the bosom of the Father "to seek and to save that which was lost." But then, Wesley, like Christ and His apostles, was superficial enough to hold that a minister of Christ might publicly deprecate "everlasting damnation," without resorting to an esoteric reservation or a non-natural sense. The second proof of Wesley's spiritual superficiality is "the excessively logical or rationalistic bent of his mind." It must be confessed that the appending the termination istic to the more obvious word rational, or the substituting the word rationalistic for the more obvious synonyme of "logical," ratiocinative, gives an exquisite piquancy to the statement. There seems a dash of sensationalism in the attributing excessive rationalisticism to the foremost preacher of repentance and assurance which the eighteenth century produced. Yet this pronouncement will much better bear looking into than some other of Mr. Davies' dicta. For it is not the theology of Wesley, but "the bias of his mind" which is described as rationalistic. The theology of Wesley, while purely rational, is the very opposite of rationalistic. That the bent of his mind was excessively rationalistic, in other words, that he had to struggle against an all but invincible tendency to demand the wrong sort of evidence for spiritual facts, he was himself conscious, he himself confessed. But he did struggle against them. He had the good sense to see that it was an internecine struggle. He did not fawn upon his doubts, and foster them, and fancy that they made a man of him. By an act of heroic intellectual selfdenial, he abandoned his favourite study, mathematics, because he found that his mental bias in that direction was excessive. And a very valuable fact is thus elicited. It is plain that Wesley's theology was not, like so much of the current theology, the result of a personal mental proclivity. No divine has ever more strictly confined himself to the written oracles of God. Mr. Davies pays a just tribute to his self-denial and self-control in another direction "From his youth onward he kept his heel down firmly on sensual appetite." But he also kept his heel down just as firmly on those intellectual idiosyncrasies, excesses, which, like "fleshly lusts war against the soul." ... : was But spiritual superficiality and incapacity are ascribed to John Wesley, and it is pronounced that 666 a genius for godliness precisely what Wesley had not."* One naturally asks, What are the censor's own ideas of spirituality and "godliness." He surely is not using the former word in its ordinary, its New Testament sense; not in the sense in which it is usually employed in the "Contemporary Review," not the sense in which he himself uses it when he attributes to Methodism 66 success in training the converted in the spiritual life," (P. 115,) and to Methodists "splendid spiritual energy." (P. 136.) For the quality to which the terms "spiritual" and "godliare in this passage applied is something quite incompatible with an absorbing desire to save one's own soul and the souls of as many other men as possible." It is rather puzzling to the average intelligence when a writer uses the same word on the same page in widely divergent senses. And this is not the only instance in which one requires a glossary of the Daviesian ness *The italics are the reviewer's own. Mr. Arnold had recognised in Wesley “a genius for godliness." dialect. Taking the critic's purely | Barclay's Apology that solemn arbitrary and glaringly unscriptural notion of spirituality and godliness, we should accept the charge against Wesley, as in reality the highest praise. But, it seems, Wesley's "superficiality" was also "intellectual" Moreover, he was "mechanically unintelligent." The dictum that Wesley was, in any way, unintelligent is so contrary to the judgment of his contemporaries, even the most competent amongst them, such as Samuel Johnson, and to that of his former critics; such a blunt upsetting of all former judgments, that of Robert Southey amongst the rest; so daringly contradictory to the evidence of the fourteen volumes of Wesley's extant Works, not to name his hymns and Histories, and to his success as an organizer and administrator, is such an affront to the University which deemed him worthy of its choicest honours; in short, is so hopelessly inscrutable, as to compel the conclusion that our critic's notions of intelligence are as arbitrary and as undefined as his conceptions of spirituality and godliness. If he had written' mechanically intelligent,' there would have been much more plausibility, though not very much more profundity, in the pronouncement. We are quite ready to admit that Wesley, a master of logic, was himself sometimes, though very rarely, mastered by his "excessively logical bent; " and that he was not duly appreciative of the "mystical" (Mr. Davies would doubtless say "spiritual") writers mentioned by the criticWilliam Law and Barclay-and of Jacob Behmen their common master. In support of his assertion that Wesley's "literary preferences were stamped with a common-place character," his censor deems it sufficient to say that Wesley "called trifle."" We must assume that the critic, having met with this quotation in Mr. Tyerman's first volume, (P. 489,) never thought of asking whether this was all that Wesley ever said about Barclay's remarkable production, and that he never met with Wesley's careful and candid critique of it. (Works, Vol. X. Pp. 177-188.) Assuredly "Barclay's Apology" is no "trifle," as Wesley in an obiter dictum once called it. Yet it is easy to understand, even without reading Wesley's deferential, though searching, analysis of the book, why its great excellencies should, in his estimate, seem vastly outweighed by its still greater defects. And we freely admit that it has real excellencies of which Wesley did not take sufficient note. Its looseness of expression, its Romish confusion of justification with sanctification, its setting up of the individual, especially Robert Barclay, above the Bible, its arbitrary, arrogant thrusting aside of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and substitution for them of stated sitting together in silence as the one essential rite of Christianity, its branding, as a kind of obscene paganism, all punctuality in religious services, pronouncing "all worship, both praises, prayers and preaching which man sets about at his own appointment, which he can begin and end at his pleasure ... ... .. but superstitious will-worship, and abominable idolatries"! all this was very offensive to a man of Wesley's habits of thought, action and expression. In like manner, the unscriptural and misleading speculations of William Law made Wesley indifferent to the oak-like strength and majesty of his style; while Behmen's evolution of God and of the universe from the eternal relations of nothing and number, so was a theologian, not a theosophist, and his theology was of the western, not the oriental type-real, dialectic, sometimes hard. Yet, after all, Wesley had a strong sympathy with mysticism, as is shown in some of his hymns, notably, Hymn 261. In philosophy he had a decided inclination to a kind of Coleridgean idealism. See, for example, his fifty-first sermon, on "The Good Steward." referred to below, "I think the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings of the mystics." But his real judgment on Mysti cism is to be found in the letter to his elder brother, and in the preface to his "Extract of the Life of Madame Guion;' literally an extract of not from. (Works, Vol. XIV. P. 275, etc.) But in religion he shrunk from mistiness as from miasma. On this very subject he wisely writes:-"At all hazards keep to the plain, practical, written word of God;" (Journal I., 376;) and again, "I desire nothing, I will accept of nothing, but the common faith and common salvation; and I want you, my dear sister, to be only just such a common Christian as Jenny Cooper was." (Letter to Miss Loxdale, Works, Vol. XIII. P. 127.) In fact, his was one of those large, round, sympathetic natures which unless well poised, as his happily was, and kept steady by strong sense and deep spiritual experience, are liable to perilous extremes on either hand. Hence he confesses that his religious dangers lay even more in the direction of mysticism than in that of mathematics. He writes, in a letter * Tyerman, Vol. I. Pp. 133, 134. (To be concluded.) NOTES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MONTH. MR. CROOKES has been working quietly and persistently in order to accumulate facts and test the properties of his remarkable discovery on the motive power of light. The nature of the discovery and the little apparatus by which it was demonstrated, have both been described in this Magazine; it is enough now to remind the reader that in a small glass bulb there is pivoted, with exquisite delicacy, a cross of very fine glass working horizontally; at the ends of the arms of which are fixed pith discs. These are black on one side and white on the other. The bulb is made into an absolute vacuum by a most perfect apparatus. On placing a lighted candle or other source of luminosity near, the whole horizontal cross, with the pith discs, is caused to revolve with a rapidity increasing with the intensity of the light. The latest results obtained with this remarkable little instrument have just been given, by the discoverer of its principle, at the Royal Institution. All the physical forces render their action perceptible by the production of motion. Indeed, the more we search the operations of nature the more profoundly are we impressed with her restless intensity of work. Mr. Crookes' discovery is only one more proof added to the many which modern investigation has supplied of the constant and intense molecular and atomic activity of matter. But it is a very remarkable one; for no evidence had ever before been given of the power of light to produce motion. It was first discovered by him, through the perplexing fact, that the light of a candle would attract an arm of pith suspended in an imperfect vacuum, but repel a similar arm suspended in a very perfect one produced by a Sprengel air-pump. This led to the construction of the Radiometer, the name given to his new instrument, and by it he had found that the propelling force of light was far stronger than had been supposed. At first he made the radiometers so delicate that the whole moving parts weighed not more than a quarter of a grain; thinking that only such delicate apparatus could be affected by the power of the light beam. This was soon shown to be a mistake, and he now makes them heavy enough to carry little magnets. One was shown which was so large that it required ten discs of pith to carry round one magnet. Outside the bulb of this instrument was a magnetic arm which was attracted every time one pole of the magnet inside the bulb came near it. This disturbance of the outside magnet every time the inner one had revolved once, was made to convey impulses to a telegraphic instrument, by means of which a series of dots made upon a slip of paper told the number of revolutions in a second of timeor any other given time-unit. Thus we have an instrument capable of recording its own action, and of measuring accurately the intensity of any given light. But refined as this instrument is, one far more delicate for this purpose has been devised by Mr. Crookes. It depends upon the force of torsion of a filament of glass, brought into action against an iron weight of onehundredth of a grain. The whole was made to act in vacuo. Thus the power of the light to twist the glass against the action of the gravity of the minute weight enabled the mechanical force of the impact of light to be directly measured. By this means it was found that the push of a beam of light coming from a candle six inches off amounted to 00162 of a grain. By calculation it was estimated that the pressure of sunlight on the earth was not less than two hundred-weight per acre, fifty-seven tons to the square mile, and three thousand millions of tons upon the whole earth; and this action is in direct opposition to the action of gravity. This is undoubtedly a great gain. to science. At once its value in optics, astronomy and meteorology are dimly seen; but what its future may be cannot be divined. Yet the result as it now stands must deeply impress us. How gigantic are the operations of nature, even where we suppose absolute inactivity! The universe is one measureless area of activity. Not an atom in it knows of rest! The crust of the earth-unchanging as it seems-is perpetually moving, the sea level is constantly changing. The earth revolves upon its axis, and it rolls in its yearly path about the sun. The sun, with the earth and all the planets, sweeps through the unknown depths of space apparently to a point in the constellation Hercules. Every "fixed" star is rushing through the abysms of space with inconceivable swiftness. Fifty thousand years ago the great Bear was a starry cross. The very nebulæ are moving not only like the stars through the ocean of space, but their own gaseous masses are seething and disturbed; or twisted by unknown agents into mighty spirals, rings and tortuous clouds. Every molecule of matter in the whole universe is swinging to and fro, every particle of ether in space is in vibration. Light is one kind of motion-demonstrated by Mr. Crookes' discovery even to ordinary vision, heat is another, electricity, magnetism, sound and so forth are others. Every human sense is the result of motion; every perception, every thought, involves molecular action in brain and nerve as servants of the mind. Every chemical change throughout the universe, and every mutation involving birth, death, growth or decay carry with them not only the motion we see, but molecular and atomic motions beside, that almost overwhelm the mind. A paper of great value-partly investigation and partly speculation -has just been read before the Royal Microscopical Society by its President, which must enhance the power of these thoughts. It is, in fact, a calculation of the probable size of the ultimate atoms of matter. He first argues from data, furnished by theoretical optics and practical investigation, that the limit of visibility of any object has been reached by the modern microscope, and that the finest line, or the smallest atom visible, must be at least 1000oth of an inch. Now, what is the relation of this to the ultimate atoms of which matter is supposed to be composed ? It is by means of the various properties of gases that a probable reply can be given. This problem has been attacked by three Physicists of great mathematical power; and the mean or average of their results is that in the 1000000000th of a cubic inch of a perfect gas there are 50,260,000,000,000 atoms. That is to say, that in a space the one-thousandth of an inch in length 21,770 such atoms would lie end to end; so that in a drop of water the both of an inch in size there would be 2,000 molecules; and in the same quantity of albumen 520 such molecules. Thus in order to see the ultimate particles of water or albumen it would be necessary to use a magnifying power from 500 to 2,000 times greater than the greatest we now command! But if we could get this, it would be useless, because the wave-lengths of light are too large to admit of its use. Upon this basis, if we suppose the germinal vesicle-in which the embryo takes its rise-to be rooth of an inch in size, it contains so many ultimate particles that if these were to be lost from the vesicle at the rate of one each second of time, they would not be exhausted for seventeen years. While if the whole ovum be takena sphere of th of an inch in diameter, if the destruction of its ultimate molecules took place at the same rate, they would not be exhausted in less than five thousand six hundred years. These calculations are to a large extent of course based on hypotheses, but they have basis enough in fact to make them indicative of the marvellous minuteness of nature's operations, and their absolute perfection insomuch as the perfection of the mass depends upon the perfection of the molecule. Another remarkable and pregnant discovery is that of the influence which light exerts upon the element selenium. The effect of light upon solids, even in modern science, has been confined to photography and phosphorescent salts. The deportment of the latter is very remarkable. Possessed of no selfluminous power, they are capable of emitting a luminous glow in |