life-time of its founder, and even later its habits of subjection seemed to make it afraid to assert its own proper character.

Wesley's title to be called "the greatest of ecclesiastical legislators," (Buckle,) with "a genius for government not inferior to Richelieu," (Macaulay,) rests much more in his practical wisdom, shown in yielding to the immediate requirements of his work, than in any remarkable foresight as to its tendencies and certain results. There was, in fact, a perpetual conflict between his theories and his practices, in which the latter usually prevailed. "He devised no system," we are told, but he permitted one of large proportions and marked characteristics to grow out of the work of which he was, under God, the chief agent. Quite probably "he knew not to what his measures would come," and it is equally evident that he cared less for the distant outcome than for the present success in “raising up a holy people; " and yet he was unquestionably "anxious about the future," as he saw his work expanding into ecclesiastical proportions under his hand. Because he so wished, he said "The Methodists were not raised up to form a sect," and yet he saw them become precisely that thing through his own management. "He lived and died loyal [after a fashion] to the Church of England," and yet he organized, under its very shadow, the most formidable division in its own body that has ever occurred. In his heart, and by virtue of the spirtiual forces that impelled him, and despite his unreasoning and unconquerable devotion to the Established Church of England, Wesley, having first received in himself, and afterward set in action, the vital forces that naturally tend to crystallize into genuine Churchhood, afterward provided for the organization of the persons so renewed by the divine Spirit into a simple, but real and thorough, Church organism. And yet, having originated a wide-spread and numerous "congregation of faithful men," he sought through all his life-time to keep it in leading-strings and to dwarf its development; and such was his dread of completing his own work, so manifestly given to him by God, that dying more than fifty years after its inception, he left it in almost chaotic disorder.

Wesley's "Societies "-associated bodies of regenerated persons, brought together for purposes of spiritual edification— were, beyond all question, real Churches, after the New Testa

ment model, and fully answering to the definition of "the Church" found in the Articles of Religion. Of these, certain ministers of the Church of England--and at first only suchbecame teachers and pastors, and thus the two great factors of a true Church were present: first, a congregation of believers; and, second, the divinely ordained teachers and ordinances of the house of God. As soon as these things were arranged, the Churchhood of Methodism was a realized fact. After this, when, in response to the requirements of the case, teachers and pastors, though not "ecclesiastically qualified," were employed-being recognized and steadily occupied in their spiritual vocation-they too became genuine ministers of Christ's Gospel, and "messengers to the Churches," effectually appointed, "for the edification of the body of Christ."

When St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "Christ sent me, not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel," he by necessary implication subordinated, as a ministerial function, the administration of the sacraments to the authoritative preaching of the word; and since in such a case the greater implies the less, whoever is called, whether by Christ or the Church, to the ministration of the word, is also, à fortiori, authorized to perform any of the minor offices of the pastorate. When, therefore, Mr. Wesley had accepted and appointed certain men to preach the Gospel in his Societies and elsewhere, he recognized them as Christian ministers, and as such they possessed all the functions. of that office. It may have been expedient, for prudential reasons, that they should, for a time, abstain from the exercise of some of the minor functions of their ministry; but in doing so they did not disclaim the right to these: and in the earnest. demand of the people for the sacraments at the hands of their religious teachers, and the confessed sympathy of the preachers with them in making this demand, we have the only conditions required for the instituting of perfected pastoral relations. It is evident, also, that in this view those preachers met with almost entire unanimity; nor does it appear that Mr. Wesley himself ever denied that they had this right, though he desired that its exercises should be held in abeyance.*

The organic individuality and genuine ecclesiastical char

* In John Pawson's Memoir of Dr. Whitehead (an unpublished manuscript) are found some remarkable passages on this subject. It should be noted that Paw

acter of Mr. Wesley's "United Societies " was fairly developed during the first decade after his great spiritual transformation -a fact which forty years of restraints and dwarfing could not reverse. Their Churchhood was defective in nothing, except in their practical disuse of a part of their ministerial functions by the preachers, and their denial to their people of what was due to them at the hands of their accepted religious guides and instructors. In 1750 the ecclesiastical character of the associated body of "the people called Methodists" differed in no essential feature from the same body as it was at the decease of its great founder, and those who after that event drew themselves still more closely together were the now recognized predecessors of the British Wesleyan Church of the present time-a body whose truly Churchly character needs no defense. It was not by any formal act of ordination that the ministers of that Church, during almost a hundred years, were recognized, and yet they were accepted by each other, and by those to whom they ministered, as called of God, and qualified by the Holy Spirit for their great work. Respecting Mr. Wesley's restraints, laid upon his preachers as long as he lived, and also the marked deference of his followers, even to the present time, for the Established Church of England, nothing need be said. We certainly have no sympathy either with his scruples or their overweening regard for a rival, not to say superciliously hostile, body, in no particular their ecclesiastical superior, and almost incomparably less effective as an evangelizing agency; and yet it is quite possible that the divine Wisdom and power have brought good out of these displays of human imperfections in good but not infallible men.

American Methodism from the very first assumed for itself

son favored the more conservative policy of Mr. Wesley and the Methodists toward the Established Church, and yet he says: "It is true that a party existed, both among the preachers and people, who were inclined to believe that those men whom God had called to preach might lawfully administer the sacraments, as they were not able to perceive that it required a greater degree of wisdom or piety to qualify a person to baptize a child than to preach the word of God; " and a little further on, in referring to the question of an entire separation of the Methodists from the Church, and noting both the strong feeling against it in the minds of some, and also the unreadiness of the former for such a separate existence, but putting the entire case on other than ecclesiastical grounds, he remarks, "Common prudence prevented them from wishing for that which they knew could not be accomplished."-TYERMAN'S "Wesley," vol. iii, pp. 298, 299.

an ecclesiastical character, and even more rapidly than the parent body became distinctively individualized. A few individuals in New York, in whose hearts the spirit of genuine Methodism had been awakened in Ireland, but which, as to most of them, had almost died out in the land of their exile, became united together for mutual Christian edification. A real New Testament Church was soon formed in the house of one of their number, who also became their minister, and by indubitable results he was soon attested as one divinely called, installed, and sealed, the "angel" or "bishop" of the infant "congregation of faithful men and women." A better authorrized Christian teacher than was Philip Embury has seldom blessed the souls of a company of humble believers; a better authenticated Methodist preacher has never preached a free and full salvation to his fellow-men in this or in any other country. And although, because of his lack of due appreciation of his own calling, or out of deference to the prejudices of others, he forbore to exercise some parts of the functions of his ministry, that fact in no degree invalidated his ministerial authority. Nor was it because of any lack of ecclesiastical completeness that the infant Church in New York sought the recognition and favor of the parent body in Europe, and especially of its venerated leader.. They asked for, because they needed, an increase of their ministerial force, and because they longed for a closer union with those of like precious experiences; and in response to their invitation ministers were sent out from England to labor for the upbuilding of the work in America. Here they found a Church already organized, and provided with the principal ordinances of religion, and their coming brought to it no new element. If at one time more than all others Methodism has presented the sight of a strictly "Original Church of Christ," that scene was presented in the modest dwelling of Philip Embury, afterward re-enacted in the "Rigging Loft," and at length more permanently seen in the chapel on Golden Hill, with only its carpenter bishop. The coming of Mr. Wesley's evangelists, no doubt, greatly refreshed the spirits and strengthened the hands of these believers. This they needed, and nothing more.

The original Methodism of Maryland and Virginia was, if not more completely a Church system, raised up and estab FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXVIII.-8

lished in entire separation from English Methodism, or any other ecclesiastical body; was of wider extent, and more nearly conformed to the organic Methodistic model. Robert Strawbridge, who, though he had at one time been a local preacher in Ireland, had by his removal to America without testimonials or credentials entirely separated himself from Mr. Wesley's Societies, between the years 1760 and 1770 began to preach the Gospel in the State of Maryland. The story of his proceedings, and of the fruits that grew out of his labors, is one of the most heroic chapters of early Methodist history. Beginning in Harford County, where he formed his first class and built a meeting-house, he extended his travels in every direction to Baltimore, to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to Virginia, and to Pennsylvania. He organized his "Societies" after the Wesleyan model, and to them he regularly ministered, with the aid of such "helpers" as were raised up to him from among his own converts, preaching to them the word and administering the sacraments. Among his converts in Harford were the parents of Rev. John Wesley Bond and his brother, Dr. Thomas E. Bond, upon whom he performed the rite of baptism in his infancy; and in Lancaster was the family of Martin Boehm, the father of the original German Methodism, who also gave a son to our ministry, the now venerable centenarian, Rev. Henry Boehm. When Mr. Wesley's missionaries came into these parts they found Methodism already planted, and grown to a good degree of organic completeness, which they took into their own hands and subjected to their own discipline, especially in the matter of the sacraments, of which they wholly deprived the people, although it was in nearly every case literally impossible for them to receive the ordinances from any others.

There is a strange vagueness about the early accounts of Strawbridge's labors and successes, which, considered in connection with their manifest extent and the solidity of the results when found and taken possession of by the English preachers, suggest the thought that there was a reason for this obliviousness of history. "Preachers," writes Stevens, were rapidly raised by him. . . . Sator Stephenson, Nathan Perego, Richard Webster, and others. . . . We have in the early biographies of Methodism frequent intimations of

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