they can never enjoy an opportunity to display, those who had capacities for becoming great men are contented with making themselves agreeable companions. Should I propose that the subjects obtained a right to hold the lucrative employments of baillis, or governors of districts, the aristocratical families of Berne would think me guilty of a crime little less than sacrilege. 'The emoluments of these offices form the patrimony of the State; and we are the State.' It is true that you in the Pays de Vaud may be deputies to the baillis; but the advantages belonging to that subordinate magistracy are obtained on certain conditions, which, unless the holder of the office lives a certain number of years, renders his bargain a very bad one for his family.

"What encouragement is then left for the gentlemen of the Pays de Vaud? That of foreign service. But to them even this road to preferment is extremely difficult, and to attain the higher ranks is impossible.... In his own district every bailli is at the head of religion, of the law, the army, and the finances. As judge, he decides without appeal all causes to the amount of a hundred francs—a sum of little importance to a gentleman, but which often makes the whole fortune of a peasant; and he decides alone, for the voices of his assessors have not any weight in the scale. He confers, or rather he sells, all the employments in his district."

It is unnecessary further to multiply extracts from this letter. The relevancy to Fletcher's personal history of those just cited will be obvious. He belonged, not to the aristocracy of Berne, but to the subordinate gentry of the Pays de Vaud. The office held by his father was not that of bailli, with its great emoluments and privileges, but the very inferior office of assesseur. Fletcher was one of those to whom little remained but foreign service, and we have seen how eagerly he sought it, and by what circumstances his hopes were frustrated. And so it was, we take it, that, having come to England, he scarcely knew why, the quiet life of a scholar and tutor satisfied him till such time as, in the possession of a new religious life and an absorbing vocation, he found "foreign service" in the highest and holiest warfare. It was while living in Mr. Hill's family that Fletcher came under the influences which determined his whole future course. He now first became acquainted with the Methodists.

Some fifteen years had elapsed since Wesley formed the first Methodist society, and Whitefield, shut out from the churches, had begun to preach the gospel to the wondering crowds on Kingswood Hill and Kennington Common. Wesley's own ungarnished account fixes the exact date of one of the most significant events in modern Church history. It is as follows: "In the latter end of the year 1739 eight or ten persons came to me in London, who appeared to be deeply convinced of sin, and earnestly groaning for redemption. They desired I would spend some time with them in prayer, and advise them how to flee from the wrath to come. That we might have more time for this great work, I appointed a day when they might all come together, which from thenceforward they did every Thursday in the evening. To these, and as many more as desired to join with them (for the number increased daily), I gave those advices from time to time which I judged most needful for them; and we always concluded our meeting with prayer suited to their several necessities. This was the rise of the United Society, first in London, and then in other places."

It was not however to the members of this society that the name of Methodist was first applied, still less was it a designation adopted by the society itself. It originated, some years earlier, in Oxford, as a nickname for the Wesleys and a few other university men, who used to meet together to read the Scriptures, and endeavoured generally to order their lives with a religious precision rare enough in the Oxford of those days. To quote Wesley's words again: "The exact regularity of their lives, as well as studies, occasioned a young gentleman of Christ Church to say, 'Here is a new set of Methodists sprung up,' alluding to some ancient physicians who were so called. The name was new and quaint, so it took immediately, and the Methodists were known all over the university."

But this first, or Oxford, Methodism was now a thing of the past. The Methodism that Fletcher found in England was really another and very different thing, though called by the same name. It was separated from the former, not only by a score or so of years, but by spiritual changes and developments of the most important character. The first Methodists were, above all things, students and Churchmen. They revived the observance of long neglected canons and rubrics; they moulded their lives on ascetic models, fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, and eating no flesh during Lent except on Saturdays and Sundays. They thought and spoke much of Christian antiquity, and, like the Oxford leaders of a century later, sought in that venerable past a rule and an authority co-ordinate with Scripture. They read Thomas à Kempis and Bishop Taylor and the great High Church mystic of their own day, William Law. This Oxford Methodism, with its almost monastic rigours, its living by rule, its canonical hours of prayer, is a fair and noble phase of the many-sided life of the Church of England, and, with all its defects and limitations, claims our deep respect. But it was not the instrument by which the Church and nation were to be revived; it had no message for the world, no secret of power with which to move and quicken the masses. To do this it must become other than it was. It must die, in order to bring forth much fruit. And this death and rising again were accomplished in the spiritual change wrought in John Wesley, the leader of the earlier and of the later Methodism. What was that change?

In the year 1738, on his return from Georgia, Wesley writes: "It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country, in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity. But what have I learned myself meantime? Why, what I the least of all suspected: that I, who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God."

Now it may be urged, with some show of reason, as indeed his own language in later life implies, that Wesley was not, in the full sense of the term, an unconverted man during the whole of his Oxford life and of his residence in Georgia. But nothing is more certain than the reality and importance of the change through which he now passed. His apprehension of salvation by faith in Christ had been hitherto obscure and imperfect. He found no rest for his soul. He longed to be at peace with God. "The faith which I want is a sure trust and confidence in God that, through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the favour of God, ... that faith which enables every one that hath it to cry out, 'I live not, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.'" It is not necessary to repeat here the oft-told story of Wesley's acquaintance with the Moravians, and more particularly with Peter Böhler, by whose teaching and testimony he was convinced that the one thing wanting to him was a living faith in Christ, together with that assurance of forgiveness and power over sin that are its fruits. How much had to be surrendered before a man of Wesley's training and attainments could submit himself to the conception of saving faith that was now presented to him, may be learnt from his own statements. It is enough to say that he found that way of faith in Christ which is the open