that females had as much right
to give pulpit as caudle lectures. With a chivalry nearly knightly
they came to the rescue, and gave woman a free pass into the regions
of language and theology. A third point of difference had reference
to the representative character of Wesleyan conferences; but into
that question we need not enter.

The first regular quarters of Preston Primitive Methodism were in
Friargate, in a yard facing Lune-street--in a small building there,
where a few men with strong lungs and earnest minds had many seasons
of rejoicing. The thermometer afterwards rose; and for some time a
building which they erected in Lawson-street, and which is now used
as the Weavers' Institute, was occupied by them. Often did they get
far up the dreamy ladder of religious joy, and many a time did they
revel with a rich and deafening delightfulness in the regions of
zeal there. They were determined to "keep the thing warm," and to
let outsiders know that if they were not a large, they were a
lively, body. Primitive Methodism does not profess to be a fine, but
an earnest, thing--not a trimmed-up, lackadaisical arrangement, but
a strong, sincere, simple, enthusiastic species of religion. It has
largely to do with the heart and the feelings; is warm-natured, full
of strong, straightforward, devotional vigour; combines homeliness
of soul with intensity of imagination; links a great dash of honest
turbulence with an infinitude of deep earnestness; tells a man that
if he is happy he may shout, that if under a shower of grace he may
fly off at a tangent and sing; makes a sinner wince awfully when
under the pang of repentance, and orders him to jump right out of
his skin for joy the moment he finds peace; gives him a fierce
cathartic during conversion, and a rapturous cataplasm in his
"reconciliation." Primitive Methodism occupies the same place in
religion as the ballad does in poetry. It has an untamed,
blithesome, healthy ring with it; harmonises well with the common
instincts and the broad, common intuitions of common life; can't
hurt a prince, and will improve a peasant; won't teach a king wrong
things; is sure to infuse happiness amongst men of humbler mould.
Its exuberance is necessary on account of the materials it has to
deal with; its spiritual ebullitions and esctacies are required so
that they may accord with, and set all a-blaze, the strong, vehement
spirits who bend the knee under its aegis. Primitive Methodism has
r