Methodist Review Volume 10; Volume 21

Methodist Review — Various authors. This 1839 issue presents a collection of theological argument, ecclesiastical critique, travel writing, and literary review characteristic of mid?nineteenth?century Methodist periodicals. Four long non?fiction pieces frame moral reform and religious law: a critique of private dueling and a call for severe civil penalties, public opinion shaping, and pulpit repentance; a historical survey of Hebrew text transmission, authorship, and canon development; and travel sketches of South America that juxtapose indigenous religious practices with Catholic missions and colonial history in Brazil and Peru. A devotional/encyclopedic piece on God’s Word surveys the Bible’s antiquity, manuscript transmission, translations, Bible societies, prophecy, and missionary implications. The issue is rounded by reviews and notices on ordination practice, trials by ordeal, foreknowledge and predestination, biblical prophecy, literary figures such as Wordsworth, and scholarly works on Hebrew grammar and theology. Across these pieces, the unifying threads are moral language, scriptural authority, and a missionary zeal to spread biblical literacy, framed within a transatlantic Methodist perspective.