the grave of John Knox ever more applicable than to our intrepid modern John : "There lies one who never feared the face of man." Unbounded benevolence was another leading trait in his character. This was the basis of his life, the spring of his self-denial and his labours. A recluse at Oxford, musty folios and metaphysics could not extinguish the smouldering fire within "He thought as a sage, but he felt as a man." Afterward the fire burst forth; he kindled as he flew over the world, a flaming seraph of mercy to mankind. At the University his benevolence led him into frightful prisons and condemned cells, into hospital and lazar-house; from the society of the common-room and beloved books to converse with felons and miserable sufferers. It curtailed his bread and his dress, it debarred him of the comfort of a well-shorn head, it led to a course of self-sacrifice and effort for the benefit of the wretched and the sinful, which put his sincerity sorely to the test, and lasted with his life. His heart bled for the world; he saw sin bursting out in blotches of sorrow all over the face of society, and he longed to purify, console, and heal. He could not look upon men drawn unto death and ready to be slain without attempting their rescue. He saw no hope for their bodies or their souls but in the labours and voluntary gifts of Christians for their salvation. He felt for their fate; but, eminently practical, he felt in bed and board, in clothing and comfort. His was sumptuary sensibility more than tearful, active compassion rather than passive. Merely because more easy of illustration, and not for a moment putting it in comparison with the ardour of his soul to do good, we adduce his monetary benevolence in proof of our point-a benevolence which would give all, do all, reserve nothing, provided it could but win a revenue of glory to God and happiness to wretched men. Never did any man part with money more freely. His charities knew no limit but his means. He gave away all that he had beyond bare provision for his present wants. He began this procedure early, and never left off till he had done with earth. In his first year at college he received £30, and making £28 suffice for his necessities, he gave away in charities £2. The next year he received £60, but still making £28 meet his expenditure, he gave away £32. The third year he received £90 and gave away £62. His receipts in the fourth year increased by the same sum as before, and out of £120 he gave away all but his primitive £28. And thus he acted through life, having given away in charities, it is believed, as much as £30,000, without a moment's thought for himself, his hands open as day, his heart the dwelling-place of kind ness. His generous and unstinted liberality finds its most convincing proof in his circumstances at death. He had often and publicly declared that his own hands should be his executors, and that if he died worth £10 beyond the value of his books and other inconsiderable items, he would give the world leave to call him a thief and a robber. He made all he could, and his publications were numerous and profitable; he saved all he could, not wasting so much as a sheet of paper; and then he gave all he could, with an angel's sublime disregard of gold and silver and the wealth the world sets such store by. The notion that he must be enriching himself prevailed even among 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 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 proselytism, 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 : |