Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.;) and the English church had been previously affected by Methodism. _Immediately_ she must also have been affected by Methodism, because Whitfield had been invited to preach in Scotland, and _did_ preach in Scotland. But, whatever may have been the cause of this awakening from slumber in the two established churches of this island, the fact is so little to be denied, that, in both its aspects, it is acknowledged by those most interested in denying it. The two churches slept the sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century; so much of the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two churches awoke, as from a trance, in or just before the dawning of the nineteenth century; this second half of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The Wesleyan Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales, who once reviled the Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for many years hailed a very large section in that establishment--viz., the section technically known by the name of the Evangelical clergy--as brothers after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own strictest model of a spiritual clergy. That section again, the Evangelical section, in the English church, as men more highly educated, took a direct interest in the Scottish clergy, upon general principles of liberal interest in all that could affect religion, beyond what could be expected from the Methodists. And in this way grew up a considerable action and reaction between the two classical churches of the British soil. Such was the varying condition, when sketched in outline, of the Scottish and English churches. Two centuries ago, and for half a century beyond that, we find both churches in a state of trial, of turbulent agitation, and of sacrifices for conscience which involved every fifth or sixth beneficiary. Then came a century of languor and the carelessness which belongs to settled prosperity. And finally, for both has arisen a half century of new light--new zeal--and, spiritually speaking, of new prosperity. This deduction it was necessary to bring down, in order to explain the new power which arose to the Scottish church during the last generation of suppose thirty years.