relation is the relation between the "King Eternal" and that over which he presides and which he controls. So out of nothing nothing comes.

RELIGIOUS HYSTERIA, OR GETTING INSTANTANEOUSLY CONVERTED.

BY GEORGE HERBERT CURTEIS, M.A.,

Late Fellow and Sub-Rector of Exeter College, Principal of the Litchfield Theological College, and Prebendary of Litchfield Cathedral.

I fear it is impossible to deny, that in the early part of the eighteenth century—amid the general coldness, languor, and want of enthusiasm which characterized that effete epoch—"the Church of England, as well as all the dissenting bodies, slumbered and slept." At this epoch, the Puritans were buried, and the Methodists were not born. The Bishop of Litchfield, in a sermon delivered in 1724, said, "The Lord's Day is now the Devil's market day." In Litchfield Cathedral Library is a copy of Dr. Balguy's Sermons, delivered in 1748, containing on the fly-leaf an autograph remark by Bishop Bloomfield. It is in these words, "No Christianity here." It is said of that period of time, by a noted minister of the Church of England, that a dry rationalism had taken possession of the church, and that all the powers of her best intellects were engaged in hot contests with Deists and Unitarians; that an equally dry morality and stoical praise of "Virtue" formed the chief part of the exhortations from the pulpit. It was just in these times that the causes of the reformation of John Wesley sprang into being. Seven biographies of John Wesley have already been written, and the subject seems far from being exhausted even yet. As usual in such cases it is the earlier publications which take the more sober view of his character and history; while those of a later date surround their hero with a halo of extravagant admiration. Alexander Knox, a personal friend of Wesley's, thus writes of him: "How was he competent to form a religious polity so compact, effective and permanent? I can only express my firm conviction that he was totally incapable of preconceiving such a scheme. * * * * That he had uncommon acuteness in fitting expedients to conjunctures is most certain; this, in fact, was his great talent." (Letter appended to Southey's Third Edition, 2, p. 428.) Methodism, at the first, sprang up simply as a revival.

Half a century ago a distinguished Wesleyan wrote as follows: "Though Methodism stands now in a different relation to the establishment than in the days of Mr. Wesley, dissent has never been professed by the body—and for obvious reasons: (1) A separation of a part of the society from the church has not arisen from the principles assumed by the professed Dissenters, and usually made so prominent in their discussions on the subject of establishments. (2) A considerable number of our members are actually in the communion of the Church of England to this day. (3) To leave that communion is not, in any sense, a condition of membership with us." (R. Watson's Observations, p. 156.)

"What may we reasonably believe to be God's design in raising up the preachers called Methodists? Not to form any new sect, but to reform the nation, particularly the church; and to spread scriptural holiness over the land." (Large Minutes of Conference, 1744–89, Qu. 3.) In the same, Qu. 45, we have this answer: "We are not seceders, nor do we bear any resemblance to them. We set out upon quite opposite principles." Southey says: "Wesley had now proposed to himself a clear and determinate object. He hoped to give a new impulse to the Church of England, to awaken its dormant zeal, infuse life into a body where nothing but life was wanting, and lead the way to the performance of duties which the church had scandalously neglected." (Southey's Life, p. 193, ed. Bohn.)

Mr Curties says: "A disastrous period of Wesleyanism opened with John Wesley's voyage to America, in 1735. It was a mission nobly undertaken, at the instance of Dr. Burton, of Corpus College, and of the celebrated mystic, William Law; and its purpose was twofold; first, that of ministering to the settlers in Georgia, and then of evangelizing the neighboring tribes of red Indians. (Southey's Life, p. 47). But its results were far different from those which either Wesley, or those who wished him well, could have anticipated. For not only were his services for the settlers rejected, and his mission to the Indians a failure. (R. Watson's Life, p. 38.) On his voyage out he had fallen in with twenty-six Moravian fellow-passengers, on their way from Germany to settle in Georgia; and they spoilt all. On his as yet unsettled, enthusiastic, self-dissatisfied frame of mind, the spectacle of their confident, tranquil, yet fervid piety, fell like a spark on tinder. He writes, in his journal, now first begun, 'From friends in England I am awhile secluded; but God hath opened me a door into the whole Moravian Church.' Here, Wesley learned, and took in, the doctrines of Peter Bohler, the Moravian, who taught thus: First, when a man has a living faith in Christ, then he is justified. Second, this living faith is always given in a moment. Third, in that moment he has peace with God. Fourth, which he can not have without knowing he has it. Fifth, and being born of God he sinneth not. Sixth, and he can not have this deliverance from sin, without knowing that he has it." (Southey's Life, p. 113.)

Such is the origin of the Methodist tenet "that there is a swift and royal road, not only for some men, but for all men, by which the highest spiritual things may be reached at a bound." Under such an impression John Wesley set about realizing an instantaneous and sensible conversion. If a man under high mental excitement is looking for such a thing to occur, something will take place sooner or later that will answer the expectation. So, on Wednesday, May 24, 1738, about nine o'clock in the evening, at a society's meeting in Aldersgate street, Wesley persuaded himself that he had felt the desired transition and had passed—from what, to what? In the answer to that question lies the whole doctrinal difference between modern Methodism and the Church of England. Stevens, in his history of Methodism 1, 108, says, Methodism owes to Moravianism special obligations: (1) It introduced Wesley into that regenerated spiritual life, the supremacy of which over all ecclesiasticism and dogmatism it was the appointed mission of Methodism to reassert. But a still stranger event occurred in John Wesley's life, which contributed still farther to darken and confuse his teaching at this critical period of his career. He had been carried away by his love of the Moravians so far as to take a long journey, and to visit the headquarters of their communion at Hernhutt, in Saxony. There he had been an honored guest at the retreat which the enthusiast Count Zinzendorf had carved out of his estate for these hunted Bohemian followers of Huss and Wickliff. But he had returned home, after a brief residence among them, as Luther returned from Rome, not a little shaken in his allegiance to their system. Indeed, shortly afterwards he broke from them entirely; set up a sort of English Moravianism of his own, and organized it with "bands" and "class-meetings" on the Moravian model. But his feelings as a churchman revolted against their ultra-spiritualism; repudiated their doctrine that sacraments and outward means were nothing, and protested that a man must do something more than wait, in quietude, until the influx of God's spirit came upon him, and filled, like a rising tide, all the sluices and channels of his soul. But no sooner had this unquiet soul emancipated itself from one foreign influence than it was warped out of its true course by another. German mysticism