John Wesley : the Man and his Mission. By G.
Holden Pike. (R.T.S. ls. 6d.)—This is a very sober and sensible account of the great evangelist. There is not much about his doctrinal and ecclesiastical position. That subject would require separate treatment, and would not, after all, attract the readers to whom the book is addressed. Practically the appeal of the evangelist takes much the same form whether the man is a follower of Calvin or of Arminius. "Jonathan Edwards," says Mr. Pike, " born in the same year as Wesley, was reviving the Evangelical doctrines with the most striking and far-reaching effects." Nor is he wrong in classing the two men together, though Jonathan Edwards's views on the Quinquarticular controversy differed Coto caelo from John Wesley's. The extracts from Wesley's diary are well chosen : they show the varieties and vicissitudes both of the work and of the preacher's moods. Mr. Pike, we see, writes that " it was remarkable that at the early age of twenty-three he should have been elected Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes of his College." The Greek lectureship at Lincoln College was a small office that went the round of the Fellows and happened to come early to John Wesley. As to " moderating the classes " of a minor Oxford College circa 1726, that was a very small affair. It is a pity that Mr. Pike has not increased the usefulness of his volume by adding either table of contents or index.
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