dreamer!" Well, even then you like to hear and read such dreams, and you wish you knew the dreamer, so that you might go to him in some moment of darkness and discouragement and defeat and despair and ask him to build for you an island in the dark realm of your disordered life and people it with stalwart and symmetrical forms of chivalry and fair forms of grace and beauty, and break the ominous silence with songs of love. To establish a connection between a weary and dust-begrimed pilgrim whose face is toward Mount Zion and one of those great spiritual laws which conserve the best interests of society is ever a great achievement. And it is as simple as it is superb.

In the gloaming of a long summer's day a boy sat in the doorway of his humble home. He had his arm outstretched as though he was taking hold of something out of sight. A gentleman passing the house saw the boy in this curious and eager attitude, and asked what he was doing. The boy promptly replied that he was flying his kite. The man looked up and, either ignoring or not seeing the slender string, replied: "I don't see any kite." The boy's brief and satisfactory philosophy expressed itself in the language: "I don't see it either, but I know it's up there, for I feel it pull!" "No man hath seen God at any time." And yet there are devout believers by the multitude, many of whom we know and some of whom we are, who are more absolutely certain of his existence and affection and wisdom and constancy than they are of any earthly values, any material appearances, or any human friendships. And they would no more count God out of their lives because they cannot comprehend him than they would refuse the cup of cold water because they cannot climb the high rocks where the mountain stream has its source.

thu

ART. II.-METHODISM IN THE SCOTTISH CAPITAL

A SERIES of fortunate events has recently placed Methodism in a better position in the ancient and important city of Edinburgh than it has ever occupied before, and the time seems to be opportune for recalling the whole story of these one hundred and fifty-six years since its founder first set foot in the Scottish capital. The place was never very congenial to him. All his prejudices were pro-Episcopal and anti-Presbyterian; and Edinburgh in a peculiar way was anti-Episcopal and pro-Presbyterian. It must be remembered that Erasmus was born before Edinburgh became the capital of Scotland, and that it was not the seat of a Scottish bishopric. There was no ancient cathedral with dignified associations to impress the populace, who were always turbulent and libertyloving. John Knox may be termed the first and only bishop of Edinburgh in any national sense. Now, John Wesley disliked and despised John Knox, regarding the Reformation work he accomplished as marked by unnecessary violence and rudeness. On the other hand, he was much attracted by the personality of Knox's adversary, the accomplished and unfortunate Queen Mary, and his diary contains many passages which freely record his preferWesley was distinctly Knoxophobe and Maryophile. Even in Wesley's time the treatment of the suffering remnant of Episcopacy in Scotland was harsh and discourteous, Episcopal services were forbidden in public, and the clergy were harassed and frequently mobbed. The communion service as observed in an Episcopal chapel was regarded by strict Presbyterians as semiPopish, and as such was frowned upon. It was only as private chaplains to members of the nobility or gentry that Episcopal clergymen were free from boycotting and persecution in the discharge of their functions; especially in Edinburgh. Wesley was prudent enough to get such a chaplaincy.

ence.

It was in the year 1751, five years after the battle of Culloden was fought, that John Wesley first crossed the Scottish border. He entered by way of Berwick, on the east coast, and made directly for Edinburgh, in the outskirts of which the famous

battle of Prestonpans was fought on September 21, 1745. He was accompanied by an English officer, Captain Gallatin, and both of them were interested in visiting the spot where the gallant Colonel Gardiner had fallen six years before. The life of this saintly man had been written by Philip Doddridge, of Northampton, Wesley's good friend. The two travelers went over the field, which is situated a short way in from the sea, on rising ground. Down this slope Prince Charlie and his Highlanders had swept like an avalanche on that misty morning in September, 1745. Wesley and Gallatin were taken to Colonel Gardiner's house. "The Scotch here affirm," says the diary, "that he fought on foot after he was dismounted, and refused to take quarter. Be that as it may, he is now 'where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest.'" Gardiner was related by marriage to the Buchan family, whose patronymic is Erskine, a gifted race. Wesley was to receive many favors from them, and to become private chaplain to the Countess of Buchan. He was not destined to find the Prestonpans people congenial. Visiting the place fifteen years later, when the Society had established itself in the town and hired a room for devotional purposes, he went to this room and "had it all to myself; neither man, woman, nor child offered to look me in the face: so I ordered a chair to be placed in the street. Then forty or fifty crept together; but they were mere stocks and stones, no more concerned than if I had talked Greek. In the evening I preached in the new room at Edinburgh, a large and commodious building." Two days later-it was the month of May-he "spent some hours at the meeting of the National Church Assembly. I am very far from being of Mr. Whitefield's mind, who greatly commends the solemnity of this meeting. I have seen few less solemn: I was extremely shocked at the behavior of many of the members. Had any preacher behaved so at our Conference, he would have had no more place among us."

Wesley's first impressions of Edinburgh were not favorable. He was intensely fond of cleanliness and cleanly habits, and the people of the Scottish capital were not the precisians in this matter; they did not believe, with him, that cleanliness was next to

godliness. Rather were they of the Highland woman's opinion: "The clartier [dirtier] the cozier." Cities in the eighteenth

century, with the exception of cities in Holland, were mostly filthy, and Edinburgh was worse than the average. As the passerby walked down the High Street or the Canongate he had ever to be on the watch for the cry of "gardyloo!" (garde-à-l'eau— look out for the water!) or the contents of a pail of slops might fall on his head. Several years before this time Whitefield had visited the west coast of Scotland and had taken part in the celebrated Kirkintilloch revival movement which stirred the country round Glasgow to its depths. Whitefield's florid style was appreciated by the Scottish people, who love oratory and can appreciate it. Moreover, Whitefield was a Calvinist, and the form of doctrine he expounded, retaining all the catch phrases, was congenial to the Scottish amateur theologian. Wesley, on the other hand, while quite willing to work along with Calvinists, rejected doctrinal Calvinism in a decisive way and his style of preaching was matterof-fact and often colloquial. Inasmuch as it lacked the charm of sonorous eloquence and of congenial doctrinal phrases it failed either to fascinate or to warm the Scottish hearer. Whitefield expected little from Wesley's visit to the Scottish capital. "You have no business in Scotland," he wrote; "for your principles are so well known that if you spoke like an angel, none would hear you; and if they did, you would have nothing to do but to dispute with one and another from morning to night." To which Wesley responded: "If God sends me, people will hear. And I will give them no provocation to dispute; for I will studiously avoid all controverted points, and keep to the fundamental truths of Christianity. And if any shall begin to dispute, they may, but I will not dispute with them." His experiences were not of a nature to falsify friend George's predictions. "You may as well preach to the stones," he remarked on one occasion to his brother, "as to the Scots. They hear everything but feel nothing." They refused to be played upon emotionally by any of his most telling methods; it was a case of constitutional lack of sympathy. The fact is, that Wesley's direct, unvarnished, cut-and-thrust manner of preaching had never been unknown in Scotland; and the truths which, when

stated boldly, were fresh to English hearers, and stirred them deeply as they came from Wesley's lips, were familiar to Scottish ears. Scottish audiences were always perfectly respectful to him. Only on one occasion was any insult offered; and that was in Aberdeen-once an Episcopalian center-where he had begun to preach on the High Street one Sunday afternoon and a few toughs attempted to break up the meeting. A potato struck Wesley on the arm-a very mild assault when compared with the fierce onslaughts he experienced around Newcastle and in the English midlands.

Wesley, however, obtained a foothold in Edinburgh through the good will of two excellent Christian women. One was Lady Maxwell, who, left a widow and childless when not yet twenty, devoted the rest of her life to good works. She founded a school at Edinburgh in the year 1770, six years after her first meeting with Wesley, and depended on his advice and aid for its organization and regulation. Soon after their first meeting she became a member of the Wesleyan Society, in which she remained until her death, in the year 1810, at a ripe age. All the time she kept up her membership in the Church of Scotland. Her Edinburgh home was at Coates, on the northwest side of the Castle, close to the present location of the Caledonian Railway terminus. Her church was Saint Cuthbert's, lying under the shadow of the Castle, where Dr. James MacGregor preaches today to large audiences. Wesley in his diary tells of his attending the church along with his hostess, Lady Maxwell, and of his taking part in the Scottish communion service, which was not to his liking. The old church was recently renovated and enlarged, its quaint steeple being retained.

When first Wesley visited Edinburgh the New Town, on the north, and Princes Street were not yet in existence. He planted his mission work on the Calton Hill, now at the east end of Princes Street, and had consequently to traverse a mile of country road from Coates, which lies at the west end of the thoroughfare. What a change has come over the locality! On his right hand, as he rode along in the early morning-his hostess for thirty-two years attended gospel preaching at five in the morning-lay the North Loch, a sheet of water now drained and converted into