate, not about "thou's," and "thee's," and "6th month's," and so on, but about straight-cut coats, and untrimmed bonnets, and broad-brimmed hats, and such like, show this. For ourselves, we don't like to see a man going about with a perpetual Nota Bene all over him. It looks as if he said to everyone he meets, "Mark well how fine I am from top to toe." This, however, was not the spirit of Wesley; his aim was to show that neither he nor Methodism were conformed to the vain and