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preaching this, (for no other crime was then so much as pretended,) we were forbid to preach any more in any of those churches, where, till then, we were gladly received; and not being suffered to preach it in the usual places, we declare it wheresoever a door is opened, either in a mountain, or a plain, or by a river side; nor dare we refrain: a dispensation of the Gospel is committed to me, and woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." And who would not do the same, that loved the Lord Jesus Christ? Would not your Lordship? For my part, I have that high opinion of your Lordship's Christianity and zeal for God, by the spirit that breathes in your Lordship's late Charge, that I should never be more disappointed, than in finding your Lordship, if under the same circumstances, any otherwise employed than in preaching up Jesus Christ, anywhere and everywhere, however apparently, as your Lordship calls it, "immethodical."

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I now beg your Lordship would be pleased to weigh these truths, and then I ask these questions: Are they gone out from among us? Or have we not rather driven them out? Away with all prejudice, and let God be glorified in our answer: which of these is the truth? I ask it in the name of my Master, my Master the Lord Jesus Christ, for whose Name I am ready to lay down my life this moment: if it is granted, as I think it must, in behalf of these "immethodical" Preachers, I ask next, For what cause were they driven out? For preaching "salvation attainable by faith; and this in a Christian country? O monstrous ! "Tell it not in Gath! For preaching up salvation by faith, are the Ministers of Jesus Christ forbidden the pulpits? Alas! my good Lord, is there any other channel to salvation? Is there any other Gospel? Can we find a better way to heaven? Will not this produce in us all manner of good works? Is not this yoke easy, and this burden light,-" Believe and thou shalt be saved?" Will any man point me out an easier and a safer way than this: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved?" O let these things be well weighed, and the mouth of all calumny be stopped!

There is a second thing laid to the charge of these people by your Lordship, which I also think it my duty to take some notice of; and that I think is couched in these words: "That they refuse to be under political government, and are therefore no friends to the hierarchy." O, my Lord! how has your Lordship been imposed on, and how undeservedly have these unhappy people suffered in your Lordship's opinion! Why, my Lord, they are ready, I answer for them; and that only upon what I read of them; (for little more of them do I know ;) I say, they are ready, whenever and wherever called upon, to confess and defend all they have subscribed to in their ordination. Give me leave to give one more transcript out of the same book I before quoted.+

"However, we cannot, it is said, be friends to the Church, because we do not obey the governors of it; and submit ourselves (as at our ordination we promised to do) to all their godly admonitions and injunctions: I answer, In every individual point of an indifferent nature, we do, and will, by the grace of God, obey the governors of the Church; but the testifying the Gospel of the grace of God, is not a point of an indifferent nature; the ministry which we have received at the hand of the Lord Jesus we are at all hazards to fulfil; it is the burden of the Lord, which is laid upon us "Appeal," 4to. p. 42.

"Appeal," 4to., p. 35. (28, third edition.)

here; and are we not to obey God rather than man? Nor do we in any ways violate the promise which each of us made, when it was said unto him, 'Take thou authority to preach the word of God, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:' we then promised to submit (mark the words) to the godly admonitions and injunctions of our Ordinary; but we did not, could not, promise to obey such injunctions as we know are contrary to the word of God.”*—(Par. 83.)

Very just, my Lord; as clear a truth in my eyes, as the sun at his full lustre, in the meridian: for example, if your Lordship should command me (which I am sure your Lordship will not do by me, nor any of your Clergy) to preach up salvation by some other name than that of the Lord Jesus Christ, your Lordship could not wonder much if I withdrew my obedience from such a command; for, notwithstanding the great love and veneration I always had for your Lordship, and now (since your Lordship's Charge) much more than ever, yet I beg leave to assure the world in general, that I would not lose my soul to obey your Lordship, nor all the Bishops in Christendom.

The last thing I shall take notice of, and which indeed cannot with any justice be passed over, is the grand charge your Lordship lays to these people, of being "immethodical." My Lord, I only take up the cause thus slightly, in the absence of those who can, and no doubt will, do it, hereafter, more efficaciously. Your Lordship's accusation is couched in these words: "Of whom it may bẹ said, that their preaching is right and good in the main, though the persons are immethodical in their practice." How did it rejoice my heart, and indeed that of every true lover of Jesus Christ, to hear these words! for indeed, my Lord, they are truth; your Lordship never spoke a greater in your life, and the Lord will bear witness to it. What a true and glorious concession has your Lordship here made! Is their doctrine "right and good?" why then are the Preachers of it despised and treated as the offscouring of the people? Ay, but they are "immethodical : wherefore are they so? Let those answer that who have driven them to it; and who are those, my Lord? who but those who have refused them their churches to preach in? Had they declined preaching in the churches, they were indeed of themselves "immethodical:" but if they are refused the liberty of preaching in the churches, and that indeed almost over this whole land; pray, my Lord, who made them so? Is not a "dispensation of the Gospel committed" unto them? Only try them, my Lord; send for them to your churches; you already approve their doctrine, you acknowledge it is "right and good in the main;" send for them then; bid them go into your pulpits; and if they refuse, I will join hand and heart with your Lordship, and give them up as schismatics.

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O, my Lord, pardon my zeal for the cause of Jesus Christ! I have declared before, and do now again declare, that the heads of this sect of people (as it is invidiously termed) are wholly strangers to me; and indeed but few, very few, of their followers have I any acquaintance with. It is true, I have some of their books, wherein I find so much of the spirit of primitive Christianity; wherein I see the Holy Ghost so clearly manifested to the world; wherein I see that almost exploded doctrine of justification by faith so strongly inculcated;, and, in short, wherein I see so much of the "mind that was in Christ Jesus;" that I must own, if this is

* Works, vol. viii., pp. 34, 35, third edition.

Methodism, I have sometimes been tempted to wish every man a Methodist, in order to his being a Christian.

If, therefore, the only prejudice your Lordship has to these people, is their being "immethodical in their practice," it is in the power of your Lordship, and every Bishop in the land, to remove this stumbling-block. Their doctrine is allowed to be "right and good." Why, then, my Lord, give them admission to promulgate this right and true doctrine in your pulpits; order the Clergy of every diocess to give them the same admission: tell them, indeed, charge them, themselves, to preach the Lord Jesus Christ, and that with the same spirit and power, and then the noise of these new Preachers will quickly vanish away. Away with your morality, metaphysics, and doctrines of works, from our pulpits. Preach up Jesus Christ, and him crucified; justification through faith in his blood; the free grace of God in remitting sins to all those who believe in the blessed Redeemer. Down with all self-righteousness; all works, but those which flow from faith working by love, a lively faith in Jesus Christ ; and even at last give all the glory to God, for the gracious gift of such a faith, as shall first justify the person, and then sanctify the soul; working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ our Lord; to whom be given, as is most due, all glory and honour, both in heaven and in earth, in time and to all eternity. Amen!

I am

Your Lordship's most dutiful son in Christ Jesus,

August 12th, 1748.

A CLERGYMAN.

DESCRIPTION OF HONOLULU.

THE dwelling-houses are chiefly situated within enclosures, a little retired from the street, and are surrounded with small but well-cultivated gardens, which give them a rural and cheerful aspect. The soil of Honolulu is light and shallow, resting upon regularly-piled strata of coral rock and volcanic cinders, and is formed mostly by the ashes from a neighbouring extinct crater and the débris washed from the hills in the rear of the town. When watered, which is done by windmills, it becomes productive. A few years ago, scarcely a tree, with the exception of the tall cocoa-nut groves which border the beach looking seaward, like watchful sentinels over the town, was to be seen within its precincts. Now the scene is widely different. Looking down from Puahi, or Punchbowl-hill, an old crater, half a mile back of the town, and of several hundred feet elevation, a pleasing and novel coup-d'œil is obtained. Punchbowl-hill obtained its sobriquet in times not quite as temperate as the present: its shape internally is much like a bowl, being a gradual and uniform hollow. Facing the town its sides are steep, and the appearances of lava and other volcanic substances from its base upwards so fresh, that one might readily be pardoned for indulging in some suspicion of its ultimate intentions; for it appears as if nursing its wrath, and ready at any angry moment to belch forth once more its destructive fires. However, further back than Hawaiian traditions run, it has remained quiescent, and its nap does not appear likely to be disturbed; nor does one of the ten thousand inhabitants that nightly repose within its shadow, sleep less quietly for fear of its awakening. It forms so prominent an object in approaching the town, from whatever posi

tion, that it may well be taken for the guardian genius of the place; and it could, at small expense, be easily made so. Annually, fires are seen to burst forth from its summit, followed by loud reports and heavy volumes of smoke. They are the pigmy fires of men in honour of men; salutes discharged from sundry enormous thirty-two and forty-two pounders, which in the days of despotism were drawn up its sides and planted on its crest, at a great outlay of human strength and stupidity. A flag-staff, a stone-wall, some natural embrasures in the lava rock, a fire-proof strawbuilt and mud-plastered powder magazine, a few hovels, a dozen ragged urchins, an old crone or two, with as many of the sturdier sex, and a numerous colony of goats, constitute. the fortification and garrison. If the battery was properly mounted and secured, it would effectually command the harbour and protect the town. At the present time it answers for the more peaceful purpose of a promenade; and the view from all points is well worth the labour of the ascent. Looking inland, the mountains rise gradually until they terminate in abrupt peaks, covered with dense forests, which lie in a region of almost perpetual mist, or showers. Lower down the grass grows luxuriantly, and herds of cattle there graze until nightfall, when they seek shelter in their pens. Seaward the eye roams over the boundless ocean, whose waters line the coral-bound shore with a broad belt of snowwhite breakers. Beneath lies the plain, alive with pedestrians, horsemen, and vehicles of quaint or fashionable appearance; a little farther, the town, with its intermingling of barbarism and civilization, and all its intermediate stages. Its numerous gardens, and the many trees which have been recently planted, give it a rural appearance. The fort, shipping, red-painted roofs, stone churches, spires, look-outs (for every house of any pretensions has a queer-shaped box or cupola perched near or upon its ridgepole), the motion of the arms of the wind-mills, engaged in their everlasting pump, pump,straw hovels, and straw palaces, mud-built walls and mud-built habitations; all combine to form a unique, if not harmonious, spectacle.-From Jarves's "Scenes and Scenery in the Sandwich Islands.”

THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

I SPENT two days at the British Museum, and wished I could have spent ten. And yet the ten, by extending my index acquaintance with the whole, would have left me many more unsettled points to brood over than the two. It is an astonishing collection; and very astonishing is the history of creation and the human family which it forms. Such, it strikes me, is the proper view in which to regard it: it is a great many-chaptered work of authentic history, beginning with the consecutive creations, dwelling at great length on the existing one, taking up and pursuing through many sections the master-production, man; exhibiting in the Egyptian section, not only what he did, but what he was; illustrating in the Grecian and Roman sections the perfectibility of his conceptions in all that relates to external form; indicating, in the middle-age section, a re-folding of his previously-developed powers, as if they had shrunk under some chill and wintry influence; exhibiting, in the concluding section, a broader and more general blow of sentiment and faculty than that of his earlier springtime; nay, demonstrating the fact of a more confirmed maturity in the very existence and arrangement of such a many-volumed history of the

earth and its productions, as this great collection constitutes. I found in the geological department,―splendid, as an accumulation of noble specimens beyond my utmost conception,-that much still remains to be done in the way of arrangement; a very great deal even in the way of further addition. The work of imparting order to the whole, though in good hands, seems barely begun; and years must elapse ere it can be completed with reference to even the present stage of geologic knowledge. But how very wonderful will be the record which it will then form of those earlier periods of our planet,—its ages of infancy, childhood, and immature youth, which elapsed ere its connexion with the moral and the responsible began! From the Graptolite of the Gruwacke slate, to the fossil human skeleton of Guadaloupe, what a strange list of births and deaths,—of the production and extinction of races,—will it not exhibit! Even in its present half-arranged condition, I found the general progressive history of the animal kingdom strikingly indicated. In the most ancient section, that of the Silurian system, there are corals, molluscs, crustacea. In the Old Red,-for the fish of the upper Ludlow rock are wanting,—the vertebræ begin. By the way, I found that almost all the older ichthyolites in this section of the Museum had been of my own gathering,-specimens I had laid open on the shores of the Cromarty Frith some ten or twelve years ago. Upwards through the Coal Measures I saw nothing higher than the reptile-fish. With the Lias comes a splendid array of the extinct reptiles. The Museum contains perhaps the finest collection of these in the world. The earlier Tertiary introduces us to the strange mammals of the Paris Basin,—the same system in its second stage to the Dinotherium of Darmstadt, and the Megatherium of Buenos Ayres. A still later period brings before us the great elephantine family, once so widely distributed over the globe: we arrive at a monstrous skeleton, entire from head to heel: it is that of the gigantic mastodon of North America,—a creature that may have been cotemporary with the earlier hunter-tribes of the New World; and just beside it, last in the long series, we find the human skeleton of Guadaloupe. Mysterious frame-work of bone locked up in the solid marble,-unwonted prisoner of the rock !—an irresistible voice shall yet call thee from out the stony matrix. The other organisms, thy partners in the show, are incarcerated in the lime for ever,-thou but for a term. How strangely has the destiny of the race to which thou belongest re-stamped with new meanings the old phenomena of creation! I marked, as I passed along, the prints of numerous rain-drops indented in a slab of sandstone. And the entire record, from the earliest to the latest times, is a record of death. When that rain-shower descended, myriads of ages ago at the close of the Palæozoic period, the cloud, just where it fronted the sun, must have exhibited its bow of many colours; and then, as now, nature, made vital in the inferior animals, would have clung to life with the instinct of self-preservation, and shrunk with dismay and terror from the approach of death. But the prismatic bow strided across the gloom in blind obedience to a mere optical law, bearing inscribed on its gorgeous arch no occult meaning; and death, whether by violence or decay, formed in the general economy but a clearing process, through which the fundamental law of increase found space to operate. But when thou wert living, prisoner of the marble, haply as an Indian wife and mother, ages ere the keel of Columbus had disturbed the waves of the Atlantic, the high standing of thy species had imparted new meanings to death and the rainbow. The prismatic arch had become the bow of the covenant, and death a great sign of the unbending justice and

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