churches here and abroad, new and old, and into a too respectable Nonconformity-for Nonconformity, by instilling good principles into the working classes, always tends to produce nouveaux riches, who grow smug and too respectable for anything good-a vivacity, an audacity, of Christian vigour which must remould society again. It has been said lately, "We are all socialists now-a-days," and it is to be hoped that at least the religious are going to prove themselves so.

In John Wesley's idea Methodism was not to found a Church. He permitted no Methodist service to be held in church hours, and even to the present day in quiet villages the same filial respect is shown to the National Church. The change came when the numbers of persons excluded from the Communion, and treated as pariahs by the clergy, grew so great that it was a practical inconvenience for them to be unable to use the best hours of the Sunday for the services to which they were attached. But the spirit of dissent which now exists in Methodism is an unnatural excrescence, and will die down again as soon as fresh life in the Church of England causes the hand of brotherly love to be stretched out. What I have said about the width of Methodist standards of doctrine suffices to indicate that the narrowness of dissent is non-Methodistic. The old name of "the Society called Methodists " will always be cherished. And in this it has a great advantage. We are sometimes told that the Church of England is the historical Church, or the Church of Rome. But we say no: the historical Church is, of course, a body of people, called by any name or names, who freely seek for all good things in the past in various developments of Christianity, who exclude no help or beauty that can be proved to be helpful or beautiful now; who are ready to learn from comrades now living, or who have passed away to the Church above; a body, in fact, the heir of the saints of former days, aiming at training saints now, and that is making Church history every day.

This Society has some ways of conducting its religious life that are subjects of curiosity and misunderstanding more than most religious organizations. Especially I mean class-meetings and lovefeasts, and of these I wish to speak. Lovefeasts are, at all events for the present, rather in abeyance, or take a different form. As I remember them, they were occasions on which pieces of currant-bread and water were passed from pew to pew in the chapel, and then, interspersed with singing and prayer, one short speech after another was made by whoever chose, about the life of Christ in the heart. One would be full of joy and praise for help in trouble, or added and sharpened delight in happy circumstances. Another would tell of heavy-heartedness and clinging faith and hope in God. There was always a feeling of special approach to the presence of God, and I think these meetings were good. Of course they gave opening by their popularity to many strange speeches; and I must claim for Methodism a greater capacity for humour in religion than any other Church. We are not afraid of humour. It is a part of the human nature which our Master

took upon Himself; and when the human being is at one with Him, fun is part of the natural play of vitality. But it is kindly, decorous, and well || kept in hand. Many and many a story of queer sayings in lovefeasts I could tell if this were the opportunity. They were domestic gatherings. Now-a-days we meet differently, perhaps not so familiarly. Class-meetings, however, have not suffered much change. They are usually small gatherings of some dozen to twenty people for strictly devotional purposes, and for giving and getting sympathy and mutual advice in leading a godly life. Very helpful, indeed, they are, and the tie that binds members of a class can become exceedingly valuable. They vary as infinitely as the characteristic of the leader, or person who is accountable to Methodism for those put under his or her spiritual charge; as infinitely as the characteristics of the members. In some cases it is a stiffer, in some a more homely meeting. But in every case the word of God is accepted as the rule of life, and the little groups try to help each other to conform to it; and membership in one of these classes constitutes membership in the Methodist Society. We do not count our members by communicants or by attendance at our places of worship, so that when I quoted the numbers of Methodists all over the world as being five and a half millions, other Churches, who count by church attendance, would have multiplied that by five.

These domesticated groups are a great help to Methodist ministers in getting to know the needs of their people. For the minister is bound to visit all the classes of his congregations once every quarter of a year, and so gets a quite rare opportunity of gauging the spiritual tone. He learns where to look for the spiritually minded men and women who will be likely to be useful workers in the spiritual and temporal offices of the Church; where the lads are growing who will make good ministers, and should be encouraged, and where he can best get help for some doubtful or tender spirit whose troubles have been confided to him. And the people get to know hima very important thing in Methodism. For Methodist ministers are not put in charge of a congregation for life, or till a better opening comes. They change from place to place every three years, alternating between country and town charges, learning life and people more thoroughly than any other body of men, and carrying with them from place to place a sense of brotherhood, and an actuality of friendship which welds Methodists of all classes and all places together. This healthy circulation was the invariable rule; indeed, the change used to be actually, and still theoretically may be, made every year. But for some purposes it is becoming desirable to give longer tenure to some few ministers, and the ecclesiastical system I have attempted to indicate is easily elastic enough for that.

But there is another peculiar institution in Methodism, which greatly modifies the relation of the ministers and the people, and which enables me to say that, with the exception of the administration of the Sacra

ments, there is no function of the Christian ministry which Methodist ministers do not share with the laity. The pastoral office is shared with the men and women leaders of classes, the ecclesiastical rule of the Church is shared with laymen (and in the lower branches theoretically with women), and even the office of preaching is shared very largely with lay preachers who live by their own labour and give their Sundays to preaching in their own neighbourhoods, and sometimes in distant parts of the country. The office of a local preacher is one that has always been held by men of the most various attainments and positions in the world, and much of the vigorous life of the Methodist Society is owing to the fact that the ministry is thus felt to be not a far-off office, but one of the functions of the Christian life exercisable by any one whose capacity for teaching is recognised by a number of his fellows. Many a useful local preacher has wished to be a minister set apart and ordained, but his suitability for Orders has not been clear to the authorities. It is evident that "priests and people," as they are commonly classed elsewhere, are more intimately and socially close together in Methodism than elsewhere. Yet there is no lack of reverence or esteem for those who deem themselves called, and whose call is recognised by the Church, to give themselves entirely to the work of the ministry. There is no superstition about Orders, but the ministry is considered the highest vocation in life, and worthy so to be held in

reverence.

I do not pretend to do justice to my subject. I can do nothing more than hint at a few of the salient features of Methodism. But I can end my lecture to-day as some others could not do. You were not, I suppose, invited to become disciples of Confucianism or Shintôism, nor, I hope, of that oddity now called Buddhism which is not Buddhism; but I have the happiness to be able to say that I have no desire to take leave of any of you. I rather say, speaking in the name of Methodists in general, to all and everybody the round world over, "Come with us, and we will try to do you good."

THE system of religion popularly known as Irvingism, or as styled by the members more ambitiously "The Catholic Apostolic Church," is emphatically a child of the nineteenth century. It took its rise out of the study of prophecy as it was pursued in the first half of that period.

The atmosphere may be said to have been ripe with undefined expectation of coming change when Edward Irving, then a young Scotch Presbyterian and assistant of Chalmers, was elected to the pastorate of the Caledonian Church in London. The congregation consisted of some fifty people when he came in July, 1822. Before long the little chapel in Hatton Garden was crowded to overflowing. Led by Canning and Mackintosh, the society of the day flocked to hear the great preacher. Many people could not come within the sound of his voice. Lady Jersey, the celebrated leader of fashion, was seen sitting on the pulpit steps. Irving reached at a bound the zenith of his popularity, which thenceforwards waned gradually till his death.

Into the tide was drawn a clever but eccentric banker, who belonged to one of the old Scotch families, Henry Drummond, owner of a beautiful place at Albury, near Guildford. Here in 1826, and in the four following years, Mr. Drummond invited a body of men to discuss prophecy with reference to the events which were at hand. The list of those who came in one year or other included men of different alliances and different opinions, of whom only a small portion became ultimately members of the future religious body. They believed that the millennium was close at hand, and "that a great period of 1,260 years commenced in the reign of Justinian and terminated at the French Revolution, and that the vials of the Apocalypse began then to be poured out; that our blessed Lord will shortly appear, and that, therefore, it is the duty of all who so believe to press these considerations on the attention of all men."

The meetings were arrested by the appearance in Scotland of what some took to be miraculous powers, manifested in cures of illness, and in the utterance of unknown tongues. John Bate Cardale, who afterwards be came the first "apostle," went with a party to pursue investigations on the spot. And in the winter after his return, in Irving's congregation, in Cardale's house, and elsewhere, prayers were continually offered for the ap

pearance of prophets and apostles. At length, on April 30th, 1831, Mrs. Cardale spoke with great solemnity in "a tongue," and "prophesied." In course of time she was followed by others, and at length scarcely a service occurred which was not interrupted by such strange utterances. Irving did not know what to do: he had evoked a power which was beyond his control.

These events caused great astonishment, and people came from all quarters to hear the prophesyings. But in course of time, as they were generally considered to lack the signs of genuineness, and the "unknown tongues" presented no resemblance to any kind of language, the interest subsided.

After various difficulties, amongst which were the removal of Irving from the Caledonian Church in consequence of heretical teaching upon the mysterious subject of our Lord's nature, and his deposition from the Presbyterian ministry, the new religious body was gradually organized. Cardale, Drummond, and ten others, were supposed to be called by the prophets to be apostles; and on the 7th of July, 1835, they met together for the solemn appointment of the "twelve" by the assembled Church. Unfortunately, they had reckoned without consent in one case. Mr. David Dow, a Presbyterian minister who had been deposed because of acknowledging the tongues, was not there. The meeting was postponed a week, and two of the most influential went to Scotland to bring the recusant, but to no purpose. On the 14th, the members fondly persuaded themselves that they found a precedent in the case of the traitor Judas, and chose two, one of whom the prophets declared to be the twelfth apostle.

It is remarkable that their greatest man—in fact, the only man who was known at all widely outside of the immediate connections of the Irvingite body in the field of religion-was never advanced to one of their highest offices. He was made an angel, it is true, or as they consider the office, a bishop; but even then he was under the strict domination of apostles, and even of prophets. Disappointment settled over him: he had expected a grand and overwhelming outpouring of the Spirit, and a dramatic conversion of multitudes. In decaying health, he started northwards to woo such an occurrence. It came not; and he died at Glasgow in December, 1834, a broken-down, worn-out old man, though at the age only of forty-two.

After their "separation," as they termed it, these apostles, accompanied by some prophets and evangelists, retired to Albury to build up their system. They believed that our Lord always intended to appoint twenty-four apostles, twelve for the Jews, and twelve for the Gentiles,-the former twelve to start the Church, and the latter twelve to present it, Jews and Gentiles, to Him at His second coming. They supposed that He began to execute this intention in the appointment of the St. Paul and St. Barnabas; but that owing to the sin of the world the work of those two eminent apostles ended in failure. The apostles died, and as Irvingites imagine, the Church "fell like a dead thing to the ground," till at the close approach