THE New York Tribune, in an article on the secret of Methodist success, called out by the Methodist Ecumenical Council in London, makes the following remarks, which are worthy of the consideration of all ministers:— “We come much nearer to the vital force when we consider Methodism as a system of popular preaching. We do not mean great preaching, or fine preaching, or wise preaching: though the Methodists could probably fill an order for any of these kinds of pulpit goods. By popular preaching we mean preaching that people will listen to and which will stir them to religious action. The Methodists have no monopoly in this kind of theological wares; but there was a time when they had very little competition. John Wesley was a popular preacher, and he drew to himself other popular preachers. When he found a man who could move other men with his voice he was not at all curious about the man’s gown and bands. This troop of talkers swept over England. Some of them who had never been ordained, or so much as dreamed of it, dropped in this country and started a blaze as if they had been coals of fire. They were such lay preachers as Phillip Embury and Captain Webb, men who had securely planted Methodism here before Francis Asbury came over to be its bishop. The Wesleyan movement began everywhere with a hot-hearted preacher; and the new local beginnings have been starting in that way ever since. Lay preachers founded half of the new churches; but ordaining them has not spoiled them, and with or without orders the successful Methodist preacher is more or less of a popular orator. “It goes without saying that Wesley, his fellows and his successors, have had something special to talk about; as orators they had a theme and a purpose; the subject was, indeed a very old one, but they put it before men in a way that had gone out of use. Christian graces had made the shibboleth venerable, but these men gave it a new accent. It is only half telling their secret to write that they talked well. They talked well because the matter of which they were full inspired them. ‘Under ordinary circumstances,’ said a Hoosier, ‘I weigh one hundred and fifty pounds, but when I’m mad I weigh a ton.’ The Wesleyan itinerants weighed a ton in their extemporized pulpits because they had gotten hold of a tremendous thought, or rather because it had gotten hold of them.”