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was of opinion that every animal might be immortal. "I will not," he said, 66. quarrel with any of you about any opinion; only see that your heart be right towards God." He was subject to an excessive credulity, many instances of which are recorded by his biographers.

"He accredited and repeated stories of apparitions, and witchcraft, and possession, so silly, as well as monstrous, that they might have nauseated the coarsest appetite for wonder; this, too, when the belief on his part was purely gratuitous, and no motive can be assigned for it, except the pleasure of believing. The state of mind is more intelligible, which made him ascribe a supernatural importance to the incidents that befel him, whether merely accidental, or produced by any effort of his own. Strong fancy, and strong prepossession, may explain this, without ascribing too much to the sense of his own importance. If he escaped from storms at sea, it appeared to him that the tempest abated, and the waves fell, because his prayers were heard. If he was endangered in travelling, he was persuaded that angels, both evil and good, had a large share in the transaction. The old murderer,' he says, 'is restrained from hurting me, but he has power over my horses.' A panic seized the people, in a crowded meeting, while he was preaching upon the slave trade: it could not be accounted for, he thought, without supposing some preternatural influence: Satan fought, lest his kingdom should be delivered up.' If, in riding over the mountains in Westmorland, he sees rain behind him and before, and yet escapes between the showers, the natural circumstance appears to him to be an especial interference in his favour. Preaching in the open air, he is chilled, and the sun suddenly comes forth to warm him: the heat becomes too powerful, and forthwith a cloud is interposed. So, too, at Durham, when the sun shone with such force upon his head, that he was scarcely able to speak, I paused a little,' he says, and desired God would provide me a covering, if it was for his glory. In a moment it was done; a cloud covered the sun, which troubled me no more. Ought voluntary humility to conceal this palpable proof, that God still heareth the prayer?' At another time the sun, while he was officiating, shone full in his face, but it was no inconvenience; nor were his eyes more dazzled, than if it had been under the earth. Labouring under indisposition, when he was about to administer the sacrament, the thought, he says, came into his mind, why should he not apply to God at the beginning, rather than the end of an illness ?" He did so, and found im

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mediate relief. By an effort of faith he could rid himself of the toothache and more than once, when his horse fell lame, and there was no other remedy, the same 'Some,' application was found effectual. he observes, will esteem this a most notable instance of enthusiasm: be it so or not, I aver the plain fact.""

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Vol. II. pp. 413, 414.

Wesley left no property but the current editions and the copyright of his works, (we wish Mr Southey had furnished a list of them,) and this he bequeathed to the use of the connection, after his debts were paid. At his death, his preachers in the British dominions amounted to 313-in the United States to 198-the number of members in the former was 76,968, and in the latter 57,621.

"Such was the life, and such the labours, of John Wesley, a man of great views, great energy, and great virtues," but obviously beset by some weaknesses, and studious of much singularity. We have already expressed our opinion respecting the manner in which the worthy laureate has executed his task; and we do not choose to risk one respecting the effects of Methodism upon the esta blished church, or society at large. We think it enough to have given a fair representation of the volumes which record the history of its " rise and progress," leaving our readers wholly at liberty to espouse whatever side they please of the controversy, which we observe they have already provoked; or, like ourselves, to stand by as spectators of the combat.

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Where'er the wings of love do carry me, O'er hill, o'er dale, through sunshine, and through shower

Where rolls the ocean, where the stormbeat tower

Frowns on the cliff, or where the rivulet's maze

Melodiously encircles grove and bower; No matter where my roving spirit strays,

If Nature still be there, and Fancy's living rays.

No theme proposed or thought of, on my flight

Abroad I launch into the boundless air, I feel my pinions shivering with delight, Moved by the Zephyrs bland that win

now there

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From the cave's mouth an old man issued slow,

And sate him down, and of the herbs did eat,

Which from his stores he brought, nor needed go

For drink, for at his feet the stream did freshly flow.

T

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Innocence, Nature, Poesy-ye are
The graces of man's spirit, led by you
It rises above every inward jar,

And prunes its wings delighted, by the

dew

Of love refreshed, which doth its thoughts

imbue

What is this world of toil, through

which we drive,

Imperious passions, fantasies untrue? Could we possess our souls, how much alive

Were then our better life, how little should

we strive !

pas

O what minds have appeared and
sed along
This theatre of earth-what thoughts

divine

It has awakened-thoughts that glow in

song,

Or haply that could never cross the line
Of the pure soul that formed them-its

confine

Girdling them in, as all unfit to meet
The ruffian air, or in the glare to shine
Of wit or verse, however smooth and
sweet-

The secret things of heaven have in the

heart their seat!

Were the true revelation made of all

As on one greater day will yet befall, When all that ever breathed shall, at the sound

Of trumpet, gather the high seat around, Where judgment will be given ;-O not alone

Would evil from its folds and hidden bound

Break forth, but things more glorious than have known

The light of day, or in the world's proud front have shone :

Dreams of poetic skyey grain, which words

Could ne'er embody-thoughts of moral
good,

Of holiness, to which no form affords
Expression (howe'er loftily endued
By school or church with title, oftener
feud

Than faith administering)—love, and
peace,

And joy, tricked out in gracious beams,

bedewed

With all the beauty which doth never

cease

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WE have been led into this subject by the following paragraphs, which we quote from the letter of a very able correspondent :

"MR EDITOR,I have just read the paper of Philotheus On the Proof of Miracles,'-which does equal honour to his talents and principles. His views of this important fundamental argument are stated with very considerable terseness and precision, and indicate a mind superior to slavish imitation, and very capable of forming its own determinations on grounds and for reasons peculiar to itself. My present object is not to controvert a single position of Philotheus. With an exception or two of a trifling nature, regarding rather the form than the substance of his statement, I coincide entirely with all he has said on the subject. But different minds view the same argument or proposition through different media. What appears conclusive to one man's understanding may assume a very different aspect when subjected to the scrutiny of another mind familiarized

That men have thought since they have with different trains of association,

skimmed the ground,

VOL. VII.

and habituated to other forms of rea

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soning and demonstration. The subject of Miracles, notwithstanding all that Campbell, Douglas, Farmer, and others, have so well and ably written concerning it, is by no means exhausted. Campbell's answer to Hume was, indeed, regarded, at the time of its first appearance, and even subsequently, as an unanswerable refutation of the Essay on Miracles; and it has, accordingly, formed the nucleus of every work into which I have looked on the subject, and which has been given to the public posteriorly to the date of that elaborate, ingenious, and admirable piece of reasoning. But

*

error, it seems, never dies. The boasted argument of Hume, with which Campbell had grappled so fiercely, appeared to be completely demolished, and no one thought of the matter farther than merely to mention, as a thing of course, about which there could be no controversy, that the sophism which had 'gravelled' a miracle-mongering Jesuit, of some parts and learning, among the cloisters of the Abbey of La Flêche, had been torn to shreds, and scattered, in derision, to the winds, by the unsparing hand of the merciless Aberdonian. Yet, mirabile dictu! and just to prove that sophistry possesses a sort of immortality, forth issues the redoubted tome of La Place on the Doctrine of Probability, which, indirectly, but mischievously, affected to prove, by demonstration, that the truth of a miracle is a mathematical impossibility. We all remember the elaborate, profound, and truly scientific account given of that work in the Edinburgh Review, and we also remember, with sorrow, the observations with which it concludes. But death has consecrated the fame of its amia ble, and, in this instance at least, we hope mistaken, author; and, recollecting the many virtues that adorned his private character, and the great name which he has bequeathed as a legacy to his country, to be enrolled in the proudest page of her literary and scientific annals, I cannot find in my heart to speak of that ill-starred admission of his faith in those terms which I would otherwise, without scruple, have applied to it. At all

*See Hume's Letter to Dr Campbell, on the publication of his book on Miracles, prefixed to that work.

events, this book revived the controversy. In what I have to subjoin, I shall speak, in the first place, with reference to the pretended irrefragable argument of Hume; and, in the next place, I shall endeavour to show, that the argument drawn from the doctrine of Probabilities is utterly hostile to the sceptical hypothesis, and applies, with singular felicity, to the numerical expression of the value of a given aggregate of human testimony."

We would have continued here the

argument of our ingenious correspondent, did we not feel it to be a more immediate duty to vindicate the memory of a great and good man from an aspersion which has been heedlessly thrown upon him, and which, arising at first from indiscreet zeal, has been continued of late in a much more do not pretend to investigate. We violent form, from motives which we mean the late MR PLAYFAIR, to whom our correspondent evidently alludes, to which he refers has always been as the paper in the Edinburgh Review ascribed to him. We have just looked into the passage in that paper upon which all the outcry was raised, and-instead of being an insidious attack upon miracles as the foundation of religious belief-we find it to be a very sage exposition of Mr Hume's doctrine limited to the subjects of philosophy and of common life, in its application to which alone it is stated to be a sound doctrine.

"The first author, (says the reviewer,) we believe, who stated fairly the connection between the evidence of testimony, and the evidence of experience, was Hume, in his Essay on Miracles, a work full of deep thought and enlarged views, and, if we do not stretch the principles so far as to interfere with the truths of religion, abounding in maxims of great use in the conduct of life, as well as in the speculations of philosophy.

"Conformably to the principles contained in it, and also to those in the essay now before us, if we would form some general rules for comparing the evidence derived from our experience of the course of nature with the evidence of testimony, we may consider physical phenomena as divided into two classes, the one comprehending all those, of which the course is known from experience, to be perfectly uni

form; and the other comprehending those of which the course, though no doubt regulated by general laws, is not perfectly conformable to any law with which we are acquainted; so that the most general rule that we are enabled to give, admits of many exceptions. The violation of the order of events among the phenomena of the former class, the suspension of gravity for example, the deviation of any of the stars from their places, or their courses in the heavens, &c. these are facts, of which the improbability is so strong, that no testimony can prevail against it. It will always be more wonderful that the violation of such order should have taken place, than that any number of witnesses should be deceived themselves, or should be disposed to deceive others.

"It is here very well worth attending to, how much the extension of our knowledge tends to give us confidence in the continuance of the general laws of nature, and to increase the improbability of their violation. Suppose a man not at all versed in astronomy, who considers the moon merely as a luminous circle, that, with certain irregularities, goes round the earth from east to west nearly in twenty-four hours, rising once and setting once in that interval. Let this man be told, from some authority that he is accustomed to respect, that on a certain day it had been observed at London, that the moon did not set at all, but was visible above the horizon for twenty-four hours; there is little doubt that, after making some difficulty about it, he would come at last to be convinced of the truth of the assertion. In this he could not be accused of any extraordinary and irrational credulity. The experience he had of the uniform setting and rising of the moon was very limited, and the fact alleged might not appear to him more extraordinary, than many of the irregularities to which that luminary was subject. Let the same thing be told to an astronomer, in whose mind the rising and setting of the moon were necessarily connected with a vast number of other appear ances; who knew, for example, that the supposed fact could not have happened, unless the moon had deviated exceedingly from that orbit in which it has always moved; or the position

of the earth's axis had suddenly changed; or the atmospherical refraction had been increased to an extent that was never known. Any of all these events must have affected such a vast number of others, that as no such thing was perceived, an incredible body of evidence is brought to ascertain the continuance of the moon in her regu lar course.

The barrier that gener

alization, and the explanation of causes thus raises against credulity and superstition,-the way in which it multiplies the evidence of experience, is highly deserving of attention, and is likely to have a great influence on the future fortunes of the human race.

"Against the uniformity, therefore, of such laws, it is impossible for testimony to prevail. But with those laws that are imperfectly known, and that admit of many exceptions, the violations are not so improbable, but that testimony may be sufficient to establish them. In our own time it has happened, that the testimony produced in support of a set of extraordinary facts, has been confirmed by a scrupulous examination into the natural history of the facts themselves. When the stones, which were said to have fallen from the heavens, came to be chemically analyzed, they were found to have the same characters, and to consist of the same ingredients, nearly in the same proportions," &c. "Here, therefore, we have a testimony confirmed, and rendered quite independent of our previous knowledge of the veracity of the witnesses. The truth of the descent of these stones on the evidence of testimony alone, would have been long before it gained entire credit, and scepticism with respect to it would have been just and philosophical. In certain states of their information, men may, on good grounds, reject the truth altogether."-Edin. Rev. Vol. xxiii. pp. 328-331.

We have no hesitation in saying, that all this admirable and luminous statement, in as far as religion is out of the question, (and the exception is distinctly made,) is perfectly correct, and coincides very nearly with the opinion of Philotheus, as it is detailed in our last number. We imagine that inquirer has got to the bottom of the question more completely than either Mr Hume or Mr Playfair, but he practically coincides with the latter,

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