THE METHODIST. 357 



place book, serious and profane, and a Christian duty 

 paper. He opened himself completely to Pitt, and 

 said he believed the Spirit was in him. Mr Pitt was 

 apparently of a different opinion, for he tried to reason 

 him out of his convictions. " The fact is," says Mr 

 Wilberforce, " he was so absorbed in politics that he 

 had never given himself time for due reflection in 

 religion. But amongst other things he declared to me 

 that Bishop Butler's work raised in his mind more 

 doubts than it had answered." Now if that was the 

 character of Pitt's intellect we must venture to think 

 that the more he reflected on religion the less he would 

 have believed in it. 



Superstition intensifies a man. It makes him more 

 of what he was before. An evil-natured person who 

 takes fright at hell-fire becomes the most malevolent of 

 human beings. Nothing can more clearly prove the 

 natural beauty of Wilberforce's character than the fact 

 that he preserved it unimpaired in spite of his Metho- 

 distic principles. It would be unjust to deny that 

 after he became a Methodist he became a wiser and a 

 better man. His intellect was strengthened, his affec- 

 tions were sweetened, by a faith the usual tendency of 

 which is to harden the heart and to soften the head. 

 He endeavoured to control <jji human, and therefore 

 sometimes irritable, temper ; he laid down for himself 

 the rule " to manifest rather humility in himself than 

 dissatisfaction at others ;" and so well did he succeed 

 that a female friend observed, " If this is madness I 

 hope that he will bite us all." 



Yet there was a flaw in Wilberforce's brain, or he 

 could never have supposed that a man might be sent 

 to hell for playing the piano. He soon showed that in 

 another age he might have been an excellent Inquisitor ; 



