flection on the editor that then was, for, though he was deservedly popular for his rare abilities, even his own friends, in some instances, gave their votes for the new nominee. He received the election, and has held the position almost without question for over twenty years.

As this office has opened the way to his real career-that of a writer-it is well to note a novel fact concerning those who secured his election to it. His first writings in the public press, or those, at least, that first drew attention to him, were of a controversial sort, and were on the opposite side from those which won him place and name. The antislavery conflict began properly in 1832 with the publication of the "Liberator." Ardent friends of that journal, of its editor, and cause, sprang up every-where, and nowhere were they more numerous or more ardent than among the Methodists of New England, though Mr. Garrison has never yet acknowledged publicly this obligation. His fine sense of honor should lead him to give this deserved recognition. They did more with him and for him and his cause than all his nonevangelical supporters. In Professor Whedon's own college were students who went out lecturing against slavery, and received the then common reward of mobs and abusive epithets, and sometimes the harder arguments of stones. One of them is the now and long well-known Dr. R. S. Rust. Dr. Fisk, in his genial temperament, disliked the strong though needful words of these abolitionists and their stronger acts. Professor Whedon fleshed his maiden sword in that controversy early in 1835, in a series of articles in "Zion's Herald," in reply to Orange Scott, then leader of the immediate abolitionists. He was also author of the famous "Counter Appeal," signed by Dr. Fisk and others, expressive of the sentiments of the conservative Methodists of New England of that day; a document much maligned, but never refuted, and whose main positions are assented to by the sober sense of the present time. George Thompson was then in this country as a "missionary," and the Professor took him to task for his interference in American politics. Thompson replied with some severity, and added a prayer for his conversion. The prayer was unanswered. But the twenty years that followed were years of rampant slavery aggression: it split the Church in twain; the free North was made the broad hunting-ground of the slave-catcher; and slavery was demanding, as its right, our vast territorial domain once solemnly consecrated to freedom. In the entirely new issues thus brought before them, Whedon and Rust were found standing side by side, and that student who had been sarcastically rebuked by his professor for his antislavery zeal, was one of the chief promoters of his election to the first editorial chair in the Church.

His career in that chair, and in lines of literary and religious work outside the chair, is before the Church and the world. He has made the Review the arena of free Christian thought, never insisting on a rigorous conformity to his own conceptions, though, when needful, uttering a word of caution or dissent. Beyond the contributors of the time of his election, he early began to search out and bring forward the young schol

arly men of the Church, many of whom have since attained a wide and enviable reputation as writers, and he has thus done much toward the creation of a high literary republic in the denomination. But while contributors have written with brilliancy and power, the productions of his own pen have from the first possessed the most commanding interest. He never speaks to his large audience without something to say, and what he says is said so clearly that the most casual and unlearned reader knows, as well and as delightedly as does the thoughtful and scholarly, precisely what he means. No living writer is master of so trenchant and incisive a style. He penetrates the heart

of the matter in hand with a word, and swiftly lays open its beauty and truth, or its deformity and falsity. His book notices, in which he is especially brilliant, frequently condense a volume into a page, or furnish, which pleases him best, a full review of the subject involved. In this department the Quarterly has deservedly attained the highest fame. His own papers have reinforced the theology and polity of the Church with new and most powerful weapons, as well as built them up and defended them against all assailants from whatever quarter; while sometimes stinging almost to madness those who merit castigation, or erecting "a white marble statue of words" for those who deserve fame, probing error to its last hiding-place, and dragging it forth scornfully to the gaze and contempt of his readers. That he is always wise, who can say that he is never dull, none can doubt.

In 1864 he gave the world his treatise on "The Freedom of the Will as a Basis of Human Responsibility and a Divine Government "the fruit of twenty-five years of study. He expected it to be the great work of his life. It will surely outlive Edwards's, for it is founded on the spiritual philosophy, and not on that of matter and fate. Its definitions are clear and its logic unanswerable. Difficult of reading, demanding severest study, it is a masterpiece to those who wish to think rightly on this deepest theme. When Calvinism shall cease to boast, and shall dare be philosophical, it will surrender unconditionally before this argument.

66

The Commentary on the New Testament," the fifth and final volume of which is now near its completion, is from its nature more widely known than the work on the "Will," and on it his fame with the great body of the people will chiefly rest. It is not, perhaps, generally known that when it was undertaken, some twenty-five years since, it was intended by the Publishers to be simply a "Tract Testament," a single volume with brief notes. But when it was nearly completed, through the urgent solicitation of many well fitted to judge, the whole plan was changed, and the work begun anew. How this man of broken constitution and frail health should have been able, even with his indefatigable industry, to accomplish so much outside of his official duties, and do it so well, is truly a marvel. The same characteristics of style already noted in the Quarterly are abundantly apparent here. "Intended for popular use," as it is, it supplies the ordinary reader with what he needs. in clear, compact diction, whose expressiveness he cannot fail to admire,

while the more learned reader is struck with the peculiar felicity and force with which grave problems are solved in a sentence, and difficulties settled at a stroke. The latter knows with what elaboration and care those clear interpretations are produced which, to the former, are so easy and intelligible. No writer has penetrated more deeply into the spirit of the fourth Gospel-the most wonderful of them all-or more beautifully developed the history of the early Church as found in the Acts. On the Epistles, the comment is finely blended with both argument and text at the same time; and it is pre-eminently rich in Romans and Ephesians, the metaphysical epistles. Without parade of scholarship, the most scholarly results are every-where visible; and not a few muchdebated questions are solved in an original manner, as well as most conclusively. Indeed, the critical student often finds it clear and decisive on passages and topics where far more pretentious works are obscure or silent. The Commentary stands in the front rank in its department of literature; and some of its highest critical commendations are from across the water, where it appears in a London edition.

His features, as our readers can see, are after the metaphysical type. Were portraits of Calvin, Watson, Arminius, Edwards, and Whedon placed alongside of each other, their heads would all be found to have been built after the same law-narrow, long, high, a steep-roofed house, where the brains are crowded in and up, and are not spread out wide or pressed down low in front. The last are scientists, observers, (if pressed down low behind they are villains, but still scientists, of the most materialistic sort.) The wide heads are literary, high-finished, but not highthoughted. These peaked brains are penetrative of the secretest on-goings of the mental world. When both broad and high, as in Shakspeare and Bacon, they are masters at once of both thought and expression. These high-roofed brains wrestle together" on a hill apart." Among these metaphysical theologians Dr. Whedon will hold very high rank. As he himself says of Agassiz: "He has made scratches on the granite of thought that will not be erased." He has given the highest debate on man, so far as his nature is concerned-a category that future students of these mysteries must respect and accept in its essential idea. Of his other and literary work we have no space to speak. We presume the space alloted us by the publishers is more than full. The portrait of one whom the Church has long delighted to honor is given the readers of the work they have long delighted to read. They will rejoice to see him at last in his outward guise. May it be long ere that mortal

ity puts on immortality!

METHODIST

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

APRIL, 1879.

ART. I.--WESLEY AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

[ARTICLE SECOND.]

Ir was shown in our last article that Wesley's scheme of philosophy had contributed no less than the other forces generated by him to the change of English thought from materialism to spiritualism. The state of English philosophy was, also, considered, when he began to preach and to teach-its slavish subjection to the hardest bound materialism under the successive rule of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume; and the like slavish subjection of the Church, both evangelical and ritual, to the same system in its theologic form. The utter prostration of all reformatory and progressive life followed in consequence of these fatalistic beliefs, and brought on "the dead waste and middle of the night" of English thought and action. Well does Dean Stanley call it a barren century. Its barrenness was confined largely to England, and was caused by materialism and fatalism there in school and Church. Not for centuries had England been as lethargic as under these morphitic doses of false philosophy and false theology.*

* Hutton portrays the terrible prostration of all soul force which Calvinism produces in these vigorous words, found in his essay on Hawthorne: "Calvinism, with all its noble features, can never keep its eyes off of that one fact, as it thinks it, of God's calm foreknowledge of a wide-spread damnation; and this gradually encroaches on the attention till the mind is utterly absorbed in the fascinating terror of the problem how to combine the clashing emotions of love and horror which its image of Him inspires."-Vol. ii, p. 45.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXI.-14

The question naturally recurs, How did Wesley, a metaphysician and logician of high rank, a popular student of the first College of Oxford, a popular Fellow and next to the rectorship of another college, get clear of these fetters, and gain the liberty which he has given to the world?

His philosophic change began in the experience which made him an ardent and joyful Christian. This is in itself a transcendental influence, a light above the brightness of the sun, a glory and a mystery: God speaking to the soul and through the soul, and after the language and nature of the soul-not throngh sensations, nor outward impressions, nor through reflections, whose very name suggests a merely mirror-like character, and no original source and fountain of power. "The strange warmth" was an influence direct from God, without intervention of body or mind. The "visitation of the living God" is what the poet of this experience, in its philosophic mood, happily calls it. That was Wesley's visitation in that hour in Fetter Lane, when, after a night of struggling, this "Sun of Righteousness arose, with healing in his wings." No reader of the "Wrestling Jacob" can fail to see the outbreak of this glory from the highest heavens. It was the dawning of the new day in him and through him to a world sitting in darkness. It was the heavens descending into human hearts, the putting of new life into the race. To describe this feeling is as impossible as to describe any other emotion. Those that have it know it, and those that have it not, cannot know it. "The carnal mind cannot discern the things of the Spirit, for they are spiritually discerned."

But it may be said, Have not others attained this state who have not affected society in the line of spiritualizing philosophy? Yea, verily. And have not others sprung forth in English history professed possessors of this highest grace, and preachers of this highest experience? Hardly. There is something peculiar about the Wesley expression, as though a sunburst had shot upon his soul that never struck his predecessors' experience. Luther's joy in justification is less jubilant; Calvin's hold on the truth is without emotion; Augustine's passion of devotion is more profuse, but not as penetrative. Bunyan's "Pilgrim," had Wesley written it, would have been of a more joyful type. In fact, the Methodist warmth began immediately