at random upon some suggestive passage of Scripture; and now if we would only allow him to be fallible on this question of his spiritual condition during the momentous weeks and months of 1738, and would quit interpreting the experience of May 24, 1738, by setting it over against that confession of the twenty-ninth of February, 1738, we should bring comfort to many Christian believers, and perhaps we ourselves might get a May experience that would save us from serving as slaves, and enable us to serve as sons. In his defense of the Moravian Church, written on the twenty-ninth of September, 1740, he declares that "a man may have a degree of justifying faith before he is wholly freed from all doubt and fear, and before he has, in the full, proper sense, a new, a clean heart." In his life of John Wesley, J. H. Overton, M.A., quotes Wesley as saying: "When fifty years ago my brother Charles and I, in the simplicity of our hearts, taught the people that unless they knew their sins were forgiven they were under the wrath and curse of God, I marvel they did not stone us. The Methodists, I hope, know better now. We preach assurance, as we always did, as a common privilege of the children of God, but we do not enforce it under pain of damnation denounced on all who enjoy it not."* Judged by the parable of the vine and the branches, Wesley's later judgment is correct. Jesus taught, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." The question of conversion is a question of the attitude of one's will. That loyalty of will which expresses itself in obedience is the test of conversion. Given a loyal will, however the sensibilities are affected, and the man is converted. Given a disloyal will, be the emotions what they may, and the man is not converted. He who has faith enough to say, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" has the faith that saves. On the other hand, it is to be said that it is just the experience that came to John Wesley when he felt his heart "strangely warmed" that gives to the Gospel carrying power. The psalmist shows real insight when he prays: "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy way, and sinners shall be converted unto thee." The sensibilities furnish the standard of all values.

* Overton's John Wesley, p. 84. I have not been able to verify this quotation.

All motives take their rise in feelings and emotions. Extirpate the sensibilities and neither interest nor motive is possible. It is true that wherever there is volition there is also feeling and emotion. It is also true that the intellectual may be so dominant that the emotional activity is reduced to the minimum. The Gospel appeals to this emotional side of our nature as well as to the intellectual. The peril of sin, the hope of heaven, the forgiveness of sin, the doctrine of regeneration, the promise of the Holy Spirit, the Fatherhood of God-these truths appeal to eternal interests, and appeal directly to the emotional nature. Their bearing upon the emotions is as valid as upon the intellectual. The Holy Spirit is as genuinely present in this as in any other spiritual activity, and if we are to carry the forward movement with power into this century these great truths must be so preached as to awaken interest and kindle emotion. We have been emphasizing the intellectual and critical side of our work for a quarter of a century. It has not been in vain. We have a better basis for a genuine reformation than ever before. We now need to convert the whole intellectual content of the Gospel as we hold it to-day into motive and practical work. We need to make prominent Wesley's viewpoint, and preach Jesus preeminently as Saviour. Only so shall we convince men that religion is not something to be endured, but a joy, triumphant and eternal; that it is a possession so good that we must share it with all men.

B.P. Raymund.

ART. III.-THE LITERATURE OF DEVOTION.

To the thoughtful mood not many things are so impressive as to hear the invitation, "Brother Trueheart, will you lead us in prayer?" Here is a captaincy we have given little heed to in our thoughts of leadership, and yet a captaincy so solemn and sublime as to find no equivalent among the renowned leaderships of men. "Lead us in prayer." Adventure for us and ahead of us out toward God-that is what this invitation urges. But we have forgotten this noble and notable meaning, or, what is perhaps more true, we have never remembered it. He who leads in prayer goes out before us in bold and holy quest of God-climbs the high Sinai as Moses did, unafraid and yet all afraid, to find God and order his cause and our cause before him. In no way can one man render another man a wiser and calmer service than in giving direction to his Godward thoughts-to give, so to say, an initial impulse toward our heavenly Father. Good men and women want to walk out into the divine presence, which is the supreme journey taken by a soul. God is not hard to find, truly; and yet to come to him in the mood of love and devout search both facilitates and enriches our meeting. God is "not far from any one of us," but how to hasten to him with immediacy, with laughing and yet sanctified and sedate approach, is an art to be studied as above all arts made much of among the sons of men. And when some man schooled in the direct route to God sets out, I for one will ask him to let me follow in his steps. I will care to be at the interview. For years I have noted this leadership in prayer with personal and pathetic interest, and seldom have failed in finding as I followed in the wake of prayer to have my spirit helped and sanctified. In prayer meeting the philosophy is not ourselves to pray at our own initiative, but to follow the initiative of another, to go his road to God. I love the road prayer takes, and have with uniformity found how helpful the journey was when taken so. Each heart has its method of access. Each has some subtle undertone of pathos springing from a dead past come to life for a flickering moment, some groping of heart after that hand of pity which

assuages the heartache of the world, some sudden leap of faith strong and bold as if an angel made it, some ingenuous appeal half childish and half grand, some vision of old truths which made old truths new as love; and this is included in the ordinary leadership of prayer.

Devotional literature is such reading as puts the heart in the mood of prayer; for to make life a prayer is to be religious. This is a widely different thing from suggesting that life is to do nothing but pray. Such a life might be essentially undevout. He who sees his brother have need and restricts his helping to prayer would be in every regard irreligious. Doing is as devout as praying. Religion consists not in praying a prayer but in being a prayer; and the devout life, whether in cornfield or kitchen, is on its knees. With such devotion God is well pleased. Prayer is to be understood as the setting of the soul toward God as the tide sets for the shore. Anything this side of that is elocution and not prayer, while anything suffused with this spirit is grandly devout and profoundly religious. To induce this mood, then, is the end of devotion. To make the heart pant for God as the stag for the water brooks when wearied with his running is to render the chiefest service. The devout life is the prayer-charged life. When this is the spirit condition there is no trouble in keeping in tune with heaven and in touch with God. When the devotee may whisper to himself in a whisper's whisper, "I am a prayer," then will he work with least friction, sing not knowing that he sings, pray with his fingers and his feet, toil thinking his work a whole holiday of gladness. This is, as we moderns understand, the Christ theory of devotion. They who say prayers through long nights of vigil and fasting and of cold are not the apostolic succession in such fashion as those who know that the prayers God is most concerned with are those which bleed from fingers worn to the bone with toiling for the saving of the world. The Christian is a working man sweaty with his toil. Yet are we moderns, while clearervisioned than they who thought to leave the world to get at God, in danger of overworking our work idea. Life is not as the sunflower wholly in the sun, but as the violet partly in shade, partly in sun. Doing is not life's totality. There are midnights just as there are

noons; and every midnight is on the road to noon. We shall not err in reckoning that we are in danger of loss in the sum total of possible effectiveness in working overmuch, in growing breathless, in fumbling our skein when a pause in the toil would be a helper to our effort. The art of pause is a not inconsequential part of the art of music. The rests are in the score. So must there be a pause in the holy life or the music will be sadly marred. One of a pastor's many joys is that as he goes from house to house in the brotherly vocation of pastoral visitation he can take breathing spell by being in a strict privacy with God while he is in transit from one house to another. And so he comes to each parishioner fresh from God. How that privacy washes away the drudgery, so called, from the pastoral office, how filled with calm delight it makes an afternoon so spent, how the Ineffable Presence shines on him as he walks about! It is like a day of summer sunshine in a winter month. The hard-worked man can thus find abundant interval for privacy with God. I have known crowded business men whose times were crammed with many callers and with many business items, and have sometimes asked them how they contrived to get a moment's space with God, and have had as answer, "I seize the moment when it comes to have my word with God." This is the secret of the holy life. We are crowded, but not so crowded as that we may not have quiet in which to make our breathing unto "the God of all comfort." We must make our battle against being crowded. We must have space to catch our breath and calm the unquiet of our turbulent career.

Hence the need of devotional literature, such books as shall help us into the ways of God and shall underscore the weightier thoughts and relations. I have had hours many and happy with such books, and count them among my major joys and helpers. Now, we are all so much ourselves as that no one else can prescribe a devotional literature for us any more than he could a table bill of fare; though for all this we must have noticed how similar the dietary tastes of men are. We eat about the same staples. A salad, a sherbet, and such accompaniments will differ, but the edibles are mainly similar. And it may be so with larger matters more than we are wont to suppose. Some staples of devotion must appeal to