rupted the people all round the
country, and Timothy Bentley, the great Brewer and Poisoner-General of
the bodies and souls of the Yorkshire people, and John Falkener, of New
Castle-on-Tyne, the wholesale Beershop-Keeper, &c., were all members and
high officials in the Wesleyan Body. And I never heard of a man being
either kept out or put out of the Wesleyan Connexion either for being a
Brewer, a Distiller, a Spirit Merchant, a Ginshop Keeper, a Publican, a
Pawnbroker, or a Beershop-keeper. And I never heard of the Conference
doing anything to promote teetotalism, or the suppression of the liquor
trade. The rules and teachings of Wesley, and the principles of Christ
on this subject, were as little cared for in the Old as in the New
Connexion.

There were points though in which the Old Connexion seemed to me
superior to the New. There seemed more hearty religiousness in the Old
Connexion than in the New. The preachers in the Old Connexion seemed to
be a higher order of men, both in piety and intelligence. They seemed to
be kinder too to each other, less jealous, less envious, and less
disposed to annoy and persecute one another. And they worked harder.
They had more of the spirit of Wesley. They were less anxious to steal
sheep from other folds, and more disposed to go out into the wilderness
to bring in those which were astray. With many of the New Connexion
members religion was too much of a form and a name: with an immense
number in the Old Connexion it was a life and a power. Hence the Old
Connexion prospered, while the New Connexion languished and declined.
The New Connexion trusted to their democratic principles of church
government for additions, and were disappointed. The Old Connexion
trusted to honest, zealous, Christian work, and succeeded. The Old
Connexion, bred great and mighty men, the New Connexion bred weak and
little ones. The New Connexion was afraid of superior men, and if any
made their appearance, drove them away, as in the case of Richard Watson
and others; the Old Connexion welcomed such men, and used them, and
reaped from their labors rich harvests of blessing. I might myself
perhaps, if my way into its ministry had not been blocked up, have been
much more happy and useful in the Old Connexion than in the New, and
have had a very different story to tell in my old age, from that which I
am telling you now. I don't know.

No; I don't know. It is quite possible that I was so formed,--that
religiou