meddling with every kind of learning, and consecrating it all to the great end of the christian ministry and the producing of books, which, whether as catechisms for children, treatises for

the formation of mental character, philosophic essays grappling with the difficulties of scholarly minds, or "comfortable words" to "rock the cradle of declining age," were all to become

of value when the nation' should awake to a real spiritual power. They are mostly laid aside now; but they have served more than one generation well; and he, beyond question, was

the first who taught the Protestant Christian Church in England to sing. His hymns and psalms were sounding on when John Wesley was yet a child, and numbers of them were ap

propriated in the first Methodist hymn-book. But Watts and Doddridge, by the conditions of their physical and mental being, were unfitted for popular leaders. Perhaps, also, it must be admitted that they had not that which has been called the "instinct for souls;" they were concerned rather to illustrate and expound the truth of God, and to "adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour," by their lives, than to flash new convictions into the hearts of men. It is characteristic that, good and great as they were, they were both at first inimical to the Great Revival; it seemed to them a suspicious movement. The aged Watts cautioned his younger friend Doddridge against encouraging it, especially the preaching of Whitefield; yet they both lived to give their whole hearts to it; and some of Watts's last words were in blessing, when, near death, he received a visit from the great evangelist.

Thus we need to notice a little carefully the age immediately preceding the rise of what we call Methodism, in order to understand what Methodism really effected; we have seen that the dreadful condition of society was not inconsistent with the existence over the country of eminently holy men, and of even hallowed christian families and circles. If space allowed, it would be very pleasant to step into, and