hers than to observe it
themselves. But when a man's words and actions contradict each other,
the argument of his actions is the more forcible, as well as the more
honest and sincere.

It has likewise been alleged, that if attendance at class-meeting be not
made a church-law, and the capital punishment of expulsion be not
attached to its violation, class-meetings will fall into disuse. I
answer, this is beside the question. The question is, whether there is
such a law in the Bible? Has our Lord or His Apostles given authority to
any conclave or conference to make such a law? Our Lord and the Apostles
knew better than their followers what was essential to membership in the
Christian Church, as well as what was essential to its existence and
prosperity. I may also observe, that if the existence of class-meetings
cannot be maintained except by the terror of the scorpion-whip, or
rather executioner's sword, of expulsion from the church, it says little
for them as a privilege, or place of delightful and joyous resort. My
own conviction is, that if class-meetings, like love-feasts, were
maintained and recommended as a privilege and useful means of religious
edification, and not as a law, the observance of which is necessary to
membership in the visible Church of Christ, but made voluntary, like
joining the Missionary Society, class-meetings would be more efficient
and useful than they are now, and attendance at them would be more
cordial and profitable, if not as, or even more, general. But what might
be or not be in any supposed case, is foreign to a question as to what
is enjoined in the law and testimony of the Holy Scriptures as essential
to discipleship with Christ.

It is well known that meeting in class, by a large portion of the
members of the Wesleyan Church, is very irregular--that their absence
from class-meeting is the general rule of their practice, and their
attendance the exception. Yet such persons are not excluded, as it would
involve the expulsion of the greater part of the members of the body,
including several of its ministers. It is, therefore, so much the more
objectionable, and so much the more wrong, to have a rule which ignores
at one sweep the membership of all the baptized children of the body,
which sends and keeps away the conscientious and straightforward, who
would not think of joining a religious community without intending
habitually to observe all its rules, and yet, after all, habitually
d