compelling story. Her body was brought from Cumnor Hall, only four miles distant, to Oxford, and lay in state in Gloucester College. In this venerable church the University sermons are preached and the celebrated Bampton Lectures are delivered. During many years of toil and persecution John Wesley maintained his connection with Oxford University as one of the Fellows of Lincoln College. Indeed, the thirty pounds a year which he derived from his fellowship, was his only fixed income. One of the duties arising from his relationship was that of preaching in his turn before the University, even after his name was cast out as evil and everywhere spoken against. It was in the pulpit of the venerable Christ Church, from which Wycliffe, the Morning Star of the Reformation, and the martyr-bishops Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer had preached, that he in turn proclaimed the Word of Life. The last time that he preached before the University was an occasion of special interest. It is thus described by Dr. Stevens: "Oxford was crowded with strangers, and Wesley's notoriety as a field preacher excited a general interest to hear him. Such was the state of morals at the time, that clergymen, gownsmen, and learned professors shared with sportsmen and the rabble the dissipations of the turf. Charles Wesley went in the morning to the prayers at Christ Church, and found men in surplices talking, laughing, and pointing, as in a playhouse, during the whole service. The inn where he lodged was filled with gownsmen and gentry from the races. He could not restrain his zeal, but preached to a crowd of them in the inn courtyard. They were struck. with astonishment, but did not molest him. Thence he went to St. Mary's Church to support his brother in his last appeal to their Alma Mater. Wesley's discourse was heard with profound attention. The assembly was large, being much increased by the races. "In his journal of that day John Wesley says, 'I preached, I suppose, the last time at St. Mary's! Be it so. I am now clear of the blood of those men. I have fully delivered my own soul.' Such was the treatment he received from the University, to which he has given more historical importance than any other graduate of his own or subsequent times, and more perhaps than any other one ever will give it." BICENTENARY HYMN. One song of praise, one song of prayer, Ye winds and waves the burthen bear: "Two hundred years ago!" What then? It looked but like a human hand; The hand of God appeared. The Lord made bare His holy arm, Fiends fled before it with alarm, God gave the Word, and great hath been One song of praise for mercies past, Through all our courts resound; WESLEY'S DEATH-BED. BY THE REV. MARK TRAFTON, D.D. Tread softly! He is dying, on his pillow worn and pale; Speak low! His busy thoughts are now with all the varied past, He moves; he lifts his withered hands, his eyes catch heaven's own rays, No warrior ever dropped at once his sword, and lance, and shield, The silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is crushed, Cold are those lips; those eyes are closed-loved hands upon them laid- With faith that grasped the promise, and brought the triumph near. The savour of that deathless name fills all the ambient air; This "brand" plucked from the burning lodge of Epworth feeds the flame For such a man no limits were of diocese or kirk; "My parish is the world," he cries, "and life my day for work; My call is to humanity, now crushed and cursed by sin; My mission to the outcast poor, for Christ the lost to win." Oh, what to him were effete forms of cope, or stole, or beads- Dead for a century, still he speaks, and shall while yet is time; Preaching at Bath in 1739, Wesley had Beau Nash and other fashionable people among his audience. Nash accused Wesley of frightening the people out of their wits by his preaching. "I desire to know what this people come here for," asked the dandy. "Leave him to me," cried an old woman. "You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we take care of our souls; and for the food of our souls we come here." He walked away without say ing a word. 24, 1790, when in the morning he explained to a numerous congrega It is a very gratifying recognition of the great work accomplished by the founder of Methodism-"the most amazing record," Mr. Birrell says, "of human exertion ever penned or endured"-that a great secular monthly has published a ten-page article in unstinted eulogy of the man and his work, by a writer not himself a Methodist. We have pleasure in abridging from the striking article in Scribners' Magazine the following appreciation of John Wesley. It appears more fully in "The Heart of Wesley's Journal," reviewed elsewhere in this maga zine.-ED. tion in Spitalfields Church "The Whole Armour of God," and in the afternoon enforced to a still larger audience in St. Paul's, Shadwell, the great truth, "One thing is needful," the last words of the journal being, "I hope many even then resolved to choose the better part." Between these two Octobers there lies the most amazing record of human exertion ever penned or endured, John Wesley contested the three kingdoms in the cause of Christ during a campaign which lasted forty years. He did it for the land-places which to-day lie far removed even from the searcher after the picturesque. In 1899, when the map of England looks like a gridiron of railways, none but the sturdiest of pedestrians, the most determined of cyclists can retrace the steps of Wesley and his horse and stand by the rocks and the natural amphitheatres in Cornwall and Northumberland, in Lancashire and Berkshire, where he preached most part on horseback. He paid more turnpikes than any other man who ever bestrode a beast. Eight thousand miles was his annual record for many a long year, during each of which he seldom preached less frequently than five thousand times. And throughout it all he never knew what depression of spirits meant-though he had much to try him, suits in chancery and a jealous wife. In the course of this unparalleled contest Wesley visited again and again the most out-of-the-way districts the remotest corners of Eng his Gospel to the heathen. Exertion so prolonged, enthusiasm so sustained, argues a remarkable man, while the organization he created, the system he founded, the view of life he promulgated, is still a great fact among us. No other name than Wesley's lies embalmed as his does. Yet he is not a popular figure. Our standard historians have dismissed him curtly. The fact is, Wesley puts your ordinary historian out of conceit with himself. How much easier to weave into your page the gossip of Horace Walpole, to en |