e
prejudice as that of the reverend Whig rationalist--"the Wesleyans, the
Orthodox dissenters of every description, and the Evangelical churchmen
may all be comprehended under the generic name of Methodists. The
religion which they preach is not the religion of our fathers, and what
they have altered they have made worse." But Southey had himself faith
as well as a literary canon higher than that of his opponent who wrote
only to "please" his patrons. He saw in these Methodists alone that
which he appreciated as the essence of true faith--"that spirit of
enthusiasm by which Europe was converted to Christianity they have in
some measure revived, and they have removed from Protestantism a part
of its reproach." He proceeded to tell how "this Mission, which is
represented by its enemies as so dangerous to the British Empire in
India, and thereby, according to a logic learnt from Buonaparte, to
England also, originated in a man by name William Carey, who till the
twenty-fourth year of his age was a working shoemaker. Sectarianism
has this main advantage over the Established Church, that its men of
ability certainly find their station, and none of its talents are
neglected or lost. Carey was a studious and pious man, his faith
wrong, his feelings right. He made himself competently versed in
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He is now probably a far more learned
orientalist than any European has ever been before him, and has been
appointed Professor of Sanskrit and Bengali at the College of Fort
William." Then follow a history of the Mission written in a style
worthy of the author of the Life of Nelson, and these statements of the
political and the purely missionary questions, which read now almost as
predictions:--

"The first step towards winning the natives to our religion is to show
them that we have one. This will hardly be done without a visible
church. There would be no difficulty in filling up the establishment,
however ample; but would the archbishop, bishops, deans, and chapters
of Mr. Buchanan's plan do the work of missionaries? Could the Church
of England supply missionaries?--where are they to be found among them?
In what school for the promulgation of sound and orthodox learning are
they trained up? There is ability and there is learning in the Church
of England, but its age of fermentation has long been over; and that
zeal which for this work is the most needful is, we fear, possessed
only by the Methodis