in his providence, is calling upon every true-hearted Methodist to extend the victories of the cross in the salvation of souls? Especially, it is no time to talk of abandoning the itinerancy, or to endanger it by questionable measures of reform. Nay, let no rude or sacrilegious hand touch it! Procul! procul! este profani! When the itinerancy falls, Methodism falls with it. But it will not fall. It must not fall! It is the child of God. It has been nurtured by his hand, and honoured by his special grace. It is just getting out of its pupilage, and assuming a mature and manly vigour. Its past achievements are but the earnest of its future triumphs. Commencing in Europe, little more than a century ago, it is destined to extend to the ends of the earth. It now covers North America. The time is not far distant when it shall traverse the entire Western Hemisphere. It is following the British arms into Asia; and one of our own bishops has just planted it on the western shores of Africa. Where shall it stop? When shall it be abandoned? Not until the faithful itinerant has driven the last savage from his cannibal feast; not until he shall have snatched every Hindoo widow from the funeral pile of her husband, and celebrated her espousal to Christ; not until he shall have arrested the last wretched mother who would devote her offspring to the god of the Ganges, and persuade her to consecrate it in baptism to the God of the universe; not until, as he "travels his circuit" over the mountains of Persia, he shall have extinguished all the fires of the Magi, and pointed every worshipper of the sun to Him who made it; not until "the heathen shall be given to Christ for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession." Let it always be considered as a "fixed fact," that the Methodist itinerancy will have fulfilled its mission only when the world shall have been evangelized. And if imagination were allowed to prescribe the concluding act in the grand drama of its existence, it should be as follows:

Some faithful itinerant is despatched in pursuit of the last wanderer from the "fold of God." This wanderer is arrested, skulking in the "furthest verge of the green earth." He is a Jew. He is brought by the man of God to the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. The obdurate son of an outcast nation looks upon it with all the obstinacy of his race; but the story of the Saviour's love and mercy is falling sweetly upon his ear. The Holy Spirit seals the truth. The child of them who cried, "His blood be on us, and on our children," begins to relent. He is penitent. His heart melts within him. He bows; for "every knee shall bow." He looks up with an eye of faith to the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." He

believes. He cries out-" Abba! Father-my Lord and my God." Then may the curtain fall upon the last scene of the itinerancy— but not till then.

Nevertheless, let it not be understood, from anything suggested in this article, that the writer is utterly hostile to all reform or modification of the rules and usages of the Methodist Episcopal Church. By no means. But there are some things which do not need reform-which cannot be reformed-indispensable elements of her power and usefulness, for which there is no substitute. Her primitive earnestness and zeal-an energetic and untrammelled itinerancy, are two of these things. The first, indeed, is a vital principle of Christianity, under any form of it. The second, if not divinely instituted, has been divinely favoured, and is, for the Methodist Church at least, the best means for giving expression and effect to her earnestness and zeal.

Nor must it be supposed that we have any wish to depreciate the importance of a well-educated ministry, or even a well-educated. laity. God forbid! Knowledge is the basis and best safeguard of true Christian faith and conduct. Zeal without knowledge is many times worse than indifference. The multiplication of schools and colleges by the Church, the enlargement of the Book Concern, and the increase of its depositories, and all efforts to amplify and strengthen our means of diffusing knowledge, are worthy of the highest commendation. These are, indeed, but the necessary and legitimate fruits of the earnestness and zeal commended. The patriotism no less than the piety of any sectary should be suspected, who teaches that "ignorance is the mother of devotion." What is meant, therefore, is, that all the Church does for the advancement of science, or the arts, or literature, or whatsoever else it may be, should be baptized with an earnest religious zeal and faith.

While our ministers shall commend themselves to men and to God by the highest degree of scholarship attainable, let them, nevertheless, keep an eye on the example of the "chiefest" of the apostles. St. Paul was a learned man in his day. He had sat at the feet of Gamaliel. He had confounded the subtlety of Greek and Jew by his logic. He had made governors tremble by his eloquence. He had extorted the admiration of kings by his wisdom. But these were the weapons of his warfare, not the source of his strength. Mark how he comes to his brethren at Corinth; not with mere "excellency of speech," but "determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." This was the language of an earnest heart. Consider the results. Wheresoever the apostle went-in Greece, or Rome. or Asia Minor-polytheism and superstition fled

before the ardour of his zeal and the power of his faith. The ancient schools of heathen philosophy were deserted. The Academy of Plato and the Porch of Zeno no longer distracted the sects by their rivalry. Cynics and Sophists, Sceptics and Peripatetics, Pythagoreans and Megarians, bowed together before the altar of "The Unknown God," and were baptized in the faith of Jesus.

And while the great apostle was thus exemplifying in his life and labours the character of the Christian minister, he also no less faithfully delineated the portrait of the Church at large,-"Be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord;" which Dr. Clarke thus paraphrases: "Be always in earnest, and let your heart ever accompany your hand."

With such a ministry and such a membership, what might not the Methodist Church accomplish? Some attention to ecclesiastical history has confirmed the convictions produced by personal observation of the character and tendencies of the human heart, that there is great danger always to be apprehended of transferring reliance and faith from the cardinal and essential principles of religion itself, to those external secular appliances which have been deemed necessary to regulate the administrative economy of the Church. Substantive doctrines and pure spirituality are apt to be supplanted by shadows and emblems. The vitality of true devotion is liable to be lost in an undue regard for rites and ceremonies, and mere prudential contrivances. Have we not a signal illustration of this tendency in the history of the Roman Church, where the simplicity and spirituality of the apostolic doctrines and usages have been utterly lost sight of in the multiplication of sacraments and ceremonies, in external pomp and childish pageantry, and the endless complex amplification of ecclesiastical machinery,-all adjusted to please the eye and captivate the imagination, without addressing the heart or enlightening the understanding?

It would be well for the Church at all times, and especially at the present time, to take heed, lest, in the language of a late writer, "mechanical philosophies supplant faith." With all his infidel proclivities of heart, and obliquities of style, Carlyle sometimes utters truths which Christians may profit by. One of these may be found in his essay on the Signs of the Times. “Our true deity"-he writes of England-" Our true deity is mechanism. It has subdued external nature for us, and we think it will do all other things. We see giants in physical power; in a deeper than physical sense we are Titans, that strive, by heaping mountains on mountains, to conquer heaven also." Let the moral of the fable to

which the writer alludes admonish the Church, that a discomfiture more fatal than that which befel the sons of Coelus and Terra awaits her, if she be guilty of the like temerity and presumption.

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first, the second, and the third quality of eloquence, he is commonly represented as answering," Action-action-action!" But the German critics, who in such matters are the best critics, say that he has been misconstrued. They render his reply,-" Earnestness--earnestnessearnestness. Ut res ex animo agi videatur." The true idea of Methodism embraces both constructions of the great orator's desideratum-earnestness and action-an earnest faith and an energetic itinerancy.

ART. IV. STROUD'S HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS.

A New Greek Harmony of the Four Gospels, comprising a Synopsis and a Diatessaron, together with an Introductory Treatise, and numerous Tables, Indexes, and Diagrams, supplying the necessary proofs and explanations. By WILLIAM STROUD, M. D. London: Bagsters. 1853. 4to., pp. 602.

Ir ought to be a matter of joy to all right-minded theologians, to observe the increasing attention and labour bestowed of late by their brethren among the laity upon the Bible, with a view to its critical elucidation and vindication. In no way can this be done more effectually than by improving and perfecting the harmony of the Gospels. The day is rapidly approaching when the evangelical narratives will be studied in this form alone,-a form, indeed, so admirably adapted to the just apprehension of the entire Bible history, that we wonder it has not been more exclusively adopted heretofore. The work named at the head of this article, from its marked originality of execution and eminent adaptation to the wants of the times, is entitled to more than a passing notice in our pages. The space, however, to which we find it necessary to confine this article, will not allow us the full discussion which the subject, as well as the book, deserves; and we can merely attempt a general description of the plan and merits of the work. The author was some time since introduced to our readers in an article on the immediate cause of the death of Christ, a subject which his medical knowledge enabled him to discuss with peculiar ability. The judgment and acumen displayed in that

treatise have been fully sustained by the present volume, for which the public have been for some time prepared, by a specimen published in Kitto's Journal, harmonizing the accounts of Christ's resurrection.

The chief desideratum in a Harmony of the Gospels, is to exhibit, on the same page, both the language of the several Gospels respecting each event, and a connected and continuous history compiled from them all. Harmonists have hitherto contented themselves with either presenting the Gospels in the former or in the latter form, instead of giving both. It is needless to state that either of these plans alone must be very inadequate and unsatisfactory: they must be combined in order to exhibit the just and full result. A mere compilation of the gospel history, although in the very words of the evangelists, does not come up to the idea of a harmony. We want to see the statements of the inspired penmen side by side, each in its proper connexion, or we cannot judge of the correctness of the arrangement. On the other hand, a mere parallel arrangement of the texts of the Gospels, however minutely carried out, does not show the mode in which the accounts supplement each other. In either case the work is but half done, and the reader must do the remainder himself. The work before us accomplishes this combination by giving, in addition to the four columns (or less, as the case may be) containing the evangelical texts, two other columns,-the first containing a "consolidation of the evangelical narrative," made up of fragments from each Gospel; and the second indicating the several chapters and verses from which these fragments are derived. In the following columns, containing the "collation of the Gospels," the first and last words only are given of those clauses which have been transferred to the "consolidation" column, the intermediate words being supplied by dots or points. The first two columns constitute what is styled in the title-page the "Synopsis," and the rest the "Diatessaron." When only one evangelist contains an account of any event, there is, of course, but one column at that place, and the Synopsis and Diatessaron become the same. The text given in the several columns is in the original Greek, which has been amended according to the critical authorities, as cited in the foot-notes. The collated texts are arranged in the order in which the author believes the several Gospels to have been written, namely, Luke, Matthew, Mark, John. The whole history is divided, on a logical rather than circumstantial basis, into parts, sections, and paragraphs, with appropriate titles to each. Prefixed to the volume is an extended introduction, which treats of the materials, principles, and plan of the work, including