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Charles and John Wesley seemed to fulfil toward their great fuinily of disciples the offices commonly assigned to Woman and Man. Charles had a narrower, tamer, less reasoning mind, but great sweetness, tenderness, facility and lyric flow, "When successful in effecting the spiritual good of the most abject, his feelings rose to rapture." Soft pity fired his heart, and none seemed so near to him as the felon and the malefactor, because for none else was so much to be done.

His habitual flow of sacred verse was like the course of a full fed stream. In extreme old age, his habits of composition are thus pleasingly described:

"He rode every day (clothed for Winter, even in Summer,) a little horse, grey with age. When he mounted, if a subject struck him, he proceeded to expand and put it in order. He would write a hymn thus given him on a card (kept for that purpose) with his pencil in short hand. Not unfrequently he has come to the house on the City road, and having left the pony in the garden in front, he would enter, crying out 'Pen and ink! pen and ink!' These being ☛pplied, he wrote the hymn he had been composing. When this was done, he would look round on those present, and salute them with much kindness, ask after their health, give out a short hymn, and thus put all in mind of eternity. He was fond of that stanza upon these occasions,

"There all the ship's company meet," &c.

His benign spirit is, we believe, gratified now by finding that company larger than he had dared to hope.

The mind of John Wesley was more masculine; he was more of a thinker and leader. He is spoken of as credulous, as hoping good of men naturally, and able to hope it again from those that had deceived him. This last is weakness unless allied with wise decision and force, generosity when it is thus tempered. To the character of John Wesley it imparted a persuasive nobleness. and hallowed his earnestness with mercy. He had in a striking degree another of those balances between opposite forces which mark the great man He kept himself open to new inspirations. was bold in apprehending and quick in carrying them out. Ye:

with a resolve once taken he showed a steadiness of purpose beyond what the timid scholars of tradition can conceive.

In looking at the character of the two men, and the nature of their doctrine we well understand why their spirit has exercised so vast a sway, especially with the poor, the unlearned and those who had none else to help them. They had truth enough and force enough to uplift the burdens of an army of poor pil. grims and send them on their way rejoicing. We should delight to string together, in our own fashion, a rosary of thoughts and anecdotes illustrative of their career and its consequences, but, since time and our limits in newspaper space forbid, cannot end better than by quoting their own verse, for they are of that select corps, "the forlorn hope of humanity," to whom shortcoming in deeds has given no occasion to blush for the lofty scope of their words.

"Who but the Holy Ghost can make

A genuine gospel minister,

A bishop bold to undertake

Of precious souls the awful care?

The Holy Ghost alone can move

A sinner sinners to convert,

Infuse the apostolic love

And bless him with a pastor's heart."

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PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR.

In presenting to the public this imperfect translation of a very celebrated production of the first German writer, I hope for indulgence from those who are acquainted with the original. There are difficulties attending the translation of German works into English which might baffle one much more skilful in the use of the latter than myself. A great variety of compound words enable the German writer to give a degree of precision and delicacy of shading to his expressions nearly impracticable with the terse, the dignified, but by no means flexible English idiom. The rapid growth of German literature, the concurrence of so many master spirits, all at once fashioning the language into a medium for the communication of their thoughts, has brought it to a perfection which must gradually be impaired, as inferior minds mould and adapt it to their less noble uses. It may become better suited to certain kinds of light writing, but must lose its condensed power of expression, as the English has done. I may be allowed to quote Mr. Coleridge in apology for a somewhat paraphrastical translation, not as presuming to compare mine with his Wallenstein, but to show that this accomplished writer deemed the rendering of the spirit, on the whole, more desirable than that of the letter. I would also shelter

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