Methodist Review: Volume 36

Methodist Review. This issue, published in January 1854, presents critical notices and essays on contemporary religious authors and themes within the Methodist Quarterly Review. It surveys biography as spiritual formation through a lengthy treatment of Stephen Olin’s life and private letters, showing how his development—from a gifted youth through a dramatic religious conversion to a disciplined Christian educator—shaped his preaching, character, and public work; it also includes a philosophical-critical essay on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s philosophy, arguing for a synthesis of theology and philosophy via Coleridge’s distinction between understanding and reason, the moral will, and the possibility of regeneration grounded in rational experience. Other pieces defend the Spirit and Mission of Methodism—praising earnestness and itinerancy as essential to growth and envisioning a vast future expansion in western territories as a national project—and offer a preliminary note on Stroud’s Harmony of the Gospels, praising the parallel, page-by-page presentation of the four Gospels to clarify the gospel narrative. The issue situates itself in a 19th-century American Protestant milieu that valorizes evangelical zeal, integrates faith with education and philosophy, and defends traditional Methodist methods alongside Christianity’s public role.