find the ministry a couch of repose instead of a field for toil-a bread-winner rather than a soul-saver by means of painful watchings, fastings, toils, and prayers—has utterly mistaken its nature, and is unworthy of its honour. It is a stewardship, a husbandry, an edification, a ward, a warfare, demanding the untiring effort of the day and unslumbering vigilance of the night to fulfil its duties and secure its reward. It is well to remember that the slothful and the wicked servant are conjoined in the denunciation of the indignant master-"Thou wicked and slothful servant!"

Where there may be sufficient lack of principle to prompt to indolence and self-indulgence, there are few communions which will not present the opportunity to the sluggish or sensual minister. But the Methodist mode of operations is better calculated than perhaps almost any other for checking human corruption when developing itself in this form. The ordinary amount of official duty required of the travelling preachers is enough to keep both the reluctant and the willing labourer fully employed.

And Mr. Wesley exacted no more of others than he cheerfully and systematically rendered himself, daily labour even to weariness being the habit of his life.

He was the prince of missionaries, however humble his self-estimate might be, the prime apostle of Christendom since Luther; his preeminent example too likely to be lost sight of in this missionary age, when the Church, in the bustle of its present activities, has little time to cherish recollections of its past worthies, or to speculate with clearness on the shapes of its future calling and destiny. But in one sense he was more than an apostle. By miracle they were qualified with the gift of tongues for missions

to men of strange speech; but Wesley did not shrink from the toil of acquiring language after language, in order to speak intelligibly on the subject of religion to foreigners. The Italian he acquired that he might minister to a few Vaudois; the German, that he might converse with Moravians; and the Spanish, for the benefit of some Jews among his parishioners. Such rare parts, and zeal, and perseverance, and learning, are seldom combined in any living man: we have never seen nor heard of any one like Wesley in the capacity and liking for labour; we indulge, therefore, very slender hopes of encountering such a one in the remaining space of our pilgrimage. In our sober judgment, it were as sane to expect the buried majesty of Denmark to revisit the glimpses of the moon as hope to find all the conditions presented in John Wesley show themselves again in England. We may not look upon his like again. His labours in a particular department—that of preaching astound from their magnitude; although these, far from being the sum total of his occupations, were but a fraction of a vast whole, and a sample of the rest. During fifty-two years, according to his biographers, he generally delivered two sermons a day, very frequently four or five. Calculating, therefore, at twice a day, and allowing fifty sermons annually for extraordinary occasions, which is the lowest computation that can be made, the whole number in fifty-two years will be forty thousand four hundred and sixty. To these may be added an infinite number of exhortations to the societies after preaching, and other occasional meetings at which he assisted. Add to these his migrations and journeyings to and fro, and none can say that his life was not well filled up. In his younger days he travelled on horseback, and was a

hard but unskilful rider. With a book held up before his eyes by both hands, and the rein dropped on the horse's neck, he often travelled as much as fifty, sixty, or even seventy miles a day; from the quickness of his pace and unguardedness of his horsemanship, endangering his own and the good steed's limbs by frequent falls. At a later period he used a carriage. Of his travels the lowest calculation we can make is four thousand miles annually, which, in fifty-two years, will give two hundred and eight thousand miles; that is, if he had ridden eight times round the globe on which we dwell, he would have had a handsome surplus of miles remaining to have done his achievement into Irish measure. Of the salutary effect of these abundant labours upon his frame we have his personal testimony at a very advanced age. His was a "cruda viridisque senectus" to the last, and he himself a memorable instance of the worth of the OPEN-AIR-ANDHARD-WORK-CURE, a process of more certain value and ready application at all times than hydropathy, homœopathy, or any of the thousand quackeries of the present day.

In person he was small, and, when seen in company with his friends, appeared almost unusually so. An engraving is extant which thus pictures him walking with Hamilton and Cole. It is amazing that so slight a frame, shaken as it had been by early pulmonary attacks, could have endured such incessant exposure and labour. To seek to delineate the more subtile lines or delicate shades of his character, our purpose forbids. The time and space would be wanting, while there is no lack of liking for the task. We shall therefore confine our further remarks to an illustration of what we conceive to be the