ministry and Church,-and therefore you cannot, as you think, consistently recognize me as a duly authorized minister of the Lord Jesus; though you can and do judge me, and the Christian family with which I am associated, to be sincere followers of Christ; and can, and do, extend fellowship to us as such. Brother! your difficulty is obvious, and is, moreover, deeply painful to me. But, blessed be God! no such difficulty exists with me. I as fully recognise you as a minister and member, both of the Church Catholic, as myself and myself as you. Give me thine hand.'

So true it is, that, in the theology of Methodism, there lies no obstacle to the most enlarged catholicity --as well of its ministry as of its membership:—while, on the other hand, this same theology, viewed as a whole, is, of necessity, highly promotive of a result so beautiful and so desirable. Glance at two points only for illustration :

:

Methodist theology presents salvation as practically possible to all that hear the Gospel invitation. The Methodist minister, without a solitary misgiving, invites the entire multitude to Christ and to heaven :while his liberal views touching the freeness and fulness of God's mercy give him, so to speak, a kind of predisposition to look kindly and charitably upon all the professed disciples of the Saviour. The logic may be written somehow thus: The grace of Christ, in his view, is infinitely free to every one. Here are multitudes of various Christian denominations who profess to have received that free grace. Their profession, under the circumstances, and where conduct does not forbid, renders it highly probable that they are, in fact, Christians. Being Christians, they are fellow

citizens with the saints, and of the household of faith; and fellowship and catholicity toward them would seem to be the inevitable result.

Provided, especially, that another doctrine of the Wesleyan theology goes out, not in theory merely, but in the deep experience of the heart. We shall be understood as referring to the doctrine of Holiness -in other words, of intense and perfect love to God, and to all Christians, as bearing, more or less, His glorious image. We have read of a love in the heart of a man—a love for the Church of Christ on earth,— impelling him to all sacrifices and labours, so that he would very gladly spend and be spent for the saints; and that too, even though the more abundantly he loved them, the less he might be loved by them. A love like this is set forth in the Wesleyan theology. But he who feels it, will think as meanly of division lines as did the great apostle;-and will call them "carnal" as surely as he did, and will receive with rapture the inspired declaration, that not one family. or sect, but "all are yours."

And now if we refer, secondly, to the Methodist polity that other grand feature of the Wesleyan system-the same view will, we think, be borne out; namely, the special adaptation of this system to the promotion of a catholic spirit. Here, again, we will illustrate in two instances only, and these must be stated with great brevity.

First, then, the itinerancy-the capital feature of the Methodist polity-tends greatly to discourage those local attachments that have, in many instances, conduced sadly to narrowness of views, if not to downright bigotry. The itinerant minister and pastor does,

indeed, become attached to his society and people— perhaps, under ordinary circumstances, sufficiently so. Yet he has not time, and because he has not time, he has not so strong inducement, to become thus attached unduly. His danger is less than that of other ministers to love a particular society, so as to become comparatively indifferent to the Church generally. The itinerant minister, as, in the course of his ministry, he passes from station to station, forming a true Christian attachment to many, and counting all the societies of his church as, in no mean sense, his own, and constantly enlarging his acquaintance, meanwhile, with his brethren of other communions-does naturally, and, if true to himself, unavoidably, become expansive in his views and spirit, and better qualified than under other circumstances he could be, to imbibe and exhibit the catholicity of the Gospel. He learns more and more, and by personal observation, that true religion and holy living are not confined to his own church. He sees, and cannot avoid seeing, that Christ has many chosen ones in various circles,—and some, where he once imagined the great Gospel change could never be realized.

Secondly, the itinerancy essentially aids the catholic spirit in Methodist ministers, by the freedom of position which it gives them relatively to the people of their charge. It is not meant that the Methodist minister is, in theory or in fact, independent of his people ;—and if, at any time, he should venture to assume such a ground, no marvel if the people be disposed to afford him some painfully impressive evidence of his mistake. At the same time, the itinerant minister enjoys a freedom which is felt to be of great value.

From the very fact of his itinerant position of his known transient stay-and of the missionary relation which, in a sense, he sustains to the Church and the world, he is conscious of a freedom not possessed by every settled and local minister. He feels a freedom to think—a freedom to preach what he thinks-a freedom to love Christians, whether his church-members approve him entirely or not. And when it comes to pass that this conscious freedom is associated with a holy, pious heart, the result can hardly fail to be catholicity.

Thus, unless we have mistaken this whole subject, the Wesleyan system, including its two prominent points of theology and polity, is highly favourable to the cultivation of a catholic spirit;-on the one hand, interposing no obstacle to any and all Christian effort for its promotion; and, on the other, prompting and encouraging to such effort, both in ministry and laity.

WHETHER, OR NOT, THE PROMOTION OF CATHO

LICITY MAY BE SAID TO CONSTITUTE ANY PART OF

METHODISM'S SPECIAL PROVINCE AND CALLING?

or

Here, again, the answer must be affirmative; else we have surveyed the whole subject of Methodism from a wrong stand-point. Let us revert, for a moment, to the commencement of this great providential agency and enterprise. What, then, was the idea the one all-absorbing idea of Wesley's mind, as, under God, he set in motion this at once most simple and most strange machinery? The reviving of religion. When, in the solemn march of this extraordinary agency, there came up the necessity of "Helpers". preaching-houses-circuits - appointments-conferences- -publications, and the rest—what now was the one great thought in the mind of John Wesley?

The reviving of religion. When, in revolving years, Helpers had grown up to be strong and influential, as well as numerous, and "societies" had spread themselves far over the United Kingdom, and the numbering up of the people was no longer by hundreds, but by tens of thousands; and when the earlier persecutions had spent their force, and were sinking to repose; and when Wesley had now traversed far along the sublime race allotted him-what, then, was his one great idea? The reviving of religion. When missionaries had already been sent by him to this western world, and when he set apart Dr. Coke, with directions to him to set apart Francis Asbury to the superintendency of the American department of this work of God, which, for almost half a century, had been blessing England; and when the patriarch, turning his aged eye this way, saw the upspringing and outspreading of the same glorious flame that had traversed the father-land-what, still, was the one hope and thought of Wesley? The reviving of religion. That vast and eminently sanctified mind could not be filled by any object less than the wide-spread baptism of the Holy Ghost, and the union of all Christ's followers for the world's evangelization and salvation. From the sublime eminence whereon he stood, he looked down with consummate pity upon all the little broils, animosities, and strifes of words growing out of sectarianism, whether in or out of the Church of England. He answered, in Christ's kingdom, to Mr. Macaulay's masterly portraiture of William of Orange, among the monarchs of Europe. As the one and capital policy of the latter was to unite all the other powers, both of Britain and the Continent, in a mighty