fields are white unto the harvest.

Thrust in the

sickle, for the harvest is ripe." But the Lord wants reapers. Who of you will go out, sickle in hand, to meet him? The harvest is ripe; shall it droop in heavy and neglected masses, for want of reapers to gather it in? To you, the young, in your enthusiasm

-to you, the aged, in your wisdom-to you, men of daring enterprise and chainless ardour-to you, heirs of the rare endurance, and strong affection of womanhood to you, the rich, in the grandeur of your equalizing charity—to you, the poor, in the majesty of your ungrudging labour, the Master comes and speaks. Does not the whisper thrill you? "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" Up, there's work for you all— work for the lords of broad acres, work for the kings of two hands. Ye are born, all of you, to a royal birthright. Scorn not the poor, thou wealthy-his toil is nobler than thy luxury. Fret not at the rich, thou poor-his beneficence is comelier than thy murmuring. Join hands, both of you, rich and poor together, as ye toil in the brotherhood of God's great harvest-field-heirs of a double heritage-thou poor, of thy queenly labour-thou rich, of thy queenlier charity and let heaven bear witness to the bridal.

The rich man's son inherits lands,

And piles of brick, and stone, and gold,

And he inherits soft white hands,
And tender flesh that fears the cold,
Nor dares to wear a garment old:
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

"The rich man's son inherits cares,-
The bank may break, the factory burn,

A breath may burst his bubble shares ; And soft white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn : A heritage, it seems to me,

One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

"What doth the poor man's son inherit? Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,

A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; King of two hands, he does his part In every useful toil and art:

A heritage, it seems to me,

A king might wish to hold in fee.

"What doth the poor man's son inherit? A patience learn'd of being poor,

Courage, if sorrow comes, to bear it, A fellow-feeling that is sure

To make the outcast bless his door:

A heritage, it seems to me,

A king might wish to hold in fee.

“Oh, rich man's son ! there is a toil
That with all others level stands,

Large charity doth never soil,
But only whiten soft white hands;
This is the best crop from thy lands:

A heritage, it seems to me,

Worth being rich to hold in fee.

"Oh, poor man's son ! scorn not thy state, There is worse weariness than thine

In merely being rich and great;

Toil only gives the soul to shine,

And makes rest fragrant and benign:
A heritage, it seems to me,

Worth being poor to hold in fee.

"Both, heirs to some six feet of sod,

Are equal in the earth at last,

Both, children of the same dear God,
Prove title to your heirship vast,
By records of a well-fill'd past:
A heritage, it seems to me,

Well worth a life to hold in fee."

THE

VI.

WESLEY AND HIS TIMES.

HE history of Christianity has not been a continuous progress. It has had its times of decay and of revival. Now it has appeared as though all hearts would welcome it-and as though, like an undisputed king, it had only to proclaim itself to be received and crowned. Again it has languished from the affections of a people, and has seemed to live only by effort and struggle. In the time of the Apostles its march was a triumph. Ere the last of them fell asleep beneath the purple sky of Ephesus, it had reached and subdued the most considerable cities of the world, and everything seemed fair and promising for the speedy conversion of men. But then came a season of indifference. Through the dreary ages succeeding, the light shone more dimly, until, like the torches at a funeral, it shone only on the mourners for the dead. The Church became formal and haughty, ambition seized upon the truth, and established upon its possession a vast ecclesiastical power, and thus the Popery of Hildebrand overlaid the Christianity of Paul. Then again came a season of revival. The world was weary for the light. Morality and faith were languishing together-men's minds brooded over the state of things, some with

T

a strange disquiet, some with a stranger hope-the hour was ripe for change, either by amendment or by ruin. From German cloisters, amid Alpine heights, from the plains of France, there rose the simultaneous cry of multitudes of spiritual bondsmen. God heard and answered, and the Reformation came. Yet again, as if with the regularity of a law, there came a period of decay. The zeal of the Churches became fitful, their faith loosely held, the morals of the people dissolute, until there grew a need of a second Reformation, which should put life into the truth which had been established by the struggles of the first.

All accounts agree to represent the sad religious state of England when George the Second succeeded. to the throne. The righteousness which exalteth a people was hidden in secret places, and, to the mourning eyes of the few faithful, it seemed as if a cloud hung darkly over the land, and as if the vials of Divine wrath were almost full. The literature of the age, which may be regarded as the index to its prevalent tendencies, was for the most part corrupt or irreligious. There were exceptions, of course, for this was the period at which the British classics started into being; but the design of Steele and Addison, and, still later, of Johnson, was to counteract the follies and vices whose desolations they deplored; and it may be easily conceived that the moral aspects of society were of no doubtful badness when Pope's Pantheism and Bolingbroke's Infidelity were fashionable; when, according to Dryden, the loose wit of Congreve was the only prop of a declining stage;

when the popular novelists were Smollett and Fielding and Mrs Aphra Behn; and when even divinity could so far forget its sacred calling as to pen the ribaldries of Swift and Sterne. If you look into the Churches, the decline is equally lamentable, and you find, even among the reputedly orthodox, the looseness of thought which too frequently introduces to looseness of life. There had been hard thinkers and great preachers, men of massive thought and burning word, both in the established and nonconforming Churches, but the words of the preachers fell powerless, and it was as though the theology of the writers was embalmed. The works of Collins and Tindall were more in vogue than those of Baxter and Howe. Men sat at the feet of Chesterfield rather than of Tillotson. Whiston lapsed into Arianism at Cambridge, and Clarke dispensed it at the church of St. James. Among Dissenters, if the truth was held, it was as a sentiment rather than as a power, and while a large number of the clergy sought relief from subscription to articles which they had long disavowed, others drank or dreamed away their lives; shepherds were profligate or idle, while the hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.

It would be easy to multiply testimonies that these are not random shafts from a bow that is drawn at a venture. Butler, Burnet, Secker, Leighton, and many others in the Establishment, Watts, Guyse, Doddridge, and many more among the Nonconformists, have left their sorrowful witness on record, and there is everything to assure us that, in Isaac Taylor's forcible words, "the Anglican Church was a system under which men had lapsed into heathenism," and that