the mind is in an indolent and dreamy state; music may be enjoyed, or even composed, in the same circumstances, because it is connected rather with the imaginative than with the logical faculty; but, not to mention any higher efforts, we cannot play a game of chess well unless we are" wide awake." Now we come to our point: -Supposing that, by any means, the brain can be deprived of that wakefulness and activity which is required for a free exercise of the reasoning powers, then what would be the effect on the imagination? For an answer to this query, we shall not refer to the phenomena of natural sleep and dreaming, because it is evident that the subjects of the experiments we have to explain are not in a state of natural sleep; we shall rather refer to the condition of the brain during what we may call "doziness," and also to the effects sometimes produced by disease on the imagination and the senses. But not long afterward, we were compelled, during an attack of disease which affected the nervous system, to hear the whole discordant performance repeated again and again, with a pertinacity which was really very distressing. Such a case prepares us to give credit to a far more remarkable story, related in one of the works of Macnish. A clergyman, we are told, who was a skillful violinist, and frequently played over some favorite solo or concerto, was obliged to desist from practice on account of the dangerous illness of his servantmaid-if we remember truly, phrenitis was the disease. Of course, the violin was laid aside; but one day, the medical attendant, on going toward the chamber of his patient, was surprised to hear the violinsolo performed in rather subdued tones. On examination, it was found that the girl, under the excitement of disease, had imitated the brilliant divisions and rapid passages of the music which had impressed her imagination during health! We might multiply instances of the singular effects of peculiar conditions of the brain upon the imaginative faculty. For one case we can give our personal testimony. A young man, naturally imaginative, but by no means of weak mind or credulous or superstitious, saw, even in broad daylight, specters or apparitions of persons far distant. After being accustomed to these visits, he regarded them without any fear, except on account of the derangement of health which they indicated. These visions were banished by a course of medical treatment. In men of great imaginative power, with whom reason is by no means deficient, phenomena sometimes occur almost as vivid as those of disease in other persons. Wordsworth, speaking of the impressions derived from certain external objects, says: We all know that in a state of "doziness," any accidental or ridiculous image which happens to suggest itself, will remain in the mind much longer than in a wakeful condition. A few slight, shapeless marks on the ceiling will assume the form of a face or a full-length figure; and strange physiognomies will be found among the flowers on the bed-curtains. In the impressible and passive state of the brain left by any illness which produces nervous exhaustion, such imaginations often become very troublesome. Impressions made on the brain sometime ago, will now reappear. Jean Paul Richter cautions us not to tell frightful stories to children, for this reason that, though the "horrible fancies" may all be soon forgotten by the healthful child, yet afterward, when some disease-a fever, for instance-has affected the brain and the nerves, all the dismissed goblins may too vividly reproduce themselves. Our experience can confirm the observation. Some years ago we went to a circus, where, during the eques-pression of the beauty of a bed of daffodils, Again, in his verses recording his imtrian performances, some trivial popular airs were played on brass instrumentscornets and trombones-dismally out of tune. Now, by long practice, we have acquired the art of utterly turning our attention away from bad music, so that it annoys us no more than the rumble of wheels in Fleet-street. We exercised this voluntary deafness on the occasion. he -"on the mind They lay like images, and seemed almost says: "And oft, when on my couch I lie, [dozing?] These words are nothing more, we believe, Enough has now been said to show, that in a certain condition of the brain, when it is deprived of the wakefulness and activity necessary for the free use of reason, the effects of imagination may far exceed any that are displayed during a normal, waking state of the intellectual faculties. The question now remains: Are the means employed by the professors of electro-biology sufficient to produce that peculiar condition to which we refer? We believe that they are; and shall proceed to give reasons for such belief. 3. What are these means? or rather let us ask: "Amid the various means employed, which is the real agent?" We observe that, in the different processes by which under the names of electro-biology or mesmerism—a peculiar cerebral condition is induced, such means as the following are employed:-Fixed attention on one object may be a metallic disk said to have galvanic power, or a sixpence, or a cork; silence and a motionless state of the body are favorable to the intended result; monotonous movements by the experimenter, called "passes," may be may be used or not. The process may be interrupted by frequent winking, to relieve the eyes; by studying over some question or problem; or, if the patient is musical, by going through various pieces of music in his imagination; by anything, indeed, which tends to keep the mind wakeful. Now, when we find among the various means one invariably present, in some form or another-monotony of attention producing a partial exhaustion of the nervous energy-we have reason to believe that this is the real agent. But how can the "fixed gaze upon the disk" affect reason? Certainly, it does not immediately affect reason; but through the nerves of the eye it very powerfully operates on the organ of reason, the brain, and induces an impressive, passive, and somnolent condition. Such a process as the "fixed gaze on a small disk for about the space of a quarter of an hour," must not be dismissed as a trifle. It is opposed to the natural wakeful action of the brain and the eye. Let it be observed that, in waking hours, the eye is continually in play, relieving itself, and guarding against weariness and exhaustion by unnumbered changes of direction. This is the case even during such an apparently monotonous use of the eye as we find in reading. As sleep ap proaches, the eye is turned upward, as we find it also in some cases of disease-hysteria, for example; and it should be noticed, that this position of the eye is naturally connected with a somnolent and dreaming condition of the brain. In several of the subjects of the so-called electro-biological experiments, we observed that the eyes were partially turned upward. It is curious to notice that this mode of acting on the brain is of very ancient date, at least among the Hindoos. In their old poem, the Bhagavad-Gita, it is recommended as a religious exercise, superior to prayer, alms-giving, attendance at temples, &c.; for the god Crishna, admitting that these actions are good, so far as they go, says: "But he who, sitting apart, gazes fixedly upon one object until he forgets home and kindred, himself, and all created things—he attains perfection." Not having at hand any version of the Bhagavad-Gita, we cannot now give an exact translation of the passage; but we are quite sure that it recommends a state of stupefaction of the brain, induced by a long-continued fixed gaze upon one object. We have now stated, 1. That such an act of long-fixed attention upon one object, has a very remarkable effect on the brain; 2. That in the cerebral condition thus induced, the mental powers are not free to maintain their normal relations to each other; especially, will, comparison, and judgment, appear to lose their requisite power and promptitude of action, and are thus made liable to be overruled by the suggestions of imagination or the commands of the experimenter. To this explanation we can only add, that all who doubt it may easily put it to an experimental test. If it is thought that the mere "fixed gaze," without electric or galvanic agency, is not sufficient to produce the phenomena in question, then the only way of determining our dispute must be by fair experiment. But here we would add a word of serious caution, as we regard the process as decidedly dangerous, especially if frequently repeated on one subject. To conclude: we regard the exhibitions now so common under the name of electrobiology as delusions, so far as they are understood to have any connection with the facts of electricity: so far as they are real, we regard them as very remarkable instances of a mode of acting on the brain which is, we believe, likely to prove injurious. As we have no motive in writing but simply to elicit the truth, we will briefly notice two difficulties which seem to attend our theory. These are1. The rapid transition from the state of illusion to an apparently wakeful and normal condition of mind. The patient who has been making snow-balls in a warm room, and has pulled the moon down, comes from the platform, recognizes his friends, and can laugh at the visions which to him seemed realities but a few minutes since. 2. The apparently slight effects left, in some cases, after the experiments. Among the subjects whom we have questioned on this point, one felt "rather dizzy" all the next day after submitting to the process; another felt pressure on the head;" but a third, who was one of the most successful cases, felt "no effects whatever" afterward; while a fourth thinks he derived "some benefit" to his health from the operation. We leave these points for further inquiry. THE a THE WESLEYS AND WHITEFIELD. THE condition of the dissenting Churches in the early part of the seventeenth century was in some respects widely different from that of the Establishment. The double burdens which their members bore for the support of religious institutions, and their numerous civil disabilities, were a guaranty for their sincerity and devotedness. To the names of Watts, Doddridge, and Lardner, we might add many more of unsurpassed fidelity and excellence in their respective spheres of duty, whose virtues gave luster to their age, and whose writings will instruct and edify generations yet to come. But the line of separation was then sharply drawn. The walls of the Established Church were impervious to light from beyond its pale. Dissenters might occupy a respectable, but not a commanding, social position. Excluded from the universities and from all official posts beyond their own congregations, they exerted an influence immeasurably below their merits, and their truly illustrious men were much less known and honored in their lifetime than they are now. The missionary spirit had not been awakened among them, and the quiet occupancy of their own posts filled up their measure, and satisfied their standard, of duty. Meanwhile, there were on English soil growing multitudes, for whose religious needs no provision was made, and who were the subjects of no clerical ministration whatever, except in the articles of baptism, marriage, and burial. The Church was in substantially the same condition in which parliamentary representation was before the passage of the Reform Bill. Parishes retained the territorial limits of much earlier times, while population had dwindled away in some localities and had rapidly increased in others. Thus a hamlet of a dozen souls might have its well-served curacy, while the incumbent of St. Giles had parishioners enough to people a brace of German principalities. The collieries, the dock-yards, the poorer neighborhoods in cities, persons engaged in coastwise navigation, and the dwellers in the purlieus of wharves and warehouses, were, for the most part, in a condition of virtual heathenism. Bible societies had not been thought of, cheap reading for the millions was a later invention, and the ability to read was not frequent enough among the less privileged classes to enable them to profit largely by the printed page. There was no system in operation for the general diffusion of intellectual light, moral culture, or religious sentiment. It was under these circumstances that Methodism had its birth. John Wesley, its founder, seems to have enjoyed the best possible providential training for his mission. His father, though the son and grandson of ejected ministers, held a distinguished place among the clergy of the Established Church, and was devotedly and somewhat bigotedly attached to its institutions and its worship. His mother was the daughter of an eminent non-conformist divine, and, though outwardly reconciled to the Church by her marriage, retained through life her strong sympathies with dissent, and her independence of prescribed and conventional modes of religious action. During her husband's frequent absences, she held religious meetings at her own house on Sunday afternoons, notwithstanding his strong disapprobation and earnest remonstrances. The son inherited from one parent his life-long dread of separation from the Establishment, from the other the religious zeal which could not brook the strait-lacing THE WESLEYS AND WHITEFIELD. of canonical forms, places, and seasons. At Oxford, Wesley, as an undergraduate, financial administration, and extempo- At this period, he shrank from the active Such Meanwhile, Whitefield had commenced drawing multitudes to listen to him in Bristol and London. His life-long and unbounded popularity is a mystery, which has never been fully solved. His printed sermons are meager, vapid, and many degrees below mediocrity. His endowments as a pulpit-orator were indeed great, but by no means unique. Yet he could command at once the reverence of the loftiest, and the control of the humblest minds; the hearty admiration of brilliant and accomplished scoffers and infidels, and the rapt attention of the coarsest and most ignorant. We have repeatedly conversed with old people who had heard him preach in their youth; and their uniform testimony has been, that his sermons and their delivery had no one remarkable characteristic exclusively their own, and yet that no eloquence could equal his in its simultaneous influence over, persons of every age, condition, and culture. We are disposed to ascribe his power, first, to his intense and vivid realization of the truths of religion as ever-present elements of his own experience, and, secondly, to the fact that in every sermon he arraigned his hearers before the tribunal of the omniscient Judge, and dwelt solely on the relation in which they stood to God, as guilty, accountable, death-bound, and immortal beings. His active religious consciousness imparted that indescribable glow of countenance and manner, which wrought even upon the deaf, and those beyond the sound of his voice, with hardly less power than upon those within reach of his words; while his uniform habit of direct appeal to his hearers, as resting either beneath the condemning sentence or the complacent regard of the Almighty, forced home upon every soul the question which no human being can ever put to himself without the concentration of his whole moral nature upon the answer: "How stand I at this moment in the eye of the omnipresent God ?" catechumens. The society embraced at the outset only between forty and fifty persons; but its constitution involved the very same principles which are now embodied in the great Methodist hierarchy on both sides of the Atlantic. The class is the integral element, the paradigm of Methodism. The classes are the integers of the congregation, the congregations of the local conference, the local conferences of the general conference; and at every stage the typical form is repeated, the official heads or representatives of each lower class constituting the members or laity of the next higher. Our limits will not permit us to follow Wesley through the details of a period of active service seldom equaled in duration, and entirely unparalleled in extent, in laboriousness, and in vigor of body and mind unimpaired, till he had completed the full cycle of fourscore years. Second, and hardly second, to John, stands Charles Wesley, in the annals of Methodism. Among rude and unlettered people, the soul is reached mainly by impressions upon the organs of sense, and in no way so effectually as through music. Every popular movement in social reform, political regeneration, or religious revival, has had its own canon of poetical inspiration and its own peculiar type of lyrical melody. Hans Sachs merits a foremost place among the Reformers of the sixteenth century; and Popery might have still been the Paganism of many a village and hamlet in now Protestant Germany, had not the minstrel cordwainer flooded the land with anti-Romish songs and ballads. Among the English poets of the sanctuary, it is almost a mockery to name Tate and Brady; for in the days of the Wesleys, the singing of their psalms merely filled up the robechanging interval in the service of the Whitefield had just left London when Church, while all the musical power and John Wesley arrived there on his return the religious impression of the orchestra from Georgia. Whitefield had no admin- were concentrated in those majestie istrative talent, and was effective solely as chants and anthems, the introduction of an awakening preacher. Wesley was a which into the worship of Dissenters has methodist by nature, had a genius for sys- transferred new life into their too tame tem, and attached little value to sporadic and barren devotional forms. Watts and and unorganized effort. He at once Doddridge were unsurpassed in their pegathered the new converts into bands or culiar vein; but their hymns were best classes, with rules for mutual vigilance adapted to the quiescent condition of the and helpfulness in the spiritual life, and religious communities to which they bewith definite forms for the introduction, longed. They represented the statics of training, testing, and final reception of piety. Methodism demanded a psalmody |