luteness and godless indifference of the age, met together in each other's rooms for the purpose of sustaining each other in the determination to live a holy life, and to bring their mutual help to the reading and opening of the Word of God. From different parts of the country they met together there; when they went forth, their works, their spheres were different; but the power and the beauty of the old college days seem to have accompanied them through life; they realised the Divine life as a real power from that commencement to the close of their career, although it is equally interesting to notice how the framework of their opinions changed. Some of their names are comparatively unknown now, but John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and James Hervey, are well known; nor is John Gambold unknown, nor Benjamin Ingham, who married into the family of the Countess of Huntingdon, of whom we will speak a little more particularly when we visit the wild Yorkshire of those days; nor Morgan of Christ Church, whose influence is described as the most beautiful of all, a young man of delicate constitution and intense enthusiasm, who visited and talked with the prisoners in the neighbourhood, visited the cottages around to read and pray, left his memory as a blessing upon his companions,

and was very early called away to his reward. This obscure life seems to have been one most honoured in that which came to be called by the wits of Oxford, "The Holy Club."

It was just about this time that Voltaire was predicting that, in the next generation, Christianity would be overthrown and unknown throughout the whole civilised world. Christianity has lived through,. and long outlived many such predictions. Voltaire had said, "It took twelve men to set up Christianity; it would only take one" (conceitedly referring to himself) "to overthrow it ;" but the work of those whom he called the "twelve men" is still of some account in the world-their words are still of some authority, and there are very few people on the face of the earth at this moment who know much of, and fewer still who care much for the wit of the vain old infidel. That Voltaire's prediction was not fulfilled, under the Providential influence of that Divine Spirit who never leaves us in our low estate, was greatly owing to this obscure and despised "Holy Club" of Oxford. These young men were feeling their way, groping, as. they afterwards admitted, and somewhat in the dark, after those experiences, which, as they were to be assurances to themselves, should be also their most certain means of usefulness to others.

They were also called Methodists. It is singular, but neither the precise etymology nor the first appropriation of the term Methodist has, we believe, ever been distinctly or satisfactorily settled. Some have derived it from an allusion in Juvenal to a quack physician, some to a passage from the writings of Chrysostom, who says, "to be a methodist is to be beguiled," and which was employed in a pamphlet against Mr. Whitefield. Like some other phrases, it is not easy to settle its first import or importation into our language. Certainly it is much older than the times to which this book especially refers. It seems to be even contemporary with the term Puritan, since we find Spencer, the librarian of Sion College under Cromwell, writing, "Where are now our Anabaptists and plain pack-staff Methodists, who esteem all flowers of rhetoric in sermons no better than stinking weeds?" A writer in the British Quarterly tells a curious story how once in a parish church in Huntingdonshire, he was listening to a clergyman, notorious alike by his private character and vehement intolerance, who was entertaining his audience, on a week evening, by a discourse from the text, Ephesians iv. 14, "Whereby they lie in wait to deceive." He said to his people, "Now, you do not know Greek; I know

Greek, and I am going to tell you what this text really says; it says, 'they lie in wait to make you Methodists.' The word used here is Methodeian, that is really the word that is used, and that is really what Paul said, 'They lie in wait to make you Methodists'-a Methodist means a deceiver, and one who deludes, cheats, and beguiles." The Grecian scholar was a little at fault in his next allusion, for he proceeded to quote that other text, "We are not ignorant of his devices," and seemed to be under the impression that "device" was the same word as that on which he had expended his criticism. "Now," said he, "you may be ignorant, because you do not know Greek, but we are not ignorant of his devices, that is, of his methods, his deceivers, that is, his Methodists." In such empty wit and ignorant punning it is very likely that the term had its origin.

John Wesley passed through a long, singular, and what we may call a parti-coloured experience, before his mind came out into the light. In those days his mind was a singular combination of High Churchism, amounting to what we should call Ritualism now, and mysticism, both of which influences he brought from Epworth the first from his father, the second from the strong fascination of the writings of William Law. He found, however, in

the "Holy Club" that which helped him. He tells us how, when at Epworth, he travelled many miles to see a "serious man," and to take counsel from him. Sir," said this person, as if the right word were given to him at the right moment, exactly meeting the necessities of the man standing before him, "Sir, you wish to serve God and to go to heaven: remember you cannot serve Him alone; you must therefore find companions, or make them. The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion." It must be admitted that the enthusiasm of the mystics has always been rather personal than social; but the society at Oxford was almost monastic, nor is it wonderful that, with the spectacle of the dissolute life around them, these earnest men adopted rules of the severest self-denial and asceticism. John Wesley arrived in Oxford first in 1720; he left for some time. Returning home to assist his father, he became, as we know, to his father's immense exultation, Fellow of Lincoln College.

In 1733 George Whitefield arrived at Oxford, then in his nineteenth year. Like most of this band, Whitefield was, if not really, comparatively poor, and dependent upon help to enable him to pursue his studies; not so poor, perhaps, as an illustrious predecessor in the same college (Pembroke), who had left only the year