ABSTRACT
Like John Wesley before it, The Methodist Magazine that circulated widely in its denomination culled useful and edifying material from wherever it could be found. In 1825 it included a passage from The Christian Philosopher by Thomas Dick, a Scottish Presbyterian Seceder who was an enormously influential exponent of popular science. In a manner typical of early nineteenth-century Evangelicals, Dick - and his Methodist readers - put science in the context of natural theology. John Pye Smith, though almost entirely self-taught, became probably the most distinguished thinker among the Independents in the early nineteenth century. William Henry Dallinger was a Wesley an minister who was also a practising scientist. He acted as president of Wesley College, Sheffield, and as president of the Royal Microscopical Society. Science finds that phenomena are self-acting, and self-adjusting. The energy is competent; the method is perfect for bringing about the result investigated.
