_THREE STEEL PORTRAITS._
Complete in Three Vols., Crown 8vo, Cloth, $7.50; Half Calf, $13.50.
The “Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley,” by Tyerman, is, if we
may judge of the whole from the first volume, the most satisfactory
exhibit of that good and great man with which I am acquainted. It is
impartial and exhaustive. It gives all the known facts, and, in difficult
questions, leaves the reader to form his own opinions. The portrait,
therefore, is full, round, and lifelike. With all his rare and, in
many respects, unrivaled excellences, Mr. Wesley was a man with like
passions with other men. The work reminds one of the “Life and Epistles
of St Paul,” by Conybeare & Howson. It will, I doubt not, have a wide
circulation. It merits it.—Rev. LEVI SCOTT, D.D., _Bishop M. E. Church_.
I have examined the volume carefully, and consider it vastly superior
to any biography of Mr. Wesley which has heretofore appeared.—Rev. M.
SIMPSON, D.D., _Bishop M. E. Church_.
I have read the volume with pleasure and profit. It is by far the best
work that has as yet been written on that subject. I trust it will have
an extensive circulation.—Rev. E. R. AMES, D.D., _Bishop M. E. Church_.
I prize the volume very highly indeed, for the sake of the author and the
subject.—Rev. E. S. JANES, D.D., _Bishop M. E. Church_.
My conviction is that it is by far the most exhaustive and trustworthy
life of Wesley extant. The plan of the work, by the division into
_years_, is convenient and happy; and, although no pretensions are
made to a finished literary style, and the writing is rather careless
than complete, it is both racy and readable. In Mr. Tyerman’s desire
for scrupulous impartiality he has sometimes, by a not uncommon mental
process, landed on the other side of it. There are some details which
might have been well omitted; there are some expressions of opinion
which I deem to be hasty and mistaken; and it is, at best, a dubious
wisdom to have rescued so many foul pamphlets of the former time from
the chandler’s basket. But, with these small drawbacks, the work is
a monument of industry and painstaking, and a faithful portrait of a
man in whom the strongest light has failed to discover any but small
impurities—like thin clouds which just relieve the eye of the beholder,
and through which, hardly dimmed by their shadows, we see the sun in his
strength.—Rev. W. MORLEY PUNSHON.
An indispensable standard of Methodist literature, and you confer an
important favor upon the denomination by its publication.—Rev. ABEL
STEVENS, LL.D.
I am fully convinced that it far excels any other biography of the
founder of Methodism. The candor of the author, his critical and correct
taste, his laborious research, which has been rewarded with the discovery
of much unpublished matter, his shunning of fulsome adulation, and yet
ardent sympathy with his subject and profound appreciation of the mission
of the son of the Epworth rector, conspire to place his work in the
front rank of ecclesiastical biography.—Rev. J. F. HURST, D.D., _Drew
Theological Seminary_.
Mr. Tyerman’s work was fairly called for, both by the fact that no life
of Wesley had been published for forty years, and because Southey’s, the
only one tolerably written as a literary performance, is the production
of a writer who was not himself a member of the Society, who in few
points of character resembled the subject of his memoir, and possessed
no sources of information which were not already before the world. Mr.
Tyerman is a Wesleyan minister, and his materials, both printed and in
manuscript, have been accumulating for seventeen years. He has made
most diligent use of them; and his history, in regard to its facts, is
incomparably more full than any that preceded it.—_Saturday Review_,
London.
The time had fairly come for a new and original life of Wesley,
embodying, as such a work must, a history of the forming period of
Methodism.... The changes wrought by the lapse of time have prepared the
way for fuller, fairer, and more appreciative examination and statement
of the subject, and it is well that the execution of that task has
devolved upon one so competent. Mr. Tyerman is thoroughly a Wesleyan,
and yet he is able to discuss the subject taken in hand with judicial
calmness. A ripe scholar—having made Methodist history a specialty—and a
practiced writer, he possessed peculiar fitness for that kind of work,
and viewing his subject from so great a distance of time, and in the
softened light of a hundred years ago, he was better situated than any
of his predecessors in the same field to see the subject in its true
relations and circumstances. He has been charged with injustice to the
good name of Wesley, but to us it seems quite otherwise. Time and its
changes have removed the halo in which it was once encircled and its
real character hidden. Some of this false glory having passed away, its
unreality is recognized; but as all true greatness appears greatest when
set in the clearest light, so nowhere else are the character and the
works of Wesley shown to so great advantage as in these pages. We have
read the work with real pleasure, and we trust it will meet with a large
sale, and be widely read by both Methodists and others.—_N. Y. Christian
Advocate._
Full of interest as this work will be for Wesleyans, it will also
prove most truly so for the philosophic observer of religious
movements.—_Westminster Review_, London.
Mr. Tyerman is master of much valuable material that no early biographer
or critic has made use of.—_Examiner_, London.
The life is one of intense and varied interest. Not a page can we open
without our attention being riveted. There is no doubt that this will be
recognized henceforth as the standard life of the great preacher, and we
are thankful that such a book has been written by one fully capable of
understanding and describing its religious influences.—_Christian Work._
A most interesting and real picture of John Wesley as he was, of the
times in which he lived, and of the remarkable movements and scenes
in which he bore so prominent a part. There is much in this volume to
interest Christians of all denominations.—_Lutheran Observer._
The writer is in every way fitted to the task. Himself a Wesleyan
minister, and in full sympathy with the life and work of the subject of
his memoir, it was to him a labor of love and delight. He also enjoyed
better facilities than any of his predecessors for the prosecution of
the work. His materials, both written and printed, had been accumulating
for nearly twenty years, and he has availed himself of them with no
common degree of diligence and skill. His work is not only admirable
from a literary point of view, but, in regard to its facts, is so full
and in every way authenticated with such painstaking scrutiny as to be
incomparably superior to any of the former biographies of Wesley. It is
not a work for Methodists alone, nor one in which the religious world
only will be interested. John Wesley was no ordinary man. Intellectually
far above the average standing of the ministry, of naturally broad
and liberal views, still further enlarged by education and experience
with the world, he excited a wider and more lasting influence upon the
religious thought of England and America than any other man of his time.
His name will always be held in grateful remembrance by all who honor
worth and sincerity, and who see in a life devoted to the advancement of
the highest interest of mankind—to the elevation and enlightenment of the
poor, the lowly, and degraded—something that demands admiration, without
regard to the dividing lines of the sects.—_N. Y. Evening Post._
Its author eschews irrelevant controversy and unprofitable speculations,
and confines himself to the facts and incidents in the eventful life
of the great preacher, and to his views, sentiments, doctrines, and
herculean labors. It is a work which not only Methodists will desire to
read, but which will be eagerly sought for by all who can appreciate and
admire the self-sacrifice and unswerving devotion of one of the most
earnest, fearless, and successful defenders of the faith whose name has
passed into modern history.—_Albany Evening Journal._
For those who wish to know every fact that can be known of Wesley’s life,
this biography will probably supersede all others.—_Athenæum_, London.
The preparation of this biography has evidently been a labor of love with
Mr. Tyerman, but he has to a commendable degree avoided the besetting sin
of biographers—excessive eulogy—and his work is such a record of Wesley’s
life as not only Methodists but the public at large will be willing to
accept without reservation. Few men have lived in modern times who have
better deserved attention at the hands of the historian than Wesley,
for the religious reform movement of which he was the head was the most
important that has ever taken place.—_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph._
Mr. Tyerman’s book is by for the most valuable life of Wesley.
Its thoroughness, frankness, fearlessness, simplicity; bold, yet
self-distrusting discrimination; its loving, yet not blind appreciation
of the subject; its patient, painstaking, one would think exhaustive,
collection of data and weighing of evidence; its gathering into a focus
all the scattered rays of information about Wesley and his work; all
this makes one profoundly grateful to Mr. Tyerman. The leading minds of
other denominations will welcome this as distinctly the best life of
Wesley ever issued; and Methodists will recognize the gracious wisdom
of Providence in setting Mr. Tyerman apart for this work.—_City Road
Magazine_, London.
Mr. Tyerman has compiled a biography that an examination of the first
volume convinces us is infinitely the best yet published, and that
promises to be accepted as the standard one. It is very circumstantial,
and very calmly and justly appreciative, the greatest care being
manifested to present the whole truth and to abstain from any thing
like mere eulogy of his subject. Many hitherto unpublished letters
of Wesley are given, and in other directions the work has unusual
interest.—_Philadelphia Inquirer._
Seventeen years of patient labor, the careful study of an immense mass
of unpublished original manuscript letters and documents, fidelity to
his subject, with an impartiality of judgment that is frequently seen in
his strictures upon Wesley’s language and actions, and an enthusiastic
love for the venerated man, are among the author’s qualifications for
his work. So far as possible he has followed the plan which has made Dr.
Hanna’s life of Thomas Chalmers a model of biography. Wesley, for the
most part, is here his own biographer. The author, with skill, and in a
lucid style, has arranged the facts and shaped the story, without regard
to the philosophy of it.... We have been fascinated over his interesting
pages, not only with his photographic views of his hero, but with his
equally faithful representations of Whitefield and the compeers of these
two great ministers of Christ.—_Christian Intelligencer_, N. Y.
An extremely able and interesting life of John Wesley. It is complete
and accurate, written in an agreeable style, full of those reminiscences
illustrative of slight traits of character which form the great charm
of a biography; a striking and faithful picture of a remarkable
man.—_English Independent._
The best biography of the great leader of modern active
Christianity.—_Freeman._
Mr. Tyerman, as his last, and we think his best biographer, has produced
a record highly honorable to his subject, fresh and lively in style,
copious in information, discriminating and candid in its tone, and worthy
of a first rank as a biographical history of early Methodism.—_Methodist
New Connexion Magazine._
The verdict of his numerous readers will be that he has admirably
succeeded; henceforth his production will be pre-eminently _the_ Life of
Wesley, and we question whether it will ever be superseded or rivaled
by any subsequent biography, certainly not for the amplitude of its
information or the impartiality or faithfulness with which facts are
given. So fully and vividly is the spiritual and moral condition of the
country during Wesley’s lifetime depicted in these pages, that the reader
finds the work a most excellent general religious history of the nation
for the period, and for this purpose it will have great value as a book
of reference.—_Methodist Quarterly_, London.
Mr. Tyerman especially deserves well of the general public, because his
Methodist reverence for the subject of his narrative does not induce him
to keep back or cover up any thing. An honest and thorough biography,
dealing with naked facts, and chiefly leaving the reader to his own
impressions, is a rare thing in religious history; but this, in the main,
Mr. Tyerman has given.—_Chicago Evening Journal._
Mr. Tyerman has earned a debt of gratitude from his readers by the
faithful, painstaking light which he throws on the man and his time,
and it may fairly be said that this, the fifth life of Wesley which has
been published, is the first which presents him to us both justly and
fully.—_Christian Register._
There are few biographies more minute, careful, and impartial than
“Tyerman’s Wesley.” There is no influence nor incident which in any
way had to do with the great preacher’s character and opinions that
Mr. Tyerman does not describe with faithful sincerity. The work is not
alone a life of Wesley—every relative and friend and disciple is given
such generous mention that it seems a perfect nest of biographies, and
it is at the same time a profuse and thorough history of the foundation
and first forty years of Methodism.... He is at no pains to hide John
Wesley’s faults and foibles: he gives us a definite picture of the man
exactly as he was.... There could not be a more accurate record of
Wesley’s noble life and unselfish labors, of his innumerable publications
and most important sermons. The literature of Methodism has no more
judicious and valuable work than this.—_N. Y. Tribune._
He is not an eulogist, but a biographer, and he gives us Wesley as he
lived, and hence his work is entitled to the high praise that is due to
impartiality. No one desires to read of an ideal Wesley, but to have the
real man reproduced, and Mr. Tyerman has reproduced his hero.—_Boston
Traveller._
There is a conscientious honesty in the portraiture of his hero which
wins our regard for the author too.—_Christian Standard._
We regard this as an invaluable contribution to Church history.... We
believe the author has given us a history worthy of confidence, as he has
certainly given it in a pleasing style.—_Methodist Protestant_, Baltimore.