poetical works; nor are there many words among them of remarkable strength. The Mystery of Life is certainly pleasingly impressive; and his epitaph on himself deserves quotation :

"Ask not, "Who ended here his span ?'

His name, reproach, and praise, was Man.
'Did no great deeds adorn his course?'
No deed of his but showed him worse:
One thing was great, which God supplied,
He suffered human life-and died.
'What points of knowledge did he gain?'
That life was sacred all-and vain :

'Sacred, how high? and vain, how low?'
He knew not here, but died to know."

Such were some of the men who went forth from Oxford. Meantime, as the flame of revival was spreading, Oxford again starts into singular notice; how the "Holy Club" escaped official censure and condemnation seems strange, but in 1768 the members of a similar club were, for meeting together for prayer and reading the Scriptures, all summarily expelled from the university. Their number was seven. Several of the heads of houses spoke in their favour, the principal of their own hall, Dr. Dixon, moved an amendment against their expulsion, on the ground of their admirable conduct and exemplary piety. Not a word was alleged against them, only that some of them

were the sons of tradesmen, and that all of them "held Methodistical tenets, taking upon them to pray, read and expound the Scriptures, and sing hymns at private houses." These practices were considered as hostile to the Articles and interests of the Church of England, and sentence was pronounced against them.

Of course this expulsion created a great agitation at the time; and as the moral character of the young men was so perfectly unimpeachable, it no doubt greatly aided the cause of the Revival. Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich, author of the Commentary On the Psalms-no Methodist, although an admirable and evangelical man-denounced the measure in a pamphlet in the strongest terms. The well-known wit and Baptist minister of Devonshire Square in London, Macgowan, lashed the transaction in his piece called The Shaver. All the young men seem to have turned out well. Some, like Thomas Jones, who afterwards became curate of Clifton, and married the sister of Lady Austen, Cowper's friend-found admission into the Church of England; the others instantly found help from the Countess of Huntingdon, who sent them to finish their studies at her college in Trevecca, and afterwards secured them places in connection with her work of evangelisation. The transaction gives a singu

lar idea of what Oxford was in 1768, and prepares us for the vehement persecutions by which the representatives of Oxford all over the country armed themselves to resist the Revival, whilst it justifies our designation of this chapter," New Lights and Old Lanterns."

CHAPTER IV.

CAST OUT FROM THE CHURCH-TAKING TO THE FIELDS.

IT was field-preaching, preaching in the open air, which first gave national distinctiveness to the Revival, and constituted it a movement. Assuredly any occasions of excitement we have known, give no idea whatever of the immense agitations which speedily rolled over the country, from one end to the other, when these great revivalists began their work in the fields. And the excitement continued, rolling on through. London, and through the counties of England, from the west to the north, not for days, weeks, or months merely, but through long years, until the religious life of the land was entirely rekindled, and its morals and manners re-moulded; and all this, especially in its origination, without money, no large sums being subscribed or guaranteed to sustain the work. The work was done, not only without might or power, but assuredly in the very teeth of the malevolence of might and of power; nor is it too much to say that it probably would not have been done,

could not have been done, had the churches, chapels, and great cathedrals been thrown open to the preachers.

It seems a singular thing to say, but we should speak of Whitefield as the Luther of this Great Revival, and of Wesley as its Calvin. Both in the quality of their work and in their relation in point of time, this analogy is not so unnatural as it perhaps seems at first. The impetuosity and passion, the vehemence and sleepless vigilance of Whitefield first broke open the way; the calm, cautious, frequently even nervously timid intelligence of Wesley organised the work.

How could a writer, in a recent number of the Edinburgh Review, say: "It is a great mistake to complain, as so many do, that the Church cast out the Wesleys. We have seen at the beginning how kindly, and even cordially, they were treated by the leading members of the episcopate." Surely any history of Methodism contradicts this statement. Bishop Benson, indeed, ordained Whitefield, but he bitterly lamented to the Countess of Huntingdon that he had done so, attributing to him. what seemed to the Bishop the mischief of the evangelical movement. "My lord," said the Countess, mark my words: when you are on your dying bed, that will be one of the few or