near to the time when the passion of the Revival was settling itself into organisation and calm; when the fury of persecution was ceasing; Methodism was becoming even a respectable and acknowledged fact. John Newton was born in 1725, and died in 1807. All his sympathies were with the theology and the activities. of the revivalists; but before he most singularly found himself the Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, and St. Mary Woolchurch, he had led a life which, for its marvellous variety of incident, reads like one of Defoe's fictions.

But his parlour in No. 8 Coleman Street Buildings, on a Friday evening, was thronged by all the dignitaries of the evangelical movement of his day. As he said, "I was a wild beast on the coast of Africa, but the Lord caught me and tamed me; and now you come to see me as people go to see the lions in the Tower." A grand old man was John Newton, the young sailor transformed into the saintly old rector; there he sat with few traces of the parson about him, in his blue pea-jacket, and his black neckerchief, liking still to retain something of the freedom of his old blue seas; full of quaint wisdom, which never, like that of his friend Berridge, became rude or droll; quietly sitting there and meditating; his enthusiastic life apparently having subsided into still

ness, while the Hannah Mores, Wilberforces, Claudius Buchanans, and John Campbells, went to him to find their enthusiasm confirmed. The friend of Cowper, who surely deserves to be called the Poet Laureate of the Revivalhimself the author of some of the sweetest hymns we still sing; the biographer of his own wonderful career, and of the life of his friend and brother-in-arms, William Grimshaw; one of the finest of our religious letter-writers; with capacities within him for almost everything he might have thought it wise to undertake, he now seems to us appropriately to close this small gallery we have attempted to present. When the spirit of the Revival was either settling into firmness and consolidation, or striking out into those new and marvellous fields of labour-its natural outgrowth-which another chapter may present succinctly to the eye, John Newton, by his great experience of men, his profound faith, his steady hand and clear eye, became the wise adviser and fosterer of schemes whose gigantic enterprise would certainly have astonished even his capacious intelligence.

In closing this chapter it is quite worth while to notice that, various as were the characters of these men, and of their innumerable comrades, to whom we do homage, although we have no space even to mention their names,

their strength arose from the certainty and the confidence with which they spoke; there was nothing tentative about their teaching. That great scholar, Sir William Hamilton, says that "assurance is the punctum saliens, that is the strong point of Luther's system;" so it was with all these men, "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen;" it was the full assurance of knowledge; and it gave them authority over the men with whom they wrestled, whether in public or private. Whitefield and Wesley alike, and all their followers, had strong faith in God. They were believers in the personal regard of God for the souls of men; and every idea of prayer supposes some such personal regard, whether offered by the highest of high Calvinists, or the simplest primitive Methodist; the whole spirit of the Revival turned on this; these men, as they strongly believed, were able, by the strong attractive force of their own nature, to compel other minds to their convictions. Their history strongly illustrates that that teaching which oscillates to and fro in a pendulous uncertainty is powerless to reform character or influence mind.