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ART. VI.

THE TWO WESLEYS.

(CONTINUED FROM APRIL NUMBER, P. 161.)

By the Editor.

Our object, as, perhaps, has been seen, is to furnish, in brief critical essays, a review of the extraordinary work of Isaac Taylor on "Wesley and Methodism." Were we to present a continuous and consecutive examination of it, we should neither realize our own wishes, nor be sustained by the patience of our readers. In our preceding article, we confined ourself to the preliminary portion of the book, in order to give, by isolation, both independence and prominence to its several topics. In this, we propose to enter in limine; on what is, in reality, the threshold of the author's undertaking; the portraits of the two brothers. The artist has taken in hand a very difficult task. It is the highest achievement of the pencil to give a perfect likeness. Finish and drapery are secondary qualities. To impersonate upon the canvas the living or the dead, demands an effort of genius little short of an intellectual transmigration; and after all, the reproduction will inevitably bear the impress of the pangs and distortions of the mental conception, and very wise and honest observers will point out an obvious want of identity with their recollections of the original. The artist and the judge may very widely differ as to the merit of the performance. A fine picture may be a very indifferent likeness. But even the failure of high artistic skill will always give pleasure, and so combine the prominent outlines of the actual subject as to render it certain whom it was his purpose to delineate. The difficulty of the execution is greatly enhanced by the lapse of years after the subject has disappeared from the field of vision, and

by the indistinctness which the fluctuations of concurrent testimony always give to an evanescent image. A philosophic painting may, indeed, be produced; an hypothetical figure may be very ingeniously drawn; but who will undertake to avouch for its verisimilitude? Nor need we wonder, since even daguerreotypes so frequently amaze us by their unnatural features, although the instrument with which they are taken is constructed on the principles of the eye.

If we be not a connoisseur in æsthetics, we are entitled to the liberty which all men take in expressing their opinions of the performances of professional skill; but, as Dr. Blair has well remarked, that "criticism is a human art," we shall enjoy an unalloyed pleasure in tracing the excellencies and beauties which so abundantly enrich Mr. Taylor's elaborate representation, especially of John Wesley; for although he sat for the likeness of Charles, he expended his strength on that of John.

To give the effect of perspective and relief to the principal personage, he introduces into the background, several distant views; and nothing can be more suggestive than his remarks upon some of the original, formative elements of Wesley's character, as exponents of that ecclesiastical organization upon which he impressed his own distinctive traits. Before, however, entering upon these, he indulges in several general reflections upon the rise of Methodism itself, which are equally just and beautiful. It was, in his estimation, no coinage from the mint of human ingenuity and collusion. It bore the impress of an earnest and wonderful spontaneity. It was the genuine development of a healthful process, in minds alive to new spiritual perceptions and impulses, after a long and dismal age of effete and decrepid formalism:

"Methodism did not appear before the world as if it had issued from a conclave; for although it came to be ruled mainly, but never wholly, by one master spirit, it was not devised, plotted, modeled, touched, and retouched by its two or three protectors, who, when they had thus set their hands to its code, prudently hushed their individual opinions, and presented a front of unanimity to the world. This was true of Jesuitism; but it was not true of Methodism."

With respect to Methodism as an aggregate, including all the phases of the great religious movement which bore that name, we will not captiously differ with Mr. Taylor in his account of its manifold sources, and of their individual contrarieties. For, giving prominence and priority to the Wesleyan, there were, undoubtedly, other tributary sources which gave volume and impetus to the tide; and several of these sources brought in, with their contributions, antagonistic qualities. Yet, in this wide sense, there was a virtual unity, notwithstanding the diversity of some of its agencies. The Wesleys, Whitefield, Fietcher and Coke were the illustrious men who, above all others, were honored with its origin and diffusion; who, however dissentient, in some respects, were harmonious in the spirit which animated them. These take their stand in the van of that Methodistic progress which is yet rolling on its triumphs to the limits of the peopled earth.

The place which he assigns this entire corps of evangelical heroes in the scale of intellectual and literary distinction is, with us, neither a matter of contention nor of solicitude. Their meed of praise does not rest upon so equivocal a foundation as either the extent or the depth of their erudition, their logical acuteness, or the power of their eloquence, but upon their sublime and undisputed prerogative of possessing and unfolding the long concealed doctrines of the cross, with the authority and the force of a new revelation. If there be any literary justice in the rank in which Mr. Taylor places them; if not one of them stood on the "high level” of mental nobility; if not one of them possessed a "mind of that amplitude and grandeur, the contemplation of which, as a natural object, excites a pleasurable awe, and swells the bosom with a vague ambition, or with a noble emulation;" if not one of them was "gifted with the philosophic faculty;" if not one "was an accomplished scholar;" if, while "some possessed powers of popular oratory unrivalled by their contemporaries, not one was a great writer;" we demand, that, with the endowments which he concedes to them, that "some were fairly learned, and few illiterate," the level on which

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they really stand is unapproachably higher than that from which he excludes them, and which he awards to the literary and philosophic magnates of this world as their sole inheritance. Admitting, therefore, for the present, what we shall hereafter, in part, dispute, the accuracy of his decision with respect to their merit as scholars, philosophers, and authors, we would repel the inuendo which this apparent justice may coutain. If Mr. Taylor is so solicitous that the world shall not mistake their claim to the reputation of learned men, may it not be his object, just by so much, to disrate them as religious reformers, and to lessen that degree of respect to which their honored achievements so richly entitle them? While, however, we have no right to accuse him of a purpose so deeply sinister, it is nevertheless our duty to guard against a conclusion which may so readily be drawn from his language. Yet we perfectly concur with him, that the problem of Methodism cannot be solved by an appeal to any human causes, however distinguished, but to such only as a carping philosophy does not recognize.

With "a very few exceptions," he purposely omits a notice of the lay preachers, or helpers of Mr. Wesley, as among the founders of Methodism; although he considers many of them to have been remarkable men; because, as he says, none of them left their individual impress upon the movement, how muchsoever they may have accelerated its course. In this omission, for this reason, he is correct. But we have referred to this omission, not so much to endorse it, as to quote a profound observation suggested by it:-"It is not given to men of no early discipline, or who have not, before attaining middle life, made good their want of education by extraordinary efforts, to exert much influence extending beyond their immediate sphere, or which can last a year after the moment of their death. It is the prerogative of the educated class to extend themselves, by the products of their minds, over space and time."

Whilst this declaration is, perhaps, a sufficient concession that the founders of Methodism belonged to the "educated

class," we regard it as embodying a proposition of much higher value; of far-reaching discernment, and of historic truth. It is based upon the laws both of the intellectual and moral economy of man. Those who are to reproduce themselves; to transmit their systems to succeeding generations; to identify themselves with the modes of thought and of action of large masses after their death, must be able by the clearness and compass of their own views, and the well balanced energy of their own characters, virtually to think and to act for posterity. Cultivated minds alone enjoy this power. and education alone, whether early or late in life, is the process by which it is conferred. And, as has been suggested, such is the testimony of history. If uninformed meu have risen to notoriety, and have produced a moral or intellectual agitation during their lives, yet for the want of those real or plausible elements which stand the test of human progress and challenge the respect of influential minds, that agitation. has usually subsided either by the absence of inherent solidity or by the disgust produced by the explosion of its errors. What a potent instrument, then, is education for good or for evil! By its means, error and truth have, respectively, propagated and entrenched themselves in the depths of human thought and human consciousness, for ages. But as the greatest possible power to counteract evil and to promote good is the prerogative and the design of the gospel, it appertains to the church to foster education in all her members, and especially in her ministers, since they are the constituted agents for its perpetuation, and by their position possess peculiar advantages for giving a salutary and permanent direction to the human mind. It is a notable fact, that the founders of Methodism belonged to the "educated class;" and by the blessing of God on this fact, they yet live in their followers. Had they been ignorant men their plans would have perished with them, and their individuality would have ceased with their breath. If Methodism arose under the prestige of a sanctified education, able to sustain itself against the learned opposition of the age, and subsequently to commend itself by

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