and Protestants joined in the congregation. One of them, after listening cried, 'Aye, he is a Jesuit, that's plain!' To which a Popish priest who happened to be near replied aloud, 'No! he is not! I wish to God he was!''

May 18, 1785. On my way to Limerick I read and carefully considered Major Vallance's Irish Grammar, allowed to be the best extant." He grumbles over it as a schoolboy might: "The difficulty of reading it is intolerable, occasioned chiefly by the insufferable number of mute letters both of vowels and consonants, the like of which is not to be found in any language under heaven. The number of pronouns and the irregular formation of the verbs is equally insufferable."

As Wesley was then in his eighty-third year, there was no reason why he should read an Irish Grammar on his way to Limerick. It was certainly from no sense of duty. He had leisure to satisfy an innocent curiosity. He had heard that Irish was a hard language to learn and now he knew it.

"Rode cheerfully to Castlebar." And what a pleasant place to preach in was Rabin in Connaught! "It was an old castle standing between

two loughs with a river behind it and wood before it, and the inhabitants

"Did like the scene appear,

Serenely pleasant, calmly fair,

Soft fell their words as flew the air."

John Wesley the humanist enjoyed preaching in such a pleasant place to such pleasant people, while John Wesley the Evangelist was performing a stern moral duty. Somehow neither of these personalities interfered with the other. When we come to think about it, why should they?

He found Scotland less congenial, but he records his pleasure in preaching in the churchyard at Kelso, and afterwards walking to see the view from Roxburgh Castle. He would have enjoyed it still more if he had known that there was among his listeners a little lad, Walter Scott by name, who afterwards was to add to the romance that surrounds the name of Mary Stuart.

I like to think of the aged John Wesley and the young Walter Scott face to face. Scott in his prime loved to pose before his friends as a gentleman of large leisure, while he concealed his hours of hard work. Wesley would have been remembered only for his prodigious labors if he had not

kept a journal. This reveals the number of delightfully "vacant hours" when he rode with a slack rein and followed the devices of his own heart. It is leisure snatched from the jaws of zeal.

SOME ALLEVIATIONS OF OUR
RESPONSIBILITIES

THE Stoics divided all events into two classes, those for which we are responsible, and those for which we are not responsible. The good man was one who took up the responsibilities that belonged to him and bore them manfully. To the other things that came to pass against his will, he cultivated a wise indifference. They were none of his business, and he refused to disquiet his soul over evils that were inevitable.

This was wholesome teaching. The Christian doctrine was based on the same discrimination. "Cast thy burden on the Lord," says one text. "Let every man bear his own burden," says another. There are things we can change by our action. Let us do our best to direct these things in the right direction. There are laws of nature and facts of the universe which we cannot alter. Here we must trust a higher wisdom than our own. Piety and common sense unite in recognizing these distinctions.

But though the two categories remain, there is

a difference in what we put into them. Actions which once were considered as belonging to the things indifferent are placed under the head of matters for which we are to be held strictly accountable. There is no doubt that, as society grows more advanced, it makes the way of the transgressor harder, and also reveals new transgressions among the well-thought-of. It increases the number of sins, and takes away some of the most venerable excuses.

The reason for this is obvious. It comes from the advance of science which is continually discovering the causes of specific evils and their practical remedies. Science is the great detective. Once on the trail of the evildoer, it spares no dignitaries and accepts no excuses. It is no respecter of persons, and carries its investigations even into the assembly of the saints.

What are the causes of typhoid fever, of cholera, of tuberculosis, of pauperism, of war, of stunted childhood, of arrested mental development, of hideous and cruel social inequalities, of our crowded tenements, and of our cheerless homes?

In the pre-scientific days men cheerfully and innocently pleaded ignorance. We surely do not