unfurl the banner of his Church and his King in this land of missionary promise. Born and brought up in India, he was converted to God and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church under the preaching of the Rev. D. O. Fox, about eight years ago. A few A few years later he went to America, where he was afterward joined by his devoted wife, and both of them pursued a thorough course of training with a view to future service in India. Mr. Oldham achieved honorable distinction as a student, and, having completed a full university course, he returned to India at the close of 1884. He landed at Bombay to meet the astounding intelligence that he had been chosen to lay the first foundation stones of the future Methodist Episcopal Church of Malaysia. He was startled, but not disheartened, and began at once, with the cheerful consent of his heroic wife, to prepare for his unexpected work.

A small beginning has been made, and the first foundation stones are in position. A Methodist Episcopal Church has been organized at Singapore, and the missionary is making rapid progress in the study of Malay, while, at the same time, giving attention to the English-speaking Chinese. At a point far up the Peninsula a member of the Rangoon Methodist Episcopal Church is employed as a teacher by the Siamese government, and has gathered a little company of Chinese Christians around him. He is not able to speak either Malay or Chinese, but by the help of his wife, who speaks the former language, he is able to hold the little flock together, and, if nothing more, his success affords an indication of what might be done under better conditions.

The Methodist Episcopal Church should occupy this promising field at once, and occupy it in force. It cannot permanently be attached to the South India Conference, or to any Conference in India. The field is distinct, and needs its own equipment. Another man, and at least two unmarried women, should be sent to Singapore, and perhaps an equal force stationed at Penang. Then year by year the work can be extended as providential indications may lead, and thus in a short time we may have a mission in Malaysia worthy alike of so magnificent a field and of so powerful a Church as that which is now represented by the two faithful but lonely workers at Singapore.

ART. II. WESLEY'S VARIATIONS IN BELIEF, AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE SAME ON METHODISM. SINCE the apostle Paul ascended to heaven there has not arisen in Christendom a man more abundant in labor, or of more extended and abiding influence, than John Wesley. Sixty-five years of almost incessant toil in the Christian ministry, in which time it is estimated he preached not less than forty thousand sermons, and compiled, revised, or wrote and published three hundred distinct volumes-in science, literature, and theology-make up a life-work probably unparalleled in the history of the Church. That for which Methodism, both in its separate organization and its prevailing influence in the Christianity of the age, is mostly indebted to its founder is such an evergrowing monument to the versatile genius, the patient research, the wisely applied learning, the power of leadership, and the personal devotion of Wesley as is found erected to the memory of but few other men of modern history.

The personal belief of one occupying a position so prominent before the world-a belief known by its fruits in the productions of pulpit and pen-must be both conspicuous and influential. But Wesley's relation to Methodism, including, as it does, a distinct system of doctrine and a well-defined form of Christian experience, was such that any changes of personal beliefs, it would naturally be supposed, would be shadowed forth in after years by the Church bearing his name. It is, however, one of the anomalies of history that one so credulous as was John Wesley, so free from invincible prejudice in his search for truth, so inquisitive for facts of experience, so susceptible to the influence of sound logic, wherever met with -that one so versatile in belief, however well established he became in the end-should be the acknowledged founder of a Church that, in extending into all the lands of Christendom, has preserved its doctrinal positions without any extended schism or radical change. The founder of the Church varied largely in his belief respecting both the distinctive doctrines and the sectarian peculiarities of the Church he founded; the Church itself, for more than a century, has been historically uniform in her beliefs, and in their doctrinal statements.

Recently there has been engraved, and put in print, a tree representative of Methodism in England. Upon that tree are more than a score of different branches, representing as many Church organizations having the common name of Methodist, Only two or three of these branches represent essential varia. tions in doctrine. In this country there have been schismsmore or less extensive, in the Church, and separations from it, but none of these have been notably on the ground of changed doctrinal belief. We must look elsewhere than in the formal division in or secession from the Church for the influence of the changed belief of its founder.

The changes of personal belief in Wesley were radical, and they had reference to what is essential to Methodism. Briefly they may be outlined as follows: Wesley began his public ministry an extreme legalist-a legalist so extreme in belief that for twelve years he sought to be saved by works; declaring that his first object in surrendering academic honors and prospects at the university at Oxford, in declining to be his father's successor at the Epworth Rectory, and in coming to the wilderness of North America to spend, perhaps, his life among the Indians, was to save his own soul. He closed that public ministry with such a declaration of belief in the doctrine of salvation by grace alone as has challenged the admiration of the world ever since. Among his last utterances-with the record of sixty-five years of unexampled fidelity in service behind him-was this: "I the chief of sinners am, but Jesus died for me." Then, as to his Christian experience resulting from the faith he had at the time, from that wilderness state of experience while yet a minister of the Church of Englandso unsatisfactory that after twelve years of zealous labor and of suffering persecution he declared he was not converted and had not been, was not a Christian and had not been-he passed over in his belief so definitely to the experience and declaration of the condition of entire sanctification that he has set forth, both by teaching and example, the New Testament doctrine of Christian perfection in a way to meet the approval of Christendom. Thus, having been in the beginning an extreme High Churchman, believing stanchly in the doctrine of apostolic succession, in the three divinely ordained orders in the Christian ministry, in baptismal regeneration, in the salvation of baptized

infants only, having such a belief in the efficacy of fasts and the observance of days as led him to observe two days in the week for fasting, and both Saturday and Sunday as holy days, and many other things which one of his biographers has called "popish nonsense," he became in the end the founder of the most catholic Church in the world, defined by himself to be "a company of believers having the form of godliness and seeking the power thereof," the door of entrance to which is as broad as that into the kingdom of God on earth; namely, "a desire to flee from the wrath to come and to be saved from sin." Through all the changes that lie naturally between these extreme points of belief did John Wesley pass in his more than threescore years of public ministry. The faithful record of these changes may be found in the unrestrained declarations of his faith at the different eras of his life.

The immediate influence of Wesley's belief, and that of any essential change that may have taken place therein, we would expect to be made apparent in his own experience and ministry, so far as they are matters of record, and the permanent influence of the same to be manifest in his printed works. It is not, however, the object of this paper to trace out the influence of changed forms of belief either in his personal experience or in the writings which he has left the Church, only so far as that influence is apparent in the Methodism of the present time. And an inquiry as to the influence of that belief on the Church of to-day would have comparatively little interest to us, were it not for the somewhat singular fact that the writings of Wesley, that are the recognized standards in Methodist theology, were the productions of his pen in these different stages of belief; and what is so often called "Wesleyan authority" is authority gotten by different individuals from his utterances and practices while passing through these different stages of Christian experience, each one selecting his 'Wesley says' according to the particular sentiment he wishes. to sustain or the doctrine he desires to prove.

For illustration, we have in the writings of Wesley, which are among the acknowledged standards in Methodist theology, the subject of conversion, or the becoming a Christian, presented in different phases, from four distinct stand-points of observation; points of view differing according to Wesley's per

sonal belief at the time. Thus for twelve years, as an ordained minister of the Church of England, Wesley preached, and went on a mission to the Indians of North America, while yet he was in such a state of questionable religious experience that he himself affirmed he was not converted-that he had not sav ing faith in God. His words are:

I went to America to convert the Indians; but O, who shall convert me? . . . Alienated as I am from the life of God, I am a child of wrath, an heir of hell.

True, in after years he looked more hopefully, and, doubtless, with better vision, on this stage of his experience, thinking that. even then he had the faith of a servant, though not of a "child of God." During these years he was most zealous in seeking and teaching "salvation by the deeds of the law." At this time and in this state of mind he preached two sermons on the subject of conversion-one on "The One Thing Needful," the other on "The Circumcision of the Heart." These are among Wesley's printed sermons-standards in Methodist theology, containing clear expositions of the theory of conversion. In these sermons the much-needed emphasis is laid on the necessity of being converted, but they are filled with the preaching of John the Baptist, "Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance."

These twelve years of spiritual bondage, and of ardent zeal in the defense of the traditions of the fathers, were ended by what Wesley terms, and what his biographers generally term, his conversion, while under the ministry, and through the influence, of certain pious Moravians. The genuineness of the work of grace then wrought in him he never afterward called in question. The effect of it was manifest in a changed faith and practice. He had until then preached salvation by works, and lived in the hope of by the means used-attaining thereunto. He now preached the extreme Lutheran doctrine of "salvation by faith alone," a doctrine which, whenever preached without its appropriate and needed safeguards, leads to Antinomianism or Phariseeism. Under this cloud of Moravian doctrine and influence, which was to him like the cloud of the Exodus, that at the passage of the Red Sea, went between the Israelites and their enemies, having its bright side and its dark