for his housekeeper there a Mrs. Brass, a good and faithful Methodist; the old Earl was fond of talking with her upon religious matters, and one day she read to him the well-known hymn, "All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw nigh." When she came to the lines,

"The Lord in the day of His anger did lay

Our sins on the Lamb, and he bore them away,"

the Earl looked up and said, "Stop! don't you think, Mrs. Brass, that ought to be, 'The Lord in the day of his mercy did lay'?"

The old lady did not admit the validity of his lordship's theology; but it very abundantly showed that his experience had passed through the verse, and reached to the true meaning of the hymn. An old blind woman was hearing Peter McOwan preach. He quoted these lines: "The Lord pours eyesight on the blind;

The Lord supports the fainting mind."

The poor old woman was not happy until she met the preacher, and she said, "But are there really such sweet verses? Are you sure the book contains such a hymn ?" and he read the whole to her. It is one by Watts:

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

Innumerable are the anecdotes of these hymns; they inaugurated really the rise of Eng

lish hymnology; and it is not too much to say that, as compared with them, many more recent hymns are as tinsel compared with gold. A writer truly says: "They sob, they swell, they meet the spirit in its most hushed and plaintive mood. They roll and bear it aloft, in its most inspired and prophetic moods, as on the surge of more than a mighty organ swell; among the mines and quarries, and wild moors of Cornwall, among the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in chambers of death, in the most joyous assemblages of the household, they have relieved the hard lot, and sweetened the pleasant one; and even in other lands soldiers and sailors, slaves and prisoners, have recited with what joy these words have entered into their life."

Thus the great hymns of this period grew and became a religious power in the land, strangely contradicting a verdict which Cardinal Wiseman pronounced some years since, that "all Protestant devotion is dead." While we give all honour to the fine hymns of Denmark and Germany, many of the best of which were translated with the movement, it may, with no exaggeration, be said that the hymnology of England in the eighteenth century is the finest and most complete which the history of the Church has known.

CHAPTER VII.

LAY PREACHING AND LAY PREACHERS.

THERE came with the work of the Revival a practice, without which it is more than questionable if it would have obtained such a rapid and abiding hold upon the various populations and districts of the country; this was lay preaching. The designation must have a more inclusive interpretation than we generally apply to it; we must understand by it rather the work of those men who, in contradistinction to the great leaders of the Revival-men of scholarship, of universities, and of educationpossessed none of these qualifications, or but in a more slight and undisciplined degree. They were converted men, modified by various temperaments; they one and all possessed an ardent zeal; but, in many instances, we shall find that they were as much devoted to the work of the ministry as those who had received a regular ordination. It is singular that prejudices so strong should exist against lay preaching and preachers, for the practice has surely received the sanction of the most ancient

usages of the Church, as even Dr. Southey admits, in his notes to the Life of Wesley. Thus, in the history of the Church, this phenomenon could scarcely be regarded as new. Orders of preaching friars; "hedge-preachers," "black, white, and grey," with all their company; disciples of Francis, Dominic, or Ignatius, had spread over Europe during the dark and mediæval ages. Although this rousing element of Church life had not found much expression in the churches of the Reformation, yet with the impulse of the new Revival, up started these men by multitudes. The reason of this was very simple. There is a well-known little anecdote of some town missionary standing up in a broad highway preaching to a multitude. He was arrested by à Roman Catholic priest, who asked him from the edge of the crowd by what authority he dared to stand there? and who had given him the right to preach? The man had his New Testament in his hand; he rapidly turned to the last chapter of it, and said, "I find it written here, 'Let him that heareth say, Come!' I have heard, and I would say Come!" The anecdote represents suffi- ' ciently the rise and progress of lay preaching in the Revival. There first appeared, naturally, a simple set of men, who, in their different spheres, would, perhaps, lead and direct a

prayer-meeting, and round it with some pious and gentle exhortation. We have already pointed out the necessity soon felt for frequent and reciprocative services; these were not the lay preachers to whom we refer; but in this fraternal form of Church fellowship, the lay preacher had his origin.

Wesley imposed restrictions upon his helpers which he soon found himself compelled to renounce. John Wesley was a strong adherent to the idea of Church order. The first lay preacher in his communion who leapt over the traces was Thomas Maxfield. It was at the Foundry in Moor Fields. Wesley was in Bristol, and the intelligence was conveyed to him. He appears to have regarded it as a serious and dangerous innovation. The good Susannah Wesley, his mother-now past threescore years and ten-infirm and feeble, was yet living in the Chapel House of the Foundry. To her John hurried on his arrival in London; and after his affectionate salutations and inquiries, he expressed such a manifest dissatisfaction and anxiety that she inquired the cause. With some indignation and unusual abruptness, he said, "Thomas Maxfield has turned preacher, I find;" and then the wise and saintly woman gave him her advice. She reminded him that, from her prejudices against lay preaching he