effect; the spoiling of worship by "a round of dramatic pantomime, with... scenic accompaniments... only adapted to the lowest stage of human thought," as if the Church were satisfied with itself, and asking the world to be satisfied with it,when fashionable society condescends to patronize it, and when its fruit is chiefly gathered from harvests whose seed it never sowed, it will imitate those who cleave to "beggarly elements," and either altogether discard the living, quickening power, or subordinate it to the dead form. Methodism prescribes an order for public worship; but that order does not conflict with the inspired teaching that "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." It has a ritual, indeed, but such is its simplicity and practicalness that it guards against abuse, and, with its conformity to Scripture, secures uniformity and admitted propriety in the services of the Church. Its ritual is not a yoke, but a teacher-an inspiration.

In a word, all the methods of Methodism, in its several departments, contemplate substantial, and generally early, results, which mark progress and growth. When there are not results after sufficient efforts, and the failure can be traced to the unsuitableness of the methods employed, they are quickly displaced. Fruit is the test of value. Nothing is esteemed as worth having out of which something does not come. We should be damaged by fossilized forms and ornamental appendages that do not signify either force or fruit.

To the work which, with divine favor, it has wrought, Methodism confidently appeals for the vindication of its polity and of its right to be. The work and the polity under which it has come to pass cannot be dissevered. They must be connected in any intelligent, ingenuous investigation, and the one is, on the human side, the chief solution of the other. The wonderful achievements of Methodism are mainly due to its singular economy. Taking the test-principle, that applies to churches no less than to individuals and nations, "by their fruits ye shall know them," and applying it to ourselves, we feel warranted in asserting that our case stands. Our vine, we believe, produces the fruit which proves it to be of the heavenly Father's planting.

The work of Methodism is before the world, and it well-nigh covers the entire earth. It is the religious phenomenon of the

nineteenth century. In our own country. its proportions are largest and most impressive. This country could not have been what it is without it. To it, more than to any other single agency, it is indebted for the Gospel. But all the nations have shared in the blessings that have flowed from it. Universal civilization owes it an immeasurable debt. There is not a Christian denomination in America or Europe which has not been brought under obligations to it. Only bigotry can fail to acknowledge this work, and only bigotry intensified by inexcus able stupidity can disallow the inference which the simplest logic requires.

We do not claim that our polity constitutes us the Church, to the exclusion and unchurching of others. But we do aver that, as far as mere polity can, it invests us with a real churchhood.

As to recognition by others, from whose polity ours differs, we do not beg for it, but assert our right to it, and our perfect equality with any and every other body styling itself a Church. At no vital point has any other body the advantage of us. We owe it to ourselves and to truth never to concede such advantage on any sort of superiority. As to the Pharisaic narrowness which refuses recognition because we prefer substance to shadow, power to pomp, the living present to the dead past, spiritual life to worn-out fables, a ministry that brings men to Christ anywhere without prayer-book or candles or gown to one that has to hunt its legitimacy and authority amid the rubbish and rottenness of the papacy-we need not be concerned about that. We give it our pity and go ahead with our work, neither distressed nor discouraged. "If God be for us, who can be against us?"

As Methodists, while humiliation is befitting because of unfaithfulness in making the most of our appliances and opportunities, we have abundant reason to be grateful for the past and hopeful for the future. It is not presumptuous to believe that, if true to our mission, God will continue to use us in extending his kingdom. A deep sense of our responsibilities as a Church, duly shared by all the preachers and people of Methodism, and a vivid realization of the fact that our perils are more from within than from without, will go far both to prevent the impairment of our system, and to bring ont continuously the greatest efficiency of which it is, or may be made, capable.

ART. VI. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE OF REV. JOHN S. INSKIP-A STUDY.

"ONE seldom finds, even among sincere Christians, that symmetry of life, that balance of character, which the promise of the Scripture holds out to our expectation, and which makes the life of our Lord the ideal life. Where we find great amiability there is apt to be a want of steadfast manliness. Where great force of character exists, we are apt to be disappointed in the lack of the ornaments of a meek and quiet spirit. Where great faith has enabled a soul to step beyond the ordinary reliance of most Christians, we are so often disappointed to find the fullness of a complete faith marred by the divergences of fanaticism, and superstition taking the place of reliance on truth."

We find the above in a modest and little-known volume, a kind of autobiographical memorial of a chronic bed-ridden invalid, in whom the suffering graces seem to have very nearly realized the divine ideal of completeness. Its author was a Quaker preacher, who had been in that sick chamber, and found it to be a veritable Bethel, and was almost persuaded that he had found the exceptional case in which the distinctive and characteristic graces of the subject were neither marred nor discounted by their opposing faults or infirmities. The paragraph is introduced in this place to recognize and affirm an important fact among the phenomena of the Christian life, that nearly every form of graciousness of character is liable to become faulty by verging into an unwholesome or excessive development, so as to destroy the spiritual symmetry and mar the completeness of the divine image in the soul: a consideration well calculated to teach us humility, to mitigate our exactions toward each other, and to induce greater charity in our judgments respecting the character and lives of professed Christians. It is also introduced to indicate the spirit in which we Jesire to consider the Christian career, experimental and active, of an eminent Christian minister.

Rev. John S. Inskip was born in Bradford, England, about seventy years ago. While he was yet a child his parents removed to this country and settled in Eastern Pennsylvania, where their son passed his childhood and youth, and came to

the critical period when the world lay before him and his life's career must be entered upon. His outfit for that great enterprise was neither large nor liberal. He was not learned nor wealthy; but he had a sound mind in a sound body, was trained to habits of industry and self-reliance, and, being endowed with a full share of hopefulness and buoyancy of spirit, the outlook was to him quite the opposite of discouraging. But just at this point in his history, that is, as he was nearing manhood, an event occurred in his experience that changed the tendencies of his aspirations and gave a new direction to all his purposes, and which effectually determined the course of his life. His father's house was not at that time, in the higher and better sense, a Christian home; and yet it was not destitute of religious and Christianizing influences, which also largely permeated and tempered the social community in which he lived, and of whose spirit he became unconsciously a partaker. At sixteen years old he was converted, and became a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The value of such a transition in the case of an active and self-reliant American youth, just bursting forth into life's activities, with the unrestrained freedom and large self-consciousness that one recognizes in that class of persons, is quite beyond any comparative estimate. It directly and at once introduced him to new and better relationships, placed him in more wholesome and conservative associations, and surrounded him with influences. that pointed him to a high spiritual ideal, as both possible of attainment and altogether to be desired. If he was truly converted-which need not be doubted--the fundamental elements of his character, the first principles of his being, the law of his life, his will and affections, had all been brought into new conditions. Obedience to God had taken the place of the natural self-will; devotion had replaced the naturally dominant egoism; and the instinctive trend of the whole moral nature had become Godward. The course of living and the objects to be aimed at the pleasures, ambitions, and attainments that had risen up before the youthful imagination—were now to be cast down, and an entirely new path entered upon, that was to be pursued from motives before unknown to him. We are considering our subject as simply an ordinary Christian youth, born of the Spirit, and honestly endeavoring to fulfill

his baptismal vows, "to renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so as not to follow or be led by them;" and the after life, which we are now to consider, answers to and proves that he was such in his experience and in his conduct.

It is also agreeable to the known facts of the case to assume that his conversion was the great and commanding event of his history, because his whole after life was fashioned by it; that this was something real, a spiritual regeneration that raised him to a higher plane of being, with better aspirations and a broader and clearer spiritual vision. It would be vain to conjecture what he would have been without that great change; but whatever he became-all that we contemplate in his life and character as seen in his history, or that we cherish as worthy to be remembered respecting him-depended upon, and in some measure grew out of, that great event. Instead of continuing in his natural estate of unspiritual carnality, he had been brought to know his Maker as a sin-pardoning God, and to accept his high calling to serve and please God in newness of life. And although we might suspect that his later life was not entirely free from doubts and fears, and perhaps occasional and partial backslidings, yet the better impulses prevailed in the sequel, and the Christian life triumphed.

Then there came another crisis in his experience, when he seemed to hear the voice of the Spirit speaking to his deepest religious consciousness and saying, "The Lord hath need of thee," and so calling him, with a specifical designation, to the ministry of the Gospel. It was an original Methodist doctrine -it may be devoutly hoped that it will never become antiquated, and the more so because the more spiritual of other denominations are beginning to recognize it-that the call to the ministry is direct and specific, the voice of the Spirit coming directly to the spiritual consciousness of the child of God; and, accordingly, there must be, in the history of every one whom the Head of the Church chooses for the special service of the ministry, a time when the soul seems to hear the "still small voice" of the Spirit intimating "the Master has come and calleth for thee." To this the first response is not unfrequently a decided protest of unwillingness-pleading unfitness