To some of the members of this “Holy Club,” we shall not be able to refer again; we must, therefore, mention them now. Especially is some reference due to James Hervey; his name is now rather a legend and tradition than an active influence in our religious literature; but how popular once, do not the oldest memories amongst us well know? On some important points of doctrine he parted company from his friends and fellow-students, the Wesleys. John Wesley used to declare that he himself was not converted till his thirty-seventh year, so that we must modify any impressions we may have from similar declarations made by the amiable Vicar of Weston Favel: the term conversion, used in such a sense, in all probability means simply a change in the point of view, an alteration of opinion, giving a more clear apprehension of truth. Hervey was always infirm in health, tall, spectral; and, while possessing a mind teeming with pleasing and poetic fancies, and a power of perceiving happy analogies, we should regard him as singularly wanting in that fine solvent of all true genius, geniality. Hence, all his letters read like sermons; but his poor, infirm frame was the tabernacle of an intensely fervent soul. Shortly after his settlement in his village in Northamptonshire he was recommended by his physician to follow the plough, that he might receive the scent of the fresh earth; a curious recommendation, but it led to a conversation with the ploughman, which completely overturned the young scholar’s scheme of theology. The ploughman was a member of the Church of Dr. Doddridge, afterwards one of Hervey’s most intimate friends. As they walked together, the young minister asked the old ploughman what he thought was the hardest thing in religion? The ploughman very respectfully returned the question. Hervey replied, “I think the hardest thing in religion is to deny sinful self,” and he proceeded, at some length, of course, to dilate upon and expound the difficulty, from which our readers will see that, at this time, his mind must have been under the same influences as those we meet in _The Imitation_ of Thomas à-Kempis. “No, sir,” said the old ploughman, “the hardest thing in religion is to deny righteous self,” and he proceeded to unfold the principles of his faith. At the time, Hervey thought the ploughman a fool, but the conversation was not forgotten, and he declares that it was this view of things which created for him a new creed. Our readers, perhaps, know his _Theron and Aspasia_: we owe that book to the conversation with the ploughman; all its pages, alive with descriptions of natural scenery, historical and classical allusion, and glittering with chromatic fancy through the three thick volumes, are written for the purpose of unfolding and enforcing—to put it in old theological phraseology—the imputed and imparted righteousness of Christ, the great point of divergence in teaching between Hervey and John Wesley.