were instructed also not to pray above eight or ten minutes at most, without intermission, unless for some pressing reason.

Before an aspirant was admitted upon trial as an itinerant, he was exercised as a local preacher; and many persons remained contentedly in this humbler office, which neither took them from their families nor interfered with their worldly concerns. They carried on their business, whatever that might be, six days in the week, and preached on the seventh but no person was admitted to this rank, unless he were thought competent by the preachers of the circuit. The places which they were to visit were determined by the assistant, and their conduct underwent an inquiry every quarter. Without their aid, Methodism could not have been kept up over the whole country, widely as it was diffused; and all that they received from the society was a little refreshment, at the cost of the people to whom they preached, and perhaps the hire of a horse for the day.

A still more important part was performed by the leaders, who are to Methodism what the non-commissioned officers are in an army. The leader was appointed by the assistant: it was his business regularly to meet his class, question them, in order, as to their religious affections and practice, and advise, caution, or reprove, as the case might require. If any members absented themselves from the classmeeting, he was to visit them, and inquire into the cause; and he was to render an account to the officiating preacher of those whose conduct appeared suspicious, or was in any way reprehensible. By this means, and by the class-paper for every week, which the leaders were required to keep, and regularly produce, the preachers obtained a knowledge of every individual member within their circuit; and, by the class-tickets, which were renewed every quarter, a regular census of the society was effected. The leaders not only performed the office of drilling the young recruits, they acted also as the tax-gatherers, and received the weekly contributions of their class, which they paid to the local stewards, and the local stewards to the steward of the circuit.

Thus far the discipline of the Methodists was well devised: if the system itself had been unexceptionable, the spiritual police was perfect. But they were divided into bands as well as classes; and this subdivision, while it answered no one end of possible utility, led to something worse than the worst practice of the Romish church. The men and the women, and the married and the single, met separately in these bands, for the purpose of confessing to each other. They engaged to meet once a week at least, and to speak, each in order, freely and plainly, the true state of their souls, with the faults they had committed in thought, word, or deed, and the temptations they had felt during the week. They were to be asked "as many, and as searching questions as may be, concerning their state, sins, and temptations"-These four, in particular, at every meeting: What known sin have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How was you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? And before any person entered into one of these bands, a promise of the most unreserved openness was required. Consider, do you desire we should tell you whatsoever we VOL. II.

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think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear, concerning you? Do you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom? Is it your desire and design to be on this, and all other occasions, entirely open, so as to speak every thing that is in your heart without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?" The nature, and the inevitable tendency of this mutual inquisition, must be obvious to every reflecting mind; and it is marvellous, that any man should have permitted his wife* or his daughter to enter into these bands, where it is not possible for innocence to escape contamination.†

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The institution of the select society or band was not liable to the same objection. This was to consist of persons who were earnestly athirst for the full image of God, and of those who continually walked in the light of God, having fellowship with the Father and the Son in other words, of those who had attained to such a degree of spiritual pride, that they professed to be in this state-the adepts of Methodism, who were not ashamed to take their degree as perfect. "I saw," says Mr. Wesley, "it might be useful to give some advice to those who thus continued in the light of God's countenance, which the rest of their brethren did not want, and probably could not receive. My design was not only to direct them how to press after perfection, to exercise their every grace, and improve every talent they had received, and to incite them to love one another more, and to watch more carefully over each other; but also te have a select company, to whom I might unbosom myself on all occasions, without reserve; and whom I could propose, to all their brethren, as patterns of love, of holiness, and of all good works. They had no need of being encumbered with many rules, having the best rule of all in their hearts." Nevertheless, the judicious injunction was given them, that nothing which was spoken at their meetings should be spoken again. Wesley says, he often felt the advantage of these meetings, and experienced there, that in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. But they placed the untenable doctrine of perfection in so obtrusive and obnoxious a light, that he found it difficult to maintain them; and they seem not to have become a regular part of the system.

The watch-night was another of Wesley's objectionable institutions. It originated with some reclaimed colliers of Kingswood, who, having been accustomed to sit late on Saturday nights at the ale-house, transferred their weekly meeting, after their conversion, to the school-house, and continued there praying and singing hymns,

Wesley has himself recorded an instance of mischief arising from these bands. "I searched to the bottom," says he, "a story I had heard in part, and found it another tale of real wo. Two of our society had lived together in uncommon harmony, when one, who met in band with E. F., to whom she had mentioned that she had found a temptation toward Dr. F., went and told her husband she was in love with him, and that she had it from her own mouth. The spirit of jealousy seized him in a moment, and utterly took away his reason. And some one telling him his wife was at Dr. F.'s, on whom she had called that afternoon, he took a great stick, and ran away, and meeting her in the street, called out strumpet! strumpet! and struck her twice or thrice. He is now thoroughly convinced of her innocence; but the water cannot be gathered up again. He sticks there- I do thoroughly forgive you, but I can never love you more." After such an example, Wesley ought to have abolished this part of his institutions.

In one of his letters Wesley says, "I believe Miss F. thought she felt evil before she did, and, by that very thought, gave occasion to its re-entrance." And yet he did not perceive the danger of leading his people into temptation, by making them recur to every latent thought of evil; and compelling them to utter, with their lips, imaginations which might otherwise have been suppressed within their hearts for ever!

far into the morning. Wesley was advised to put an end to this ; but, "upon weighing the thing thoroughly, and comparing it with the practice of the ancient Christians," he could see no cause to forbid it; because he overlooked the difference between their times and his own, and shut his eyes to the obvious impropriety of midnight meetings. So he appointed them to be held once a month, near the time of full moon. "Exceedingly great," says he, "are the blessings we have found therein; it has generally been an extremely solemn season, when the word of God sunk deep into the hearts even of those who till then knew him not. If it be said, this was only owing to the novelty of the thing, (the circumstance which still draws such multitudes together at those seasons,) or perhaps to the awful stillness of the night, I am not careful to answer in this matter. Be it so however, the impression then made on many souls has never since been effaced. Now, allowing that God did make use either of the novelty, or any other indifferent circumstance, in order to bring sinners to repentance, yet they are brought, and herein let us rejoice together. Now, may I not put the case further yet? If I can probably conjecture, that either by the novelty of this ancient custom, or by any other indifferent circumstance, it is in my power to save a soul from death, and hide a multitude of sins, am I clear before God if I do not ?-if I do not snatch that brand out of the burning?”

The practice which Wesley thus revived had been discountenanced, even in the most superstitious Catholic countries, for its inconvenience, and its manifest ill tendency; and therefore it had long been disused. While the converts to his doctrine retained the freshness of their first impression, watch-nights served to keep up the feeling to the pitch at which he wished to maintain it; and if any person, who was almost a Methodist, attended one of these meetings, the circumstances were likely to complete his conversion. For the sake of these advantages, Wesley disregarded the scandal which this part of his institutions was sure to occasion; and he seems not to have considered the effect among his own people, when their first fervour should have abated, and the vigils be attended as a mere formality. He also appointed three love-feasts in a quarter: one for the men, a second for the women, and the third for both together; "that we might together eat bread," he says, "as the ancient Christians did, with gladness and singleness of heart. At these love-feasts (so we termed them, retaining the name, as well as the thing, which was in use from the beginning,) our food is only a little plain cake and water; but we seldom return from them without being fed not only with the meat which perisheth, but with that which endureth to everlasting life." A travelling preacher presides at these meetings: any one who chooses may speak; and the time is chiefly employed in relating what they call their Christian experience. In this point, also, Mr. Wesley disregarded the offence which he gave, by renewing a practice that had notoriously been abolished, because of the abuses to which it led.

It cannot be supposed that a man of his sagacity should have overlooked the objections to which such meetings as the watch-nights and the love-feasts were obnoxious; his temper led him to despise, and

to defy public opinion; and he saw how well these practices accorded with the interests of Methodism as a separate society. It is not sufficient for such a society that its members should possess a calm, settled principle of religion to be their rule of life and their support in trial religion must be made a thing of sensation and passion, craving perpetually for sympathy and stimulants, instead of bringing with it peace and contentment. The quiet regularity of domestic devotion must be exchanged for public performances; the members are to be professors of religion; they must have a part to act, which will at once gratify the sense of self-importance, and afford employment for the uneasy and restless spirit with which they are possessed. Wesley complained that family religion was the grand desideratum among the Methodists; but, in reality, his institutions were such as to leave little time for it, and to take away the inclination, by making it appear flat and unprofitable after the excitement of classmeetings, band-meetings, love-feasts, and midnight assemblies.

Whenever a chapel was built, care was taken that it should be settled on the Methodist plan; that is, that the property should be vested, not in trustees, but in Mr. Wesley and the Conference. The usual form among the dissenters would have been fatal to the general scheme of Methodism; "because," said Wesley, "wherever the trustees exert the power of placing and displacing preachers, there itinerant preaching is no more. When they have found a preacher they like, the rotation is at an end; at least till they are tired of him, and turn him out. While he stays, the bridle is in bis mouth. He would not dare speak the full and the whole truth; since, if he displeased the trustees, he would be liable to lose his bread; nor would he dare expel a trustee, though ever so ungodly, from the society. The power of the trustees is greater than that of any patron, or of the king himself, who could put in a preacher, but could not put him out." Thus be argued, when a chapel at Birstall had been erroneously settled upon trustees; and the importance of the point was felt so strongly by the Conference, that it was determined, in case these persons would not allow the deed to be cancelled, and substitute one upon the Methodist plan, to make a collection throughout the society, for the purpose of purchasing ground, and building another chapel as near the one in question as possible.

Wesley never wished to have any chapel or burial-ground consecrated; such ceremonies he thought relics of popery, and flatly superstitious. The impossibility of having them consecrated, led him, perhaps, to consider the ceremony in this light, at a time when he had not proceeded so far as to exercise any ecclesiastical function, for which he was not properly authorized. The buildings themselves were of the plainest kind: it was difficult to raise money* even for

*The history of one of these chapels, at Sheerness, is curious. "It is now finished," says Wesley, in his Journal for 1786, but by means never heard of. The building was undertaken, a few months since, by a little handful of men, without any probable means of finishing it: but God so moved the hearts of the people in the dock, that even those who did not pretend to any religion, carpenters, shipwrights, labourers, ran up at all their vacant hours, and worked with all their might without any pay. By these means a large square house was soon elegantly finished, both within and without. And it is the neatest building, next to the new chapel in London, of any in the south of England."

A meeting-house at Haslinden, in Lancashire, was built for them on speculation, by a person not connected with the society in any way. He desired only three per cent. for what he laid out, (about 8007.) provided the seats let for so much; of which, says Wesley, there is little doubt. This was in 1788.

these; but Mr. Wesley had the happy art of representing that as a matter of principle, which was a matter of necessity; and, in the tastelessness of their chapels, the Methodists were only upon a level with the dissenters of every description. The *octagon, which, of all architectural forms, is the ugliest, he preferred to any other, and wished it to be used wherever the ground would permit : but it has not been generally followed. The directions were, that the windows should be sashes, opening downwards; that there should be no tub-pulpits, and no backs to the seats; and that the men and women should sit apart. A few years before his death, the committee in London proposed to him that families should sit together, and that private pews might be erected; "thus," he exclaims, "overthrowing, at one blow, the discipline which I have been establishing for fifty years!" But, upon further consideration, they yielded to his opinion.

He prided himself upon the singing in his meeting-houses: there was a talent in his family both for music and verse; and he availed himself, with great judgment, of both. A collection of hymns was published for the Society, some few of which were selected from various authors; some were his own composition; but far the greater part were by his brother Charles. Perhaps no poems have ever been so devoutly committed to memory as these, nor quoted so often upon a death-bed. The manner in which they were sung tended to impress them strongly on the mind: the tune was made wholly subservient to the words, not the words to the tune.

The Romanists are indebted for their church-music to the Benedictines, an order to which all Europe is so deeply indebted for many things. Our fine cathedral service is derived from them; may it continue for ever! The psalmody of our churches was a popular innovation, during the first years of the Reformation; and the psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins were allowed to be sung, not enjoined. The practice, however, obtained; and having contributed, in no slight measure, to the religious revolution, when the passion wherein it originated was gone by, it became a mere interlude in the service, serving no other purpose than that of allowing a little breathing-time to the minister; and the manner in which this interval is filled, where there is no organ to supply the want of singers, or cover their defects, is too often irreverent and disgraceful. Aware of the great advantage to be derived from psalmody, and with an ear, as well as an understanding, alive to its abuse, Wesley made it an essential part of the devotional service in his chapels; and he triumphantly contrasted the practice of his people,

*His predilection for this form seems to have arisen from a sight of the Unitarian meeting-house at Norwich, "perhaps," he says, "the most elegant one in Europe. It is eight-square, built of the finest brick, with sixteen sash windows below, as many above, and eight sky-lights in the dome, which, indeed, are purely ornamental. The inside is finished in the highest taste, and is as clean as any nobleman's saloon. The communion-table is fine mahogany: the very latches of the pew doors are polished brass. How can it be thought that the old coarse Gospel should find admission here?" The sort of humility, which is implied in this sneer, is well charactered by Landor, when he calls it

"A tattered garb that pride wears when deform'd."

It is no wonder that he was struck by the cleanness of the chapel. This curious item occurs in the minutes of Conference for 1776. "Q. 23. Complaint is made that sluts spoil our houses. How can we prevent this? A. Let no known slut live in any of them."

Those who have searched into the matter with the utmost care and curiosity," says Collier, (vol. ii. 326.) "could never discover any authority either from the crown or the convocation."