tly-published returns of the Conference that the total number of
members, not mere attendants, at Wesleyan places of worship, is in Great
Britain at the present time 342,380, being an increase of 5310; and there
are upon trial besides for Church membership 24,926 candidates. A people
which have thus grown, which have thus become a power in the State, to
whom Dr. Pusey has appealed for aid, surely are well worth a study.

In an exhaustive work by Mr. Pierce we have, as it were, the inner life
of Wesleyan Methodism, methodically arranged and placed in chronological
order. "The attempt," says the Rev. G. Osborn, D.D., in his Introductory
Preface, "is made in honesty and candour; and has required a large amount
of labour on the part of the compiler, which, however, his love and
admiration of the system have made, if not absolutely pleasant, yet far
less irksome than under other circumstances it would have been." We
must, in fairness, add that Mr. Pierce has certainly exhausted his theme,
and his non-Wesleyan readers. A catechism of 800 large pages of small
type is more trying than even that of the Assembly of Divines. Surely it
was possible to do what Mr. Pierce has done in a more readable form.
Still, however, his work is invaluable as a cyclopaedia of Wesleyan
faith, and organization, and practice.

Mr. Wesley had originally no intention of seceding from the Church of
England. Dr. Stevens, in his very interesting work, has shown how, step
by step, he was forced into secession, and was compelled, by the force of
circumstances--the irresistible logic of events--to abandon his very
strong Church principles. In this respect Conference has rigidly adhered
to Wesley's teaching. "What we are," it stated in 1824, "as a religious
body we have become both in doctrine and discipline by the leadings of
the providence of God. But for the special invitation of the Holy Spirit
that great work of which we are all the subjects, and which bears upon it
marks so unequivocal of an eminent work of God, could not have existed.
In that form of discipline and government which it has assumed it was
adapted to no preconceived plan of man. Our venerable founder kept only
one end in view--the diffusion of Scriptural authority through the land,
and the preservation of all who had believed through grace in the
simplicity of the Gospel. This guiding principle he steadily followed,
and to that he surrendered cautiously but faithfully whatever