66 a serious man, whom he had travelled many miles to see, said to him, 'Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember that you cannot serve Him alone. You must therefore find companions, or make them; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.' He never forgot this," says his biographer; "therefore, on his return to the University, he first spoke to his brother, Mr. Charles Wesley, and afterwards to Mr. Morgan, Mr. Hervey, Mr. Whitfield, and others. When they first began to meet, they read divinity on the Sunday evenings. The summer following, they began to visit the prisoners in the castle, and the sick poor in the town. Their meetings now began to be more directly religious; they read and considered the Greek Testament on the week evenings, and conversed closely and deeply on the things of God."

This Association of young men, called THE GODLY CLUB by the witlings of the University, was the nucleus of that band of holy men to whom, when in after years they became themselves more enlightened by the teaching of God's Holy Word, was committed the great work of religious revival which, under the name of Methodism, revolutionized the National Church, and influenced for good every Christian community in our land. Several of the members of this Association (this word is used by Mr. Moore, Wesley's biographer) went as missionaries to Georgia; and, during their visits to London, going and returning, became intimately associated with the Young Men's Societies mentioned by Woodward, especially those meeting in Westminster, Fetter Lane, and Aldersgate Street. It was at the Aldersgate Street meeting, in August 1738, that Mr. John Wesley experienced the power of a divine change wrought in his soul by the Holy Ghost, of which he says, "I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in

Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." The journals of this good

man, and the writings of his contemporaries, will abundantly prove that he found his earliest and best coadjutors amongst the members of the London Young Men's Societies, and that, united in the metropolis, in the works to which they and he had before devoted themselves in their separate spheres,-the visitation of the gaols, hospitals, and workhouses,—they were permitted to gather in the first fruits of a great harvest, people prepared for the Lord."

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A long interval occurs during which we know little of efforts made to unite young men in religious activities, or to guard them from the evils and temptations incident to their age and peculiar position in society. The labours of the successors of early Methodists, and of such of the clergy of the National Church as shared their convictions and were stimulated by their zeal, were so engrossed by the common wants of a population everywhere ignorant of spiritual things, often depraved and brutal, and largely pervaded by an infidel and lawless spirit, that little opportunity presented itself for caring for the special needs of particular classes. Such memoirs as those of Wesley, Whitfield, Sir Richard Hill, and others of their time, will better illustrate the state of society then, and the difficulties which presented themselves to earnest servants of Christ.

It would, however, be wrong to suppose that during this period nothing was done for young men. The biographies of Bishop Daniel Wilson, of Dr. Jabez Bunting, of the revered Edward Bickersteth, of Dr. Andrew Reed, and of Dr. John Leifchild, all open to us little glimpses of the life of young men in London in the succeeding generation, and of the means by which some at least were weaned from dissipation and idleness, and were brought under influences of culture and piety which fitted them for careers of usefulness in the Church and in the world. Let it be gratefully remembered that in the men of whom we thus have mention, we only get the prominent members of the little society to which each belonged. How much

London owes to-day to the young men of that apparently dark and neglected period it is impossible to tell. "The Contending Brethren," "The Spitalfields Benevolent Society," "The Widows' Friend Society," which did more for their members than merely furnish opportunities for their charitable zeal and sympathy, were but a few of the humble organizations, and their members but a small proportion of the young men, who were occupied in aiding the cause of piety and philanthropy; and the early days of this century witnessed self-denying labours of young men in the education of the young and poor, in cottage lecturing, and in the visitation of the sick, which might well put to shame their successors in this more favoured generation. But these references are to what young men did for other classes of the community, not to the proper business of young men's societies, which is to work for young men, and of such work, in any specific form, we know little till a very recent period.

The year 1835 has become memorable in the history of religious work, by the formation of the London City Mission. Its founder, David Nasmith, had, during many years of evangelistic labours, made himself acquainted with the condition of the people in our great cities, with the failure of ordinary religious agencies to meet their wants, and with the utter inadequacy of such agencies, were they ever so well adapted to such an end, to supply the clamant needs of millions of men who were then living in this Christian land in a degree of ignorance and barbarism which only differed from that of heathenism, in that its moral evil and danger were intensified by the light and privilege amid which it had grown and extended. Mr. Nasmith saw that if these masses of men were to be reached in their degradation and misery, it must be by men who had some common experience of privation and suffering; men who had lived amongst them, or had lived under similar circumstances; men who knew how easily the border line of industry and integrity is passed under the influence of temptation, and how

hard it is for men once fallen to recover themselves in this land of respectability; men who, by God's grace, had been lifted up out of the horrible pit and miry clay, and who could go with the strong sympathies of a common woe, and the practical experience of the only remedy, to pluck poor sinners as brands from the burning, and to lead them to know and trust a loving Saviour; or men who, if they did not share the experience of extreme degradation in the habits and consequences of sin, had learned such lessons of human weakness, been so deeply penetrated with the sorrows and sufferings of the poor, and acquired so much of the spirit of Him who "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses," that they could, like Him, go about doing good, reaching the consciences and hearts of the sons and daughters of poverty and crime by the power of tenderness and love. It was the first attempt to bring to bear upon the practical heathenism of our great cities an agency called out from itself, taught and trained in its own schools, master of all its positions, and acquainted with all the difficulties of its subjects. How wise, and how beneficial the attempt has proved, the experience of that Society for thirty years, and the altered condition of the masses of our people everywhere, where similar agencies have been adopted, will attest.

But the far-seeing intelligence which comprehended the danger to society from the condition of the poor, and devised this plan to meet and remedy it, had also discerned the evils which were likely to result from the practical separation of the young men of the population from the influences of religion. Infidelity was noisy and active; the friends of education were then, for the most part, ranked amongst the doubters, if not the opponents, of Christianity; political strifes led certain classes of young men to an exaggerated idea of their importance in the community, leading to lawlessness of disposition, while the ordinary temptations to selfishness, self-indulgence, and vice were unchecked by any adequate influences either social or religious.

The question presented itself to Mr. Nasmith, How are these young men to be met and dealt with? If they go wrong, all goes wrong; for they are everywhere the doers, whether the thing done be good or evil. The principle adopted in the case of the general population furnished a reply in regard to this particular class. Young men who have seen and escaped from these temptations; young men who have learned to love and study their Bibles; young men who, in the sense of personal guilt and weakness, have sought pardon and strength from the Lord Jesus Christ, and are seeking to live as his disciples in the world, must be the instruments employed to reclaim, protect,

and bless their fellow young men.

On the evening of the day on which the London City Mission was instituted, there assembled with Mr. Nasmith, in the house of Mr. George Seeley, in Fleet Street, a party of young men, who united to form the Metropolitan Young Men's Society, of which the Hon. and Rev. B. W. Noel, M.A., then minister of St. John's, Bedford Row, became president; and amongst the vice-presidents were to be found those who bore the loved and honoured names of William Hamilton, one of the Elders of Regent Square Church; James Nisbet, of Berners Street; and William Whitmore, of the Bank of England. Its weekly meetings were continued for some time, but it was social in its character, and did not lead to any aggressive action on behalf of young men, and, with the increasing years and domestic and commercial responsibilities of its members, it passed away. Not, however, before it had done its work by calling attention to the necessities of young men, and leading to the formation of other Societies for their benefit in other places. Of these, amongst the most influential were the London Young Men's Society, under the presidency of the late Rev. Dr. Alexander Fletcher, meeting in Finsbury, and one at Hackney, of which the late learned and excellent Rev. F. A. Cox, D.D., was the representative. By such instrumentalities young men were