inspired them to visit the sick, to go to the prisons, to teach poor children, and thus laid the beginnings of an active piety and philanthropy which never tired and never ended, and never will end, we may hope. They were despised, of course; they were laughed at, and they were called Methodists in derision. They are not now ashamed of the name, and, indeed, they never were. We have not space here to trace the lives of the two Wesleys in their visit to America in 1735, of their connection with Whitefield, of their return to England (1738), their attempts to rouse the hearts of priests and people to a lively sense of the vital power of religion, until all church-doors were shut against them, even the church where their father had preached. Then John Wesley stood up on his father's tombstone and preached to the villagers the great doctrine—Religion is Love, God and man should be friends. And from this time forth his life was spent in this wonderful work. Was it well spent? Was he truly great, spiritually? intellectually? These are subjects of speculation not essential to the purpose now in hand. It is sufficient here to say, that when John Wesley, at the age of eighty-eight, laid himself down to die, those who distinctively recognized him as their leader and father numbered one hundred and fifty thousand souls; while over five hundred travelling preachers, inspired by his fervor, and stimulated by his example, were carrying forward the work he had begun.
Great or small, wise or foolish, it is clear that no living man ever felt more vitally his great doctrine, or ever applied it so thoroughly to life. So it strikes me. Now, every man has a personal religion more or less vague; but it is most rare that any man's religion pervades and dominates his whole nature, as John Wesley's did. And it is of the nature of miracle almost that any one man should be able to organize his religion into a powerful church in his own lifetime, as John Wesley did. Further, it is remarkable that he had never the wish to do this. He always held by the English Episcopal Church, in which he was born and ordained, and only desired to inspire it with his own fervor, and to bring to its fold the weak and the wicked through all the land. The English Church could not understand this, and its doors were shut against him, so that he preached all his life in rooms and in fields, and almost always to the despised and debased. Thus he and his friends became field preachers and itinerants. Thus, one of the distinctive features of Methodism, lay preaching, grew out of necessity. Assistance he must have; and what bishop would ordain his preachers? It was not until about the year 1784 that Wesley, believing that a bishop was but a presbyter set to do a specific work, brought himself to ordaining Mr. Coke to act as bishop of the American Methodists. Up to this time, lay preaching was almost the whole preaching of the Methodist body in England and America. Since the year 1784, the Methodists in America have been an Episcopal Church, distinct from the English or American Episcopal Churches—ordaining its ministers and administering its sacraments, as it had not done before.
Religion is Love. This I believe to be the central, vital, cardinal sentiment or principle which John Wesley radiated into the souls of men; this it is which is now organized into the most vital and powerful of American churches; and this it is which may—can I say will?—make it the great church of the future time. There is a religion of the soul. There may be devotion of the senses, or of the pocket; but there is no religion of the intellect. The common sense of mankind, I think, has concluded that theology is metaphysics, and that the most various intellectual beliefs may coexist with love of God and virtue. It is certain that
