to be engulfed in the yawning earth, or overwhelmed by tidal wave. How vividly we realized that we were on the line of those earththroes which have belted the world with ghastly wounds, or with the lava-scabs of extinct volcanoes! In John's day, as now, the marks of these terrible visitations of Deity were seen everywhere on island and shore. In sight from the cliffs of Patmos was the island of Thera, formed by a "burning mountain cast into the sea" (Rev. viii: 8); the harbor being but the crater extinguished by the waters. Eusebius mentions the earthquakes of the year 17 A.D., which shook Ephesus, Sardis, Philadelphia, and the whole region where the Seven Churches were afterward planted. In A.D. 46 the Islet of Therasia lighted up the Ægean with its volcanic glare. Seneca, writing nearer to the time of the Apocalypse, said, "The world itself is being shaken to pieces." John naturally wrought the impression of these scenes into his sublime metaphors of the convulsive throes of the moral world, when the earth should open, as by volcanic rift, even to the bottomless pit.

As we gaze upon Patmos, seventeen centuries roll away. With them the village and monastery yonder disappear. In the quarries are gangs of men, who for crimes against the State, have been sentenced to exile from communion with their fellow-men. Among them at their toil, or allowed to roam at liberty over the lonely rocks, in the solitude of his thoughts, is an old man, bent with nearly a century's weight. His garb is mean, limited to the kilt about the loins, and the skull-cap or turban of wound cloths protecting his head from storm and sun-the only raiment of the quarry slave. But how radiant his face with the beauty of his pure and loving soul! and his eyes how bright with the lustre of deeper, wiser worlds than this! This man has seen, with the bodily eye, Jesus, the Cross, the Resurrection and the Ascension; and for perhaps seventy years his soul has stood almost within the portal of the spiritual glory of his Lord. And now the "door in heaven" is opened; his inspired thought is so great, the revelation so stupendous, that he sweeps sea and land and sky, the whole circuit of human history, custom and thought, and above all, those other worlds of past revelation, for figures vast enough to even shadow forth his own; and even then-such is the limitation of human language- he can reproduce only the shadow of his inward vision. Like Paul, he sees things which it is not lawful (possible) for him to

utter.

III.-METHODIST PREACHING: "OLD AND NEW STYLE.” BY ABEL STEVENS, D.D., LL.D

THE phrase Old and New Style, as applicable to the Methodist Ministry, has been prescribed for me as the title of this paper. It would hardly be admitted by the denomination without considerable qualification. Doubtless there have been changes of the "old style" of its preaching-some salutary and adverse-but they have been fewer than is generally supposed.

It would be a detraction from the character of the Church had there been no modification of its pulpit by the advancing intelligence of the nation, and the remarkable educational provisions of the denomination; for, though the latter was a few years without successful schools, it has, through most of its history, been energetically devoted to education, and, as results, it now has 144 universities, colleges and "boarding academies " (including 9 theological schools), attended by more than 26,000 students, and 408,000 of its youth have been trained in them. The intellectual character of its ministry has therefore unquestionably advanced. But it may be questioned whether it ranks higher to-day, relatively to the average national intelligence, than it did at the organization of the Church in 1784, or through the first ensuing half century-the period to which may be attributed what is called its "old style." One thing at least may be affirmed, that it has not since had greater "talent" than it had during this period. It had then as large a proportion of men of conspicuous, of national, reputation as it has now, perhaps larger; for it must be borne in mind that many of its most noted men of our own early days began their ministry within that period-its Capers, Pierce (the elder), Bangs, Soule, Hedding, Dempster, Summerfield, Maffitt, Bascom, Durbin, Fisk, Olin, etc. And these men, national as well as denominational in their fame, were formed in the early school of Methodist preaching-they were exceptional only by their superior talents; but examples of rare talent, especially of natural talent, have always characterized the Methodist ministry in both England and America.

a

Though the early preachers had no special education, or rather preeducation, for their work, they had, at least, the average education of their fellow-countrymen, and they were required to pass through Course of Study"—a specified curriculum, with formal "Examinations"-during the first four years of their connection with the "Conference." Of the present 64,200 Methodist preachers of the New World (27,500 "Itinerant," and 36,700 "Local"), the number who have had a collegiate education is not comparatively large; and the number who have passed through a Theological School is also compara

tively small. While, therefore, the ministry as a whole has intellectually advanced proportionately with the advancing intelligence of the country, its professional education can hardly be said to have essentially changed its "style" of preaching, except in two or three sections of its great field.

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The early Methodist preaching was universally extemporaneous, and this fact had much to do with its style. It was an exceptional fact in the Protestant ministry of the times. Bishop Coke wrote out his sermon for the Episcopal Consecration of Asbury; Ezekiel Cooper wrote his on the death of Asbury, and both were immediately printed; but neither, I think, was read before the congregation. For nearly fifty years no sermon was read in an American Methodist pulpit, except one or two of Wesley's printed discourses, which the book of Discipline" required to be read annually. Both the preachers and the people had conscientious scruples against manuscript preaching. Durbin was the first who placed a "sketch," or "skeleton," of his discourse on the open Bible; and I can remember how, in his occasional visits from the West to the East (visits which were a sort of ovation in the churches), devout Methodists of Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, used to deprecate the influence of his example, though his manuscript was the barest outline of his subject, and though they often sobbed or "shouted" under the extemporaneous eloquence with which he used it. The first Episcopal reading of sermons in the denomination was by Bishop Baker, who was consecrated as late as 1852; he was a scholarly and very devoted man, but excessively diffident, and the people sympathized with his spirit and excused the innovation, especially as it had already been introduced somewhat extensively among the subordinate branches of the ministry in New England, where the Bishop began his career, and was a general usage there in other denominations.

The habit of extemporaneous preaching had an important moral effect on both the ministry and the people. It did not relieve the preacher from the task of study, though, it relieved him from the drudgery of writing. Extemporaneous discourse requires, probably, more thorough preparatory meditation than the manuscript sermon. The early Methodist preachers were noted as "sermonizers," but they were still more noted as "exhorters;" for, having the outlines of their discourses well premeditated, and being, at the same time, untrammeled by the manuscript, their sensibilities had freer play in the pulpit, impromptu thoughts or illustrations and pointed applications were more readily available. They ascended the desk expecting these advantages, and praying that they might be inspired by the Divine Spirit. Their diction naturally became more that of the common people; their manner more colloquial; the sympathetic interest of the congregation was more readily awakened, and the interaction of both

heart and head between preacher and people was more vivid. There are special subjects, or special occasions, on which manuscript preaching is undeniably expedient; but, according to the early Methodist opinion, they are rare; native talent for eloquence can always have better play in extemporaneous than in written discourse, and most of the early Methodist itinerants were chosen for the ministry on account of natural rather than acquired talent. "R-e-a-d," said a veteran among them, "does not spell preach;" and the Church of their day would have considered the reading of sermons as great a disadvantage, as much a practical solecism, as would be the reading of his plea before a jury by a lawyer, or of a popular address by a politician, or a speech by a representative in Congress. The tendency of the modern Methodist ministry towards manuscript preaching is one of its most marked deviations from the "old style." This tendency is, however, yet too limited to affect generally the pulpit of the Denomination, or to render irrelevant the qualification I have given above to the phrase respecting its "Old and New Style."

Again: the early preachers were "Itinerants"-genuine Itinerants. -not merely nominal ones, as most Methodist pastors in the Atlantic States at least now are. Among the latter the term applies almost exclusively to the change of "appointments" made every two or three years; but in the early ministry it meant ministerial travel; even the city churches were connected in "Circuits," and for some time the preachers of Philadelphia, New York, etc., were transposed every three or six months; meanwhile the rest of the work throughout the continent was arranged in extensive Circuits, many of them 100 miles long, some of them 200 or more. Over these great districts the Itinerants went, on horseback, with saddle-bags, preaching day and night, averaging usually one sermon a day and two or three on Sunday. They thus met an urgent national want; for the religious needs of the westward moving population could never have been provided for by the customary stationary pastorate and pre-educated ministry.. The latter could never have kept pace with the former. It has been justly said that the Methodist Itineracy thus laid the moral foundations of the republic throughout the valley of the Mississippi, and saved the great West from early moral barbarism. The Itinerants were conscious of their momentous mission in this respect and became heroic in it. They have been called the legio tonans—the “thundering legion" of the American ministry; they were at least an evangelical cavalry. They were indeed "heralds" of the Gospel; for years. they were nearly all unmarried men; they had no homes, no abiding places, but were hospitably entertained in the log cabins of the people; they preached in private houses, in school-houses, in the open air. They were incessantly stimulated by the example of their great leader, Asbury, who usually rode from Savannah, Ga., to Portland,

Me., and back again, annually, often accompanied by a "led horse" to help his speed. He traveled at an average of 6,000 miles a year on horseback-about equivalent to the circuit of the globe every four years.

The Itinerants kept thus in the very van of westward emigration; they were habitually in familiar intercourse with the hardiest popu lation of the country; they came in contact with all sorts of adventurous and eccentric characters; they learned thoroughly human nature, and knew well how to adapt themselves to it, in the pulpit as well as out of it. While heroic in their incessant travels and labors, they acquired a certain remarkable bonhommie by continual rencontres with such varied frontier characters; they became notable raconteurs, story-tellers of their itinerant adventures, at the log-cabin firesides of their people; they became not only familiar and colloquial, but largely anecdotal in their preaching.

But what have these facts to do with the "Old Style?" They have much to do with it; they are important data for the induction by which we can estimate it. "Style," said Buffon, "is the man." These facts largely contributed to make the early Itinerant the man that he was, and thereby to make his "style"-his style in the broad sense in which we are here using the term. They made him militant, heroic, often pathetic, oftener energetic, characterized by remarkable traits of popular adaptation. Herein, I think, was his chief advantage over his successor of our day. His was the heroic period, in a new and heroic cause and country; but the heroic period cannot last forever; and the "new" ministerial style of Methodism shows the passing away, to some extent, of its old heroic day. To some extent, I say; for it lingers still in large sections of the vast battle-fields of the Church, especially in its great western and frontier regions. Extemporaneous preaching still prevails there, and the old "Circuit system," and not a few of the personally militant characteristics of the Itinerants.

A mistake prevails, in popular opinion at least, respecting the hortative character of the "old style." It was, indeed, more hortative than the "new style"; the early preachers were not only noted as "sermonizers" with their "firstly, secondly, thirdly," etc., but they were also, as I have affirmed, still more notable as "exhorters." The peroration is now usually the "fag end" of the sermon, calmly summarizing or applying it. With the early Methodist ministry it was the culmination, the climax; it was never in diminuendo, but always in crescendo; the whole discourse was made to bear down upon it. The old preachers expected to do their chief execution in the final exhortation. It was more prolonged and energetic than it is now. But, though fervid in it, they were not, as is usually supposed, generally noisily declamatory. The common supposition that Methodist