he attracted, compelled him to preach them in the open air: a measure which the moral wants of the country demanded, and which is justified, as well by the example of Christ as by its unquestionable results.

The inconvenience of the "room" occupied by his followers for spiritual meetings at Bristol, led to the erection of a more commodious edifice. This was a place of occasional preaching, and finally, without the slightest anticipation of such a result, the first in a series of chapels which became the habitual resorts of his followers, and thereby contributed more, perhaps, than any other cause to their organization into a distinct sect. The debt incurred by this building rendered necessary a plan of pecuniary contributions among the worshipers who assembled in it. They agreed to pay a penny a week. They were divided into companies of twelve, one of whom, called the leader, was appointed to receive their pittances. At their weekly meetings, for the payment of this contribution, they found leisure for religious conversation and prayer. These companies, formed only for a local and temporary object, were afterward called classes, and the arrangement was incorporated into the permanent economy of Methodism. In this manner originated one of the most distinctive features of its system, the advantages of which are beyond estimation. The class-meeting has,

more than any other means, preserved the original purity and vigor of the denomination. It is the best school of experimental divinity that the world has seen in modern times. It has given a sociality of spirit and a disciplinary training to Methodism which have been characteristic of it, if not peculiar to it.

We cannot but admire the providential adaptation of this institution to another which was subsequently to become all-important in the Methodist economyan itinerant ministry. Such a ministry could not admit of much local pastoral labor, especially in the New World, where the circuits were long. The class-leader became a substitute for the preacher in this department of his office. The fruits of an itinerant ministry must have disappeared in many, perhaps most, places during the long intervals which elapsed between the visits of the earlier preachers, had they not been preserved by the classmeeting.

Another most important result of the class-meeting was the pecuniary provision it afforded for the prosecution of the plans which were daily enlarging under the hands of Wesley. The whole fiscal system of Methodism arose from the Bristol penny collections, modified at last into the "rule" of "a penny a week and a shilling a quarter." Thus, without foreseeing the great independent cause he was about to establish, Wesley formed, through a slight circumstance, a

simple and yet most effective system of finance for the expenses which its future prosecution would involve. And admirably was this pecuniary system adapted to the circumstances of that cause. He was destined to raise up a great religious organization; it was to be composed chiefly of the poor, and yet to require large pecuniary resources. How were these resources to be provided from among a poor people? The providential formation of a plan of finance which suited the poverty of the poorest, and which worldly sagacity would have contemned, banished all difficulty, and has led to pecuniary results which have rarely if ever been equaled by any voluntary religious organization.

The itinerant lay ministry was equally providential in its origin. Wesley was at first opposed to the employment of lay preachers. He expected the cooperation of the regular clergy. They, however, were his most persistent antagonists. Meanwhile the small societies, formed by his followers for spiritual improvement, multiplied. "What," he says, was to be done in a case of such extreme necessity, where so many souls lay at stake? No clergyman would assist at all. The expedient that remained was to seek some one among themselves who was upright of heart and of sound judgment in the things of God, and desire him to meet the rest as often as he could, to confirm them, as he was able, in

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the ways of God, either by reading to them or by prayer and exhortation." From exhortation these men proceeded to exposition, from exposition to preaching. The result was natural, but it was not designed. Such was the origin of the Methodist lay ministry.

The multiplication of societies exceeded the increase of preachers. It thus became necessary that the lat ter should travel from town to town, and thence arose the itinerancy, one of the most important features of the ministerial system of Methodism. It is not a labor-saving provision-quite the contrary-but a laborer-saving one. The pastoral service, which would otherwise have been confined to a single parish, was extended by this plan to scores of towns and villages, and, by the co-operation of the classmeeting, was rendered almost as efficient as it would have been were it local. It was this peculiarity that rendered the ministry of Methodism so successful in new countries. It also contributed, perhaps more than any other cause, to maintain a sentiment of unity among its people. It gave a pilgrim, a militant character to its preachers; they felt that "here they had no abiding city," and were led more earnestly to seek one out of sight. It would not allow them to entangle themselves with local trammels. The cross peculiarly "crucified them to the world, and the world to them." Their zeal, rising

into religious chivalry; their devotion to one work; their disregard for ease and the conveniences of stationary life, were owing largely to their itinerancy. It made them one of the most self-sacrificing, laborious, practical, and successful bodies of men which have appeared in the great field of modern Christian labor. And it was the opinion of Wesley that the time when itinerancy should cease in the ministry, and classes among the laity of Methodism, would be the date of its downfall.

These developments inevitably led to others. It was necessary that Wesley should advise his preachers; they met him annually for the purpose, and from such informal consultations arose the constitutional Conference, a body whose title has taken a prominent place in the ecclesiastical terminology of Christendom, among the names of councils, convocations, and synods. Its deliberations at last originated the laws, defined the theology, and planned the propagandism of the denomination. Its Minutes, revised and reduced, became the Methodist Discipline. It has reproduced itself in Ireland, in France and Germany, in the American Republic, in the British North American Provinces, in Australia, in India and in Africa; and it promises to be a perpetually if not a universally recognized institution of the Protestant world.

With the erection of churches arose the necessity