those who ought to have known better. Need we wonder, then, that he received a letter from the Board of Excise telling him that the Commissioners could not doubt but that he had plate of which he had neglected to make entry, and requiring him immediately to send a proper return. The following was his answer:-"Sir, I have two silver teaspoons at London, and two at Bristol; this is all the plate which I have at present; and I shall not buy any more while so many around me want bread. Your obedient servant, JOHN WESLEY." His chaise and horses, his clothes, and a few trifles of that kind, were all, his books excepted, that he left at his death. Thus he laid not up treasure upon earth, but in heaven, a good foundation against the time to come, that he might lay hold upon eternal life. Free from the love of money and the impulse. of ambition, the two most ordinary motives of action among civilized men, what powerful principle sustained him in his life-long career of labour and endurance, selfdenial and responsibility? One that never entered into the calculation of his unfriendly critics and biographersa strong sense of duty springing from love to God. The stanza of the hymn so much upon his lips on his dying bed is the key that unlocks his heart, that opens up the mystery of a life otherwise inexplicable :—

"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath,

And when my voice is lost in death

Praise shall employ my nobler powers;

My days of praise shall ne'er be past,

While life, and thought, and being last,

Or immortality endures."

And when the daughters of music were brought low, and the death-rattle was heard in his throat, when lip and

limb were alike stiffening in the paralysis and collapse of death, the last feeble effort of his voice was put forth in syllabling

"I'll praise-I'll praise."

Thus died John Wesley,-an end in harmony with his life. Our Euthanasia shapes itself into resemblance to his dismissal:-"Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!"

But we cannot leave our subject even here without adverting to one of the finest forms in which the benevolence of this great man showed itself-one of the finest forms, in fact, which it can assume amid the war of parties and clash of religious discord—namely, his enlarged charity toward religionists of every name. We believe there is no instance on record in which he was the assailant, and that it was only when covered with the blackest aspersions affecting his character and creed that he came forth to make his modest and, in most cases, convincing apologies. The unmeasured invectives of many a Thersites both in the Church and in the world he met with the philosophic gentleness and gravity of a Ulysses. He seldom forgot in the heat of polemics what was due to himself as a gentleman, a scholar, and a Christian.

His catholicity is seen in the constant object of his labours, which was not to raise a new sect among other sects, but to revive the languid spirit of religion in all, and especially in his own beloved Church. That ever his work and people took another direction was not owing to any crafty scheme, long a hatching in his own bosom, but to the bent of circumstances and the preference of the people themselves. He gave no countenance to prose

lytism, and deprecated, at least, the name of separation. He never put his peculiar views above the fundamentals of the faith; nor, where the differences were the greatest between himself and others, did he for a moment forget that "charity which is the bond of perfectness." He believed that a strong vein of piety ran through the life and death of many Romanists, the monks of La Trappe, and Ignatius Loyola himself. He believed that Pelagius, the Montanists, and other early heretics, as they are called, might be wise and holy men despite their ignominious reputation; and while he vindicates the orthodoxy of Michael Servetus, has, in the same breath, a word of commendation for John Calvin: "I believe that Calvin was a great instrument of God; and that he was a wise and pious man." His enlarged charity deemed the heathen capable of eternal life, and opened heaven even to the brute creation. Wesley was a man to be loved. In these speculative views he may have been right or wrong; but they are an index to his soul, and prove that whatever else he may have been he was certainly not a narrow sectarist nor a cruel bigot. In all the atlases in his library there was not one little map devoted to a Methodist heaven. The distinctive point of his Arminian creed, that redemption is for the world, proves him to have been a person of large, generous, all-comprehending sympathy and love. His sentiments on ecclesiastical controversy are so apposite that we must do ourselves the pleasure of adducing them:

"We may die without the knowledge of many truths, and yet be carried into Abraham's bosom; but if we die without love what will knowledge avail? Just as much as it avails the devil and his angels! I will not quarrel with

you about any opinion; only see that your heart be right toward God, that you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, that you love your neighbour, and walk as your Master walked, and I desire no more. I am sick of opinions; I am weary to bear them; my soul loathes this frothy food. Give me solid and substantial religion; give me an humble and gentle lover of God and man, a man full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy; a man laying himself out in the work of faith, the patience of hope, the labour of love. Let my soul be with these Christians, wheresoever they are, and whatsoever opinion they are of. Whosoever thus doth the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother.””

And we add, capping this declaration with our heart's heartiest approval, let every one that readeth this say Amen. We regret that our space will not allow us to transfer to our pages the fine anecdote of the casual interview between the venerable Charles Simeon, then a young Calvinistic clergyman, and the aged apostle of Methodism, so creditable to the wisdom and piety of both. Our readers who may not be acquainted with it are referred to the Memoir of Simeon by Carus.

Unlike many, unlike most enduring celebrities, Wesley was successful, popular, appreciated during his lifetime, nor had to wait for posthumous praise. This was doubtless owing in part to the practical bent his genius took, which was calculated to win popular regard, but also to the unequalled excellence he displayed in the line he had chosen. The man who was known to have travelled more miles, preached more sermons, and published more books than any traveller, preacher, author, since the days of the

apostles, must have had much to claim the admiration and respect of his contemporaries. The man who exhibited the greatest disinterestedness all his life through, who has exercised the widest influence on the religious world, who has established the most numerous sect, invented the most efficient system of Church polity, who has compiled the best book of sacred song, and who has thus not only chosen eminent walks of usefulness, but in every one of them claims the first place, deserved to be regarded by them and by posterity as no common man.