TAYLOR'S WESLEY AND METHODISM.' *
Tills volume might be considered in some sort as a pendent to Loyola and Jesuitism ; since the revival of a more earnest reli- gious spirit and the formation of a new religious body were equally the characteristics of Wesley and of Loyola. It does not appear that the author had any direct purpose of this kind in view, although both books might have originated in that great cyclical work on the history of enthusiasm or religious error, which he contemplated in his prime of manhood, but the intention of whose completion he subsequently dropped.
As the author frequently applies his critical remarks on Me- thodism to the past and present state or probable future of religion in England, portions of the book have a more immediate bearing than anything connected with the origin of the Jesuits ; but as a literary. work, Wesley and Methodism is inferior to its predecessor. This does not arise from any inferiority of subject. The lives and careers of Whitefield, of John Wesley, and of his more remarkable followers, were as extraordinary for inward struggles and external adventure as anything among the founders of Jesuitism. If their enthusiasm was not better regulated, it was occupied on better and more rational subjects ; if their privations were not so great, they were not self-imposed, but encountered in the fulfilment of a duty, and they were devoid of the physically filthy character which dis- tinguishes the humility of so many Romish saints. The previous lives, the inward wrestlings with the flesh and the Devil in the course of their conversion, the subsequent exertions of many of the early Methodists, with the galling persecutions they under- went, would furnish themes quite as striking as anything in the lives of Loyola and his friends. These more stirring features of his subject the author has eschewed, and to such an extent that the reader unacquainted with the biography of the persons will not always thoroughly under- stand the text. Exposition, running into disquisition, is the cha- racter of the book ; and the anecdotes or other personal matter in- troduced are subservient to the argument of the writer. To explain the true philosophy of Methodism, the religious effects it pro- duced, and the secret of its success, the causes why Wesleyan Methodism did not actually supersede the English Church, and why, having answered the purpose designed by Providence, there is a prospect of its decadence, are the objects the author proposes to himself. In some of these topics it is impossible to avoid handling the personal traits of the human agents, recurring to events in their career, and touching upon the manners of the times ; but this is done allusively, and in subordination to the argument. Neither is this argument altogether so close and interesting as it might be. The purpose is sometimes remote, the manner too sermonizing. The work exhibits a thorough acquaintance with the lives and writings of the founders of Methodism, and a living knowledge of some of them as they approached the termination of their career. A judgment nicely critical is exercised upon both, in which charity never dulls the acumen, but ever restrains it from passibg into bitterness. Much thought, moreover, is displayed upon the real causes of the success of the Methodists, and a good deal of origi- nal opinion in the survey of the religious world ; which Mr. Taylor's task permits, if it does not require. Taken as a whole, however, the book is not so attractive as some of the author's pre- vious writings.
The theory of Mr. Taylor on the subject of Wesle an Methodism is worth considering. Whether he will get Wesleyans, or any other class of religionists, to think with him, is another question. Mr. Taylor's idea is, that Christianity must be founded on Scrip- ture alone ; in which opinion all Protestants at least will join : but then, he seems to think that no existing church or sect em- bodies Apostolical Christianity, though it is matter of inference that the Evangelical portion of the Church of England would come very near to it. Completely to embody the Scriptural idea, the individual must be addressed, and, in technical language, regene- rated ; but he must also be cared for and considered relatively— socially. In addressing the individual on his spiritual state—his own relation to God—the Methodists were most successful, Whitefield perhaps more so than Wesley. They did not establish a church which should regard the religious career of the aggre- gation of individuals ; the Wesleyan body, in spite of its num- bers and organization, not being that Scriptural society, chiefly, it would seem, from the non-representation of the laity. How far this affirmation is correct the Wesleyans themselves must settle. A passage in which the leading principles of the author are put forth is remarkable for the reach and depth of its philosophy.
Wesley and Methodism. By Isaac Taylor. Published by Longman and Co.
The religious battle of the present day really turns upon the dif- ference between the " church " and the "individual."
"This is a rudiment of that church idea which we assume to be as un- doubtedly apostolic in its origin as the other just named. Now the various, or as one night say, the multifarious forms under which the Christian sys- tem in the lapse of ages has put itself forward, might conveniently be classified on this very ground; that is to say, as having either given expressions, chiefly, if not exclusively, to that in the Gospel which concentrates the reli- gious affections upon the individual relationship between God and the soul ; or to that which diffuses the religious feelings and renders them less immediate. In a classification such as this, Methodism would take its place along with instances of the former class. Yet an objection starts up against such a de- cision; for it may be said, 'Has not Methodism shown itself to be eminently a social scheme ?' We grant that it has ; yet it is social only so far as the in- dividual convert is individually considered : of the apostolic church idea it has seemed to belittle conscious, or too unmindful. It was on this ground that Wesley innovated the most, where least he is thought of as an in- novator.
"If the distinction we have now to insist upon be of a kind that is less ob- vious than some, it is far from being of inferior moment; and in truth, at this time, it is precisely that distinction which most urgently needs to be well mim-stood and attentively regarded. If we imagine each of these modes of Christian piety to be carried to its extreme point, and even to be a little ex- aggerated, then we shall have before us two broadly-marked religious styles, as well of feeling as of behaviour, and between which the reconciling prin- ciple has not hitherto been discovered, or not applied. That it will be dis- covered and applied too, and that thus an entire Christianity shall at length exhibit itself, we hold to be certain. " Taken, therefore, somewhat in its extreme form, for the sake of obtain- ing a more decisive contrast, the church idea of Christianity, beyond which the Church of Rome knows of nothing, and to which the Church of England has given more prominence than has been allowed it by any other of the Protestant communions, and more prominence than to the opposite or coun- teractive idea, upon which Methodism wholly rests; this church idea lays its hold of all that are born within its circle, and it seals them as the pro- perty of the church, and treats them as passive subjects (not individually, indeed, but seriatim rather) in its own appointed manner, as they arrive at each epoch of their mortal journey, from the womb to the grave : it duly engages for their safety and welfare, certain conditions being complied with; and it sends them forward, authoritatively countersigned, or endorsed, not merely, into the unseen world, but beyond its entrance. " Now, it must not be denied, that within the limits of even a system such as this, the religious affections may find room for exercise, and may become intense, profound, and ecstatic. Nevertheless, it is manifest, that so long as this church idea is held entire, or where it is open to no disturbance from the contiguity of more animated religious systems, there must belong to it a reserve, a distance, and a sense of remoteness from the object of worship. Piety, under this form, is mediate always, more than immediate; and where- as the individual adult worshiper has reached, as a matter of course, and as if according to an invariable rule of official promotion, his actual-place in the marshalled host that is moving forwards with a steady tread toward the world eternal, he is not likely to entertain the thought of his own individu- ality ; nor has he been encouraged to cherish the animating belief that he individually is the object of the Divine complacency in a pectilliar sense. " How unlike this, on every side, whether of feeling, or of behaviour, or of customary phraseology, is that idea of Christianity which, in connexion with our immediate purpose, we must call the Methodistic ! Nor is the force of the contrast abated in any sensible degree when we select our Methodistic samples from out of the very bosom of the Church ; nay, when we not only find our instances within its pale, but leave them there. Methodism may indeed flourish within the Church; but it will not be of it in a thoroughly homogeneous sense; or it will not do so until that harmonizing principle has come into operation, which shall give play to the two counteractive but not incompatible rudiments of Christianity itself. Until then, even if every- phrase and every rubrical usage that hitherto has stood in the way Of una- nimity and conformity were removed, there must still exist a Christianity within the Church, and a Christianity out of it, whether Methodistic or Dis- senting. Those phrases and those usages have hitherto served as the means of conserving among us that other Christian element which the Church does not recognize so distinctly as it might, and to which, in the last century, Methodism gave so broad an expansion."
The exposition of Mr. Taylor's idea as respects the future, indi- cated in the closing sentence of the second paragraph of this ex- tract, is reserved for another work. In a supplemental section, called " Methodism of the Time Coming," he partly enters upon" the subject now. There is in this section probably more expansion of argument, till the drift of the reasoner is lost in a cloud of words, than in any other part of the book. The leading idea is this. Roman- ism on one side and Pantheism on the other will be a means of bringing about Apostolical Christianity, by respectively carrying off the weak, the sensuous-minded, and the silly, or the scientific and the sceptical.
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