letters are in an appendix to Moore's Life of Wesley. The replies are six, and are in the usual editions of Wesley's works.

In 1758 a Rev. Dr. Free attacked the Methodists and their founder, who replied in two letters. One was written in Tullamore, in Ireland. He says: "I wrote a short answer to Dr. Free's weak, bitter, scurrilous invective against the people called Methodists. But I doubt whether I shall meddle with him any more; he is too dirty a writer for me to touch." As Dr. Free published a sermon on the same subject, and in the same strain, Mr. Wesley gave him another letter, and says: "I wrote a second letter to Dr. Free, the warmest opponent I have had for many years. I leave him now to laugh and scold, and witticise and call names just as he pleases, for I have done." It may be supposed that in the great field congregations collections were usually taken up; but Dr. Free is told. that "the pence and the preaching" did not "go hand in hand together."

In the same year he wrote a letter to the Rev. Mr. Potter, who had published a sermon "on the pretended Inspiration of the Methodists." In the letter he declares that he contended not for the extraordinary inspiration of the apostles, but for the promised assistance of the Holy Spirit to all Christians.

In 1759 we find "A Letter to the Rev. Mr. Downes, Rector of St. Michael's, Wood-street, London, occasioned by his late tract, entitled, Methodism Examined and Exposed."" Here is the conclusion of the whole matter: "In a word, all ancient heresies have in a manner concentered in the Methodists; particularly those of the Simonians, Gnostics, Antinomians, Valentinians, Donatists, and Montanists!" Says Mr. Wesley: "While your hand was in you might as well have added, Carpocratians, Eutychians, Nestorians, Sabellians." Nothing new was brought against the Methodists; but the old objections had to be answered again. The writer made bold assertions; but was "so bold because he was so blind." It appears that Mr. Downes did not see the reply, but died before it was published. The widow procured a tract to be written in answer; but as it contained no little virulence and scurrility he did not notice it. (Journal, November, 1760.)

In 1762 the Rev. Dr. Horne preached a sermon on justification before the University of Oxford, in which he spoke of the "heresies making their periodical revelations," and of the "new lights at the Tabernacle and Foundry," and objected to justification by faith alone, but rather by works accompanying it. Mr. Wesley replied to the sermon, and set forth the Protestant, the Church of England, and the Scriptural doctrine of justification by faith alone against

the five arguments of the preacher. The tract is a concise and clear defense of the doctrine against some plausible objections. Dr. Horne was the author of a Commentary of the Psalms, which Mr. Wesley thought, was the best ever written. gentleman was a Hutchinsonian in his creed.

It seems that the

ART. VI.-HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS.

Hours with the Mystics.

A Contribution to the History of Religious Opinion. By ROBERT ALFRED VAUGHAN. 2 vols. London: Parker & Son. 1856. Essays and Remains of the Rev. Robert Alfred Vaughan. Edited, with a Memoir, by the Rev. ROBERT VAUGHAN. 2 vols. London: Parker, & Son.

1858.

THE intelligence of the death of Mr. R. A. Vaughan, in the autumn of 1857, produced peculiar feelings of disappointment and sadness in the hearts of his many personal and theological friends. He had been known as the author of a volume of poetry, The Witch of Endor and other Poems, published while a student in the Lancashire Independent College. Subsequently, his papers in the British Quarterly, marked as they were by vast research and chastened imagination, gave his name admission to some of the leading literary circles of England and Scotland. But thus far his reputation as an author was only circumscribed, and it was not until the appearance of Hours with the Mystics that the public became fairly acquainted with him. The work was received with instant attention and favor. A number of the prominent critical periodicals contained commendatory and exhaustive reviews of it, while it created no little stir among the gowned race on the banks of the Isis and the Cam. Not that it was hailed with such enthusiasm as deifies some books that are born in a palace on a bright morning, but die before night by the wayside, and are buried in the potter's field. Denied such an ostentatious natal hour, it was happily spared from a like premature and ignoble grave. Its mission was not to the masses, but to the thinking mind and the feeling heart. The facts it contained had never before been condensed into even, a score of works; the style was pure and engaging, the treatment skillful and attractive. The favorable judgments upon it were for the most part from exalted sources; and the author's laurels were of such value that but a tithe of them would have been ample reward for those five years of unremitting labor in languishing health.

But scarcely had Mr. Vaughan time to witness such a favorable FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XII.-18

reception of his work before he was compelled to lay down his pen and die. The interest previously excited in reference to him was now doubled; and to satisfy this, as well as to pay a tribute to the worth of an affectionate and gifted son, Dr. Vaughan, himself an eminent English author, collected his various minor productions and published them under the title of Essays and Remains. The work embraces a memoir, contributions to British magazines, the best poems of the deceased, and some fragmentary but valuable reflections on religion. The memoir was sad work for a father, but we thank him for it, because it admits the light into a great soul, and shows us how much of love and usefulness can be combined into a brief lifetime. Though painted by a kindred hand, we can detect no attempt to gloss irregularities of feature. We discover many traces of a father's tears, but nowhere do they blind the critic's eye or bribe his pen.

It would be alike instructive and interesting to linger at some of those parts in the course of the Memoir that describe the phases of Mr. Vaughan's inner experience, but we are assured that we deal stricter justice to the dead in giving but a hasty glance at the events of his life in order to widen the field for the consideration of his greatest work. He was born in Worcester on the 18th of March, 1823. At the close of his thirteenth year he entered the school of University College, London, and in 1842 he took his Bachelor's degree with honors in the classics. We find him a student in the Lancashire Independent College in 1843; and after completing his theological course in that institution he went to Germany, and was matriculated at the University of Halle. Not long had he been attending the lectures there before he began to be acclimated to the hazy atmosphere of German speculation. He was learning to dream too, and his faith was on the wane. Unlike many unfortunate ones, however, under similar circumstances, he saw his error and embraced the remedy for it. So he passed through the ordeal of rationalistic doubts, and came out like tried gold. After enjoying the rare opportunities afforded him, not least of which was the society of the saintlike Tholuck, he returned to England a stronger and better man. He then accompanied his father on a tour through Switzerland and Italy, after which he assumed the active duties of the ministry by becoming assistant pastor in Bath with that distinguished and useful man the Rev. William Jay. In 1848 he was married, and continued his pastoral labors in Bath two years. From there he was called to Birmingham, where he remained until the summer of 1855, when failing health compelled him to resign. his charge.

It was during his residence in the last named place that he performed the most of his literary work. Marvelous does it seem to find this young man writing articles for the best reviews of England, learning languages and dialects in order to apply their treasures to his commenced magnum opus, ministering to the spiritual wants of a large congregation, and all this with a constitutionally delicate and now diseased body. The consumption had fastened upon his lungs, and cessation from ministerial labor was his only reasonable hope of protracting life. It was a bitter day to him when he parted with his Church, but submission to God was no new lesson for him to learn. The subsequent intervals of strength he devoted mainly to composition; and he died in great peace of mind in the thirty-fifth year of his age, but shortly after the emphatic utterance of the words, "Yes, God is very good." Thus ended, as calmly as a summer day, a life singularly earnest, spiritual, and suggestive. Of all men Dr. Vaughan was best adapted to sketch it, for the intelligent interest and counsel of the father had much to do with the molding it; while in return there were confided to that father's heart all the plans, and hopes, and prospects of a nobly gifted son.

In passing through the rich gallery of the Essays we will only linger a moment before a few of the finest paintings. The article on Origen was Mr. Vaughan's first essay in Church history. The sources from which he was required to draw his materials were obscure and chaotic; but patient study, a sound judgment, and the imagination of the true poet have clothed the Alexandrian Father in such a modern but truthful dress as the most ardent admirer of patristic times would have deemed impossible. You are transported to an enchanted country, a Ulysses on Ogygia, but without the dangers of shipwreck or the wiles of Calypso. We first read the Origen in travel, commencing on the cars, and concluding in a superannuated, creaking stage. When finished it was like awaking from a dream; certainly were all history written in such a style, the world would read it as the richest romance. The studies pursued in connection with Origen, awakened in Mr. Vaughan's mind not only an interest in the mysticism of that day, but a strong inclination for the study of religious opinions throughout the Middle Ages. This was the source of his best essays, as also of the work on which his reputation now rests. In an article of the Eclectic Review, which we are guaranteed in ascribing to the chaste and scholarly pen of the Rev. John Brown Paton, of Sheffield, we find this mention: "This first historical study of his [the Origen of Mr. Vaughan] we doubt not was the seed, accidentally dropped, which brought

forth such stores of fruit in Hours with the Mystics. His chief articles, written afterward, hover near the same subject, showing the fascination with which it engrossed his mind.". The monograms in Schleiermacher and Savonarola and his Times, abound less in imagery, but have magic power to transport the reader to other times and lands. They were conceived and studied during the author's student life in Germany. There is no thinker of modern times more misunderstood than Schleiermacher; and we have here such a clear setting forth of his doctrines and their merit that we have not been able to find an approach to it in our language. It may be profitably studied in the absence of a rigid investigation of the varied works of the great Berlin professor and preacher. We have then reviews of Mackay's Religious Development in Greece, Kingsley's Hypatia, Lady Holland's Sydney Smith, and Young's Christ of History. This last paper is a manly defense of the supernaturalism of Christianity. It proves the author to have been trained in the school of Henry Rogers, only a tithe, it may be acknowledged, of the service rendered by the Independent Church of Great Britain to the cause of evangelical truth. We trust the barriers she has raised may successfully resist the further progress of German Rationalism in England. The next essays are on Lewes's Life and Works of Goethe, French Romances of the Thirteenth Century, and some Fragments of Criticism. The work closes with two poems, Antony, a Masque, and The Disenchantment. Many of the articles in these two volumes attracted marked attention as they appeared, but that false dignity which requires a man's property to circulate without his name, precluded the possibility on the part of many from identifying their author. We meet a number of old friends in this work whose acquaintance we first made in the Eclectic Magazine of New York. It makes them doubly dear to us to know the writer's name, and something of his interesting life. But his pen will yield no more of that rare fruit, in which beauty of style, deep research, and kindness of heart ever held such friendly company.

But the Essays and Remains of Mr. Vaughan were only the coastings of his venturesome youth, the mere pleasure-trips of his genius. The great voyage of his life, by which we become possessed of so much treasure, is Hours with the Mystics. The work is in the form of a dialogue. A circle of friends converse about the Mystics and their doctrines. They read essays also, and thus, by a pleasing variety, they pass through the entire field of mysticism down to the death of Swedenborg. Verily these intimates have chosen a strange topic; but let us sit down with them and listen to