of his character and his abilities. The people invite their own ministers, fix their allowances, administer trust-estates and finance. They take an important part in the synods and in the connexional committees which manage the Home and Foreign Missions of the Church, and also in the great board which directs the affairs of the theological colleges. They have a large place in the deliberations of Conference. There is no room for rivalry between ministers and laymen. The laymen are jealous of everything that affects the independence of their ministry, and wish them to be free to maintain godly discipline. An educated and high-toned ministry lifts a whole Church. The laymen of Methodism see this clearly, and are prepared to make any reasonable sacrifice to obtain it. But there is no sacerdotal spirit in Methodism, and there is no room for any. These are some of the reasons why Methodism has such a hold on the affectionate loyalty of its people and its ministers. They are proud of its past, they are thankful for its present position at home and abroad, its zeal, its learning, its hold on the people, and they are full of hope for the future. Methodism is even yet in its cradle, and its adherents are confident that no Church is more needed by the world, or more likely to do a full share in that great work for which all Churches exist-the preaching of Christ, and the gathering of souls into living fellowship with Him. V THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS BY THOMAS HODGKIN, D.C.L., Ph.D. Past History. First Period, 1648-1689 I AM invited to describe, as accurately as I can, the present position of the Society of Friends as a religious body; but I feel that it is hardly possible to do this without some allusion, however brief, to its unique but varied history in the past. It is generally known that the "Society of Friends," in scorn called Quakers, owed their origin to the preaching of a Leicestershire peasant, named George Fox. Attention, however, has hardly been sufficiently directed to the peculiar condition of the religious mind of England at the time when he began his mission, or to the nature of the doctrines against which his preaching was a protest. He was born in 1624, and his boyhood was therefore passed during the period of religious repression which marked the eleven years when Charles I., Laud, and Strafford ruled England without a Parliament. Already, however, when Fox was but fifteen years of age, the first war between Charles and the Scots had heralded the downfall |