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The Deity that the universe proclaims to us is not simply a power but a person. The mere existence of power or motion does not, perhaps, prove the existence of intelligence; but where there is contrivance and design directing forces to beneficial ends, there must be strict personality. We see no way of avoiding the conclusion. The acts of a mind prove the existence of a mind. Our minds are also a proof of the intelligence of the First Cause, for none but an intelligent Being could produce intelligence. That the Deity is not the object of our senses is not strange, since the most active powers of nature are the most concealed. Nothing but gross matter is the object of sense. Gravitation, chemical affinity, and terrestrial magnetism are invisible. Of man, mind is the all-important part, but our senses take no cognizance of it; our minds are mutually concealed from each other. The anatomist may dissect the human brain, and search the abode of intellect, but search in vain; it perpetually eludes his grasp. The great intellects of Newton and Milton were known to the world only by their works. In the same manner we are to judge of the existence and character of God. The existence, therefore, of an Intelligent Cause is to be regarded as a truth of strict induction. If it is an hypothesis, it is one that is absolutely necessary to explain the phenomena of nature.

We may in a future article consider the moral nature in man, in its bearing upon Natural Theology.

ART. II.-STEVENS'S HISTORY OF METHODISM. The History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century called Methodism; considered in its different Denominational Forms, and its Relations to British and American Protestantism. By ABEL STEVENS, LL.D. Vol. III. From the Death of Wesley to the Centenary Jubilee of Methodism. New York: Carlton & Porter. London: Alexander Heylin. 1881.

THIS third volume of Dr. Stevens's "History of Methodism" will lose much of its enduring interest by being read out of connection with the two preceding volumes. The first of these

volumes containing the Wesleyan reformation in its germinant state, the second in its early development, and the third in its maturing fruit, evidently must be read in their order and connection. Thus we can appreciate the irrepressible power of the movement only when we know the resistance with which it was doomed to conflict. This the first volume describes in the variety of its forms and in the obstinacy of its character.

The great reformation of the sixteenth century found the fiercest resistance in the hierarchal usurpations which had overshadowed christendom. This stupendous system, which was the growth of centuries, and the mightiest imposture ever practiced on humanity, was the grand obstacle of the German movement. But the Wesleyan reformation grappled with another class of obstacles. The former reformation was a protest against the frightful abuses of priestly power; the latter against the practical ungodliness of the age. How rife and multiform was this ungodliness, a thousand witnesses attest. It had generated the deism of England, of which such minds as Hobbes, Tindal, Collins, Shaftesbury, Chubb, and many of smaller notoriety, were open advocates. This deism of the island was rapidly becoming the atheism of the continent, the rationalism of Germany.

The crown of England, through several reigns, having used its prerogatives to restore popery, accelerated the return of the masses to practical heathenism. The profound torpor which had paralyzed the national Church, was itself a fruitful source of general immorality. That the minister of the altar should head the mob to disperse earnest worshipers, was evincive that heartless formality had supplanted spiritual devotion, and that the establishment itself was among the most formidable obstacles to the reformation. This profound spiritual apathy was also the legitimate source of the Arianism, Socinianism, and Unitarianism so skillfully vindicated by the Clarkes, Priestleys, and Whistons of their respective ages.

This decline of truth and piety had reached its maximum, when the voices of the Wesleys, like the blast of a trumpet, broke the slumber of ages, and introduced the era of spirituality.

"The ribald burlesque and licentious humor," says our author, "of such men as Swift and Sterne, sufficiently indicate ·

the clerical taste of the day;" while the works of Dryden, which are not more bright with genius than dark with vice, furnish a specimen of the demand then made by polite society. Indeed, such was the national relish for the poisoning cup of infidelity, that the works of Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon had become the chosen books of large circles.

The historian has also summoned witnesses from another class, who attest to a state of morals corresponding to this virtual rejection of revealed truth. We allude to the British Essayists of the eighteenth century, comprising Steele, Addison, and Johnson. The Tatler of the first, the Spectator of the second, and the Rambler of the last, having the one general aim to rebuke humorously or sarcastically the vices of the age, are attestations to their prevalence. Not only had moral death pervaded the national Church, but it had also swept like a desolating flood over the dissenters. Scores of thoughtful men blended their voices of sorrow in the assertion "that ungodliness was the characteristic of the English nation." No voice gave utterance to this sentiment with more depth and tenderness than "good Bishop Burnet," who tearfully declared that "such was the waste of religion in the hearts and lives of men that there was fearful apprehension that it would die out of the world." This moral blight pervaded the whole period from "the restoration," till Methodism entered on its high commission to disperse the fearful gloom of that long night of almost two

centuries.

The characteristics of these obstacles are the exponents of that agency which was to overcome them. Unlike the Reformation of Germany, which was a war against false doctrine, the Wesleyan movement was a conflict with dead formality and corrupt manners.

That the Christian Church is the organic form of spiritual life, is that great principle whose development is the philosophy of Methodism.

At several points our author finds a striking similarity between the incipient struggles of Christianity in the apostolic age, and those of the Wesleyan revival in the last century. In nothing was this similarity more striking than in the utter absence of all pomp and circumstance. The living truths of redemption flowed from apostles' lips not often in the temple or synagogue,

but on the ship and shore, on Mars' Hill and in judgment halls and in the jail at Philippi, in the private dwelling and by the way side, and wherever there were listening ears to drink in the "joyful sound." Equally homeless and churchless was incipient Methodism. Its most signal victories were won when its preachers, excluded from churches, raised their mighty voices beneath the open canopy of heaven; when crowded thousands hung with rapture on their artless lips; when school-rooms, private houses, and city commons witnessed the unutterable emotions of agitated crowds. There, despite of all external inconveniences, the word of life, invested with irrepressible energies, mysteriously expanded and multiplied. Thousands seemed to hear the voice from heaven which startled the German monk on the staircase at Rome, saying, "The just shall live by faith." This germinant principle of the great reformation once more developed its measureless power to disenthrall and enrapture the penitent.

This third volume of Dr. Stevens's history grasps forty-eight years, being the most thrilling period of Methodism. Being the seventh and closing book of the series, it contains eighteen chapters, spread over more than five hundred pages. The author has opened the volume by most graphically depicting the last decade of the eighteenth century so far as it relates to his subject. The events of that period he shows to have been too stirring to ever fade from history. The fields will continue red that were drenched with blood, and the re-erected thrones of Europe are scarcely yet firm that it shook to the ground. But the event that most painfully interested the Wesleyan societies was the death of their founder.

The author has shown that this event created through the connection the profoundest concern for its continued unity and efficiency. It was regarded as pregnant with consequences which might be disastrous to the great evangelical movement. While it generated these fears on the part of friends, it rekindled the hopes of enemies. It was feared that at the last gasp of this apostolic man the fraternal bond of the connection would dissolve, and that the societies of which he had been the binding center would go off in scattered fragments. It was hoped by the foes of "the revival," that now the "invincible agitator" was gone, the repose of the Church would be unbroken, and the amusements of the Sabbath be resumed.

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Both parties well knew the height to which that influence had reached, which had been accumulating for more than half a century, which had poured its swelling stream through the first and second generations to the third. But neither those hopes or fears have ever become a realization.

The powers of this unique character, formed of strong and well-balanced elements, precluded the very result that was dreaded. That power was too great and holy to be exclusively embodied in his person. It imbued with an ever-living spirit the entire organism which Providence had formed by his skillful hand. The agency of Wesley was of that class of moral influences which time cannot waste nor social changes neutralize. Enthroning itself firmly in the moral powers of our being, it is imperishable as they.

Both the fears and hopes, therefore, that the cause of Wesley would die with him ignored that great principle, that divine truth, inculcated by holy agency, will erect to itself monuments more durable than brass.

It is true, that never did the stroke of death fall on a more venerated head of a community. The affection of the societies was the basis of his authority. The vigor of his purpose, the purity of his motives, the power of his perseverance, the loftiness of his aim, all bathed in the light of a singular intelligence, made his sway absolute over all he served. But death could not abolish, but only transfer this power from his person to his cause. This organism, made vital in every part, would in a manner perpetuate his life through ages in an expanded form. But the calamities to the connection which were apprehended as following Mr. Wesley's death, were the more feared from the great political upheaval of Europe. The revolution in France burst on the nations like an earthquake which had engulfed the empire. The whirlwind of revolution passed over populous states, and ancient thrones tottered to their fall. No moral interest remained unscathed in its course.

This outbreak was the more desolating from its unnatural alliance with infidelity. This in its darkest type, in the form of atheism, for the first time in man's history, identified itself with the rights of man, and was borne forward on the popular tide to a loftier position than ever before attained. Roman superstition was the transition ground over which the national

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