We observe that with the New Year the Wesleyans are
to issue a weekly penny paper, which is to be edited by the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, and to be called the Methodist Times. From the programme which has been pat forth, we should expect it to take very comprehensive ground, and not to be likely to fulfil Mr. Disraeli's hopes of Wesleyanism as a great Conserva- tive force. The paper will be, we suppose, in the main, a religious organ, but will" unhesitatingly recognise the vast and inevitable results of the constitutional revolution which Mr.Glad- stone and Lord Salisbury have combined to carry out." "The relation of Methodism to the new Democracy," it says," is a ques- tion of incalculable importance." " While hostile, like John Wesley, to the political establishment of religion, and prompt to expose and condemn all ecclesiastical oppression, it [the new paper] will be ever ready to applaud all that is spiritual and Christian in the Established Churches of England and Scotland." That is a programme which promises some breadth of view, though, for our own parts, we hope the Methodist Times will "applaud" Christian work of any kind as little as possible, however much it may enter into it, and however much it may learn from it. Already in the Press we have too much " applause " and too little sympathy. The staff of the Methodist Times promises well in culture, learning, and high purpose.
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