leading traits of John Wesley's character, never so specified that we are aware of before, yet lying so palpably on the surface, that they have only to be named to be recognised. Without the preeminent qualities in question, no one was ever great and good; and as we have no scruple in calling him great and good beyond easy comparison, so are these qualities to be found developed in him to an unusual degree. They made him what he became, the successful reformer of his age, and one of England's noblest worthies, while his system will make him a benefactor to millions yet unborn.

The distinctive features of character we unhesitatingly ascribe to him, are an indomitable firmness, and a boundless benevolence. John Wesley was a man in a singular measure tenax propositi. Where he thought himself certainly right, nothing on earth could move him. In all such cases this quality is a great virtue, but in cases of a different complexion it is a great fault. In questions of doubtful propriety and prudence it will bear the ugly names of obstinacy and self-will. But, stigmatize it as we please, there never was a great man without a strong will, and an infusion of self-reliance sufficient to raise him above the dauntings of opposition and reliance upon props. It is a heritable quality, as transmissible from father to son, as the sage or "foolish face." Wesley certainly derived it from his parents. The daughter of the eminent non-conformist rector of Cripplegate, Dr. Annesley, who at thirteen years of age had studied the state Church controversy, and made up her mind, with force of reason too, to contemn her father's decision, and take her place for life on the other side, cannot be supposed to have been wanting in firmness; who, further, would never

renounce her Jacobite respect for the jus divinum of the Stuart kings, nor say amen to her husband's prayers for him of the Revolution, nor bow beneath the thousand ills of her married life, and pursued the onward, even, and unwearying tenor of her way, undismayed by censure, uncrushed by poverty and domestic cares, unchanging and unchanged to the last, could not be wanting in it. Nor was the sire less endowed with it, though there was more of petulance and human passion in its display in him. The man whose whole life was a perpetual struggle with circumstances and war with opinions, and a series of ill-rewarded efforts the wight who stole away from the dissenting academy, whence they sohoed him in vain, and without consulting friend or relative, tramped it to Oxford, and entered himself a penniless servitor; who afterward, a right loyal but very threadbare clergyman, rode off in a huff from his wife, nor rejoined her for a twelvemonth, till the death of King William released him from his sturdily kept but unrighteous vow-who "fought with wild beasts" for high Church of the highest order, and shrank from no cuffs he caught in such a cause; and who, when his "Job" was consumed in the fire that burnt his parsonage, sat down to renew the labour of years, and recompose and rewrite his learned Latin folio:-these are so many indications of indomitable firmness, that we should be blind as moles to overlook its presence in his character. John Wesley had the same unbending sinew. He too was made of stern unpliant stuff, and to drive the Tiber back to its sources were as easy a task as to turn him back from a course deliberately chosen with the approval of his judgment. Opponents, strong and numerous enough, he had to encounter, to justify concession, had he been so

disposed, nor was reason always so visibly on his side but he might have paused. We shall name an occasion or two such as rarely occur in the life of a good man, which signalized the lordliness of his will, and proved him to be endowed with a rare determination. We omit the ridicule and minor persecutions provoked by the religious singularities of his early career, as not sufficient to turn even an aspen-minded man who had any earnest devotion about him, from his way, and note his first most trying decision that by which he was led to renounce his father's living.

Shortly before his father's decease, it occurred to the head of the family, looking anxiously forward to its fortunes, and those of his parish, how desirable it would be that his son John should succeed him in his cure, at once for the perpetuation of the religious care he had exercised over his parishioners, and that his wife and daughters might retain their accustomed home at the parsonage. Here was every consideration to move a susceptible manregard for souls, veneration for a parent in the ministry, respect for hoar hairs grown gray in the service of the Church, and Christian and family ties of more than ordinary strength-all put before him in a strain of uncommon force and pathos by his father in his final appeal.

He was

But none of these things moved our hero. devout, affectionate, and filial, but firm; so notoriously so, that his elder brother Samuel, writing to him on the subject in December, 1734, says: "Yesterday I received a letter from my father, wherein he tells me you are unalterably resolved not to accept of a certain living if you could get it. After this declaration I believe no one can move your mind but Him who made it." The question was, in