ety
prepared an effectual check against unbelief, when the lower orders were
afterwards invaded by it, was due to the spiritual yearnings created by
the ministrations of men, often rude and unlettered, who told the wondrous
story of Christ crucified, heart speaking to heart, with intuitions
kindled from on high. The sinful began to feel that God was not afar off,
reposing in the solitude of his own blessedness, and abandoning mankind to
the government of conscience and to the operation of general laws, but
nigh at hand, with a heart of fatherly love to pity and an ear of mercy to
listen. The narrative of Christ the Son of God, coming down to seek and to
save that which was lost, awoke an echo in the heart which neutralized the
doubts infused by the deist. And it is a comfort to every Christian
labourer to know that if he cannot wrangle out a controversy with the
doubter, he can speak to the doubter's heart.

Few would compare the irregular missionaries of spiritual religion in the
last century with the great writers of evidence. The names of the latter
are honoured; those of the former are unknown or too often despised. It
might seem strange, for example, to institute a comparison between the two
contemporaries, bishop Butler and John Wesley. Yet there are points of
contrast which are instructive. Each was one of the most marked
instruments of movement and influence in the respective fields of the
argumentative and the spiritual; the one a philosopher writing for the
educated, the other a missionary preaching to the poor. Butler, educated a
nonconformist, turned to the church, and in an age of unbelief consecrated
his great mental gifts to roll back the flood of infidelity; and died
early, when his unblemished example was so much needed in the noble sphere
of usefulness which Providence had given him, leaving a name to be
honoured in the church for generations. Wesley, nursed in the most
exclusive church principles, kindled the flame of his piety by the devout
reading of mystic books;(495) when our university was marked by the
half-heartedness of the time; and afterwards, when instructed by the
Pietists of Germany,(496) devoted a long life to wander over the country,
despised, ill-treated, but still untired; teaching with indefatigable
energy the faith which he loved, and introducing those irregular agencies
of usefulness which are now so largely adopted even in the church. He too
was an accomplished scholar, and possess