Wesley and his century, a study in spiritual forces

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John Wesley

the painting by J. W. L. Forster

WESLEY AND HIS
CENTURY

A STUDY IN SPIRITUAL FORCES

BY THE

REV. W. H. FITCHETT, B.A., LL.D.

pmincipal op the methodist ladies* college, bawthobn,
ublboubnb; president of the uethodist

CHUBCH OP AUSTKALABIA

WITH A PORTRAIT AND FACSIMILES

THE ABINGDON PRESS

NEW YORK CINCINNATI

Printed In the United States of America

First American Edition Printed March, 1917
Reprinted March, 1920; August, 192a

CONTENTS

PAGE

Probm— Wbblet's Place in History 9

BOOK I.— THE MAKING OP A MAN

CHAP. PAGE

I. Home Forces 21

II. The Wesley Household 31

III. Household Stories 39

IV. Personal Equipment 48

BOOK II.— THE TRAINING OF A SAINT

I. Child Piety 57

II. In Search of a Theology 64

III. A Deeper Note 73

IV. A Religion that Failed 83

V. Oxford Loses its Spell 90

VI. A Strange Missionary 98

VII. Reaching the Goal 113

VIII. What had Happened 126

BOOK III.— THE QUICKENING OF A NATION

I. England in the Eighteenth Century 139

II. Beginning the Work 148

III. The Field-Preaching 159

IV. The Three Great Comrades 166

^ V. Wesley as a Preacher 176

VI. The Great Itinerant 186

VII. A New Order of Helpers 199

VIII. How the New Converts were Sheltered 213

IX. Soldier Methodists 220

X. How THE Work Spread: Scotland 235

XI. How the Work Spread: Ireland 243

XII. Across the Atlantic 255

XIII. The Secret of the Great Revival 269

XIV. How Wesley affected England 278

5

6

CONTENTS

BOOK IV.— THE EVOLUTION OP A CHURCH

CHAP. PAGE

I. Wesley as a Chukch-bdilder 293

II. The Breach with the Moravians 303

III. The Controversy with Whitepield 314

IV. The Onfall of the Bishops 326

V. The Conference 337

VI. A Year OP Crisis 346

VII. The Developing Church 355

VIII. A Threatened Schism 365

IX. The Deed op Declaration 377

X. Wesley's Theory op the Church 389

XI. The Final Steps 399

XII. The Effective Doctrines of Methodism 411

XIII. Methodism AS A Pouty 423

BOOK v.— PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

I. Wesley's Personality w 431

II. Wesley's Love Affairs 442

III. Wesley in Literature 458

IV. Wesley's Odd Opinions 469

V. The Closing Day 481

VI. Wesley's Death 489

VII. Wesley's Critics 498

Epilogue — The Continuity of Spiritual Impulse 509

Index 515

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PoKTRAiT OF JoHN Weslet FroTiiitpiece

From the painting by J. W. L. Forster

FACSIMILES
Page from John Wesley's Journal in Georgia re

Miss Hopket To face page 110

Letter from John Wesley to Miss Bolton of

Witney, May 13, 1774 " " " 431

Reprodvred by the kind permission of Miss M. G.
Collins of Warmck
Page from John Wesley 's Journal in Georgia . . . . " " " 463
Letter from John Wesley to Miss Bolton of

Witney, Feb. 26, 1780 " " " 469

Reproduced by the hind permission of Miss M. G.
Collins of Warwick

PROEM

WESLEY'S PLACE IN HISTORY

If John Wesley himself, belittled, long-nosed, long-
chinned, peremptory man who, on March 9, 1791, was
carried to his grave by six poor men, "leaving behind
him nothing but a good libraiy of books, a well-worn
clergyman's gown, a much-abused reputation, and — the
Methodist Church," could return to this world just now,
when so much admiring ink is being poured upon his
head, he would probably be the most astonished man on
the planet. For if Wesley has achieved, fame, he never
intended it. Seeley says that England conquered and
peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind. And
if Wesley built up one of the greatest of modern Churches,
and supplied a new starting-point to modern religious
history, it was with an entire absence of conscious in-
tention.

For more than a generation after he died historians
ignored Wesley, or they sniffed at him. He was accepted
as a fanatic, visible to mankind for a moment on the
crest of a wave of fanaticism, and then to be swallowed
up, without either regret or recollection, of mere night.
Literature refused to take him seriously. He was denied
any claim to stand amongst the famous men of all time.
But Wesley has at last come into the kingdom of his
fame. The most splendid compliments paid to him
to-day come not from those inside the Church he
founded, but from those outside it. Leslie Stephen
describes Wesley as the greatest captain of men of his
century. Macaulay ridicules those writers of "books
called histories of England" who failed to see that
amongst the events which have determined that history
is the rise of Methodism. Wesley, he says, had "a genius
for government not inferior to that of Richelieu"; Mat-
thew Arnold gives nobler praise when he says he had
"a genius for godliness." Southey, who wrote Wesley's
9

10

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Life without the least understanding Wesley's secret,
asserts him to be "the most influential mind of the last
century; the man who will have produced the greatest
effects, centuries or perhaps millenniums hence, if the
present race of men should continue so long." Buckle
calls him "the first of ecclesiastical statesmen." Lecky
says that the humble meeting in Aldersgate Street where
John Wesley was converted "forms an epoch in English
history" ; and he adds that the religious revolution begun
in England by the preaching of the Wesleys is "of greater
historic importance than all the splendid victories by
land and sea won under Pitt." Wesley, he holds, was
one of the chief forces that saved England from a revolu-
tion such as France knew. "No other man," says
Augustine Birrell, "did such a life's work for England;
you cannot cut him out of our national life."

England, in a word, is as truly interested in Wesley as
in Shakespeare.- And, since the forces which stream from
religion are mightier thar anything literature knows, it
is a reasonable theory that, in determining the history of
the English-speaking race, Wesley counts for more than
Shakespeare.

What was there, then, in Wesley himself, or what is
there in his work, to justify compliments so splendid, and
from authorities so diverse?

Wesley's least monument, in a sense, is the Church he
built; and yet the scale and stateliness of that Church
are not easily realised, nor the rich energy of growth
which beats in its life. When Wesley died in 1791 his
"societies" in Great Britain numbered 76,000 members,
with 300 preachers. To-day, Methodism — taking its four
great divisions in Great Britain, Canada, the United
States, and Australasia — has 49,000 ministers in its
pulpits, and some 30,000,000 hearers in its pews. It has
built 88,000 separate churches; it teaches in its schools
every Sunday more than 8,000,000 children. The branches
of Methodism, in some respects, are more vigorous than
even the parent stock. In Canada, out of a population of
less than 6,000,000, nearly 1,000,000 are Methodists.
Every ninth person in Australasia belongs to Wesley's
Church. It is, in some respects at least, the most vigor-
ous form of Protestantism in the world. The Methodist
Church of the United States raised £4,000,000 as a

WESLEY'S PLACE IN HISTORY

11

centenary effort — the largest sum raised by a single
Church in a single effort in Christian history.

Time is a rough critic; it dissolves like some powerful
acid all shams. But the Church that Wesley founded
does more than barely survive this test. A century after
Wesley died, it is well-nigh a hundred-fold greater than
when he left it.

And yet Wesley's true monument, we repeat, is not the
Church that bears his name. It is the England of the
twentieth century ! Nay, it is the whole changed temper
of the modern world : the new ideals in its politics, the
new spirit in its religion, the new standard in its phi-
lanthropy. WTio wants to understand Wesley's work
must contrast the moral temper of the eighteenth cen-
tury with that of the twentieth century; for one of the
greatest jjersonal factors in producing the wonderful
change discoverable is Wesley himself.

In some respects the eighteenth century is the most
ill-used period in English history. It is the Cinderella of
the centuries. Nobody has a good word to say about it.
Carlyle sums it up in a bitter phrase: "Soul extinct;
stomach well alive." Yet a century cannot be condensed
into an epigram, least of all into one written in gall. The
eighteenth century suffers because we set it in a false
perspective. W^e compare it with the centuries which
come after it, not with those which went before it. Its
records, no doubt, look drab-coloured when set between
the English revolution of the seventeenth century, which
destroyed the Stuarts, and the French revolution of the
nineteenth century, which cast out the Bourbons. But
we may not be unjust, even to a century ! The eighteenth
century is, for England, a chain of great names and of
great events. It found England, Scotland, and Ireland
separate kingdoms; it left them united. If it took from
us the United States, it gave us Canada, India, and
Australia, If Lord North ruled England for twelve sad
years during its course, William Pitt ruled it for twenty
years of splendour. If it saw a British Admiral shot on
his own quarter-deck for cowardice, and a British fleet
in open mutiny at the Nore, it also saw the great sea
victories of Rodney at the Battle of the Saints, of Lord
Howe on the first of June, and of Nelson at tlie Nile.
Blenheim was fought the year after Wesley was born, and

12

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

the Nile seven years after his death. The century between
such events cannot have been inglorious. It was cer-
tainly a century of social and political growth. The
England of George III. and of Pitt is a vast advance on
the England of Queen Anne and of Walpole.

The real scandal of England in the eighteenth century,
the leprosy that poisoned its blood, the black spot on the
shining disc of its hi-<tory, is tlie general dfcay of religion
which marked its first fifty years. At the point of its
faith England was dying. Its spiritual skies were black
as with the gloom of an Arctic midnight, and chilly as
with Arctic frosts.

Only by an effort of the historic imagination can we
realise the condition of England in 1703. When Wesley
was born, men still lived who had seen Judge Jeffreys
on the bench, Titus Gates in the witness-box, and the
Seven Bishops in the dock. Montesquieu, who studied
the England of that age through keen French eyes, says
bluntly : "There is no such thing as religion in England."
That, of course, was not true; Epworth parsonage itself
disproves it, and there must have been many English
homes like that of which Susannah Wesley was the
mother. But that saying of the keen-sighted Frenchman
had a dreadful measure of truth in it. Christianity under
English skies was never, before or since, so near the
death point. Who does not remember the sentences
which Bishop Butler, that gloomy, subtle, powerful in-
tellect, prefixed to his "Analogy"? "It has somehow come
to be taken for granted," he wrote, "that Christianity
is not so much a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at
length discovered to be fictitious. . . . Men treat it as if
in the present age this were an agreed point amongst all
people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set
it up as a principal subject to mirth and ridicule." Be-
twixt Montesquieu and Butler, the great Frenchman and
the still greater P^nglishman, what a procession of wit-
nesses might be quoted in proof of the decay of faith in
Great Britain at the beginning of the eighteenth century !
And when faith dies, what else can live?

Who wants to see the morality of that period will find
it reflected in the art of Hogarth, the politics of Walpole,
the writings of Mrs. Aphra Behn, or of Smollett, and the
pleasures of the Medmenham Club. It is registered in

WESLEY'S PLACE IN HISTORY

13

the foulness of the literature of the day, in the eineKy
of its laws, in the despair of its religion. Christianity
cannot perish; but it came near its death-swoon in that
sad age. "There was," says Green, the historian, "open
revolt against religion and against Churches in both
extremes of English society. The poor were ignorant and
brutal to a degro" Impossil;]'^ now to realise; the rich,
to an almost utter disbelief of religion, linked a foulness
of life now happily almost inconceivable."

Then there came the Great Eevival ! The most wonder-
ful movement in the history of the eighteenth century ;
its greatest gift to the English-speaking race, is nothing
in the realm of politics, or of literature, or of science ; it
is not the rise of the middle classes, which shifted the
centre of political power ; or the great industrial awaken-
ing, which multiplied the wealth of the nation tenfold.
It is the re-birth of its religion ! And it is this of which
Wesley is at once the symbol and the cause.

That revival was the translation into English life, and
into happier terms, of Luther's Reformation in Germany.
Wycliffe's reforms had no root; the Reformation in the
days of Henry VIII. had almost worse than no root.
It was political and non-moral. The true awakening
of the religious life of the English-speaking race dates
from Wesley. To say that he re-shaped the conscience
of England is true, but is only half the truth. He
re-created it I It was dead — twice dead ; and through
his lips God breathed into it the breath of life again.
The pulse of John Wesley is felt to-day in every form
of English religion. His fire burns in all our philan-
thropy! "The Methodists themselves," to quote Green
once more, "were the least result of the Methodist revival.
Its action on the Church broke the lethargy of the clergy ;
its noblest result is thc^ steady attempt which has never
ceased from that day to this to remedy the guilt, the
ignorance, the physical suftering, tlie so< ial degradatioii
of the profligate and the puor. . . . Tdo great revival
reformed our prisons, abolished the slave trade, taught
clemency to our penal laws, gave the first impulse to
popular education."

But what was Wesley's secret ? By what strange magic
did he work a miracle so great? it is a great deed to
create a new Church, and perhaps a harder thing still

14

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

to reform a Church both old and dead. How did Wesley
accomplish both feats? The answer to this question is
found in the history told in these pages. But let it be
said at once that it is idle to seek the reason merely in
some endowment of personal genius. The compliments
paid to Wesley are often mere blunders. He was not,
as Buckle calls him, 'the first of ecclesiastical statesmen"
— a Leo X. in a Geneva gown. He did not possess "the
strongest mind of his century," as Southey thought.
Coleridge's oft-urged criticism is at least partly true;
he had the logical, but not the philosophical mind. He
had nothing of Bunyan's dreamy genius; he could not
compare in sweep and range of thought with the author
of the "Analogy" ; and, to come to later names and times,
he had not Newman's subtle and profound intellect. The
secret of his work is not to be found in the close-wrought
and magnificent ecclesiastical machinery with which he
endowed his Church. The characteristic institutions of
Methodism were not the causes of the great revival ; they
are its results. And Wesley invented no new doctrine.
He added to Christian knowledge no new truth. "I
simply teach," he himself said, "the plain old religion of
the Church of England"; truths, as he again put it,
"which were merely the common, fundamental teaching
of Christianity." And that is perfectly true. Wesley
did not re-discover Christianity. He did not disturb
it with a new heresy, or adorn it with a new doctrine.
He did not even set the old doctrines in a new per-
spective.

The fatal thing in the religion of that age was that
it had ceased to be a life, or to touch life. It was
exhausted of its dynamic elements — the vision of a
Redeeming Christ ; the message of a present and personal
forgiveness. It was frozen into a theology; it was spun
out into ecclesiastical forms; it was crystallised into a
system of external ethics; it had become a mere adjunct
to politics. No one imagined it, or thought of it, or
tried to realise it, as a spiritual deliverance; a deliverance
at the very touch of the fingers; a deliverance to be
realised in the personal consciousness. Religion trans-
lated into terms of living human experience, and dwelling
as a divine energy in the soul, was a forgotten thing. An
electric lamp without the electric current is a mere loop

WESLEY'S PLACE IN HISTORY 15

of calcined fibres black and dead. And Christianity it-
self, in England, at the beginning of the eighteenth cen-
tury, was exactly such a circle of dead fibres. What
Wesley did was to pour the mystic current of a divine life
through the calcined sonl of a nation, and so turn black-
ness into flame.

Wesley's secret, in brief, does not lie in his statesman-
ship, in his genius for organisation, or in his intellectual
power. First and last it belongs to the spiritual realm.
The energy that thrilled in his look, that breathed from
his presence, that made his life a flame and his voice a
spell, stands, in the last analysis, in the category of
spiritual forces.

But all this only shows how lofty was the plane on
which Wesley worked, and how great were the forces
he represented, George Dawson, in his "Biographical
Lectures," says: "I never can think of Wesley without
associating him with the four glorious Johns of whom
England ought to be proud — Wyclilie, the Reformer
before the Reformation ; Milton, the greatest soul Eng-
land ever knew; Bunyan, the writer of the most blessed
book next to the Bible that the world ever delighted in ;
Locke, who turned a clear understanding, an admirable
education, and a pure conscience to putting that which
was before a matter of feeling on the grounds of phi-
losophy. Then comes Wesley, and, I believe, taking him
altogether, Wesley was worthy to walk in the company
of these four." But Dawson did not see that while
Wesley had not the genius of Milton, or the luminous
imagination of Bunyan, or the analytical intellect of
Locke, he has yet left a deeper mark on English history
than the other three Johns put together!

There are men who live in history because they em-
bodied the ruling ideas of their age and made them
victorious. There are men of jet loftier force, who may
be said, not to reliect, but lo create, the impulses which
governed the world in which thpy lived. They shaped
their epoch ; they were not shaped by it. Napoleon was
of the first type. He did not create the Revolution. He
became its political heir and embodiment. Ctesar was
of the other and greater order. He did not merely find
a new channel for the currents of Roman history; he
changed the very direction of their flow. By force of

16 :WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

genius he gave to the history and political order of Rome
a new physiognomy.

Wesley, too — if he is to be judged by the scale and
permanence of his work — belongs to this greater type.
He was not merely the intei'preter of his age, the acci-
dental figurehead of a spiritual revolution which was set
in movement independently of him, the human centre
round which crystallised impulses vaguely stirring in a
thousand lives. He did not reflect his century; he
wrought it to a new pattern. He set its pulses moving
to the rhythm of a new life. He was, as a matter of
fact, in quarrel with the essential temper of his age. But
be bent that temper to his own. He set in motion forces
which changed the religious history of England.

Wesley, to sum up, was great; great in mere scale
and range of intellect ; greater than his generation knew,
or than even his own Church yet realises. No one can
study Wesley's life and work without an ever-deepening
sense of the scale of the man, comjjared with other
notable figures in history. But Wesley's work was
greater than Wesley himself; and it was greater because
its secret lies in Ihe spiritiial realm.

And it is exactly this that makes his story an inspira-
tion for all time. The supreme gifts of the intellect are
incommunicable. Shakespeare's creative genius, Dante's
piercing imagination, Darwin's gift for cuuibining a thou-
sand apparently unrelated facts into one triumphant
generalisation, Wellington's faculty for guessing "what
there was on the other side of the hill" — all these came
by original endowment of nature. They were gifts, not
acquirements. But the great forces and endowments of
the si)irihinl realm do not depend on the gifts or denials
of nature. Their secret is not hidden in the convolutions
of the grej^ matter of the brain. They depend on spiritual
conditions ; so they lie within the reach of common men.

And Wesley's secret, we repeat, lies at this point.
Great as was his work, yet the ex[)lauation of it all is
both near and simple. And to realise this at the outset
is the one condition that makes the story of Wesley's
life worth reading and worth writing.

Yes! across even what it is the fashion to call the
leanness of the eighteenth century runs a golden chain
of mighty names. Marlborough — he won Blenheim the

WESLEY'S PLACE IN HISTORY

17

year after Wesley was born — stands at its beginning ; the
man who behind the mask of his serene lace hid the most
terrible lighting gifts English history, at least, has
known ; Nelson and Wellington stand at its close. Among
the figures still visible to history in the century are the
two Pitts — haughty father and still haughtier son;
Wolfe with his sky-tilted nose, who gave us America ;
Clive, with his suUen brows, who won for us India; and
Canning, who called the new world into existence to
redress the balance of the old. Its record in literature
is splendid; it ranges from Swift and Addison, Johnson
and Goldsmith, Pope and Gibbon, to Byron and Burns,
to Coleridge and Wordsworth. Isaac Newton is its repre-
sentative in science; Burke and I*itt in statesmanship;
Wilberforce in philanthropy. Yet, in that crowd of great
faces, the one which represents the force which has most
profoundly affected English history is the long-nosed,
clear-complexioned face of John Wesley, with its eager
eyes, and masterful chin, and flowing locks.

It is sometimes claimed that Newman, who was born
ten years after Wesley died, has influenced the religious
life of his country as deeply as he. A convinced Protes-
tant, of course, must be forgiven for holding that New-
man's influence, on the whole, was evil, and not good.
But, apart from this, it must be remembered that, of his
ninety years, Newman threw the first forty-five into the
scales of the Anglican Church, and the last forty-five into
the scales of the Roman Catholic Church. Neither can
claim him as a whole. He spent the first half of his life
in protesting against one Church, and the second half of
his life in protesting against the other. George Washing-
ton is the only name in the record of the eighteenth cen-
tury which rivals that of Wesley in its influence on our
race, and Wesley represents the more enduring energy.

All this may be claimed for Wesley, not because he
outshone the men of his century in genius, but because
he dealt with loftier forces than they. WTio awakens the
great energies of religion, touches the elemental force
in human life; a force deeper than politics, loftier than
literature, and wider than science. Wesley worked in a
realm through which blew airs from eternity!

BOOK I
THE MAKING OF A MAN

CHAPTER I

HOME FORCES

John Wesley came of a notable stock. His ancestors for
three generations were gentlefolk by birth, scholars by
training, clergymen by choice, and martyrs, in a sense,
by roughness of fortune. They belonged to a hard
age; an age of ejectments and proscriptions, when in-
tolerance was crystallised into Acts of Parliament, and
even mistook itself for religion. Daniel Defoe sat thrice
in the public stocks in the very year John Wesley was
born — for no worse crime than having written that
matchless bit of irony, "A Short and Easy Way with the
Dissenters" !

A very bitter storm of legalised cruelty beat on the
Wesleys of that time. Bartholomew Wesley, the great-
grandfather of John, was thrust out from his snug
Dorsetshire rectory, in advance of the general ejection
under the Act of Uniformity, in 1662. His son, John,
a more brilliant scholar than even his father, but of less
toughness of fibre, was imprisoned in 1661, just before
his father's ejection, for not using the Book of Common
Prayer. He was turned out of his living at Blandford in
1662, and lived a harried, distressful life under the cruel
laws of the period afterwards. His natural home was
Weymouth; but he was forbidden to settle there. A
good woman, guilty of giving him lodgings, was fined
£20 for the oflfence. "Often disturbed, several times
apprehended, four times imprisoned," runs his patient,
melancholy record. Under the infamous Five Mile Act
he was driven from one place after another, and he died,
a comparatively young man, killed by the cruel temper
of his times.

His son, Samuel Wesley, the father of John, had all
the essential virtues of his stock — their passion for
scholarship, their courage, their independent will; but
he was of a hardier temper than his father. His inde-
pendence of will took a somewhat surprising develop-
ment. This son and grandson of ejected ministers decided
21

22 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

that the Church which had ejected them was in the
right, and he joined its ministry — thus turning his back
on two generations of ill-used kinsfolk! He was, at the
moment, at a Dissenting academy, a lad scarcely of age ;
but the form of diss6nt about him might well shock a
youth of serious and generous temper. It was only a
bitter variety of politics, absolutely exhausted of reli-
gious ideals and forces; and Samuel Wesley renounced
it, trudged on foot to Oxford, with exactly forty-five shill-
ings in his pocket, and entered himself at Exeter College
as a "poor scholar."

About that very time, in London, the thirteen-year-old
daughter of a famous Dissenting clergyman was putting
her learned father, and his theology, in the scales of her
girlish judgment, and solemnly deciding against both it
and him! This sturdy youth, trudging in the winter
weather to Oxford, with such scanty coins in his pocket,
but such high purpose in his heart, and this remarkable
theologian in short dresses, had not yet met; but they
were destined to be man and wife. There were, plainly,
some very notable aflSnities of nature betwixt them.
When they met and mated their offspring might well be
expected to possess some unusual qualities.

The total amount of assistance Samuel Wesley received
from his family during his university course consisted of
five shillings ; but he emerged, at the end, with a degree,
and £10, 15s. in cash in his pocket! On the whole no
student perhaps ever gave less to Oxford or got more
out of it than did Samuel Wesley. In Scottish uni-
versities generations of hardy students have cultivated
much literature on very little oatmeal; but all the uni-
versities north of the Tweed might be challenged to pro-
duce an example of scholarship nourished on scantier
cash or a more Spartan diet than that of Samuel Wesley.

He held a London curacy for a year, was chaplain on
board a king's ship for another year, won the chaplain-
ship of a regiment by a poem on the Battle of Blenheim,
and lost it, according to one account, by publishing an
attack on Dissenters. He was given the living at Epworth
to which was afterwards added the neighbouring parish
of Wroot.

John Wesley's father, even at this distance of time,
kindles a half-humorous, half-exasperated admiration.

HOME FORCES

23

He was a little, restless-eyed, irascible man ; high-minded,
quick-brained, of infinite hardihood and courage, but with
an impracticable, not to say irresponsible, strain in his
blood. He was determined — in spite of nature — to be a
poet; and on his poetry, Pope, though his friend, finds
time, in the "Dunciad," to distil a drop of gall. His
son John — who knew bad poetry when he saw it — says
of his father's "Life of Christ" in verse — filial piety con-
tending in him with literary judgment — "the cuts are
good ; the notes pretty good ; the verses so-and-so." Praise
of more frosty temperature it is diflBcult to imagine.
Samuel Wesley's great work was a commentary on the
Book of Job, a performance which would have supplied
a new exercise in patience to that much-afflicted patri-
arch, if he had been required to read it. "Poor Job!"
says Bishop Warburton; "it was his eternal fate to be
persecuted by his friends."

Wesley's clear-eyed wife, who loved her impracticable
and hot-tempered spouse with an affection all husbands
may well envT', yet admits that amongst his rough
parishioners at Epworth the talents of her husband were
buried, and says, with wifely gentleness, he was "forced
to a way of life for which he is not so well qualified as 1
could wish." But this was only a wife's soft periphrase.
Her impracticable husband was busy hammering out
laborious rhymes in his study, or was riding off to hold
debate with his brother clergymen in Convocation, leav-
ing his clearer-brained wife to manage the parish, culti-
vate the glebe, and govern her too-numerous brood of
infants.

Susannah Wesley, his wife, would have been a remark-
able woman in any age or country. She was the daughter
of Dr. Annesley, himself an ejected divine, and a man
of ripe learning and good family. The daughter of such
a father had a natural bias for scholarship; she knew
Greek, Latin, French, while yet in her teens, was satu-
rated with theology, reasoned herself into Socinianism
— and out of it — and, generally, had a taste for abstruse
knowledge, which in these soft-fibred modern days is
almost unintelligible.

She was reading the Early Fathers and wrestling with
metaphysical subtleties when a girl of to-day would be
playing tennis or practising sonatas. While yet only

24 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

thirteen years of age, as we have seen, she solemnly re-
viewed "the whole issue in dispute betwixt Dissent and
the Church," and gravely decided that the views held by
her father — and such a father ! — were wrong. A feminine
theologian of such tender years, who felt herself capable
of deciding such an issue, and who actually decided it
in such a way, and against such authorities, would be
regarded in these days as a somewhat alarming portent.
None but a blue-stocking, it might be confidently assumed
— a dowdy in spectacles, with neglected dress and non-
existent complexion, from whom suitors fled — would be
capable of such a feat. As a matter of fact, Susannah
Annesley was a beautiful, high-spirited girl — her sister
was painted by Lely as one of the beauties of his time —
keen-witted, but modest; with a genius for practical
aflfairs. She was certainly neither dowdy nor blue-stock-
ing; and was probably the most capable woman in all
England in her day.

When only nineteen years old she married Samuel
Wesley; and bore him nineteen children in twenty-one
years. She was herself the twenty-fifth child of her
father. It was an age of small incomes and large fami-
lies!

She was an ideal wife, incomparably superior to her
husband in practical genius, and yet herself lovingly blind
to the fact. She might have talked philosophy with
Hypatia or discussed Latin and Greek with Lady Jane
Grey; and yet with her impetuous, unpractical husband
she was as patient — if not quite as submissive — as
Griselda. They were a strong-willed pair, accustomed to
think for themselves; and she wrote to her son John
afterwards, "It is a misfortune almost peculiar to our
family that your father and I seldom think alike." It
may be taken for granted, however, that when they
differed the wife was usually in the right. Yet she prac-
tised towards her husband the sweetest wifely obedience.
That pugnacious little divine very properly expended
many of his leaden stanzas on his wife:—

"She graced my humble roof and blessed my life;
Blessed me by a far greater name than wife.
Yet still I bore an undisputed sway;
Nor was't her task, but pleasure, to obey.

HOME FORCES

25

Nor did I for her care ungrateful prove,

But only used my power to show my love;

Whate'er she asked I gave without reproach or grudge;

For still she reason asked, and I was judge.

All my commands requests at her fair hands,

And her requests to me were all commands."

These are heavy-footed rhymes; aud the actual prose
of married life usually comes short of its poetry. The
rector of Epworth discovered one fatal day that his wife,
who had her own political views, did not join in the re-
sponse when he offered prayer for the king.

"Sukie," he said majestically, "if we are to have two
kings, we must have two beds"; aud the little, absolute,
irresponsible, aud exasperating man took horse and rode
away, leaving his wife to care for his children and his
parish. According to Southey — though the tale is doubt-
ful— she did not hear of him again till twelve months
afterwards, when William III. died, and the hot-headed
rector of Epworth came back condescendingly to the
bosom of his family!

The courageous pair began their wedded life on a
curacy and an income of £30 a year; and children came
fast — nineteen, as we have seen, in twenty-one years. So
poverty — always darkened with the shadow of debt, and
sometimes trembling on the edge of want — was a constant
element of the family life. Years later, in a letter to his
bishop, Mr. Wesley gives him the interesting information
that he had but £50 a year for six or seven years to-
gether, and "one child at least per annum." The little
rector of Epworth, indeed, was fond of doing exercises in
what may be called family arithmetic for the edification
of his diocesan. In a letter to his Archbishop, aunouncing
the birth of twins, he says : "Last night my wife brought
me a few children. There are but two yet, a boy and
a girl, and I think they are all at present. We have
had four in two years and a day, three of which are
living . . . Wednesday evening my wife aud 1 joined
stocks, which came to but six shillings, to send for coals."

A father who, with only six shillings in his pocket, has
to welcome the arrival of twins might be pardoned for
feeling some anxiety. But the head of the Wesley house-
hold left that branch of family duty, as he did most
others, to his wife. She carried the burden of household

26 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

care; her husband could betake himself either to Convo-
cation, or to a debtors' prison, in a spirit of most cheerful
philosophy. He wrote to the Archbishop of York, when
the gates of Lincoln Castle had just been shut on him:
"Now I am at rest; for I have come to the haven where
I have long expected to be." He adds incidentally:
"When I came here my stock was but little above ten
shillings, and my wife at home had scarce so much." It
does not seem to have occurred to this remarkable
husband that a wife left with a brood of little children,
and less than ten shillings in her possession, had almost
sharper cause for anxiety than he had. She could
hardly sit down and write philosophically: "Now I am
at rest." He adds : "She soon sent me her rings, because
she had nothing else to relieve me with; but I returned
them."

Only once was there audible in his brave veife's voice
a repining note. While her husband was still lying in
prison for debt, the Archbishop of York asked her :

"Tell me, Mrs. Wesley, whether you were ever really
in want of bread?"

"My lord," she answered, "strictly speaking, I never
did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it
before it was eaten, and to pay for it after, as has often
made it very unpleasant to me; and I think to have
bread under such terms is the next degree of wretched-
ness to having none at all."

In later years Mrs. Wesley writes of the "inconceivable
distress" from which they not seldom suf^ei'ed in those
sad days; one of the daughters, Emilia, speaks with
sharper accents of the "intolerable want" of the family,
and of the "scandalous want of necessaries" which not
seldom afflicted them.

Samuel Wesley did, no doubt, manage his financial
affairs very badly. He understood practically the whole
sad philosophy of debt. "I am always called on for
money before I make i1," he wrote, "and must buy every-
thing at the worst hand." But he lacked common-sense
in money matters. His household was divided by very
thin partitions, indeed, from mere want; and yet this
surprising husband and father could spend no less than
£150 in thrice attending Convocation ! He was very
sensitive, however, to any impeachment of his thrift and

HOME FORCES

27

care as the head of his family; and, to his brother-in-
law, who attacked him bluntly on the subject, and quoted
Scripture on the uncomfortable thesis that he who failed
to provide for his own household was worse than an
infidel, offered the following record of his business affairs.
The figures have a delicious and characteristic confusion
about them, and might well be the despair of an ac-
countant ; and yet they show that if the little impatient
man had never learnt the art of living within his income,
he contrived to exist on surprisingly small means. It is
all written, it will be observed, in the third person : —

£ *. d.

Imprimis, when he first walked to Oxford, he had in

cash 2 5 0

He lived there till he took his Bachelor's degree, with-
out any preferment or assistance, except one
crown 0 5 0

By God's blessing on his own industry he brought to

London 10 15 0

When he came to London, he got deacon's orders and

a cure, for which he had for one year 28 0 0

In which year, for his board, ordination, and habit he

was indebted £30, which he afterwards paid 30 0 0

Then he went to sea, where he had, for one year, £70,

not paid till two years after his return 70 0 0

He then got a curacy at £30 per annum, for two years,
and by his own industry, in writing, &c., he made
it £60 per annum 120 0 0

Was there ever a worse tangled bit of arithmetic ! And
yet behind the confused figures there shines a gallant
spirit !

In a letter to his Archbishop, Samuel Wesley makes
a frank but quite unnecessary confession of his want of
business knowledge: "I doubt not but one reason of my
being sunk so far is my not understanding worldly affairs,
and my aversion to law, which my people have always
known but too well. I had but fifty pounds per annum
for six or seven years together, nothing to begin the world
with, one child at least per annum, and my wife sick for
half that time."

To all his other ills must be added Samuel Wesley's
quarrels with his neighbours, bred, in the main, of politi-
cal disputes, and amongst that rough peasantry taking a
very rough shape. They maimed his cattle, destroyed his
crops, assailed his character, tried to set fire to his

28

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

rectory. His tithes could be collected only in patches,
and often by force. But the little plucky man had at
least the virtue of courage. "They have only wounded me
yet," he said, "and, I believe, can't kill me." The whole
relation betwixt priest and parishioners was of a very
curious and troubled sort.

Susannah Wesley was a mother of a very notable type,
and her management of her children may well be the de-
spair of all mothers and the envy of all fathers to the
end of time. This brave, wise, high-bred woman, with the
brain of a theologian behind her gentle eyes, and the
tastes of a scholar in her blood, had great ideals for her
children. They should be gentlefolk, scholars. Christians.
Her motherhood had an inexorable plan running through
it; and never were the innumerable offices of a mother
discharged with such insistent method and intelligent
purpose. The whole household life moved as if to a
time-table. The very sleep of the children was measured
to them in doses. As each child reached a certain fixed
date in its life it was required, within a certain specified
time, to learn the alphabet. This wise mother understood
that the will lies at the root of the character, and deter-
mines it. The Wesley household was richly endowed in
the matter of will, so the first step in each child's educa-
tion was to bring that force under government. It was a
standing and imperative rule that no child was to have
anything it cried for, and the moral effect on the child's
mind of the discovery that the one infallible way of not
getting a desirable thing was to cry for it must have
been surprising.

The children were taught to be courteous in speech ; to
cry softly when it was necessary to cry at all — and some-
times this best of all mothers supplied her children with
excellent reasons for crying.

Mrs. Wesley carried her principle of method and a time-
table into the realm of religion. She began surprisingly
early. "The children were early made to distinguish the
Sabbath from other days, and were soon taught to be
still at family prayers, and to ask a blessing immediately
afterwards, which they used to do by signs, before they
could kneel or speak!" The cells of each infantile brain
were diligently stored with passages of Scripture, hymns,
collects, &c. Prayer was woven into the fabric of every

HOME FORCES

29

day's life. The daily lesson of each child was set in a
framework of hymns. Later, certain fixed hours were
assigned to each member of the household, during which
the mother talked with the particular child for whom that
hour was set aside. It is probable that those rigours
of introspection, that severity of self-anaylsis, which
formed the habit of Wesley's life in after years had their
origin in those Thursday interviews which Mrs. Wesley
had with "Jackie."

Mr. Birrell accuses Mrs. Wesley of hardness. She was,
he says, "a stern, forbidding, almost an unfeeling parent."
Mr. Lecky says the home at Epworth parsonage "was not
a happy one." But no criticism could well be more un-
just. Life had not been vsoft to Mrs. Wesley; the age
was not soft. A strain of the Spartan mother was in
her blood, and not without need. A very narrow space
divided that household of hungry mouths at Epworth
from real want. When Susanuah Wesley awoke every
morning, her first preoccupation must have been how to
find bread for her hungry brood. These were conditions
unfavourable to light-hearted ease. But no one can
study the records of that home without seeing that its
atmosphere was love. Love, it is true, of a strenuous
temper, with no element in it of loitering tenderness,
and no enervating strain of indulgence; but still love of
deathless quality. John Wesley himself was the least
sentimental of men ; but his affection for his mother had
something in it of a lover's glow and tenderness. He
writes to her hoping he may die first, and so not have the
distress of outliving her !

It is possible to challenge some of Mrs. Wesley's
methods ; and there is a tragical side to the family history.
Out of her nineteen children nearly one-half died in
infancy; and of her seven clever, quick-witted girls, five
made very unhappy marriages. But great risks lie like a
shadow on all human homes.

The only charge which can be fairly urged against
Susannah Wesley is that she had no sense of humour.
The very names of the children prove the complete
absence of any sense of the ridiculous in either the rector
of Epworth or his wife. One daughter was cruelly
labelled Mehetabel ; a second Jedidah ! Mrs. Susannah
Wesley's theological performances while yet in short

30

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

dresses prove her want of humour. A girl of thirteen,
who took herself solemnly enough to undertake the settle-
ment of "the whole question betwixt Dissent and the
Church" must have been of an unsmiling and owl-like
gravity. Now, humour has many wholesome offices. It
acts like a salt to the intellect, and keeps it sweet. It
enables its owner to see the relative sizes of things.
It gives an exquisite tact, a dainty lightness of touch to
the intellectual powers. And Mrs. Wesley visibly lacked
any rich endowment of that fine grace.

CHAPTER II

THE WESLEY HOUSEHOLD

The Wesley family, as we have described it, was a
household of stroug natures, strongly ruled, and ruled to
noble ends. A cluster of bright, vehement, argumentative
boys and girls, living by a clean and high code, and on the
plainest fare; but drilled to soft tones, to pretty formal
courtesies; with learning as an ideal, duty as an atmos-
phere, and the fear of God as a law. Religion in the
home was, as it ought to be in every home, the master-
force ; a force that had the close and constant pressure of
an atmosphere. It was not, it is true — and as subsequent
pages will show — the most intelligent form of religion. It
created an atmosphere through which ran no golden sun-
shine, and in which few birds sang. Still it fulfilled its
eternal oflSce of ennobling the lives it touched.

And on the whole, it may be confidently asserted that
at that particular period of the eighteenth century, more
brains could be found beneath the thatch of Epworth
Parsonage than under any other roof in England. The
elder Wesley, indeed, suggests — if only by his simplicity,
his wrong-headed unpracticality — Dr. Primrose in the
*'Vicar of Wakefield"; and, it may be added, he must
have been a much less comfortable man to live with than
Goldsmith's amiable, if too simple-minded, hero. But he
had a clever brain, an energetic will, and courage enough
for a grenadier battalion ! He was no doubt of a peremp-
tory temper. A will, stubborn by hereditary gift, had
been hardened by a perpetual duel with adverse circum-
stances, till it was almost incapable of yielding. In his
house he was a despot, but this was only the fashion of
the times. Susannah Wesley, in her letters to her friends,
was accustomed to describe her lordly little husband as
"My Master," though, as is often the case in married life,
the majestic husband had much less authority than he
himself imagined. The children, when they wrote to their
father, addressed him as "Honoured Sir."

Mr. Quiller Couch, in his "Hetty Wesley," however,
31

32

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

draws a portrait of the father of tlie Wesley honsehold
which is sinii)ly a caricature. Saninel Wesley, as he
pictures him, with hot, ferret eyes, set close together
on either side of his long, obstinate nose, is a sort of
eighteenth-century Quilp in a cassock. He is a deeply
and justly hated domestic tyrant, the evil genius of his
children's lives. Even the wise, gentle-browed Susannah
Wesley is described as fit to shape the lives of her great
sons, but as a curiously helpless mother for her daughters.
In "Hetty Wesley" is a scene in which Molly, the most
timid and shrinking of the Wesley girls, faces her terrible
father, and scolds him through whole paragraphs. "Your
temper," she informs her father, in sentences which sug-
gest Dr. Johnson, "makes life a torture. Thwarted
abroad, you have drunk of power at home till you have
come to persuade yourself that our souls are yours." And
she ends by pointing her finger at her father, and shriek-
ing, "Look at him, a ridiculous little man."

That scene is false, both in fact and in art. There
is no echo of the household speech of the century in
that passage, still less of the accent of the Epworth
Rectory. Samuel Wesley was not too wise as a father,
but few men ever made greater sacrifices for their chil-
dren, or were more completely bound up in their happi-
ness. And what other wife and mother of that age can
be put beside Susannah Wesley? She is one of the
famous women of all time. Of her three boys, one was
destined to mould to a new type the religious life of the
race to which he belonged ; a second was to be the greatest
hymn-writer in English literature; while the eldest of
the group, Samuel, had a strength of will and vigour
of intellect equal to his more famous brothers, and a wit
even keener. Unfortunately, in his case, no thaw ever
came to the benumbing frost of High Church theology
which lay ui)on him.

The girls of the rectory had, of course, a tamer and
less varied life than their brothers. The sons went early
to the noise and stir of a great public school, to the
learned atmosphere of the University, and, later still, to
the open stage of the great world itself. And, as was
natural, the imagination of both father and mother
followed the boys into those new realms with keenest
interest. Their figures took a new scale in the domestic

THE WESLEY HOUSEHOLD

33

landscape. For the girls remained nothing but the
tameness of home-life; and the life of a country rectory,
set, as Ejiworth was, in the desolate fenlands, and in the
middle of the eighteenth century, must have been tame.
Nature was unkind to it. Life moved slowly, and was
filled with connnonplace tasks. They had a preoccupied
and impracticable father, an overburdened mother, a
half-furnished house, and a very inadequate income.
Suitors were scanty; new dresses were an idle dream,
hard work was inevitable. The girls did not possess —
and could hardly be blamed for not possessing — the
wise philosophy of their mother. Emilia, the oldest of
the girls, and the least contepted, talks shrewislily and
often of the scandalous insufficiency of things upon which
they had to live.

The flat, melancholy fenlands, pricked with thin lines
of pollard willows and alders, and seamed with dikes
through which the sluggish waters crept — dikes which
in winter became mere ribbons of ice — all this made
a desolate landscape, over which, in winter, the bitter
south-east winds raged. Here and there a distant church
spire showed like the point of a spear against the sky-line ;
a low cluster of village roofs, a solitary farmhouse, gave
a sharper accent to the desolation of the scene. The
stubborn fen-men did not take kindly to those who, like
the Wesleys, were not of their stock. Fifty years earlier
the surly breed had waged thinly disguised civil war with
the Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, whom William
of Orange brought over to drain the ancient fens. They
broke down his dams, beat his workmen, burnt his crops;
and they had something of the same mood towards the
Wesleys. They stabbed the little rector's cows, maimed
his sheep, broke the dams at night to flood his little
fields. They harried him for his debts, tried, not un-
successfully, to burn his parsonage over his head. Then
they accused him of having set fire to it himself!

He was urged by his friends to leave Epworth, but
nobody with the Wesley blood in his veins was capable
of being driven .any whither. "It is like a coward,"
Samuel Wesley wrote to his bishop, "to desert my post
because the enemy fire thick upon me." He was writing
from i)rison, into which he had been cast on account of
his debts. It may be frankly admitted that these were

34

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

not very happy domestic conditious. They meant many
cares and a narrow social horizon for the Epworth
household.

The family history of the Epworth Parsonage, it may
be added, was blackened by not a few tragedies, and
these all clustered round the bright, clever girls of the
household. There are worse evils than want, sharper
ills than poverty, things harder to bear than either pain
or death. Few mothers have had keener griefs than
Susannah Wesley. The single cry of pain, indeed, audible
in all her correspondence is a passage in a letter to her
brother Annesley : —

"I am rarely in health; Mr. Wesley declines apace; my dear
Emily, who in my present exigencies would exceedingly comfort
me, is compelled to go to service in Lincoln, where she is a
teacher in a boarding-school; my second daughter, Sukey, a
pretty woman, and worthy a better fate, when, by your last un-
kind letters, she perceived that all her hopes in you were frus-
trated, rashly threw herself upon a man (if a man he may he
called who is little inferior to the apostate angels in wickedness)
that is not only her plague, but a constant affliction to the family.
Oh, sir! Oh, brother, happy, thrice happy are you, happy is my
sister, that buried your children in infancy: secure from tempta-
tion, secure from guilt, secure from want or shame, or loss of
friends! They are safe beyond the reach of pain or sense of
misery; being gone hence, nothing can touch them further. Be-
lieve me, sir, it is better to mourn ten children dead than one
living; and I have buried many."

The vague, bitter, nameless reference here is to her
daughter Hetty, the keenest spirit, the liveliest, brightest,
and most happy of that cluster of fair girls under the
roof of the Epworth Parsonage. Hetty had rare gifts
of intellect, and it is recorded of her that she could read
the Greek Testament by the time she was eight years
of age. A brilliant, fascinating girl, with a strain of
gay and half impish mischief in her, she was self-willed
and masterful in spirit ; and yet no girl under any English
roof at that moment had a more tender spirit, a quicker
intelligence, or perhaps a sadder fate. She was the one
daughter who brought shame upon the household.

When her shame was known her father broke into
fierce, inexorable anger. For long he would not see his
daughter; but for the mother's patience, she might have
been driven from the household roof. Hetty herself,
years afterwards, when her father was partially recon-

THE WESLEY HOUSEHOLD 35

ciled, wrote : "I would have given at least one of my eyes
for the liberty of throwing myself at your feet before I
was married at all ; yet since it is past, and matrimonial
grievances are usually irreparable, I hope you will con-
descend to be so far of my opinion as to own that, since
upon some accounts I am happier than I deserve, it is
best to say little of things quite past remedy."

The only quarrel John Wesley ever had with his father
arose out of a sermon he preached on "The Charity Due
to Wicked Persons," which his father held to have been
preached on Hetty's behalf and levelled against himself.

In a reckless mood — a mood half of contrition and
half of desperation — Hetty vowed to marry any person
her parents wished, and that self-imposed penance was
ruthlessly exacted. A journeyman plumber named
Wright offered himself, the father's wrath was still flam-
ing, and the marriage took place. Never, perhaps, was a
more unhappy union. Wright, in character, education,
habits, and temper, was the exact opposite of his wife. It
was the marriage of a clever, refined, high-spirited girl
to a drunken and dissolute boor. She was a neglected
wife, an exiled daughter, an unhappy mother, for her
children died almost at the moment of their birth. One
of the most beautiful and pathetic poems of its kind is
a piece entitled "A Mother's Address to Her Dying In-
fant," which Hetty wrote by the deathbed of her little
infant : —

"Tender softness! infant mild!
Perfect, purest, brightest child!
Transient lustre! Beauteous clayl
Smiling wonder of a day!
Ere the last convulsive start
Rend thy unresisting heart;
Ere the long-enduring swoon
Weigh thy precious eyelids down;
Ah, regard a mother's moan.
Anguish deeper than thy own!
Fairest eyes! whose dawning light
Late with rapture blest my sight.
Ere your orba extinguished be.
Bend their trembling beams on me!
Drooping sweetness! verdant flower.
Blooming, withering in an hour!
Ere thy gentle breast sustains
Latest, fiercest, mortal pains.
Hear a suppliant! Let me be
Partner in thy destiny."

36

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

If we add to these verses the words — spelt as in the
original — which Hetty's husband wrote to John Wesley
enclosing the lines, the interval in mind and education
betwixt husband and wife can be understood : —

■"I've sen you Sum Verses that my wife maid of Dear Lamb Let
me hear from one or both of you as Soon as you think Con-
veniant."

Her wedded life, sown thick with every kind of grief,
broke the unhappy Hetty's spirits, and she sought, with
pathetic eagerness, for her angry little father's forgive-
ness.

"Honoured Sir (she wrote), although you have cast me off, and
I know that a determination once taken by you is not easily
moved, I must tell you that some word of your forgiving is not
only necessary to me, but would make happier the marriage in
which, as you compelled it, you must still (I think) feel no small
concern. My child, on whose frail help I had counted to make
our life more supportable to my husband and myself, is dead.
Should God give and take away another, I can never escape the
thought that my father's intercession might have prevailed
against His wrath, which I shall then, alas! take to be manifest.

"Forgive me, sir, that I make you a party in such happiness
(or unhappiness) as the world generally allows to be, under God,
a portion for two. But as you planted my matrimonial bliss, so
you cannot run away from my prayer when I beseech you to
water it with a little kindness. My brothers will report to you
what they have seen of my way of life and my daily struggle to
redeem the past. But I have come to a point where I feel your
forgiveness to be necessary to me. I beseech you, then, not to
withhold it."

Samuel Wesley, however, listeued with unconvinced
ears. He found no true note of sincerity in his unhappy
daughter's letters. He advised hei', in her next letter, if
she wishes to convince him, to "display less wit and more
evidence of self-examination." "What hurt," he asks,
"has matrimony done you? I know only that it has given
you your good name." A mother, of course, would not
have replied in such a fashion to such a letter as poor
Hetty had written, but then Samuel Wesley had some-
thing more than an average man's inability to understand
feminine sensibilities.

But sorrow, poverty, neglect, and loneliness, if they
broke the once gay Hetty's pride, refined her character.
She wrote to her brother John in 1743: —

THE WESLEY HOUSEHOLD

"Though I am cut off from all human help or ministry, I am
4iot without assistance; though I have no spiritual friend, nor
ever had one yet, except, perhaps, once in a year or two, when I
have seen one of my brothers or some other religious person by
stealth, yet (no thanks to me) I am enabled to seek Him still,
and to be satisfied with nothing else than God, in whose presence
I affirm this truth. I dare not desire health, only patience, resig-
nation, and the spirit of a healthful mind. I have been so long
weak that I know not how long my trial may last, but I have a
firm persuasion and blessed hope (though no full assurance) that
In the country I am going to I shall not sing 'Hallelujah!' and
'Holy, holy, holy!' without company, as I have done In this."

Wesley's last record of his sister is inexpressibly, if
unconsciously, touching: "1750, March 5. I prayed by
my sister Wright, a gracious, tender, trembling soul; a
bruised reed, which the Lord will not break. I had sweet
fellowship with her in explaining at the chapel those
solemn words: 'Thy sun shall no more go down, neither
shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be
thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning
shall be ended.' "

Let there be set against the background of that record
the picture of the high-spirited, bright-witted girl, the
sunshine and the pride of the rectory before she was
stained by shame or broken by human cruelty, and what
a pathetic chapter in the history of the Wesley family
becomes visible !

Another datighter, Martha, had a fate almost as cruel
as that of Hetty, though, in her case, there was no
personal fault to add gall to it. Martha was married to
one of Wesley's Oxford comrades, Westley Hall, a clergj'-
man, a man of good family, but whose character had in it
unsuspected depths of vileness. Adam Clarke sums up
his history : "He was," he says, "a curate in the Church
of England, who became a Moravian, a Quietist, a Deist
(if not an Atheist), and a Polygamist, which last he de-
fended in his teaching and illustrated by his practice."
Hall fell in love with Keziah Wesley, and announced that
it had been revealed to him that he must marry her. His
affection — and his revelations — however, were of a very
transferable quality. He presently cast his evil eyes on
Martha, and reported a further revelation that he must
marry her. The neglected Keziah died broken-hearted ;
upon Martha fell what proved to be the worse fate of
marrying Hall.

38

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Hall had a genius for sustained deceit and for cruelty,
which almost suggests diabolical possession. Patty, as a
girl, was the most frolicsome of the whole Epworth group.
"You will all be more serious some day," said the wise
mother, looking at her laughing children with prophetic
eyes. "Shall / be more serious, mum?" asked Patty.
"No," said the mother with a smile. Nothing, she
thought, could cloud the bright spirit of that girl! And
yet this merriest of girls had to wade through black floods
of suffering. She developed a gentle and heroic patience
which outshone that of Tennyson's Griselda. She covered
her vile husband's faults, nursed his mistresses, took into
pitying arms his illegitimate children, clung to him with
heroic fidelity. When her v/orthless husband, years after-
wards, died, almost his last words were, "I have injured
an angel, an angel that never reproached me."

And yet his wronged wife's heroic meekness did not
represent any want of either courage or strength. She
kept her intellect bright, wore a serene face amid all
troubles, and by the sheer charm of her mental qualities
became one of Dr. Johnson's most intimate and valued
companions. "Evil," she once said, "was not kept from
me, but evil has been kept from harming me." If her
life was a tragedy, her death was marked by a strange
peace. Just before she died, her niece asked her if she
were in pain? "No," she said, "but a new feeling. I
have the assurance which I have long prayed for.
Shout !" she whispered eagerly, and so she died. It would
be difficult to find in the records of womanhood another
example of a spirit so sorely tried, yet so serenely heroic,
as that of Patty Wesley.

Yet another of the Wesley girls, Susanna, wrecked her
happiness in marriage. She had the misfortune to choose
a husband so atrocious in character that she was com-
pelled to leave him. Marriage for the Wesley household
was a curiously perilous experiment. All these tragedies,
however, lay as yet, unguessed, in the vague and distant
future.

CHAPTER III

HOUSEHOLD STORIES

Some of the incidents of Wesley's childhood must have
deeply coloured his religion. One is the historic fire which
consumed the rectory in 1709, when Wesley was not yet
six years old. The building was old and dry, constructed
of lath and plaster and ancient timber. On the midnight
of February 9, 1709, it was discovered to be in flames.
The fire raced along the woodwork of the ancient rectory
as though it had been so much tinder. The rest of the
household made a hurried and scorched escape, but John,
in the alarm and hurry, was forgotten.

The little fellow awoke to find the room so full of light
that he though it was day ; he lifted his head and looked
through the curtains. A red scribble of fire was racing
across the ceiling. He sprang from the bed and ran to
the door, but it was already a dreadful tapestry of danc-
ing flames. He climbed on a chest which stood beneath
the window and looked out. The night was black, but
the light of the burning house fell on the upturned faces
of a swaying crowd of agitated people. The strong north-
east wind, blowing through the open door, had turned the
staircase into a tunnel of flame ; the father found it would
be death to climb it. He fell on his knees in the hall,
and cried aloud to God for the child that seemed shut up
in a pi'ison of flame.

Mrs. Wesley herself, who was ill, had — to use her own
phrase — "waded through the fire," and reached the street,
with scorched hands and face ; as she turned to look back
at the house the face of her little son could be seen at the
window. He was still in the burning house !

There was no ladder; his escape seemed impossible.
The boy himself heard behind him the crackling flames,
and saw before him the staring, white-faced crowd, framed
against the background of the black night.

One man, with more resource than the rest of the
crowd, ran in beneath the window, and bade another climb
upon his shoulders. The boy was reached and, just as he
39

40 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

was drawn through the window, he heard the crash of the
falling roof behind him. "Come, neighbours," cried the
father, when his child was brought to him, "let us kneel
down! Let us give thanks to God! He has given me
all my eight children. Let the house go. I am rich
enough."

No child of six could ever forget an incident like that.
It burned itself in upon the boy's imagination. In later
years it became for him luminous with new and strange
meanings. It was a parable of his own spiritual history.
He had been delivered from fiercer fires than those which
consumed Epworth Eectory. Was he not "a brand
plucked from the burning" ; and plucked for some special
purpose? Nay, the incident became a mystic picture of
the condition of the whole world, and of the part he was
to play in it.

His theology translated itself into the terms of that
night scene. The burning house was the symbol of a
perishing world. Each human soul, in Wesley's thought,
was represented by that fire-girt child, with the flames of
sin, and of that divine and eternal anger which unrepent-
ing sin kindles, closing round it. He who had been
plucked from the burning house at midnight must pluck
men from the flames of a more dreadful fire. That re-
membered peril coloured Wesley's imagination to his
dying day.

The story of the fire is told by the rector himself, by
Mrs. Wesley, and by John, from his boyish recollection.
Of these three accounts, the most graphic and vivid is
that by Samuel Wesley himself, though, curiously enough,
it is the account generally overlooked. As it is read,
something of the confusion, the heat, the terror of the fire
can be realised across nearly two centuries : —

"A little after eleven (he writes) I heard 'Fire!' cried in the
street next to which I lay. If I had heen in my own chamber, as
usual, we had all been lost. I threw myself out of bed, got on my
waistcoat and nightgown and looked out of the window; saw the
reflection of the flame, but knew not where it was; ran to my
wife's chamber with one stocking on, and my breeches in my
hand ; would have broken open the door, which was bolted within,
but could not. My two eldest children were with her. They rose,
and ran towards the staircase, to raise the rest of the house.
Here I saw it was my own house, all in a light blaze, and nothing
but a door between the flame and the staircase.

"I ran back to my wife, who by this time had got out of bed.

HOUSEHOLD STORIES

41

and opened the door. I bade her fly for her life. We had a little
silver and some gold, about £20. She would have stayed for it,
but I pushed her out. I ran upstairs and found them, came down,
and opened the street door. The thatch was fallen in all on fire.
The north-east vind drove all the sheets of flame in my face, as
if reverberated in a lamp. I got twice on the steps, and was
drove down again. I ran to the garden-door and opened it. The
fire was there more moderate. I bade them all follow, but found
only two with me, and the maid with another (Charles) in her
arms that cannot go; but all naked. I ran with him to my house
of office in the garden, out of the reach of the flames; put the
least in the other's lap; and not finding my wife follow me, ran
back into the house to see her, but could not find her.

"I ran down, and went to my children in the garden, to help
them over the wall. WTien I was without, I heard one of my poor
lambs, left still above-stairs, about six years old, cry out, dismally,
'Help me.' I ran in again, to go upstairs, but the staircase was
now all aflre. I tried to force my way up through it a second
time, holding my breeches over my head, but the stream of fire
beat me down. I thought I had done my duty; went out of the
house to that part of my family I had saved, in the garden, with
the killing cry of my child in my ears. I made them all kneel
down, and we prayed to God to receive his soul.

"I ran about inquiring for my wife and other children; met the
chief man and the chief constable of the town going from my
house, not towards it, to help me. I took him by the hand and
said, 'God's will be done!' His answer was: 'Will you never have
done your tricks? You fired your house once before; did you not
get enough by it then, that you have done it again?' This was
cold comfort I said, 'God forgive you!' But I had a little better
soon after, hearing that my wife was saved, and then I fell on
mother earth and blessed God.

"I went to her. She was alive, and could just speak. She
thought I had perished, and so did all the rest, not having seen
me nor any share of eight children for a quarter of an hour; and
by this time all the chambers and everything was consumed to
ashes, for the fire was stronger than a furnace, the violent wind
beating it Aovn on the house. She told me afterwards how she
escaped. When I first went to open the back-door, she endeav-
oured to force through the fire at the fore-door, but was struck
back twice to the ground. She thought to have died there, but
prayed to Christ to help her. She found new strength, got up
alone, and waded through two or three yards of flame, the fire
on the ground being up to her knees. She had nothing on but
her shoes and a wrapping-gown, and one coat on her arm. This
she wrapped about her breast, and go safe through into the yard,
but no soul yet to help her. She never looked up or spake till I
came; only when they brought her last child to her, bade them
lay it on the bed. This was the lad whom I heard cry in the
house, but God saved him by almost a miracle. He only was
forgot by the servants, in the hurry. He ran to the window
towards the yard, stood upon a chair, and cried for help. There
were now a few people gathered, one of whom, who loved me,
helped up another to the window. The child, seeing a man come

42 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

into the window, was frightened, and ran away to get to his
mother's chamber. He could not open the door, so ran back
again. The man was fallen down from the window, and all the
bed and hangings in the room where he was were blazing. They
helped up the man a second time, and poor Jacky leaped into his
arms and was saved. I could not believe it till I had kissed him
two or three timea"

The next day, as he was walking in the garden, and
surveying the ruins of the house, he picked up part of
a leaf of his Polyglot Bible, on which these words were
still legible: "Vade; vende omnia quae habes; et attoUe
crucem, et sequere me" — "Go; sell all that thou hast;
and take up thy cross, and follow Me."

Is it any wonder that such an experience registered
itself ineffaceably on John Wesley's imagination? Wesley,
as a child, must have watched with grave, wondering eyes
another incident in the Epworth household. The father
was absent at Convocation; and Mrs. Wesley began to
hold religious meetings in the rectory kitchen. She held
these little services first for her own servants and chil-
dren; then the neighbours begged permission to come,
till thirty of forty were gathered on Sunday evening.
That fiery little High Churchman, her husband, heard
the news. A "conventicle" was held under the roof of
his own rectory, with a woman publicly praying, and
even, perhaps, exhorting; and that woman his own wife!
Here was matter to set the sacerdotal conscience on fire
with austere auger! Mrs. AVesley's letters, in reply to her
imperious husband, are models of sense and goodness, and
her logic is quite too much for that irascible little man.

It "looked particular," her husband argued, if she held
a service. "I grant it does," his wife replies, "and so
does almost anything that is serious, or that may in any
way advance the glory of God or the salvation of souls,
if it be performed out of a pulpit." Theu, too, her sex
made it unsuitable, her husbaud contended, that she
should conduct such a meeting. "As I am a woman,"
Mrs. Wesley replies, "so I am also mistress of a large
family; and though the superior charge of the souls con-
tained in it lies upon you, as head of the family, and as
their minister, yet in your absence I cannot but look
upon every soul you leave under my care as a talent
committed to me under a trust by the great Lord of fill

HOUSEHOLD STORIES

43

the families of beaven and earth. And if I am unfaithful
to Him, or to you, how shall I answer when He shall
command me to render an account of my stewardship?"

"Why did she not ask some one else to read a sermon ?"
Mr. Wesley demanded. "Alas!" she replies, "you do
not consider what a people these are. 1 do not think one
man among them could read a sermon without spelling
a good part of it; and how would that edify the rest?"
As for its being a conventicle, a rival of the church,
"these little gatherings," Mrs. Wesley tells her husband,
"have brought more people to church than ever any-
thing else did in so short a time. We used not to have
above twenty or twenty-five at evening service, whereas
now we have between 200 and 300."

Mrs. Wesley's modesty is charming. "I never durst
positively to presume to hope that God would make use
of me as an instrument in doing good. The furthest T
ever durst go was : It may be ! Who can tell? With God
all things are possible. I will resign myself to Him ; or,
as Herbert better expresses it : —

'Only since God doth often make
Of lowly matter for high uses meet

I throw me at His feet.
There will I lie until my Master seek
For some mean stuff whereon to show His skill;

Then is my time.' "

Mrs. Wesley closes with a note of fine dignity. "If
you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do
not tell me that you desire me to do this; for that will
not satisfy my conscience. But send me your positive
command, in such full and express terms as may absolve
me from guilt and punishment for neglecting this oppor-
tunity for doing good when you and I shall appear before
the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ."

That terrible sentence was too much for the little
rector, and the meetings were continued until he returned
from London.

But the whole incident, it can well be imagined, must
have deeply impressed John Wesley, who then was only
nine years old. The figure of his mother standing before
that crowd of peasant listeners, the grave, sweet, high-
bred face, in such vivid contrast with every other face

44

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

in the room ; the example of serious but intense zeal ;
the controversy with the father; the questions — the very
questions he had himself to settle later, and on a larger
field — which was of greater importance, decorous form or
spiritual fact? whether it was wrong to do good if the
method of doing it was irregular ; did human souls exist
for the sake of ecclesiastical forms, or ecclesiastical
forms for the salve of human souls? The whole inci-
dent, we repeat, with the controversy it kindled, must
have profoundly impressed Wesley. And his mother's
fine persistency and courageous zeal mnst have helped
to determine the whole policy of his own life in after
years.

Meanwhile, on the lively household at Epworth there
broke one of the oddest experiences that ever visited a
bewildered rector's family circle — the performances of
that poltergeist — noisy ghost, or imp — familiarly named
by the girls of the household "Old Jeffrey." Who does
not know the story of "Old Jeffrey" has missed one of
the best attested and most curious ghost stories in
literature.

For nearly six months — from December 1716 to April
1717 — the rectory was made hideously vocal with mys-
terious noises, raps on doors and walls, thumps beneath
the floor, the smash of broken crockery, the rattle of
iron chains, the jingle of falling coins, the tread of mys-
terious feet. The noises baffled all more prosaic explana-
tions and were at last assigned by common consent to
some restless spirit; they became a sound so familiar
that they ceased to be annoying, and the lively girls of
the parsonage labelled the unseen, but too audible, sprite
"Old Jeffrey."

The story is told in letters, in amplest detail, and by
every member of the family in turn, and all the tales
were collected by John Wesley himself — who was at the
Charterhouse when "Old Jeffrey" was active — and pub-
lished in the Arminian Magazine. There is an element
of humour in the varying tones in which the marvellous
tale is recited. The rector tells it with masculine direct-
ness, and a belief in the ghost which plainly breeds, not
fear, but only anger, and a desire to come to close quarters
with it, and even to thump it. Mrs. Wesley tells the
story, after her practical fashion, with Defoe-like sim-

HOUSEHOLD STORIES

45

plicity; the quick-witted girls tell the tale with touches
of girlish imagination and humour ; a neighbouring clergy-
man, who was called in to assist in suppressing the ghost,
adds his heavy voice to the chorus. The evidence, if it
were given in a court of law, and in a trial for murder,
would suffice to hang any man.

Some of the performances of the ghost were of a
thrilling character. Mrs. Wesley, walking hand in hand
with her husband, at midnight, downstairs to the room
whence the noises came, records that "a large pot of
money seemed to be poured out at my waist, and to run
jingling down my nightgown to my feet." More than
once the indignant rector felt himself actually pushed
by some invisible force. When the sounds were first
heard it was noticed that the slumbering children, who
were unconscious of the sound, were trembling with
agitation and terror in their very sleep ; and Mr. Wesley,
with fatherly indignation, demanded why the ghost dis-
turbed innocent children, and challenged it to meet him
in his study if it had anything to say to him. He walked
off majestically to his study to meet the ghost, and found
the door held against him.

The girls discovered, by-and-by, that they could make
"Old Jeffrey" angry by making personal remarks about it,
ascribing its j)erformauces to rats, &c. ; whereupon it
would thump the floor and walls with huge indignation.
"Old Jeffrey" was a ghost with pronounced ijolitical
views, and would kick the floor or walls with noisy energy
when Mr. Wesley prayed for the king. But the rector's
loyal sentiments were not to be repressed by a mere
Jacobite ghost, and he would repeat the prayer for King
George I. in yet more defiant tones. Samuel Wesley
offered on this the sensible reflection, "Were I the king
myself, I should rather Old Nick should be my enemy
than my friend." Mr. Wesley pursued the noise into al-
most every room in the house, chased it into the garden ;
tried to open a conversation with the ghost, engaged the
services of a mastiff to put it down, but when the ghost
began to discourse the dog tried ignobly to get under the
bed in sheer terror. Once he made elaborate preparations
for shooting it, but was prevented by a fellow divine, who
was watching with him, reminding him that lead could
not hurt a spirit. It was a punctual ghost, and generally

46

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

began its performances a little before ten o'clock ; and the
girls came at last to accept it as an intimation that it was
"time to go to sleep." "A gentle tapping at their bed-
head," John Wesley records, "usually began between nine
and ten at night : they then commonly said to each other,
'Jeffrey is coming ; it is time to go to sleep.' "

"Old Jeffrey," it may be added, was the most polite and
considerate of poltergeists known to literature. When it
was "on duty," it would lift the latches of the doors as the
girls approached them to pass through. Mrs. Wesley, in
her literal fashion, appealed to the invisible imp not to
disturb her from five to six, as that was her quiet hour,
and to suspend all noise while she was at her devotions;
and "Old Jeffrey," the most gentlemanly of ghosts, re-
spected her wishes, and suspended his noisy operations
during these periods.

The knocking in one particular chamber was especially
violent one night; Mr. Wesley went into the room and
adjured the spirit in vain to speak. He then said, "These
spirits love darkness. Put out the candle, and perhaps
it will speak." His daughter Nancy did so, and the
rector repeated his adjuration through the darkness ; but
there was only knocking in reply. Upon this he said,
"Nancy, two Christians are an overmatch for the devil;
go you down stairs. It may be when I am alone he will
have courage to speak." When the girl was gone he said,
"If thou art the spirit of my son Samuel I pray thee
knock three knocks and no more." Immediately all was
silence and there was no more knocking that night.

The performances of this queer poltergeist in Epworth
Parsonage have, of course, their parallel in many similar
stories; and what explanation of them is possible? Mrs.
Wesley, after her direct and practical fashion, tried "Old
Jeffrey" by the test of his utility, and pronounced against
him. "If these apparitions," she said, "would instruct us
how to avoid danger, or put us in the way of being wiser
and better, there would be sense in it. But to appear for
no end that we know of, unless to frighten people almost
out of their wits, seems altogether unreasonable." A very
foolish ghost is "Old Jeffrey," according to Mrs. Wesley !

Coleridge discovers in the Wesley family "an angry and
damnatory predetermination" to believe in the ghost, a
view which is in hopeless quarrel with the facts, "The

HOUSEHOLD STORIES

47

noises," he says, "were purely subjective, and partook of
the nature of a contagious nervous disease" — an explana-
tion which respect for a great name need not prevent any
one from calling childish. ''Old Jeffrey," it is clear, was
too much for the philosophy of S. T. C. There are many
explanations of "Old Jeffrey." Dr. Salmon accuses Hetty
Wesley of playing tricks on her family and producing all
the noises ; but Mr. Andrew Lang, an authority on ghosts
and their performances, writes a long article in the Con-
temporary, in defence of Hetty, and decides that she "did
not, in top boots, invade the room of her father's serving
man and frighten his mastiff into howls." Priestly offers
the theory of imposture by servants and neighbours ; Isaac
Taylor resolves "Old Jeffrey" into a monkey-like "buffoon-
ing droll" of a spirit. Mr. Wesley had preached for
several Sundays against the "cunning men" of the neigh-
bourhood, whom the ignorant peasants used to consult
as a kind of wizards; and Mr. Andrew Lang thinks the
performances of "Old Jeffrey" were the revenge taken by
these "cunning men."

Samuel Wesley, the eldest son of the household, offers
the best judgment on the story, and he puts it in the form
of an unconscious, but very respectable, epigram. "Wit,
I fancy," he says, "might find many interpretations, but
wisdom none." The modern reader, we suspect, will take
the side of "wisdom."

"Old Jeffrey" belongs to the class of queer phenomena
that baflSe explanation, but the story undobutedly coloured
John Wesley's imagination. It, to use Mr. Andrew Lang's
phrase, "made a thoroughfare for the supernatural
through his brain." It predisposed him not, it is true, to
believe in all ghost stories, but to expect them ; to listen
to them with alert attention; to record them; to treat
them respectfully. He tells a hundred ghost stories in
his "Journal," and always has towards them the same
mental attitude of keenest interest, a respect for the
witnesses, and an open mind as to any explanation.

According to one tradition, it may be added, "Old
Jeffrey" revisited his familiar haunts nearly a century
later; and an incumbent of less hardy courage than that
possessed by the Wesley household was actually driven
from the Epworth Rectory by strange, persistent, and
utterly unaccountable noises.

CHAPTER IV

PERSONAL EQUIPMENT

In the sober and ordered household life of the Epworth
Rectory John Wesley grew up a grave, silent, patient boy,
with meditative brow and reflective ways, and an in-
vincible habit of requiring a reason for everything he was
told to do. "I profess, sweetheart," said the hot-tempered
little rector to his wife, "I think our Jack would not eat
his dinner unless he could give a reason for it." The boy
had a strain of social silence and endurance in him even
at that tender age. In 1712 he, with four of the other
children, had the smallpox, the common and dreaded
plague of that time. His mother writes : "Jack has borne
his disease bravely like a man, indeed, like a Christian,
though he seemed angry at the piistules when they were
sore, as we guessed by his looking sourly at them, for he
never said anything."

The boy's gravity of temper, and what may be called
his religious docility, were so marked that when he was
not yet eight years of age has father — always disposed to
do things in a hurry — admitted him to the Lord's Supper.
His mother, with the finer prescience that love gives to a
mother, saw in her second son the hint of some great,
unguessed future, and she writes in her diary under the
head of "Evening, May 17, 1717, Son John":—

"What shall I render to the Lord for all His mercies? I would
offer myself and all that Thou hast given me; and I would resolve
— O give me grace to do it! — that the residue of my life shall be
all devoted to Thy service. And I do intend to he more particu-
larly careful with the soul of this child, that Thou hast so merci-
fully provided for, than ever I have been; that I may instil into
his mind the principles of true religion and virtue. Lord give
me grace to do It sincerely and prudently."

In 1714 his father succeeded in procuring for him,
from the Duke of Buckingham, a nomination to the
Charterhouse; and thus, when not yet eleven years old,
from the shelter of home — and such a home! — and from
48

PERSONAL EQUIPMENT

49

an atmosphere charged with prayer as with the fragrance
of ever-burning incense, John Wesley stepped into the
competitions and tumult of a great i)ublic school. The
change of atmosphere and environment was great. The
Charterhouse of that day was a school with great tradi-
tions and a decent standard of scholarship; but it was
rough, not to say lawless, to a degree that can now
hardly be realised. The hateful "fag" system prevailed
in a very unsoftened form. The school, indeed, was a
little patch of human society, exhausted, in some respects,
of all civilised elements and governed by the ethics of the
savage. The stronger and older boys systematically
robbed the younger ones of their meat, and during the
greater part of the six years Wesley spent in that school
he suffered that daily and ignoble theft, and practically
lived on bread.

A boy trained in the severities of Epworth Parsonage,
however, could easily survive even the raided meals of
the Charterhouse School. His father advised his son to
run three times round the Charterhouse garden every
morning; and the son obeyed that injunction with the
literal fidelity characteristic of him. Every morning a
little, lean, boyish figure might have been seen flying
with nimble legs thrice round the Charterhouse garden.
Wesley's hair when a boy was of an auburn tint, though
it grew darker in later years; and the rich-tinted hair
crowning the thin face, with its serious yet keen eyes,
must have made a very interesting countenance. Spare
diet and constant exercise in the keen morning air helped
to endow Wesley with that amazing physical toughness
which enabled him, when eighty-five years old, to walk
six miles to a preaching appointment, and declare that
the only sign of old age he felt was that "he could not
walk nor run quite so fast as he once did."

That he was an ideal student — quick, tireless,
methodical, friigal of time and sober of spirit — goes with-
out saying. The son of Susannah Wesley, fresh from the
touch of her diligent life, and with the breath of her
grave spirit still upon him, could hardly be anything else.
And six years of strenuous, if somewhat rough and harsh,
life at the famous school gave Wesley an ample founda-
tion for his after studies. Life at a great public school,
however, is something more than an education in books.

50

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

No enervating softness is in its atmosphere. It develops
courage, hardihood, self-reliance. It hardens all the
fibres of the character. It is one long and bracing tonic.
Wesley brought f roip the Charterhouse a tough body ; but
he brought from it, too, a certain toughness of character,
an admirable possession for a youth of seventeen who
is entering a great University, and such a University as
Oxford was in the early years of the eighteenth century.

The oldest brother Samuel was at this period a teacher
in Westminster School, where the youngest of the three,
Charles, was a scholar ; and John Wesley studied Hebrew
under his elder brother; for the Wesleys had in an ad-
mirable degree the habit of helping each other. "Jack is
with me," writes Samuel to his father, "and is a brave
boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can."

At this stage a piece of what seemed surprisingly good
fortune visited the Epworth household. Charles Wesley
was at Westminster, a lively schoolboy, with more than
a schoolboy's gift for fighting, when an Irish gentleman,
Garrett Wesley, rich and childless, wrote to the Epworth
Rectory asking if there was a son of the house named
Charles ; if so, he desired to adopt him as his heir. There
was some kinship of blood betwixt the two families, but
its exact degree is not clear. Garrett Wesley seems to
have actually contributed to the cost of his intended
heir's education for some time, and finally wished to
carry him off to Ireland and take the place of a father
to him. Mr. Wesley left the decision of the matter to
the boy himself, who declined the proposal; and Garrett
Wesley chose as his heir another kinsman, Richard
Colley, who assumed the name of Wesley, was raised to
the peerage as Baron Mornington, and became the grand-
father of the Duke of Wellington. Up to 1800 the most
famous of British soldiers appears in the Army-list as
"Arthur Wesley"; after that year the name is changed
to Wellesley.

This seems to show that the saint and reformer who
changed the course of the religious history of England by
spiritual forces, and the great soldier who contributed
such splendid victories to its secular history, sprang 'from
the same family stock. And betwixt Wesley and Welling-
ton are, no doubt, curioiis points of agreement. Both
were little men, of the toughest physique, with an almost

PERSONAL EQUIPMENT

51

miraculous capacity for hard work, and with courage
which, if it had the coolness of ice, had also the hard-
ness of steel. Wellington's "Despatches" and Wesley's
"Journal" have many characteristics in common — a
certain stern directness, a scorn of ornament, a love for
short words and clear thinking. If the portraits of the
two men are studied there are odd points of resemblance.
Each has the long, obstinate nose, the resolute chin, the
steady, piercing eves of a leader of men. But the counte-
nance of the great preacher is refined and made gentle by
the gospel of love he preached so long. The character of
the famous soldier was moulded and tempered in the red
furnace of Badajos and San Sebastian, of Busaco and of
Waterloo. And the scars of the flames are on his face
even in old age I

In 1720 John Wesley began his life at Oxford, entering
Christ Church as a commoner on a Charterhouse scholar-
ship of £40 a year. The Oxford of 1720 might have been
pronounced, in advance, to be a singularly ungenial field
for a clever lad of seventeen who took life very seriously,
and who — though he was quite unconscious of it — was to
be the agent under God of the greatest movement in the
religious history of England. The Oxford of that day
was suflSciently remote from the Oxford Matthew Arnold
has painted in memorable words : "steeped in sentiment,
spreading her gardens to the moonlight," and "whispering
from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle
Ages." There was no romance about the Oxford on which
John Wesley looked with perplexed youthful eyes, and no
atmosphere of "sentiment." In an age which counted
"enthusia.sm" the most deadly of sins the Universities
were certain to sufi'er most : just as in a body in which
the circulation of the blood is defective the extremities
are the parts most affected. And Oxford at the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century was perhaps the mo.st
prosaic patch in the whole drab-coloured English land-
scape.

It had no "enthusiasms," not even for athletics! It
was the home of insincerity and idleness and of the
vices bred of such qualities. Its insincerity, too, was of
a specially evil type. It was organised, endowed, made
venerable, clothed with authority, and even mistook itself
for virtue ! All the formulae of a great Christian seat of

52

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Christian learning existed ; but the facts were in quarrel
with the formulJE. Gibbon has cruelly embalmed, like
a dead fly in the imperishable amber of his rhetoric,
his own tutor who , "remembered that he had a salary
to receive and forgot that he had a duty to perform";
but this man was a type of the University itself. The
professors drew salaries for lectures they never gave ; the
students bought dispensations for absence from lectures
which were never delivered, and took oaths to obey laws
which they never so much as read. Oxford, when Wesley
trod its streets, was, for the average student, an education v
in the bad art of subscribing to articles he ridiculed,
swearing to keep laws he ignored, and pretending to
attend lectures which had no existence. Whoever
wants to understand to what a depth it had sunk must
read that terrible sermon which Wesley himself de-
livered in St. Mary's pulpit on St. Bartholomew's Day
of 1744. That discourse is, in fact, a flaming indict-
ment of the University, preached with infinite courage
in the University pulpit itself, and to an audience of
professors, fellows, heads of colleges, and students. It
can hardly be wondered at that this sermon was the last
Wesley was allowed to deliver in the historic pulpit of
St. Mary's!

A whole University is not, of course, to be packed
into a single generalisation. There was some good
scholarship and a surviving element of wholesome life in
even the Oxford of 1720-44; but no one can understand
the evolution of Methodism in its primitive form at Ox-
ford who does not realise the moral and intellectual
atmosphere of the great University.

Wesley had a studious and successful, if not brilliant,
career at Oxford. The atmosphere of the University did
not enervate him ; perhaps by some subtle law of reaction
it even made his industry more intense. He took his
Bachelor's Degree in 1724 and was elected Fellow of
Lincoln in 1725. A year later he was appointed lecturer
in Greek and Moderator of the Classes. He took his
Master's Degree in 1727.

Thus at twenty-two Wesley was a Fellow of the most
scholarly, if almost the smallest, college in Oxford. His
brother Samuel had a good position jn Westminster
School and was making powerful friends. Charles, his

PERSONAL EQUIPMENT

53

younger brother, only seventeen years old, had a scholar-
sliip at Christ Church. The sons of the Epworth Par-
sonage jdainly promised to do better in the world than
their hot-tempered, impracticable father.

And Oxford put upon John Wesley its ineffaceable
mark. He was a University man, with the merits and
the faults of the type, to the day of his death. He had
mental faculties that worked with the exactitude of a
machine. He excelled in logic, and was apt to resolve
everything — even his own religions experience — into the
^terms of logic. He had a certain confident primness of
manner, shone in argument and found delight in it. His
literary style showed already the characteristics which
brought him fame in later years. It was clear, terse,
direct, and marked by a stern scorn of ornament and
of mere verbal pyrotechnics. Wesley delighted in short
words set in short sentences. His very brevity, indeed —
his habit of taking the most direct road to his meaning,
and of clothing his thoughts in the fewest possible
syllables— had many of the effects of wit. He talked
in epigrams without intending it, or even being conscious
of it.

The youthful Fellow of Lincoln planned great things
for his own future. That somewhat pompous announce-
ment, "Leisure and I have taken leave of each other,"
belongs to this period of his life. It was translated into
sober and humble fact later ; but even at this stage he
treated his degree not as the end, but as the starting-
point of his life as a student. He distributed his hours
on plan with characteristic thoroughness, so many being
given to classics, so many to logic and ethics, so many
to Hebrew and Arabic. Saturday was devoted to oratory
and poetry, for already Wesley was making more or less
successful excursions into the fairyland of verse. "Make
poetry your diversion," wrote his serious-minded mother,
"but not your business."

A letter from a University chum, Robert Kirkham,
gives a sort of keyhole glimpse of the secular Wesley,
the young, precise, self-confident, argumentative Fellow
of Lincoln. Kirkham addresses his friend as "Dear
Jack," describes with tindergraduate gusto a dinner of
"calves' head and bacon, with some of the best green
cabbages in the town." The dinner party "tapped a

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

barrel of admirable cider"; and by way of relish to the
calves' head and bacon, Wesley was informed, they dis-
cussed "your most deserving queer character, your little
and handsome person, and yoiir obliging and desirable
conversation. You have often," Kirkham writes, "been
in the thoughts of M. B., which I have curiously observed,
when with her alone, by inward smiles and sighs, and
abrupt expressions concerning you." "M. B." was Miss
Betty Kirkham, the writer's sister, and the letter shows
that the "little and handsome person" of the youthful
Fellow of Lincoln already drew the regards of feminine
eyes.

Wesley himself at this stage took an affectionate in-
terest in his own personal appearance. He discusses
with his brother Samuel, and with great seriousness, the
question of whether he should wear his hair long or
short. "As to my looks," he writes, "it would doubt-
less mend my complexion to have it [his hair] off, by
letting me get a little more colour; and perhaps it
might contribute to my making a more genteel appear-
ance." But John Wesley, like John Gilpin's wife, was of
a frugal mind, and he decided that the improvement
in his looks did not supply suflScient grounds for
expending two or three pounds a year in payments to
a barber.

The fact is that debt pursued Wesley up to the very
threshold of his Fellowship. His father writes to "Dear
Mr. Fellow-elect of Lincoln," sending him £12 and saying,
"I have done more than I could for you. I have not
£5," he says, "to keep the family till after harvest. What
will be my own fate, God only knows." The little man
plainly had before his eyes the prospect of paying another
visit to Lincoln Castle in the capacity of a prisoner for
debt. He writes, however, "Sed passi graviora." "Wher-
ever I am, my Jack is Fellow of Lincoln !"

But a wave of deeper feeling was beginning to sweep
through the channels of Wesley's life, and "M. B." with
her sighs, and the hairdresser with his scissors, were
soon submerged and lost for ever to human vision.

BOOK II
THE TRAINING OF A SAINT

CHAPTER I

CHILD PIETY

Religion is, of course, the supreme fact in John Wesley's
life, the oue thing that gives it historic aud immortal
interest. In the great realm of religion he found the
forces which enabled him to write his signature so deeply
on human history. In its service he did the work which
has made his name famous for all time. Apart from the
great revival in which he was the chief actor, he would,
no doubt, have i)layed a considerable part in the world of
his day. A brain so clear and nimble, a body so tough, a
figure so trim, a capacity for work so amazing, must have
won for him success in any realm aud under any con-
ditions. Had he remained the prim High Churchman
with a purely mechanical religion, he might have worn the
lawn sleeves of a bishop, and his name would probably be
carved to-day in fading letters on a tomb in some English
cathedral. But in that case his sole title to human recol-
lection would be a dozen arid volumes of controversial
divinity. Wesley changed the very currents of English
history; he gave a new development to English Protes-
tantism, and so made himself visible for all time; and
he was able to do this because he mastered the central,
essential secret of religion and made his life the channel
through which the great forces which belong to religion
flowed into the life of his countrymen. And it is the
religious history of John Wesley which still supremely
concerns the world.

We have described the i)urely human aud secular ele-
ments in his training up to this point, that his spiritual
history may be told as a separate record, aud so may be
seen in unbroken perspective.

In a sense John Wesley's spiritual history is a
curiously modern story, and Wesley himself, looked at
religiously, is the most modern of men. In his biography
all the schools of the religious life of to-day are reflected
and reproduced. Scieuce reports that in the pre-natal
57

58 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

stages of the human infant the whole physiological chain
of existence, link by link, is, so to speak, rehearsed. So
the stages of religious experience through which John
Wesley passed cover the whole range of the religious
moods and emotions which stir men's lives to day.

We have what may be called the religion of childhood
— the only religion some people ever know — a purely
imitative thing, impressed on the life from without by
force of discipline, the result of domestic training, but
without any vital and spiritual root. We have the religion
of the High Churchman, resolved into a machinery of
external rules and maintained by external discipline; of
the legalist, with all the saving elements of religion frozen
into ice, and only its ethics left alive ; of the ascetic, who
tries to save his soul by afflicting his body — "salvation
by starvation," as some wit has called it; of the mystic,
who loses touch of solid ground and of homely duties
and drifts away into some dim realm of fog.

All these types exist in Wesley. He tried all readings
of religion ; tried them earnestly ; tried them with heroic
thoroughness; spent thirteen years in the process — and
found himself a spiritual brankrupt at the end!

He learned at last the deep, eternal secret of religion ;
religion as a present and personal deliverance; a de-
liverance verified in the consciousness and bringing the
redeemed soul into terms of sonship with God; religion
with its secret of power over sin; its great gift of a
morality set on flame by love. And with that supreme
discovery his life was transfigured. Wesley's reli-
gious experiences are thus "the history of a soul"; but
they are much more. They are the story of great schools
for religion I'eproduced within the boundaries of one
earnest life. All the successive moods of Wesley's reli-
gious experience are alive to-day; they exist contem-
poraneously, as separate types of religion.
, In Wesley's spiritual development, too, all these transi-
tions of experience can be seen with crystalline clearness,
they can be followed with unclouded certainty. His was
a soul, in all its moods, set in crystal; and his habit of
relentless self-analysis, the unreserve both of his letters
and of his immortal Journal, the exquisite simplicity of
his style, make it i)Ossible to follow without effort all the
stages of his religious evolution. He has throughout

CHILD PIETY

59

his whole life the frankness of Rousseau without his
sly self -consciousness ; and he moves, of course, in a
realm so high that he seems to belong to another spiritual
order than the famous Savoyard. Then, too, we have
Wesley's self-judgments revised by himself at wide in-
tervals both of time and of spiritual progress. Thus he
sets his youth in the high lights, and tries it by the
fervours, of his conversion. Later he retries both by the
wise and sober judgment of his old age. So we have the
Wesley, say, of 1728 judged by the Wesley of 1738; and
both again re-judged by the Wesley of 1788. If ever it
could be said of a human soul that it might be studied
in detail, and under the miscroscope, this may be said of
John Wesley.

Some of the elements of what may be called child-
religion lie on the surface, and are easily described and
assessed. A child acquires readily a crust of external
habit, impressed by rule; a whole system of simple and
undiscriminating beliefs — beliefs unequipped with proofs
— unrelated, fndeed, to the reason and accepted on
authority. This docile, imitative piety is as external to
the soul as the skin is to the body; but it has many of
the useful offices of a skin.

Now all these elements of child-religion Wesley had in
a very high degree. His mother's bent of character, her
insistent and orderly discipline that shut round her chil-
dren's lives like an atmosphere, and with something of the
perpetual and resistless pressure of an atmosphere, was
exactly calculated to produce that casing of habit which
makes so large a part of the religion of a child. What
theology the child learned was naturally of a High Church
type. He was taught, for example, that his sins had been
washed away in baptism, and in after years he records
gravely that "not till I was about ten years old had I
sinned away that washing of the Holy Ghost which was
given me in baptism." He was further taught that he
"could only be saved by keeping all the commandments
of God" ; a version of the Gospel of Christ which cost him
afterwards years of suffering. The result of such disci-
pline and teaching on a nature predisposed to meditative
gravity was to produce a childish piety of an abnormal
and almost uncomfortable seriousness. But it so com-
pletely satisfied the sacerdotal ideals of his father that,

60

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

as we have seen, when tlie boy was scarcely eight years
old he made him kneel at the table of the Lord's Supper.

It was an age of wonderful children ! Of Mrs. Wesley's
father, afterwards Dr. Annesley, it is gravely recorded
that "when about fiVe or six years old he began a practice,
which he afterwards continued, of reading twenty chap-
ters every day in the Bible." The phenomenon of a child
not six years old who solemnly forms, in the cells of his
infantile brain, the plan of reading twenty chapters of the
Bible every day — and sticks to it through a long life —
would in these modern days be reckoned nothing less
than astonishing. Of Hetty Wesley, the sister of Johu,
it is on record that at eiglit years of age she could rea<l
the Greek Testameiit. Do any such wonderful children
exist in these days?

I'erhaps Wesley's own early and hot-house piety made
him in later years too credulous of .infantile saints; it
helps, indeed, to explain his melancholy Kingswood ex-
periment, when he tried, on a large scale, to transfigure
boys of seven or eight and ten into middle-aged saints.

But some of the sweeter and more gracious elements
of child-piety are conspicuously absent from John
Wesley's childhood. The modern Church has happily
learned to find in a little child's religion some beautiful
and most enviable graces ; a confident trust that outruns
the metaphysics of great theologians; an easy, happy
love of God, that might almost seem irreverent but for its
very simplicity; a gladness in religion as spontaneous
as the singing of the birds, and as sweet; a simplicity
of prayer that makes a listening mother both weep and
smile. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," says
Wordsworth ; and aboiit a little child, breathing the air
of a Christian home, does lie the heaven of a simple-
hearted love of God and of a trust in Him on which no
shadow of doubt can fall. Christ stands close to the
child's heart. Nay, still as of old He sets the little child
in the midst of His Church and warns us all that that
way lies heaven !

Now these gracious elements of child-religion, glad,
simple, and confident, John Wesley did not possess.
They would have been for him an anachronism. They
did not belong to his age, nor to the type of theology
taught under the roof of Epworth parsonage. They

CHILD PIETY

61

formed no element in the measured, exact discipline — a
discipline that dealt out hours and duties as a chemist
counts the drops of a tincture — which was the best Mrs.
Wesley herself, at this stage, knew. No child ever outruns
the religion of its own mother ; and if it was in one sense
the merit, it was also the defect, of Susannah Wesley's
pietj^ that it was constructed on the principle of a railway
time-table, and with something of its mechanical effort.
This was the school in which she herself had been
nurtured. Writing in 1709 to her eldest son, Samuel,
who was then at Westminster, she says : —

"I will tell you what rule I used to observe when I was in my
father's house and had as little, if not less, liberty than you have
now. I used to allow myself as much time for recreation as I
spent in private devotion. Not that I always spent so much, but
I gave myself leave to go so far but no farther. So in all things
else; appoint so much time for sleep, eating, company, &c."

Now a girl who prayed by the clock, and measured her
prayers, and then allowed herself exactly so much time
for "recreation" as she had spent in prayer and no more,
certainly understood the seriousness of religion ; but what
did she know of its gracious freedom? And this was the
general characteristic of Susannah Wesley's piety. There
was an heroic fibre in it. It is impossible not to admire,
almost with a touch of amazement, the resolute methods
of her religion ; its seriousness, its diligence, its energj^
of routine. This mother of nineteen children, for example
— who had to be their teacher and almost their bread-
winnei*, as well as their mother — yet resolutely spent
one hour every morning and another every evening in
prayer and meditation. In addition she generally stole
another hour at noon for wholesome privacy, and was
in the habit of writing down at such times her thoughts
on great subjects. Many of these are still preserved,
marked "Morning," "Noon," or "Evening"; and they
have a certain loftiness of tone, a detachment from secular
interests nothing less than amazing. Airs from other
worlds seem to stir in them. Here is one example: —

"Evening. — If to esteem and to have the highest reverence
for Thee; if constantly and sincerely to acknowledge Thee, the
supreme, the only desirable good, be to love Thee, I do love
Thee. If comparatively to despise and undervalue all the world
contains, which is esteemed great, or fair, or good; if earnestly

62 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

and constantly to desire Thee, Thy favour, Thy acceptance,
Thyself, rather than any or all things Thou hast created, be to
love Thee, I do love Thee! . . .

"If to rejoice in Thy essential majesty and glory; if to feel a
vital joy o'erspread and cheer the heart at each, perception of Thy
blessedness, at every thought that Thou art God; that all things
are in Thy power; that there is none superior or equal to Thee,
be to love Thee, I do love Thee!"

That is a remarkable bit of religious meditation. It
might have been written by Madame Guyon. There are,
indeed, many points of resemblance betwixt the mystical
Frenchwoman and this practical, strong-souled English-
woman. But if Madame Guyon had been the mother of
nineteen children, and had to nourish them on the scanty
income of the Epworth parsonage, it may be doubted
whether her "reflections" would have had the serene
altitude of the sentences we have quoted. Charles
Wesley, in 1742, wrote his mother's epitaph : —

"True daughter of affliction she,
Inured to pain and misery;
Mourned a long night of griefs and fears,
A legal night of seventy years."

But that can hardly be described as a "legal night" in
which shone such star-like thoughts as those we have
quoted.

And yet the extract we have given shows the defects
of the writer's theology. It exactly reflects the spiritual
methods of her son during the troubled years before his
conversion. She has the essential graces of Christian
character, but without any note of glad confidence or
any certainty of acceptance before God. The methods of
logic take the place in her spiritual life of the gracious
"witness" of the Holy Spirit. She has to assure both
God and herself that she loves by the help of syllo-
gisms! In the language of technical theology she "con-
founded justification with sanctification" ; and this was
not a mere blunder in metaphysics. She believed, and
she taught her children to believe, that the consciousness
of acceptance with God came, not at the beginning of the
Christian life, but at the end. It was not so much a
motive to obedience as the reward of an obedience which
existed independently of it.

If Mrs. Wesley had applied her theology to the story

CHILD PIETY

of the Prodigal Son she must have entirely rewritten
that pearl of parables. She must have described the
father as postponing the kiss, the ring, the best robe — all
the pledges of restored son ship — until the poor, returning
outcast had gone into the kitchen of his father's house,
done the work of a servant, and bought himself a decent
suit of clothes with his own earnings! She herself said
late in life that she had always regarded the conscious-
ness of God's forgiving grace as the rare experience of
great saints, and an experience impossible to ordinary
Christians.

Now what Mrs. Wesley did not know she could not
teach, and this explains the missing elements in the
childish piety of her great son.

Wesley's youthful religion hardly survived the rough
shocks of life at the Charterhouse and at Oxford. It
passed away inevitably with the tender years which gave
it birth. Wesley himself says, "Outward restraints being
removed, I was much more negligent than before even
of outward duties, and was continually guilty of outward
sins which I knew to be such, though they were not
scandalous in the eye of the world." Wesley wrote these
words in 1738, just after his conversion; and when,
judging his past life by the test of the emotions and
new-born ideals of that great experience, he naturally
painted it in dark tints. "I still read the Scriptures," he
says, "and said my prayers morning and evening." Then
with a characteristic touch of what may be called ex post
facto self -analysis, he adds: "What I then hoped to be
saved by was (1) not being so bad as other people,
(2) having still a kindness for religion, (3) reading the
Bible, going to church and saying my prayers." That
was, of course, a singularly inadequate scheme of re-
ligion. And though it cannot be said that Wesley at
any time plunged into vicious conduct, yet he fell into a
frivolous mood. His conscience lost both alertness and
authority. And by the time he had reached twenty-two —
and for years before that, indeed — the purely imitative
piety of his childhood had, even to his own consciousness,
become a failure.

CHAPTER II

IN SEARCH OF A THEOLOGY

At the beginning of 1725 Wesley, with a successful
University course behind him, had to choose a career.
His Fellowshi]) naturally oi)ened the gate to one of the
three learned professions, the law, medicine, or the
Church. Wesley had in a supreme degree some, at least,
of the gifts wliich make a great lawyer; and he had
strong natural tastes, as after years showed, in the direc-
tion of medicine. He dabbled in physic, indeed, through-
out his whole life. But on the whole the Church was
for him inevitable. The forces of heredity, the whole
pressure of his training, and certain qualities of natural
temperament carried him in that direction. There were
college livings, too, and livings in the gift of Charter-
house, that made the outlook cheerful. His father had
been pressing him in this direction ; and early in the
year Wesley wrote to Epworth saying he was disposed
to take Orders.

The choice was for him of supreme importance, since
it definitely threw his life into the currents of religion.
Charles Wesley, when tracing the forces which turned
his mind in the same direction, says, "Diligence led me
into serious thinking." The earnestness with which he
bent himself to study awakened, as though with kindred
but deeper vibrations, all his higher faculties. And with
his brother John the decision to enter Holy Orders made
him look at religion with new eyes. Later Wesley taught
his Church that conversion was the essential pre-requisitc
for the ministerial oflSce; but in his own case that order
was inverted. He decided to take Holy Orders, and
then betook himself to "serious thinking" to discover
what spiritual fitness he possessed for the calling he had
selected !

It is curious to read his father's discussion of the
motives proper to a candidate for the great oflBce of the
Christian ministry. He writes : —
64

IN SEARCH OF A THEOLOGY

65

"My thoughts are: if it is no harm to desire getting into that
office, even as Eli's sons, 1o eat a piece of hread, yet certainly a
desire and an intention to lead a stricter life, and a belief that
one should do so, is a better reason. Though this should by all
means be begim before, or ten to one it will deceive us after-
wards."

This seems a curiously inadequate account of the
spiritual equipment necessary for one taking up an oflBce
so great. His mother strikes a little loftier note : —

"Dear Jackt, — The alteration of your temper has occasioned
me much speculation. I, who am apt to be sanguine, hope it may
proceed from the operations of God's Holy Spirit, that by taking
away your relish of sensual enjoyments He may prepare and dis-
pose your mind for a more serious and close application to things
of a more sublime and spiritual nature. If it be so, happy are
you if you cherish those dispositions, and now in good earnest
resolve to make religion the business of your life. . . . Now I
mention this, it calls to mind your letter to your father about
taking Orders. I was much pleased with it, and liked the pro-
posal well. ... I approve the disposition of your mind and
think the sooner you are a deacon the better; because it may be
an inducement to greater application in the study of practical
divinity, which I humbly conceive is the best study for candidates
for Orders."

Mrs. Wesley, after her fashion, proposes that her son
should instantly proceed to interrogate himself, "that
you may know whether you have a reasonable hope of
salvation — that is, whether you are in a state of faith
and repentance or not. If you are," she says, "the satis-
faction of knowing it will abundantly reward your pains.
If not, you will find a more reasonable occasion for tears
than can be met with in a tragedy."

This is good advice, no doubt; but here again is the
same odd inversion of the true spiritual order. The
ministerial oflSce comes first, and fitness for it afterwards !
Her son is not to take Orders because he has the neces-
sary equipment of practical divinity ; he is to take Orders
in order that he may study practical divinity.

Wesley, however, having decided on his career, set
himself with characteristic thoroughness to prepare for
it. His own record is: "When I was about twenty-two
my father pressed me to enter into Holy Orders. I
began to alter the whole form of my conversation and to
set in earnest to enter upon a new life."

66

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

A student, familiar with books, and accustomed to
approach everything from the literary side, he betook
himself to devotional literature ; and three writers, widely
separated from each other in time, and very diverse in
genius and atmosphere — Thomas k Kempis, Jeremy
Taylor, and William Law — profoundly influenced him.
Great, subtle, far-reaching is the power of a good book!
In a sense, as Milton taught, it is' an immortal force.
The hand that wrote it, the brains in which it was con-
ceived, turn to dust; but the book lives, and sings, or
instructs, or warns, ever new generations of readers. The
De Imitatione Christi has been printed in more lan-
guages, has found more readers, and perhaps has influ-
enced more lives, than any other book save the Bible.
Who actually wrote it is still matter for dispute; but
that nameless monk in his far-off cell, who into the
sentences of the Imitatio distilled, in Dean Milman's
words, "all that is elevating and passionate in all the
older mystics," first stirred, across three centuries, deep
religious feeling in Wesley's heart. As he read the im-
mortal book, "I began to see," he says, "that true religion
was seated in the heart, and that God's law extended to
all our thoughts as well as words and actions. . . . I set
apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I
communicated every week; I watched against all sin,
whether in word or deed. ... So that now doing so
much and living so good a life I doubted not that I was
a good Christian."

Jeremy Taylor influenced Wesley almost as profoundly
as did Thomas h Kempis. And yet no contrast could
well be greater than that bewixt the two minds : Wesley
with his logic, ice-clear and ice-cold, and his scorn of
rhetoric; and Jeremy Taylor, "the golden-mouthed
preacher," with his more than tropical tangle of elo-
quence. Jeremy Taylor has been called "the Shakespeare
of theology." De Quincey tells how he once began an
elaborate Life of the great divine, but never got farther
than the first sentence — "Jeremy Taylor, the most elo-
quent and the subtlest of Christian philosophers, was the
son of a barber and the son-in-law of a king." But De
Quincey, himself one of the supreme masters of style in
English literature, is never tired of singing the praises
of Jeremy Taylor's prose. He classes him with the author

IN SEARCH OF A THEOLOGY G7

of "Urn Burial" and with Jean Paul Richter, as the
richest, the most dazzUng, and the most captivating of
rhetoricians. And certainly the man who amid the
tumult and strife of the Civil War wrote "The Rules of
Holy Living and Holy Dying" had, perhaps, the most
melodious voice in all Christian literature. It is still
audible above the strife of parties and the clash of battle
amid which Jeremy Taylor moved.

His scholarship, his spiritual glow, his gentle spirit for
a time took captive Wesley's mind. And yet Jeremy
Taylor must have exercised, in some respects, an evil
influence on Wesley. Coleridge declares that the author
of "Holy Living and Holy Dying" was "half a Socinian
in heart," and it is certain that the Cross of Christ can be
seen but very dimly through the golden mist of Taylor's
rhetoric. He was a protege of Archbishop Laud, and his
High Churchmanship was so extreme that, like other
and more modern Churchmanship of the same altitude,
it is almost undistinguishable from Popery. Coleridge
complains that "he never speaks with the slightest symp-
toms of affection or respect of Luther, Calvin, or any
other of the great reformers, but he saints every trumpery
monk or friar down to the very latest canonisations of
the modern Popes." Jeremy Taylor did not help to
clarify Wesley's theology; he served, indeed, to give it
an added flavour of sacerdotalism.

But Wesley took neither himself nor his teachers on
trust. He interrogated them, as he did his own spiritual
condition, with tireless diligence. His common-sense, for
example, rejects the ascetic element in the De Imitatione
Christi, its quarrel with innocent gladness, its exaggera-
tion of the spiritual value of sorrow. "I cannot think,"
he tells his mother, "that when God sent us into the
world He had irreversibly decreed that we should be
perpetually miserable in it." His father, on the whole,
agi'eed with i Kemi)is. "Mortification," he said, "was
still an indispensable Christian duty." But after all, the
heroic strain in the Imitatio was too high for the good
little rector, and, with a flash of unusual wisdom, he
refers John to his mother, saying, "she had leisure to bolt
the matter to the bran."

Mrs. Wesley discusses with exquisite good sense the
whole ethics of pleasure : —

68

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"Would you Judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleas-
ure take this rule: Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the
tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or
takes off the relish of spiritual things — in short, whatever in-
creases the strength and authority of your body over your mind,
that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

The wisest of casuists might find it diflScult to better
that interpretation of human duty!

Wesley, with a fine readiness, absorbed what was
sjnritually wholesome in his new teachers. From the
Jmitatio Christi he learned something of the altitude
and range of the spiritual life. After reading it he says,
"I saw that giving even all my life to God, supposing it
possible to do this, would profit me nothing, unless I gave
my heart; yea, all my heart to Him." Jeremy Taylor
taught him the great truth, on which he dwells with
such tender and moving emphasis, the need of absolute
simplicity and purity of intention. "Instantly," says
Wesley, "I resolved to dedicate all my life to God — all
my thoughts and words and actions — being thoroughly
convinced that there is no medium, but that every part
of my life — not some only — must be either a sacrifice to
God or myself ; that is the devil."

But he questions, with invincible good sense, Jeremy
Taylor's exaggeration of the duty of humility. Was it
really a form of piety to believe ourselves to be worse
than anybody else? "It is all," argues Wesley, "a ques-
tion of fact. One, for instance, who is in company with a
freethinker cannot avoid knowing himself to be the better
of the two."

At this stage, however, Wesley was more concerned, on
the whole, with making his theology clear, than with his
own spiritual condition. He discusses a hundred vexed
questions in theology with his father and mother; and it
is difiScult to believe that at that time any other corre-
spondence in England could rival, in mingled sense and
seriousness, the letters which passed betwixt John Wesley
in Oxford and the family circle in the Epworth Rectory.
His mother was, perhaps, the best theologian in the
group, though her theology was not always of the evan-
gelical type.

John Wesley discusses the perplexed question of pre-
destination with her. "That doctrine," she teUs him, "as

IN SEARCH OF A THEOLOGY

69

maintained by the rigid Calvinists, is very shocking, and
ought to be abhorred; because it directly charges the
most high God with being the Author of sin." "God has
an election," she argues, "but it is founded on His fore-
knowledge, and does in no wise derogate from the glory
of God's free grace, nor impair the liberty of man." Years
afterwards, Wesley printed his mother's letters in the
Arminian Magazine, and they, no doubt, helped to shape
his theology, and that of the Church he founded.

Mother and son again held debate on such questions
as the true nature of faith, of repentance, of the Trinity;
the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed ; future
punishment, the doctrine of assurance, &c., &c. On the
subject of assurance Wesley, at this stage, held sounder
views than his mother. "An absolute certainty that God
has forgiven us," she says, "you can never have until you
come to heaven." Wesley replies : "I am persuaded that
we may know that we are now in a state of salvation,
since that is expressly promised in the Holy Scriptures to
our sincere endeavours." But here he falters, and misses
— as for the next thirteen years he missed — the great
truth of the direct attestation the Holy Spirit bears in the
believing soul of the forgiveness of sins. "We are surely,"
says John Wesley, "able to judge of our own sincerity" ;
and the estimate the human soul is able to form of its
own "sincerity" is, apparently, the sole foundation on
which could be built the rejoicing certainty that sin is
forgiven !

Wesley was ordained deacon on September 19, 1725;
he preached his first sermon at South Leigh, a small
village near Witney. Later, he spent the summer of
1726 at Epworth, preaching for his father and pursuing
his own studies.

For his parents this must have been a delightful visit.
John Wesley had upon him the fresh glories of his fellow-
ship ; life for him was opening very brilliantly ; he was of
blameless character, and stood on the threshold of the
most sacred office a human being can hold. His father
had written to him a few months before, when a new note
of gravity had stolen into his son's letters : "If you be but
what you write, you and I shall be happy." And now the
father could judge that his son was "what he wrote."

By the fireside of the rectory, every evening, Wesley

70

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

sat with his father and mother and held high debate on
great themes. He notes in his diary the range of topics
over which the talk wandered : how to increase our faith,
our hope, our love of God : i)rudence, sincerity, simplicity,
&c. To a mother of Susannah Wesley's grave and lofty
bent, those fireside talks with her brilliant and accom-
plished son, who came to her from the atmosphere of a
University, and was plainly on the entrance of a great
career, must have been an exquisite pleasure.

But was Wesley, at this time, and in the clear Scrip-
tural sense of the word, a Christian? He shall answer
for himself. In 1744 he drew up a statement of the great
evangelical truths which had changed his life, and by the
preaching of which he was affecting the lives of multi-
tudes. Then he looks back on the time we have just
been describing: —

"'It was many years,' he says, 'after I was ordained deacon
before I was convinced of the great truths above recited; during
all that time I was utterly ignorant of the nature and condition
of justification. Sometimes I confounded it with sanctification,
particularly when I was in Georgia. At other times I had some
confused notion about the forgiveness of sins; but then I took
it for granted the time of this must be either the hour of death
or the day of judgment. I was equally Ignorant of the nature of
saving faith, apprehending it to mean no more than a firm assent
to all the propositions contained in the Old and New Testa-
ments.' "

This was surely a very remarkable degree of theological
ignorance to be found in a mind so clear, and one that
had enjoyed such a training! But the theology of Ep-
worth Parsonage, with all its seriousness and charm,
was very defective. And while men are to be judged,
not by their theology, but by their life, yet any grave
misreading of divine truth must profoundly affect the
life.

As for Wesley, an unrelenting thoroughness marked
at every stage his temper in religion. He would have
no uncertainties, no easy and soft illusions. Religion
as a divine gift, and as a human experience, was some-
thing definite. He possessed it, or he did not possess
it. No intermediate stage was thinkable. And with a
wise — but almost unconscious — instinct he put his
theology to the one final test. He cast it into the
alembic of experience. He tried it by the challenge of

IN SEARCH OF A THEOLOGY

71

life; of its power to colour and shape life. He spent
the next thirteen years in that process ; trying his creed
with infinite courage, with transparent sincerity, and
often with toil and suffering, by the rough acid of life,
till at last he reached that conception of Christ and
His Gospel which lifted his spirit up to such dazzling
heights of gladness and power.

William Law, no doubt, influenced Wesley at this stage
more profoundly than even Thomas h Kempis or Jeremy
Taylor. Law's ""Serious Call" is one of the great books
of Christian literature. Dr. Johnson told Boswell that
he had been a lax talker against religion till he read
Law's work. "I took up the book," he said, "expecting
to find it a dull book, as such books generally are; but
I found Law quite an overmatch for me. That book
first set me thinking in earnest." Wesley, late in life,
and after he had renounced Law himself as a religious
guide, yet declared the "Serious Call" to be "unsurpassed
in the English language for beauty of expression and for
justness and depth of thought."

Law lives vaguely in the popular memory as a mystic ;
and it is true that, as Soiithey puts it, "the man who
had shaken so many intellects sacrificed his own at last
to the reveries and rhapsodies of Jacob Behmen." But
if William Law ended in mysticism, his earlier years were
unclouded by that evil fog.

There was no hint of the mystic in Law's appearance —
a stout, round-faced man, with ruddy, farmer-like cheeks,
heavy of foot and solid of body. There is nothing, too,
of myvstic nebulousness in his earlier works. It would
be difficult to match Law for strong-fibred logic, for quick
and piercing vision into the flaws of an adversary's argu-
ment. His books are, for the modern taste, robbed of
charm by the writer's habit of personifying all his vices
and virtues, and labelling them with Latinised names —
"Paternus," "Modestus," &c. And yet few writers have
such a command of resonant, expressive English as Wil-
liam Law. His terse sentences have in them, not seldom,
a salt of satire not unworthy of Swift.

Law for some time was spiritual director of the house-
hold of the father of Gibbon, the famous historian, and
was tutor to young Gibbon himself. There is an element
of humour in that association — the combination of the

72 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

mystic, who looked at the whole material world as a
parable of the spiritual universe, and the arid sceptic,
who treated the spiritual world as irrelevant, or even
non-existent. Yet Law's visible devoutness and sincerity
won even Gibbon's admiration. "If he finds a spark
of piety in any mind," he said, "Law will soon kindle
it to a flame."

The effect this great and powerful writer produced on
Wesley he himself has described : —

"Meeting now with Mr. Law's 'Christian Perfection' and 'Seri-
ous Call,' although I was much offended with many parts of both,
yet they convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height
and depth and breadth of the law of God. The light flowed in
so mightily upon my soul that everything appeared in a new
view. I cried to God for help; resolved as I had never done
before, not to prolong the time of obeying Him. And, by my
continued endeavour to keep His whole law inward and outward
to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that I should be
accepted of Him, and that I was even then in a state of salva-
tion."

CHAPTER III

A DEEPER NOTE

It is possible, at this stage, to assess roughly the influ-
ence that these three great books had on Wesley. They
aroused his conscience. They gave him a transfiguring
vision of the awful sweep and altitude of religion; how
great were God's claims, how vast was man's duty. But
if they awoke in him great aspirations they did not teach
him the divine art of realising them. Their emphasis
rested not on God's grace, but on man's duty. If, then,
they awakened the conscience, they left it helpless. The
great triumphant secret of Christianity: forgiveness — of
grace, and through faith — and obedience, under the forces
that stream into the soul through forgiveness, they left
unrevealed. They missed, in a word, the order, eternal
and changeless, which God has fixed for the spiritual
life. In that order, forgiveness comes first. It is the
Beautiful Gate into the temple of a godly life. Or, to
vary the metaphor, it is the channel through which
stream into the forgiven soul all those great forces of
love and gratitude which make obedience not merely
possible, but inevitable and exultant.

It is quite true that in each of these great books stray
phrases are found which are as evangelical as anything
in Charles Wesley's most triumphant hymns, or in George
Whitefield's most passionate appeals. Law, for example,
told Wesley, "You would have a philosophical religion;
but there can be no such thing. Religion is the most
simple thing in the world. It is only *We love Him
because He first loved us.' " What words could go more
directly to the heart of Christianity! St. John might
have written them; St. Paul would have countersigned
them.

But all the effective emphasis of Law's writings lies
elsewhere. And the strength of the three great books,
which so powerfully influenced Wesley at this stage of
his spiritual development, lies in the aflSrmation, we
repeat, not so much of divine grace, as of human obli-
73

74

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

gation. They clothed the great ethics of Christianity
with more imperious authority to Wesley's conscience;
but they failed to teach the special message of Chris-
tianity, the relation of the personal soul to the personal
Saviour. So they left him bankrupt of that spiritual
energy, flowing direct from the Holy Spirit, which alone
brings the lofty ethics of the New Testament within the
realm of human possibility.

Wesley returned to Oxford in September 1726, and
took his degree of Master of Arts in 1727. In August of
the same year he became his father's curate at Epworth
and Wroot, until on November 22, 1729, he was recalled
to Oxford. Wesley thus had more than two years of
actual parish work as his father's curate, fee possessed
what would be almost universally regarded as pre-eminent
endowments for success in that work. He was a scholar,
a gentleman, with a trained brain, a tireless body, a
matchless faculty for crystalline speech, an intense zeal,
and a conception of religious duty almost austere in its
thoroughness. He had, that is to say, all the human
qualifications for success as a minister in at least as high
a degree as at any stage of his whole life. And yet he
failed, failed utterly and consciously — failed exactly as
he afterwards failed at Georgia ! He had not learned
the first letter in the alphabet of success. He drew no
crowds. He alarmed no consciences. He influenced no
lives. His own summary of his work at that time is : "I
preached much, but saw no fruit of my labour. Indeed,
it could not be that I should, for I neither laid the founda-
tion of repentance nor of believing the Gospel, taking
it for granted that all to whom I preached were believers,
and that many of them needed no repentance." )

Wesley's complete failure at this stage of his life is as
significant as his amazing success at a later stage. Dur-
ing this period the serious, not to say the ascetic, note
in his experience grew more dominant. When he came
into residence at Lincoln College he writes: "Entering
now upon a new world, I resolved to have no acquaintance
by chance, but by choice, and to choose such only as I
have reason to believe would help me on my way to
heaven." "I should prefer," he writes again, "at least
for some time, such a retirement as would seclude me
from all the world to the station I am now in." The

A DEEPER NOTE

75

impulse which makes the monk was stirring in Wesley's
chilled blood !

The mastership of a school in Yorkshire, proposed to
him at this time, had the advantage of a good salary,
but it had what in Wesley's mood at that moment was
the much greater charm of almost utter inaccessibility.
He had, as a general rule, a singularly healthy imagina-
tion; but just now it was diseased, and what Wesley
calls the "frightful description" given of the landscape
about the school, and the difficulty of anybody getting
to it, fascinated him. The school was given to some one
else, and his mother, with characteristic good sense,
writes to congratulate him upon having missed it. "That
way of life," she says, "would not have agreed with your
constitution, and I hope God has better things for yon
to do."

In November 1729 Wesley was recalled to Oxford.
An alarmed attempt was being made to restore the dis-
cipline of the University. As one detail, it was decided
that the junior Fellows, who were chosen as Moderators,
should in person attend to the duties of their office. In
the Oxford of that day, the public disputations were
amongst the most important functions of the University.
At Lincoln College these were held daily, and the busi-
ness of the Moderator was to preside at them. Wesley
was recalled for that purpose, and threw himself, with
characteristic energy, into the business. He found it an
intellectual discipline of no mean value to himself. It
increased his readiness of speech, his expertuess in debate,
his quickness of vision for the flaws in an argument. It
helped to give him that formidable quality as a contro-
versialist which served him so well in later and more
stormy years.

Wesley remained in Oxford from November 22, 1729,
till he left for Georgia, on October 6, 1735. These six
years were, for Wesley himself, years of striving without
attaining; of great aspirations, and of great spiritual
defeats. He was living, as some one has said, in the
seventh chapter of Romans and had not yet reached
the eighth ! And in those six fateful years — years in
which Wesley was practising the self-denial of an ascetic,
and burning with the zeal of a fanatic — and all on a
High Church theology — Methodism was born For

76

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Methodism, it must never be forgotten, shares and re-
flects all the spiritual stages of its founder. It began
in the stage of his unilluminated and High Church
theology, of his attempts to find salvation by works, to
act on Christian ethics without the energy of Christian
forces, to produce the fruits of Christian living while the
root was non-existent.

When Wesley returned to Oxford he conceived of re-
ligion as a tireless industry in pious acts, an intense zeal
in the discharge of external duties, a form of piety to be
nourished by an incessant use of all external means of
grace. And he found already in existence a tiny society
which exactly reflected this conception of religion, and
supplied the machinery for its exercise.

Charles Wesley, who was then a student at Christ
Church, had resisted his elder brother's first attempt lo
put on him the stamp of his own gloomy and mechanical
piety. "What!" he said, "would you have me to be a
saint all at once?" While John Wesley, however, was
toiling in his barren curacy at Wroot, Charles flung
himself with new and serious diligence into his studies,
and "diligence," he records, "led me to serious thinking."
As one result of this new and graver mood he began
attending the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper every
week. And in the ethics of that day the whole tempera-
ture of religion turned round the question of how often
the Lord's Supper was taken. To take it once a week
constituted piety — or oddity — according to the point of
view of the critic.

There was always a singular charm in Charles Wesley's
personality. His more masterful brother dominated men ;
Charles Wesley drew them as the magnet draws steel. A
little group of fellow-students gathered round him. They
crystallised into a sort of club, they undertook to live by
rule, and to meet frequently for the purpose of helping
each other. This little group of ordered lives quickly
arrested public attention. They took all duties seriously.
Law of God, rule of the Church, statute of the University
— all must be kept, and kept with exact precision. These
were startling novelties ! The lively wit of the University
soon found a label for this cluster of oddities. They were
the "Godly Club," "Biblemoths," "Sacramentarians." But
the ordered fashion of their lives finally determined their

A DEEPER NOTE

77

title. They were Methodists! So the great historic term
emerges, though the youthful wit who invented — or
rediscovered — it little dreamed that he had shaped a name
for a great Church about to be born.

That original band of Methodists was a constellation
of goodly names: Robert Kirkham, William Morgan,
James Harvey, the author of the once famous and now
happily forgotten "Meditations amongst the Tombs";
George Whitefield, the greatest preacher the English
pulpit has ever known ; Charles Kinchin, of saintly life.
Of the little group three were tutors in the colleges, the
rest were bachelors of arts or undergraduates.

Wesley, on his return to Oxford, found this Society in
existence, and already beginning to attract respect from
some and ridicule from many. He at once joined it, and
became its leading spirit. His standing in the University,
his energy of will, his quickness of speech, and his natural
genius for influencing others at once made him the master
spirit of the little club. "I hear," wrote his father, "my
sou John has the honour of being styled the 'Father of
the Holy Club.' If it be so, I am sure I must be the
grandfather of it."

John Wesley stamped an even deeper seriousness on
the life of the little club. He gave a new austerity to its
discipline, a sharper strain to its order, a new daring to
its zeal. The little company met every night to review
what had been done, and to lay plans for the next day.
The sick were visited, help was given to the poor, children
were taught in the schools, visits were paid to the inmates
of the workhouse and of the prison.

This tiny group of serious lives grew to fifteen in
number. Its members fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays.
They subjected themselves to elaborate self-scrutiny.
They multiplied, and drew yet more tense, the rules which
regulated the employment of every hour and the use of
every faculty. Mrs. Wesley's advice to her son helped to
determine the physiognomy of the little society. "Ap-
point," she wrote, "so much time to sleep, eating, com-
pany, &c. , . . Often put yourselves the question, 'Why
do I do this or that?' by which means you will come to
such a steadiness and consistency as becomes a reason-
able creature and a good Christian."

The new club naturally kindled much ridicule: it soon

78

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

provoked an opposition which grew violent. Here is a

curious story told in Benson's "Wesley" : —

"A gentleman, eminent for learning and -well esteemed for
piety, told his nephew, who had joined the little company, that
if he dared to go to the weekly Communion any longer he would
turn him out of doors. This argument had no success; the young
gentleman communicated next week. The uncle now became
more violent, and shook his nephew by the throat to convince
him more effectually that receiving the Sacrament every week
was founded in error; but this argument appearing to the young
gentleman to have no weight in it he continued his weekly
practice. This eminent person, so well esteemed for piety, now
changed his mode of attack. ... By a soft obliging manner he
melted down the young gentleman's resolution of being so strictly
religious, and from this time he began to absent himself five
Sundays out of six from the Sacrament. . . . One of the seniors
of the college consulting with the doctor, they prevailed with the
other young gentlemen to promise they would only communicate
three times a year."

What must have been the religious climate of the great
University when its heads set themselves in this fashion,
and by such methods, to discourage piety amongst the
undergraduates ?

Wesley met the attacks on the little Society by drawing
up, in the Socratic style, a series of questions, of which
these are examples : —

"Whether we shall not be more happy hereafter the more good
we do now?

"Whether we may not try to do good among the young gentle-
men of the University; particularly whether we may not endeav-
our to convince them of the necessity of being Christians, and
of being scholars?

"Whether we may not try to convince them of the necessity
of method and industry, in order to either learning or virtue?

"Whether we may not try to confirm and increase their in-
dustry by communicating as often as they can?

"May we not try to do good to those who are hungry, naked,
or sick? If we know any necessitous family, may we not give
them a little money, clothes, or physic, as they want?

"If they can read, may we not give them a Bible, a Common
Prayer-book? . . . May we not inquire now and then how they
have used them, explain what they do not understand, and enforce
what they do?

"May we not contribute what we are able towards having their
children clothed and taught to read?

"May we not try to do good towards those who are in prison?
. . . May we not lend small sums to those who are of any
trade that they procure themselves tools and materials to work
With? . . ."

A DEEPER NOTE

79

There is, of course, a strain of Socratic irony in these
interrogations. No one could (juarrel with tlie practices
thus described without maliing open war on religion
itself; and Wesley's schedule of inconvenient and unan-
swerable queries undoubtedly, for the moment, silenced
the scoffers. But if the diligence of the Methodists in
practical beneficence increased, so the ascetic — not to say
monkish — strain of their personal religion grew more
intense. John Wesley drew up at this time, for himself
and his companions, a scheme of self-examination which
Southey declares, with some truth, might well be ap-
pended to the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola.
Here are samples :

"Have I been simple and recollected in everything I
did?" And under this head is a swarm of microscopic
tests of "sincerity," which the soul was to apply to itself.
"Have I prayed with fervour?" Then follows a list of
the times in each day at which prayer must be offered,
and a series of tests for ascertaining the exact degree of
fervour in each prayer — tests which irresistibly suggest
a spiritual thermometer, with a graduated scale to regis-
ter the rise of the mercury. Wesley adopted the practice
his mother urged of asking, "Have I, in private prayer,
frequently stopped short and observed what fervour in
devotion?" That is, the anxious soul was to keep one
eye directed to the Object of prayer, and the other
vigilantly fixed upon itself, so as to observe its own be-
haviour. The ideal of each member of the Holy Club
at this stage was, plainly, to keep his own soul under a
microscope, and watch its motions with tireless suspicion.

The practical tests by which each member was to try
himself were of a saner kind ; but the note is pitched
very high : —

"1. Have I embraced every probable opportunity of doing good,
and of preventing, removing, or lessening evil? 2. Have I thought
anything too dear to part with, to serve my neighbour? 3. Have
I spent an hour at least every day in speaking to some one or
other? 4. Have I in speaking to a stranger explained what reli-
gion is not (not negative, not external), and what it is, the
recovery of the image of God; searched at what step in it he
stops, and what makes him stop? 5. Have I persuaded all I
could to attend public prayers, sermons, and sacraments, and in
general to obey the laws of the Church Universal, the Church of
England, the State, the University, and their respective colleges?
6. Have I, after every visit, asked him who went with me, did I

80

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

say anything wrong? 7. Have I, when any one asked advice,
directed and exhorted him with all my power? 8. Have I rejoiced
with and for my neighbour in virtue or pleasure; grieved with
him in pain, and for him in sin? 9. Has goodwill been, and
appeared to be, the spring of all my actions towards others."

It is impossible to deny that there is a lofty and Christ-
like note in the type of life here aimed at, though the
questions represent aims rather than attainments. And
these fine virtues — charity, meekness, devotion, diligence
— did they spring from no root? They were the genuine
fruits of religion; but they sprang from the root of a
theology maimed and incomplete. They left the soul
without any assurance of acceptance, and the conscience
without any atmosphere of peace.

As for Wesley himself, he toiled in the routine of good
works with a diligence which can only be described as
passionate, and with severities of self-denial almost
worthy of an Indian fakir. He already had formed the
habit of rising at four o'clock every morning, a practice
which he kept up almost to the day of his death. He
found when he had £30 a year he could live on £28, and
he gave away the odd £2; and when he enjoyed his com-
fortable fellowship, he still lived on £28, and gave to the
poor the remainder of his income. He fasted with an
heroic diligence and severity, which at last broke down
his health. He imposed on himself a taciturnity of iron
quality. His brother Charles records, incidentally, "I
cannot excuse my brother mentioning nothing of Epworth
when he has just come from it. Taciturnity as to family
affairs is his infirmity. ... It was much that he told
me they were all well there, for he did not use to be so
communicative."

What a contrast this is to the radiant Wesley of after
years, with his frank tongue and shining face ; the Wesley
of whom Dr. Johnson — to whom conversation was a
luxury — said, "I could talk with him all day and all
night, too"; the Wesley in whom Alexander Knox, who
knew him as few men did, found "an habitual gaiety of
heart" expressed continuously in both face and speech,
and whom he describes as "the most perfect specimen of
moral happiness which I ever saw." In Wesley's speech,
look, and temper he discovered "more to teach me what a
heaven upon earth is . . . than all I have elsewhere

A DEEPER NOTE

81

seen or heard or read, except iu the Sacred Volume."
The difference betwixt the two Wesleys — Wesley the
ascetic and Wesley the evangelist — is that betwixt a
landscape on which the night is lying, and one on which
the sun is risen. Knox describes Wesley as he was after
he had found the great secret of the Christian life. At
this stage he was only seeking it, and seeking it in the
wrong direction.

' Wesley's earnestness at this time trembled on the edge
of mere over-strained fanaticism. "I am tempted," he
writes, "to break off my pursuit of all learning but what
immediately tends to practice." He seriously contem-
plated the formation of a society for the yet more strict
observance of saints' days, of Saturday as a Christian
festival, of all the fast-days of the ancient Church, &c.
It became for him a matter of conscience that the wine
used in the Sacrament should be mixed with water; for,
says Wesley, "we were in the strongest sense High
Churchmen." "No man," he says in a letter to his
father, "is in a state of salvation until he is contemned
by the whole world"; and Wesley, at this stage, was
diligently qualifying himself for that contempt, and find-
ing a morbid enjoyment in the process !

There is a strain of mysticism clearly visible, too, in
Wesley's religious mood at this stage, and it seems in
irreconcilable conflict with the rigid and mechanical
ritualism of his outward life. Mystic and ritualist: that
is the strangest combination ! They represent the union
in one life of discordant elements. Mysticism and ritual-
ism are not half-truths; they are contradictories. One
lays supreme emphasis on external acts ; the other denies
the external world, and dwells in a land of dreams.

Wesley gets rid of his mysticism first; startled, as a
nature so practical as his must have been, by its funda-
mental quarrel with practical religion. He writes to his
brother Samuel an amazingly keen analysis of the essen-
tial characteristics of mysticism : —

"I think the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck
of the faith was the writings of the mystics; under which term
I comprehend all, and only those, who slight any of the means of
grace. I have drawn up a short scheme of their doctrines and
beg your thoughts upon it. . . .

"Men utterly divested of free-will, of self-love and self-activity
are entered into the passive state, and enjoy such a contemplation

82

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

as is not only above faith, but above sight— such as is entirely
free from images, thoughts, and discourse, and never interrupted
by sins of infirmity or voluntary distractions. They have abso-
lutely renounced their reason and understanding, else they could
not be guided by a divine light. They seek no clear or particular
knowledge of anything, but only an obscure, general knowledge,
which is far better.

"Having thus attained the end, the means must cease. Hope
is swallowed up in love. Sight, or something more than sight,
takes the place of faith. All particular virtues they possess in
the essence, and therefore need not the direct exercise of them.

"Sensible devotion in any prayer they despise; it being a great
hindrance to perfection. The Scripture they need not read, for
it is only His letter, with whom they converse face to face.
Neither do they need the Lord's Supper, for they never cease to
remember Christ in the most acceptable manner."

This is a reading of religion which comes perilously
nears its very denial ! Wesley quarrelled with mysticism
on another ground. He was too keen a logician not to
see that in the last analysis it is but the subtlest form of
self-righteousness ; and every form of self-righteousness
is fundamentally a rejection of Christ and His redemp-
tion. "If righteousness is by the law" — or by any form of
human effort — then, in Paul's tremendous phrase, "then
is Christ dead in vain." His Cross is not merely an ir-
relevance, it is an impertinence. And nothing can be finer
than the keen and peuertating logic with which Wesley
tracks back mysticism to its ultimate root as a form of
self -righteousness.

In writing to his brother from Georgia he had criticised
Law's mystical teaching. Law had taught him that out-
ward works were nothing being alone; and, he adds, "he
recommended to supply what was wanting in them,
mental prayer and like exercises, as the most effectual
means of purifying the soul and uniting it with God."

Now, "these were in truth," says Wesley, with a glance
of characteristically keen vision, "as much my own works
as visiting the sick or clothing the naked ; and the union
with God thus pursued was really my own righteousness
as any I had before pursued under another name." "All
the other enemies of Christianity," he writes elsewhere,
"are trifles. The mystics are the most dangerous. They
stab it in the vitals, and its most serious professors are
most likely to fall by them."

CHAPTER IV

A RELIGION THAT FAILED

The strain of such a religion as that on which Wesley
was now trying to live was too much for human nature.
Even Wesley's tough body, with its nerves of wire and
tissues of iron, broke down. His body might have sur-
vived the fasts he imposed upon it, the strain of work,
the grudged allowance of sleep. But when to this was
added a mind disquieted, a religious consciousness vexed
and pricked with incessant doubts, it was no wonder that
liis health failed. It seemed, indeed, as if the ill-usage
of his own body was at that time part of Wesley's reli-
gion. In a humorous letter in verse which, on April 20,
1732, Samuel Wesley wrote to his brother Charles, he
asks : —

"Does John seem bent beyond his strength to go;
To his frail carcass literally foe:
Lavish of health, as if in haste to die.
And shorten time t' ensure eternity?"

His mother, with a touch of over-anxious motherly care,
believed John was falling into consumption. He had
serious haemorrhage of the lungs, and was for some time
under medical treatment.

Another member of the little group, William Morgan,
died at this time, and his death brought the Holy Club
under the suspicion of having killed him by its austerities.
His father had written to Morgan a fortnight before his
death complaining: —

"It gives me sensible trouble to hear that you are going into
villages about Holt, calling their children together and teaching
them their prayers and catechism and giving them a shilling at
your departure. I could not but advise with a wise, pious, and
learned clergyman. He told me that he has known the worst of
consequences follow from such blind zeal, and plainly satisfied me
that it was a thorough mistake of true piety and religion. . . .
He concluded that you were young, and, as yet, your judgment
had not come to maturity. In time you would see the error of
your way and think as he does, that you may walk uprightly and
safely without endeavouring to outdo all the good bishops, clergy,
and other pious and good men of the present and past ages."

83

84

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

In the curious ethics of that age a "wise, pious, and
learned clergyman" plainly thought that a young mau
guilty of teaching little children how to pray was sinning
against all religioij! When Morgan died Wesley was
openly accused of being contributory to his death. This
brought from him a long and noble letter, addressed to
Morgan's father, dated October 18, 1732, giving an ac-
count of the Holy Club and its methods. The letter —
which forms the opening passage of the famous Jour-
nal— is both a history of the little society up to that
date, and a defence, and is marked by qualities which
make it one of the memorable documents of Christian
literature.

The missing qualities in Wesley's religious state at
this time are sufficiently obvious. It utterly lacked the
element of joy. Religion is meant to have for the spiritual
landscape the office of sunshine, but in Wesley's spiritual
sky burned no divine light, whether of certainty or of
hope. He imagined he could distil the rich wine of
spiritual gladness out of mechanical religious exercises;
but he found himself, to his own distress, and in his own
words, "dull, flat, and unaffected in the use of the most
solemn ordinances." Fear, too,- like a shadow, haunted
his mind : fear tliat he was not accepted before God ; fear
that he might lose what grace he had; fear both of life
and of death. He dare not grant himself, he declared, the
liberty that others enjoyed. His brother Samuel, whose
letters are always rich in the salt of common-sense, had
remonstrated with his younger brother for the austerities
he practised and the rigours of alarmed self-interrogation
under which he lived. John Wesley defends himself by
the plea — in which there is an unconscious pathos — that
he lacks his brother's strength and dare take no risks.

"Mirth, I grant (he says), is very fit for you. But does it
follow that It is fit for me? If you are to rejoice evermore be-
cause you have put your enemies to flight, am I to do the same
while they continually assault me? You are very glad because
you have passed from death to life. Well! but let liini be afraid
who knows not whether he is to live or die. Whether this be
my condition or no, who can tell better than myself?"

In a letter to his mother Wesley recites all the spiritual
advantages and opportunities he enjoys, and asks, "What
shall I do to make aU these blessings effectual? Shall

A RELIGION THAT FAILED

85

I quite break oft' my pursuit of all learning but what
immediately tends to practice? 1 once desired to make
a fair show in languages and Philosophy ; but it is past."
What, he cries, is "the snrest and shortest way" to the
peace for which he sigiied? "Is it not to be humble?
But the question recurs: How am I to do this? To own
the necessity of it is not to be humble."

Then this brilliant, masterful, all-accomplished Fellow
of Lincoln, his body worn with fasting, his spirit weary
with unsatisfied longing, turns to his mother with the
gesture of a tired child. In the old, simple, far-off days
at the rectory his mother was accustomed to give an hour
every Thursday for religious talk with "Jacky." Wesley
writes : —

"In many things you have interceded for me and prevailed.
Who knows but in this, too, you may be successful? If you can
spare me only that little part of Thursday evening which you
formerly bestowed upon me in another manner, I doubt not but
It will be as useful now for correcting my heart as it was then
for forming my judgment. When I observe how fast life flies
away and how slow improvement comes, I think one can never
be too much afraid of dying before one has learned to live."

Canon Overton, who energetically tries to button John
Wesley up, through all the stages of his life, in a High
Church cassock, contends that at this stage Wesley was
a saint without knowing it. It is true that Wesley him-
self, who ought to know best about his own spiritual con-
dition, declared afterwards that he was utterly ignorant
of true religion at this time; but Canon Overton insists
heroically on defending John Wesley against John
Wesley. He tells the tale of Wesley's diligence in all
the ordinances of the Church, his zeal in acts of Christian
beneficence, his lofty aspirations after Christian grace,
and asks if that is not to be a good Christian, what is?
"If John Wesley," he says, "was not a true Christian
[when in Georgia] God help millions of those who profess
and call themselves Christians."

But can any one study the religious experiences of
Wesley at this time and pretend that they represent the
spiritual mood religion is intended to create, and does
create, in the believing heart? Wesley at this stage was
living on what can only be described as the servile theory
of religion. He had not yet learned the meaning of that

86 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

great saying, "Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but
a son !"

At times, however, Wesley makes it clear that, in-
tellectually, he held all the evangelical doctrines. On
January 1, 1733, for example, he preached in St. Mary's,
Oxford, a remarkable sermon on "The Circumcision of the
Heart." As a statement of the offices of the Holy Spirit
in the human soul that sermon is unsurpassed for force
and clearness. It still forms, indeed, one of the fifty-three
sermons which, with Wesley's Notes on the New Testa-
ment, constitute the theological standard of the Methodist
Church everywhere. Here is Wesley's definition of the
spiritual state he is describing: —

"The circumcision of the heart is that habitual disposition of
the soul which. In the sacred writings, is termed holiness, and
which directly implies the being cleansed from sin, from all fllthi-
ness both of the flesh and the spirit; and, by consequence, the
being endued with those virtues which were also in Christ Jesus;
the being so renewed in the image of our mind as to be perfect
as our Father in heaven is perfect."

It would be diflScult, in the same number of words, to
state more strongly that doctrine of "perfection" which is
the characteristic — and in the eyes of many the scandal
— of Wesley's later ministry. Wesley himself, indeed,
says, in 1765, "This sermon contained all that I now
teach concerning salvation from all sin and loving God
with an undivided heart." And yet the sermon belongs
to the period of his unilluminated theology; the time
when Wesley himself was afflicted with perpetual doubts
as to his own spiritual condition !

In the sermon of 1733 he goes on to define the faith
which is the secret of Christian victory. It is, he says,
"An unshaken assent to all that God hath revealed in
Scripture; and in particular to those important truths,
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners ; He bore
our sins in His own body on the tree; He is the pro-
pitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for
the sins of the whole world." And there Wesley stopped.
But in 1765, when he republished the sermon, he added,
with a significant "Nota bene" as a footnote, the following
passage : —

"It is likewise the revelation of Christ in our hearts; a divine
evidence or conviction of His love; His free, unmerited love of

A RELIGION THAT FAILED

87

me, a sinner; a sure confidence in His pardoning mercy wrought
in us by the Holy Ghost; a confidence whereby every true be-
liever is enabled to bear witness 'I know that my Redeemer
liveth'; that I have an advocate with the Father, and that Jesus
Christ the righteous is my Lord, and the propitiation for my sins.
I know that He hath loved me, and given Himself for me; He
hath reconciled me, even me to God, and I have redemption
through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins."

Wesley by this time has got his pronouns right ! These
words vibrate with the essential note of Christianity;
the personal accent, the triumphant cadence! Here the
central and divinest purpose in Christ's redemption has
become a realised human experience. Faith is not merely
an intellectual assent to certain theological or historical
propositions ; it is the rejoicing trust of the personal soul
in a personal Saviour. But this is exactly the missing
note in the sermon of 1733, as it was in Wesley's own ex-
perience at that date. And it is most instructive to see
that little mosaic, on which is inscribed Wesley's joyful
experience in 1765 — an experience which had by that time
endured for more than a quarter of a century — set as a
witness amid the arid sentences of the sermon of 1733.

Another illustration of the curious theological oscilla-
tions of Wesley at this period — the fashion in which,
while he grasped evangelical truth with his intellect, he
utterly failed to realise it in his experience — is found in
the contrast betwixt the first little book he ever printed,
a book of prayers in 1733, and his second original publi-
cation some eighteen months afterwards, the sermon on
"The Trouble and Rest of Good Men." The prayers glow
with evangelical fervour. For vision, simplicity, direct-
ness, and beauty they are unmatched. But in the sermon
of 1735 Wesley is the High Churchman again. He has
swung back into the realm of sacerdotal theology! Per-
fect holiness, he declares, "is not found on earth. Some
remains of our disease will ever be felt. Who," he asks,
"will deliver us from the body of this death?" His
curiously unevangelical answer is "Death will deliver us !
Death shall destroy at once the whole body of sin."

Death, in brief, is the Christ of the soul, and is the
only deliverer the soul will ever know! Wesley, it is
plain, had at this time no clear, sustained vision of Chris-
tian truth, verified in his own experience. He swings
like a pendulum betwixt contradictory conceptions.

88

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

An odd illustration of Wesley's changing moods is
found in the somewhat absurd correspondence he car-
ried on at this time with a woman who in after years
attained social an^ literary fame — Mary Granville, after-
wards Mrs. Pendarvis. She was three years older than
Wesley, a young and fascinating widow, the niece of Lord
Lansdowne, rich, witty, beautiful. Wesley met her at
the house of the Kirkhams, and the youthful Fellow of
Lincoln College and the brilliant and fashionable young
widow correspondeed with each other. Wesley labelled
himself "Cyrus," Mary Granville was disguised as "As-
pasia"; and for many months Cyrus and Aspasia ex-
changed letters through which there runs a curious
mixture of theology, and of a personal feeling that
trembled on the verge of mere flirtation. Cyrus cries,
"Tell me, Aspasia, if it be a fault that my heart burns
within me when I reflect on the many marks of regard
you have already shown me." Then he exhorts Aspasia
to "pray for him," and discusses with her some problem
in theology. "Oh, Cyrus!" writes Aspasia, "how noble
a defence you make ! And how you are adorned with the
beauty of holiness." Later, Aspasia complains that
"Cyrus by this time had blotted me out of his memory."

There is the oddest mixture of doctrinal discussion and
of very human sentiment in this correspondence, and
Cyrus plainly was in imminent danger of forgetting the
theologian in the lover. Sometimes, indeed, he crossed
the line ; and the lady herself — though too late, and only
when Wesley had moved into quite another realm of
feeling — was visibly more than willing to infuse a very
human warmth into her letters.

It sheds some curious light on Wesley's mood where
the fair sex is concerned to notice that the correspondence
with Aspasia blossomed on the stock of an earlier corre-
spondence— that with Miss Betty Kirkham — a correspond-
ence in which beat the pulse of a very definite and
human love. Betty Kirkham was the sister of his col-
lege friend, and that Wesley loved her in his temperate
fashion, and would have married her, can hardly be
doubted. Some unkind force — perhaps parental authority
on the one side or the other — interfered. Betty Kirkham
married some one else, and died after a very brief wedded
life. It was in the house of the Kirkhams that Wesley

A RELIGION THAT FAILED

89

met Mrs. Pendarvis. Wesley, in his correspondence with
Betty Kirkham, labelled her Varanese, and his earlier
letters to Aspasia are full of references to "my \., my
dear V." Wesley, however, kept a vigilant and scientific
eye on his own emotions as a lover ; and he tells Aspasia,
"I cannot bnt often observe with pleasure the great
resemblance between the emotions I feel in writing to
Aspasia and that with which my heart frequently over-
flowed in the beginning of my intercourse with our
dear V."

This is another proof that Wesley was destitute of
any quick sense of humour. How could he expect one
Toung lady to be interested in the circumstance that the
business of writing to her excited in her correspondent
exactly the same emotions which the process of writing
to an earlier and lost love once awakened ! All through
his life Wesley never comes so near the point of being
absurd as when he is in love, or is in the earlier stages of
love. Perhaps, indeed, he never felt love in the usual
human sense. But he was nurtured in a household sin-
gularly rich in feminine influences. He knew, as few
men could have known, how keen a woman's intelligence
may be, how quick her wit, how tender her affections,
how clear her spiritual insight. And all through his
life he eagerly sought the friendship of clever and pure
women.

CHAPTER V

OXFORD LOSES ITS SPELL

An expressive proof of the cloistered and self-centred
character of Wesley's piety at this stage may be found in
his refusal to take his father's i)lace at Epworth. His
father was now old, and was visibly breaking down in
health. He might die at any moment. Who should be his
successor? On that point hung practically the future of
the Epworth household. The living was of value; the
rector had spent a considerable part of his income in
improving the parsonage. If John could secure the next
presentation this would ensure a home for his mother
and sisters as long as they needed it. The living was in
the gift of the Crown, and John Wesley was strongly
urged to take steps at once to secure the appointment.

He hesitated, doubted, debated, and at last definitely
refused ; and he justifies himself in a letter of stupendous
length to his father, a letter which in bulk would almost
make a pamphlet. A decision which required an apology
on such a scale must have been doubtful !

Wesley's reasons for refusing, when analysed, are all
of a personal, not to say selfish, sort. His first considera-
tion he declares is "which way of life will conduce most
to my own improvement?" He needs daily converse
with his friends, and he knows "no other place under
heaven, save Oxford, where I can have always at hand
half-a-dozen persons of my own judgment and engaged in
the same studies. ... To have such a number of such
friends constantly watching over my soul" is a blessing
which, in a woi^d, Wesley cannot bring himself to give
up. At Oxford, too, he enjoys retirement. "I have not
only as much, but as little, company as I please." He
is free from care; he enjoys all sorts of spiritual oppor-
tunities— public prayer twice a day, the weekly sacrament
of the Lord's Supper, &c. Whatever others may do, says
Wesley, "I could not stand my ground, no, not for one
month, against intemperance in sleeping, eating and
drinking, against irregularity in study, against softness
90

OXFORD LOSES ITS SPELL

91

and self-indulgeuce, unless" in brief, lie had snch

aids to Christian living as Oxford alone afforded. "Half
Christians," he declares, would kill him. "They under-
mine insensibly all my resolutions and quite steal from
me the little fervour I have. I never come from among
these 'saints of the world' but faint, dissipated, and shorn
of all my strength." Except he can crouch beneath the
shelter of a stronger faith than his own, John Wesley pro-
tests he must die ; so he will not venture from Oxford !

The question of doing good to others has, of course, to
be considered; but Wesley tells his father bluntly "the
question is not whether I could do more good to others
there or here, but whether I could do more to myself.
Seeing wherever I can be most holy myself, there I can
most promote holiness in others." But this is at Oxford
and only at Oxford. It has been urged that at Oxford
many persons "despised him," and he would at least, by
going to Epworth, step into an atmosphere of respect.
But Wesley is in that unhealthy spiritual mood in which
persecution is a sort of luxury. A Christian, he replies,
will be despised anywhere; "nay, until he be thus con-
temned no man is in a state of salvation."

All this shows that Wesley's piety was of the cloistered
type. It dreads the fresh air. Unless wrapped in cotton
wool, and fed with a spoon, and allowed to breathe a
medicated atmosphere, it will die!

His father was too sick to wrestle with a filial logician
at once so ingenious and so diffuse. He tells his son
Samuel he "had done what he could with such a shattered
head and body, to satisfy the scruples which your brother
has raised against my proposal from conscience and
duty," and he appeals to Samuel to help him.

Samuel now takes up the correspondence, and asks
his brother, with refreshing bluntness, if all his labours
came to this: that more was absolutely necessary to the
very being of his Christian life than for the salvation
of all the parish priests of England ! He tried to engage
John Wesley's conscience on the side of going to Epworth.
"Are you not ordained?" he asked. "Did you not de-
liberately and openly promise to instruct, to teach, to
admonish, to exhort those committed to your charge?
Did jo\i equivocate then with so vile a reservation as
to purpose in your heart that you would never have a

92 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

charge? It is not a college, it is not a University, it
is the order of the Church according to which you were
called." He had taken orders, in a word, not that he
might be a tutor in a college, but have a cure of souls.
"The order of the Church," cries Samuel, "stakes you
down, and the more you struggle you will be held the
faster. If there be such a thing as truth I insist upon
it you must, when opportunity offers, either perform that
promise or repent of it."

But John was too alert a logician to be caught by his
brother's argument. A priest who refused all cure of
souls would, no doubt, be faithless; but was it perjury
to reject the first parochial charge ofi'ered to him? His
conscience, however, was troubled. "I own," he says,
"1 am not the proper judge of the oath I took at ordina-
tion. Accordingly, the post after 1 received yours I
referred it to the 'high priest of God' before whom I
contracted that engagement, proposing this single ques-
tion to him : whether I had at my ordination engaged
myself to undertake the cure of a parish or no." The
appeal to the bishop in such terms shows the legal con-
science in Wesley. He would keep the letter of the bond ;
but he must have it interpreted in the letter, and by
official authority !

His bishop replied : "No ; provided you can as a clergy-
man better serve God and His Church in your present
or some other station."

Wesley thus escaped the net of his brother's logic ; yet,
ten months afterwards, with strange inconsistency, he
left Oxford tor Georgia, doing the very thing which he
declared an anxious regard for his own spiritual health
made it impossible for him to do, even though sacred in-
terests— the comfort of an aged father, the future of his
mother and his sisters — hung upon it. His brother's
logic, in the long run, proved too much for John Wesley's
conscience. There is some evidence, indeed, that after his
father's death Wesley did actually apply for the living,
but Sir Robert Walpole was unfriendly and the applica-
tion failed.

No one can read the letters which passed at this time
betwixt John Wesley and his old and dying father — his
plain-spoken brother Samuel acting as a sort of chorus —
without seeing how thoroughly self-centred, and how

OXFORD LOSES ITS SPELL

93

wanting in robust fibre is the younger Wesley's piety
at that time. He is so occupied in thinking about his
own soul that he can spare no thought for any one else.
And of his own soul he thinks in a fashion at once so
morbid and so timorous that it is clear he has scarcely
mastered yet the first letters in the great spiritual
alphabet of Christianity.

Wesley's father died on April 25, 1735, and nothing in
the whole story of his life is so beautiful as the manner
of his leaving it. Years had mellowed him. Time had
cooled the restlessness of his blood. Sickness had given
a new perspective to his theologj', a new tenderness to
his spirit. As he drew near the mysterious borderland
of eternity his piety deepened ; it was baptized with new
influences.

Both John and Charles Wesley were with him at the
last, and. in a letter dated April 30, 1735, Charles de-
scribes to his brother Samuel the manner of their father's
death. Something of that strange vision which comes to
dying eyes was granted the old man. "He often," writes
Charles Wesley, ''laid his hand upon my head and said,
*Be steady! The Christian faith will surely revive in
this kingdom. You shall see it, though I shall not.' "
To John he said : "The inward witness, son ; the inward
witness I That is the strongest proof of Christianity."

That "inward witness" had come late to the old man,
but it had come. To liis son it was then an unknown
experience. The very words were cryptic ; they belonged
to an unknown language. "I did not," says John, when
telling the story afterwards, "I did not, at that time,
understand them." Yet what thrilled in the soul of the
dying father was the very force which was later to trans-
figure his son's life and, through him, to change the whole
religious history of England.

Just as the end came John stooped over his father
and asked him whether he was not near heaven? "He
answered," writes Charles, "distinctly and with the
utmost of hope and triumph that could be expressed in
sounds: 'Yes, I am.' Jnst after my brother had used the
commendatory prayer he spoke again : 'Now you have
done all.' These were his last words."

Mr. Wesley left his household but ill provided for. He
rented a few fields, and the live stock upon them was

94

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

seized on the very day of his funeral, by a hard landlord,
for the unpaid rent. Charles had not yet taken his de-
gree; John's fellowship scarcely did more than provide
for his own wants, and the burden of the support of
Mrs. Wesley and her unmarried daughters fell on Samuel.
The father had finished, before his death, his magnum
opus — a commentary on the Book of Job — and Wesley
went to London to present a copy to the Queen.

While in London Dr. Burton, of Corpus Christi College,
who was one of the trustees of the new colony of Georgia,
introduced him to General Oglethorpe, the founder of the
colony. The trustees were at that moment in search of a
clergyman who could preach to the settlers and to the
Indians in their neighbourhood, and Wesley seemed to
them to be exactly the man for the post. He was a
scholar, a clergyman of known and intense zeal, with
a passion for religious work which, to cooler tempera-
ments, seemed fanaticism. It might have been supposed
that the logic which forbade John Wesley leaving Oxford
to go to Epworth, on account of the risks involved in a
change of spiritual climate, would apply yet more forcibly
to the new scheme. But Wesley had unconsciously shifted
his ground. His conscience had arrayed itself on the side
of his brother's arguments.

Moreover, University groups are in their very nature
temporary. Mere time dissolves them. The members
must scatter to their separate careers; and this was
happening at Oxford. Morgan was dead; Gambold and
Ingham were about to accept cures. Whitefield, not
yet ordained, was starting for evangelistic work in
Gloucestershire. Broughton was chaplain at the Tower.
The goodly fellowship of the Holy Club at Oxford, like
the knighthood of King Arthur's Round Table, was dis-
solving. And Wesley, with other ties one by one snap-
ping, listened with not unwilling ears to this new call.

It is clear, in addition, that Wesley himself, if he had
not grown tired of the Holy Club and its methods, had
visibly lost faith in it and them. Its round of mechanical
prayers, its pious services, its physical austerities, were
but a spiritual treadmill, and yielded no more progress
than a treadmill. It led no whither. Wesley had been
on it six years, and knetv. At the end of those weary,
high-strung, earnest years he felt there was in religion

OXFORD LOSES ITS SrELL

95

a secret that evaded his search, a strength unpossessed,
a joy nntasted. How could spiritual life be translated
into mechanical terms and not perish in the process?

At first Wesley refused the offer of the mission to
Georgia, but it was with an accent which invited its
renewal. He declared he could not leave his mother, for
whose support and comfort he was indispensable. Would
he go, he was asked, if his mother consented? Wesley
thought this impossible, but agreed that she should be
consulted. If he expected her to refuse he strangely
misread the lofty and courageous temper of his mother's
mind. "Had I twenty sons," the brave woman answered,
"I should rejoice that they were all so employed, though
I should never see them more."

Wesley, however, did not take even his mother's con-
sent as final. He consulted many other advisers, from
William Law, and his brother Samuel, to John Byrom the
poet. All agreed that he should go. Samuel, no doubt,
-hoped that the fresh airs of the new world, and the rough
schooling of a new life, would chase out of his brother's
character some morbid elements.

On September 18, 1735, Wesley agreed to go. He was
thirty -two years of age ; he possessed the best scholarship
of his time ; he had practised at Oxford the austerities of
an ascetic, and had shown he possessed a natural genius
for leadership. The Georgia trustees counted themselves
lucky in securing such a man. Many of Wesley's friends,
however, were sorely disappointed. The Georgia appoint-
ment seemed a mere black eclipse falling on a brilliant
career. Wesley, to justify himself, explained his motives
in a remarkable letter, dated October 10, which is worth
quoting at length : —

"My chief motive is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope
to learn the true sense of the Gospel of Christ by preaching it to
the heathen. They have no comments to construe away the text;
no vain philosophy to corrupt it; no luxurious, sensual, covetous,
ambitious expounders to soften its unpleasing truths. They have
no party, no interest to serve, and are therefore fit to receive the
Gospel in its simplicity. They are as little children — humble,
willing to learn, and eager to do the will of God.

"A right faith, will, I trust, by the mercy of God open the way
for a right practice; especially when most of the temptations are
removed which here so easily beset me. It will be no small thing
to be able, without fear of giving offence, to live on water and the
fruits of the earth. An Indian hut affords no food for curiosity.

96

WESLF.Y AND HIS CENTURY

no gratiflcation of the desire of Rrand or new or pretty things.
The pomp and show of the world have no place in the wilds of
America.

"... I have been a grievous sinner from my youth up, and
am yet laden with foolish and hurtful desires; but I am assured,
if I be once converted myself, God will then employ me both to
strengthen my brethren and to preach His Name to the Gentiles.

"I cannot hope to attain to the same degree of holiness here
which I may there. I shall lose nothing I desire to keep. I shall
still have food to eat and raiment to put on; and if any man
have a desire of other things, let him know that the greatest
blessing that can possibly befall him is to be cut off from all
occasions of gratifying those desires which, unless speedily rooted
out, will drown his soul in everlasting perdition.'"

This letter explains exactly what aspect the Georgia
mission wore to Weslej' himself, and with what motive
he undertook it. Why did he go to preach the Gospel
to American Indians? "My chief motive," he says, "is
the hope of saving my own soul." His oivn soul is
still his chief preoccupation. It bulks, to his own dis-
tressed gaze, so large that it shuts out of sight all the
human race beside! He is conscious that he has not
yet learnt the true secret of the Gospel of Christ, and in
that he was perfectly correct. He hopes to discover it
for himself, however, by the process of teaching it to a
heathen community on the other side of the world !

Here is a missionary, in a word, who does not possess
a creed, but who is starting on a cruise in search of one !
He hopes not so much to impart it to the dark-skinned
savages whom he is to teach, but to extract it from them !
The note of weariness with Oxford, and with the spiritual
processes of the Holy Club, is audible throughout this
letter. His peaceful room in the quadrangle of Lincoln
College, under the shadow of the famous Lincoln vine,
with a little circle of pale and studious faces bending
over their Greek Testaments round his table — he is eager
to exchange all this for a wind-blown American prairie,
and a company of half -clad Indians! The College chapel
with its pealing organ, its murmur of incessant prayers,
its decorous and learned audience, oppresses him. What
he had not found in the atmosphere of an ancient uni-
versity he hopes to discover amongst the rough settlers
of the new land, or — with still greater hope — from the
untutored savages wandering through its forests.

> Wealey'e Works, vol. vii. p. 36.

OXFORD LOSES ITS SPELL

97

He drew a picture of these delightful savages so glow-
ing that one astonished correspondent — a lady — ex-
claimed, with feminine directness of logic, "Why, Mr.
Wesley, if they are all this already, what more can Chris-
tianity do for them?"

But perhaps the flower of a true Christian faith, which
refused to grow amid the heavy airs of Oxford, might
blossom on the roiigh soil of Georgia. Wesley would
revise his creed by the unspoiled consciences of his Indian
hearers. "I cannot hope," he says, "to attain the same
degree of holiness here which I may there." Only ten
months before he had declared the only place on earth
where he could hope to keep the faintest pulse of reli-
gious life beating in his blood was Oxford. The change
to the spiritual climate of Epworth would simply kill
it. Now he flees from Oxford as the best means of saving
his soul!

Methodism has sent out, since then, a thousand mission-
aries to heathen lands, but never one with so strange an
equipment of motives as that under which its own founder
sailed as a missionary to Georgia. But if any proof is
needed of the failure of the religious creed on which
Wesley had hitherto lived — a High Church theology, a
plodding, heavy-footed ritualism — it may be found in the
explanation of his own motives which Wesley gives.

CHAPTER VI

A STRANGE MISSIONARY

Wesley's mission to America, as we have seen, might be
fitly described as a pilgrimage in search of a religion.
And it was a pilgrimage which failed! He embarked
for Georgia on October 13, 1735, and landed on his return
at Deal on February 1, 1738, thus spending nearly two
years and a half in the experiment. He emerged from it,
in the end, more profoundly dissatisfied with himself than
at the beginning. The spiritual progress of those twenty-
eight arduous and suffering months can be measured by
two significant extracts with dates. On October 10, 1735,
before embarking for Georgia, he describes in words al-
ready quoted what he expected to find in America : —

"My chief motive is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope
to learn the true sense of the Gospel of Christ by preaching it to
the heathen. ... I cannot hope to attain the same degree of
holiness here which I may there."

In his Journal, when on his "way back from America,
he sums up what he had actually gained under American
skies : —

"I went to America to convert the Indians; but, O! who shall
convert me? ... It is now two years and almost four months
since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian
Indians the nature of Christianity; but what have I learned
myself in the meantime? Why, what I the least of all suspected;
that I who went to America to convert others was never myself
converted to God."

It is true that when, many years afterwards, Wesley
reprinted those sentences in his Journal, he added the
significant note, "I am not sure of this"; but the words
at least expressed faithfully his judgment on himself
when he landed on English soil again. He had gone to
America in the hope of finding there what Oxford and
the Holy Club had failed to yield him — a clear religious
98

A STRANGE MISSIONARY

99

experience. He returns with a more bitter and crushing
self-discontent than ever. And the story of those months
on a strange soil and under strange skies is not the least
instructive chapter in Wesley's spiritual history.

The little group of missionaries consisted of John
Wesley, his brother Charles — who held the post of secre-
tary to General Oglethorpe, the governor of the colony
— Benjamin Ingham, and Charles Delamotte, both mem-
bers of the Holy Club. Two others, Hall and Salmon,
were to join the party; but Hall, who was Wesley's
brother-in-law, almost at the moment of embarkation
received news of his appointment to a benefice, and
promptly unpacked his luggage. He was not of the stuff
of which martyrs and saints are made! Salmon was
intercepted by his friends and prevented from going al-
most by force.

The voyage lasted from October 14, 1735, to Febru-
ary 5, 1736, a fact which shows how leisurely was the
navigation of those days. With the voyage begins Wes-
ley's immortal Journal, a bit of literature once strangely
neglected, and now almost over-praised. For naturalness,
incident, variety, and imperishable interest it undoubt-
edly deserves to be classed with "Boswell." Over Bos-
well's "Johnson," indeed, the Journal has the advantage
that it deals with a greater figure than even the famous
lexicographer, and the hero of it is also the writer. The
Journal, again, is not a book of gossip ; it is an autobiog-
raphy. It gives us Wesley, not as seen from the outside,
but as Wesley saw himself. It enables us, in a word, to
look at men, books, and events through John Wesley's
eyes and to see Wesley himself as interpreted — and
sometimes as misinterpreted — by his own conscience.

If the voyage was leisurely, Wesley and his companions
spent it in no leisurely mood. They began by drawing up
and signing a solemn bond betwixt themselves. It bears
date November 3, and runs : —

"In the name of God, Amen! We, whose names are under-
written, being fully convinced that it is impossible either to pro-
mote the work of God among the heathen without an entire union
among ourselves, or that such a union should subsist unless each
one will give up his single judgment to that of the majority, do
agree, by the help of God: — First, that none of us will undertake
anything of importance without first proposing it to the other
three; secondly, that whenever our judgments differ, any one

100

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

shall give up his single judgment or inclination to the others;
thirdly, that in case of an equality, after begging God's direction,
the matter shall be decided by lot.

John Wesley.
V Charles Wesley.

Benjamin Ingham.
Chables Delamottk."

Here we have Wesley's iustiuct for order aud fellow-
ship registering itself. The missiouaries were not to be
separate units, but a disciplined company. In the last
words of that bond, too, we have the practice of sortilege
— which runs intermittently through all Wesley's after
years — erected into a law and made the ultimate standard
of decision in all doubtful matters.

The voyage was regarded by the little group as an
opportunity for trying all sorts of heroic experiments
with themselves. It gave them a welcome chance of
shedding old habits. They reduced the number of their
meals, and limited their diet to rice and biscuits. Wes-
ley, owing to an accident, had to sleep on the floor one
night without a bed, and so made the delightful dis-
covery that a bed was a suj)erfluity. It could in future
be dispensed with. The ascetic, not to say the monk, was
emerging once more in Wesley's life! He acted on the
theory that his soul was a besieged fortress, and each
physical sense was an avenue standing wide open to
his foes. An appetite starved into submission, or other-
wise suppressed, was a traitor hanged!

In other ways the ship that carried these strange
missionaries was turned into a floating monastery. Each
hour of the day was assigned to a specific task. They
rose at four o'clock in the morning, and went through
a succession of ordered tasks — meditations and spiritual
exercises — that left not one moment of perilous space for
leisure, till ten o'clock at night when sleep came.

One incident of the voyage served as a sharp test to
Wesley of his own spiritual condition. Amongst the
passengers he found a little group of Moravian exiles,
who, by the simplicity and seriousness of their piety,
strangely interested him. A storm broke over the ship
one evening just as these simple-minded Germans
had begun a religious service; Wesley describes what
follows : —

A STRANGE MTRSIONARY

101

"In the midst of the Psalm wherewith their service began, the
sea broke over, split the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and
poured in between the decks as if the great deep had already
swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began amongst the Eng-
lish. The Germans calmly sang on. I asked one of them after-
wards, 'Was you not afraid?' He answered, 'I thank God, no.'
I asked, 'But were not your women and children afraid?' He
replied mildly, 'No; our women and children are not afraid to
die.' From them I went to their crying, trembling neighbours,
and pointed out to them the difference in the hour of trial be-
tween him that feareth God and him that feareth Him not."

Now, Wesley knew that he had not mastered the secret
of that strange contempt of death. "I have a sin of
fear," he said then, and for many a day afterwards. And
he knew that the tonch of death has for religion the oflBce
of an acid on gold. It is a test — the most searching of
tests. And under the touch of that dreadful acid of fear,
Wesley's religion at this stage failed him.

It was not that he recoiled from the mere icy breath
of death ; else would he have had less courage than the
recruiting sergeant can buy in every market for a few
pence a day. But there are mysterious elements in death,
which make it the symbol of sin's triumph, the crowning
act of sin's dark reign. The human soul is dimly con-
scious that in moral evil there are dark and strange
forces— depths unsounded, relations with God and His
universe unrealised — and death brings the soul face to
face with these last and uttermost elements of wrong-
doing. So it is that sin and death, while strangely akin,
are strangely abhorrent to each other. And as Wesley's
religion at this stage failed to deliver him from the fear
of death, he judged, right enough, that he had not yet
found in it any complete deliverance from sin, death's
sad ancestress.

Directly he landed, too, Wesley found himself face to
face with the challenge of what was to him a quite new
type of piety. He eagerly sought out the head of the
little Moravian community', August Spangenberg, and,
with that fine humility which was characteristic of one
side of his nature, asked his advice — as Wesley himself
puts it — "with regard to my own conduct." The simple-
minded Moravian pastor proceeded to put Wesley to the
question : —

"He said, 'My brother, I must first ask you one or two ques-

102 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

tions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit

of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?'
" 'I was surprised,' records Wesley, 'and knew not what to

answer. He observed it, and asked, "Do you know Jesus Christ?"

I paused and said, "I, know He is the Saviour of the world."
" 'True,' he replied; 'but do you know He has saved youT'
" 'I answered, "I hope He has died to save me." He only

added, "Do you know yourself?" I said, "I do." But I fear they

were vain words.' "

Wesley was the last man in the world to resent ques-
tioning so frank and courageous ; but it is clear that the
challenge of the plain-spoken Moravian disquieted him.
He does not seem to have been struck by the circumstance
that an echo of his father's dying words — "The inward
witness, son, the inward witness" — from the lips of a
man of another race and another theological school,
thus met him as he put his foot on the soil of the new
world.

Wesley, however, was strangely drawn to the Mora-
vians. He lived with them for a while, and saw their
piety in what might be called its household dress. It was
the most beautiful form of piety he had yet witnessed — the
ordered devoutness and diligence of the Epworth Rectory
repeated, with a strain of gladness running through it
the Epworth household hardly knew. Wesley was pres-
sent, again, at a Moravian service held for the election
and ordination of a bishop, and he records how the grave
simplicity of the proceedings made him forget the seven-
teen centuries that had fled, and imagine himself in
one of those assemblies where form and state were not,
but Paul the tentmaker, or Peter the fisherman, pre-
sided.

It is curious to note, however, that though the sim-
plicity of Moravin piety moved Wesley's admiration, and
the certainty of Moravian faith awakened his envy, yet
all this did not in the least abate the fury of his own
sacerdotal zeal. The very centre of his religion was,
no doubt, unconsciously shifting; but the outer crust of
the High Churchman — the external habit of his life — was
almost more rigid and austere than ever.

It was a strange human field on which Wesley was
now at work. The colony of Georgia represents, perhaps,
the most generous experiment in settlement known to
history. Its founder was General Oglethorpe — scholar,

A STRANGE MISSIONARY

103

soldier, politician, knight-errant, philanthropist, and
through it all — for he was the son of an Irish mother —
a generous, hot-blooded, irresponsible Irishman. He had
been a student at Oxford, a soldier in the British Army;
he had fought on the Continent under Prince Eugene,
and in the British Parliament had anticipated Howard
as a philanthropist. The condition of debtors in English
prisons moved his warm-hearted pity. He secured the
appointment of a Parliamentry Committee to report on
the condition of the great English prisons, the Fleet and
the Marshalsea ; and as an incidental result, the plan
for forming a settlement in South Carolina emerged.
The settlement was vested in trustees; Oglethorpe was
appointed governor; large sums of money were raised
to start the colony ; and a code of regulations was drawn
up, which, if not in every detail of perfect wisdom, at
least represented very noble ideals.

One clause prohibited slavery, as contrary not only
to the Gospel, but to the fundamental laws of England.
It would have been well for the Southern States of
America, and for the whole history of the English-
speaking race, if Oglethorpe's regulations for his settle-
ment at this point had been universally adopted. Their
ab.sence was, later, to cost the United States the most
dreadful civil war known to history. The most difficult
social and political problem the great transatlantic
Republic has to solve would never have existed if the
Georgian precedent had been followed.

But the new colony not only represented a great social
experiment ; it offered a refuge for social failures of every
kind — English debtors. Highland .Jacobites, Moravian
refugees, the wrecks of commerce and of politics, the
victims of religious persecution. The settlement was
thus a cluster of unrelated human atoms, representing
social, political, and racial types of very diverse kinds.
It was, moreover, planted on the soil, and breathed the
airs of a new world, with ancient conventions forgotten,
and a new liberty fermenting in its very blood. It con-
stituted an ideal field for social and religious experiments.
And, as his contribution to the peace of the new settle-
ment, We.sley was bent on enforcing, by priestly disci-
pline, the strictest reading of the rubric ! He would stamj)
the usages — or what he imagined to be the usages — of

104

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

the first Christian century on a community living in the
eighteenth !

This proves how completely the ecclesiastic and the
sacerdotalist were dominant in Wesley. He worked
solely on what mky be called the ecclesiastical plane.
Thus he instituted both early and forenoon services for
every day. He divided the morning service, taking the
Litany apart.- He celebrated the Lord's Supper every
week, but refused it to all who had not been episcopally
baptized. He revived what he believed to be the Apostolic
practice of baptism by immersion. He re-baptized the
children of dissenters, and refused admission to the
Lord's Supper to the pastor of the Salzburgers because
— though he had been baptized — it was not done in
severely correct canonical fashion. Nearly twenty years
afterwards, recalling this incident, he wrote, "Can High
Church bigotry go farther than this? And how well
since I have been beaten with mine own staff." The
indictment against Wesley, drawn up by the grand jury
of Savannah in 1737, consists of ten articles, and to one
of these Wesley with every sign of penitence pleaded
guilty. His crime consisted of having baptized an In-
dian trader's child with only two sponsors ! "This," cries
the conscience-stricken ritualist, "I own, was wrong; I
ought at all hazards to have refused baptizing it till he
had procured a third."

There spoke the true High Churchman, who not only
believes that spiritual and eternal issues hang on
mechanical forms, but will sacrifice them for the sake
of the forms! On Wesley's theory the eternal destiny
of the child turned on its being baptized. Yet, even
at that dreadful hazard, Wesley believed he ought to
have refused to baptize it in the absence of a third
sponsor !

But if Wesley's standard was severe for others, it was
nothing less than heroic for himself. Zeal for high ideals
of conduct and service burnt in him like a flame. There
were no austerities of self-denial from which he shrank.
He visited his parishioners from house to house in order,
taking for that business the hours betwixt twelve and
three, when all work was suspended on account of the
heat. He lived with the i)lainuess and simplicity of an
anchorite. In one of the schools which he and Delamotte

A STRANGE MISSIONARY

105

taught, some of the poorer scholars went barefoot, aud
the more comfortably dressed children looked down with
contempt on their unshod companions. To cui*e that
pride Wesley himself, for a while, went with naked feet.
He lived practically on dry bread, and interspersed even
that rudimentary diet with incessant fasts. The social
impulse in Wesley reappears in Georgia. A wise and
sure instinct warned him that solitary religion would
perish, and, as at Oxford, he organised his flock into little
societies which met once a week, or oftener, in order to
improve, instruct, and exhort one another.

But Wesley's ministry at Savannah failed, exactly as
it did at W>oot, and with even more dramatic complete-
ness. It was empty of true spiritual force. It failed
to make men better. It bred strife. "How is it," asked
Oglethorpe, bewildered by the ecclesiastical quarrels that
filled the air on every side — "how is it that there is no
love, no meekness, no true religion amongst the people;
but instead of this, mere formal prayers?" Wesley, in
Southey's words, instead of feeding his flock with milk,
was "drenching them with the physic of an intolerant
discipline" ; and human nature rebelled against the bitter
dose.

One angry parishioner — as Wesley faithfully records
in his Journal — told him, "I like nothing you do. All
your sermons are satires upon particular persons; there-
fore I will never hear you more, and all the people are
of my mind." His puzzled hearers, this plain-spoken
critic went on to say, were unable to decide whether
Wesley was a Protestant or a Roman Catholic. "They
never heard of such a religion before. They do not know
what to make of it. And then your private behaviour.
All the quarrels that have been since you came have
been along of you. . . . Aud so you may preach long
enough, but nobody will come to hear you."

If at Savannah his parishioners were quarrelling with
John Wesley, at Frederica both the governor and the
people were in angry feud with Charles Wesley. Charles
was as austere as his brother John, and had, perhaps,
even less tact. Within a month his parishioners were in
open rebellion against him, and tried to ruin him with
the governor by accusing him of a design to destroy the
colony. The unfortunate governor found that his chap-

106 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

lains were mere human storm-centres. "What would
an unbeliever say to your raising these disorders?" he
demanded of Charles Wesley in bitter tones.

Oglethorpe was a man of impetuous temper and un-
restrained speech; his underlings naturally exaggerated
these qualities, and outvied him in the steps they took
against the unfortunate chaplain. Charles Wesley was
practically denied the ordinary necessaries of existence.
A bed was provided out of the public stores to every one
else in the settlement, but denied to the too zealous
divine, who, while suffering from a low fever, had yet to
sleep on the ground. "Thank God," said poor Charles
Wesley, "it is not yet made capital to give me a morsel
of bread !" But his life, he seriously believed, was more
than once attempted.

Oglethorpe a little later was starting out to meet a
descent by the Spaniards upon the new settlement. The
odds against him were desperate; he believed he would
never return, and he took leave of his secretary and
chaplain in very high-strung fashion.

"'I am now going to death,' he said. 'You will see me no
more.'

" 'If I am speaking to you for the last time,' replied his secre-
tary, 'hear what you will quickly know to be the truth as soon as
you are entered upon a separate state. ... I have renounced the
world. Life is a bitterness to me. I came hither to lay it down.
You have been deceived. I protest my innocence of the crimes
I am charged with, and think myself now at liberty to tell you
what I thought never to have uttered.' "

An explanation followed; Oglethorpe, the most gener-
ous, if the most impulsive of men, fell on his chaplain's
neck and kissed him, and so they parted.

"God is with you," cried Charles Wesley as the boats
moved off. "Go forth, CJiristo duce et auspice Christo."

When Oglethorpe returned safe from his expedition,
Charles told him he had longed to see him once more to
give further explanations; "but then," he added, "I con-
sidered that if you died you would know them all in a
moment."

"I know not," said Oglethorpe, "whether separate
spirits regard our little concerns. If they do, it is as men
regard the follies of their childhood, or I my late pas-
sionateness."

A STRANGE MTSSTONARY

107

Oglethorpe coiild quarrel with his chaplains furiously,
but he loved them; and, man}' years afterwards, when
he himself was a white-haired and venerable figure — the
finest figure, as Hannah More declares, she ever knew,
and one which "perfectly realised her ideal of Nestor" —
it is on record that, meeting John Wesley unexpectedly,
he ran to him and kissed him with the simplicity and
affection of a child.

Charles Wesley, with his comrade, Ingham, returned to
England in July, 1736, but John Wesley clung resolutely
to his post. The puzzle is that his High Church temper
was so little influenced by the admiration he felt for
Moravian teaching, and the type of piety it produced.
The Moravians of Savannah taught him exactly what
Peter Bohler taught him afterwards in Loudon, but the
teaching at the moment left his life unaflfected. Wesley's
own explanation is, "I understand it not: I was too
learned and too wise, so that it seemed foolishness unto
me; and I continued preaching, and following after, and
trusting in that righteousness whereby no flesh can be
justified."

The truth is that Peter Bohler himself, had he met
Wesley in Savannah, would have taught him in vaiu.
The stubborn Sacramentarian and High Churchman had
to be scourged, by the sharp discipline of failure, out of
that subtlest and deadliest form of pride, the pride that
imagines that the secret of salvation lies, or can lie,
within the circle of purely human effort. Wesley later
describes Peter Bohler as "one whom God prepared for
me." But God, in the toilsome and humiliating experi-
ences of Georgia, was preparing Wesley for Peter Bohler.

A love episode, as ill-managed and as barren as were
all Wesley's excursions into the realm of sentiment,
l)rought his stay in Georgia to a hasty and inglorious
end. Wesley, from his youth, both by temperament and
by the manner of his training, was peculiarly susceptible
— though in no ignoble fashion — to feminine influence.
In the Epworth Rectory feminine influences — from the
wise, serene, strong-brained mother, to the circle of bright-
witted sisters — were supreme ; and Wesley, at every stage
of his life, sought — what had been the joy of his early
years — the companionship of intelligent women. But
where the sex was concerned, he suffered a curious par-

108

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

alysis of his native shrewdness, and he managed his love
affairs worse than perhaps any other great man known to
history.

The chief magistrate of Savannah, Mr. Causton, was
a man of doubtful antecedents and violent temper. His
niece, Miss Hopkey, a clever and attractive girl, fell in
love with Wesley — or at least was anxious that the little,
handsome, and clever Fellow of Lincoln College should
fall in love with her, and she plainly endeavoured, by
all the innocent arts known to the sex, to hasten that
desirable consummation. She became pensively religious
to suit Wesley's mood ; attended his services with pious
diligence; dressed to suit his austere taste; nursed him
through a sickness; took his advice on the interesting
question of what she should eat for supper, and how soon
she should go to bed.

Wesley accepted all this with exquisite simplicity, as
signs of an angelic character. He was visibly and frankly
— if somewhat pedantically — in love with her. In the
beginning of December he records in his Journal, "1
advised Miss Sophie to sup earlier and not immediately
before going to bed. She did so, and on this little cir-
cumstance depend what an inconceivable train of conse-
quences! Not only all the colour of remaining life for
her, but perhaps my happiness too."

His companion, Delamotte, who contemplated Miss
Hopkey through no nimbus of sentiment, and who had
not been at Oxford for nothing, bluntly warned Wesley,
and asked him if it was his intention to marry her.
Wesley — at this stage of his life a chill-blooded ecclesi-
astic, even when in love — found he could not answer
that inconveniently direct query. He determined to
submit the question of whether he ought to marry Miss
Hopkey to the Moravian Bishop — a .step which, to the
feminine mind at least, will prove decisively that he was
not in love with that young lady at all. The matter
was finally referred, for decision, to the elders of the
Moravian Church — strange assessors in the court of the
affections! They solemnly considered the case. Wesley
was called in to learn his fate.

"Will you abide by our decision?" Mtschman asked
him.

After some hesitation, Wesley replied, "I will."

A STRANGE MISSIONARY 109

"Then," said the Moravian, "we advise you to proceed
no further in the matter."

"The will of the Lord be done," answered Wesley.

It is a matter debated still with great keenness, whether
or not Wesley had actually offered himself in marriage
to Miss Hopkey. Moore, his biographer, says that Wesley
told him expressly, "he never actually proposed mar-
riage." On the other hand, the young lady herself, in the
proceedings against Wesley at the close of his stay in
Savannah, deposed under oath that "Mr. Wesley had
many times proposed marriage to her, all of which pro-
posals she had rejected." But no one who reads the
whole story can doubt that Wesley's real offence was that
he failed to propose to Miss Hopkey, or, at least, to do it
with sufficient defiuiteness.

That quick-witted young lady learned that her lover
was submitting the direction of his affections to a court
of venerable Moravian elders; she guessed the decision
would be against her and promptly betook herself to
another lover. On March 4 the Moravian elders gave
their decision ; on March 8, Wesley ruefully records in his
Journal, "Miss Sophie engaged herself to Mr. Williamson,
a person not remarkable for handsomeness, neither for
genteelness, neither for wit, nor knowledge, nor sense, and
least of all for religion." And on Saturday, March 12,
four days after, they were married. An expeditious
young lady, this !

Wesley found in the lesson of the day for the suc-
ceeding Sunday the words, "Son of man, behold 1 take
from thee the desire of thine eyes at a stroke"; and, he
adds, "I was pierced through as with a sword." Twelve
years afterwards he was to write that same verse once
more in his Journal, as the record of a yet more bitter
defeat of his affections.^

'Wesley, at this period even more than in later years, had the habit
of recording with an almost incredible diligence, and for the purpose
of self-scrutiny, every act of his life, and every play of his feelings.
His Georgian journals, which still exist, are examples of the tireless
industry with which he translated himself into written terms. In the
Journal there is not only a page for every day, but a separate space
for every hour of the day. He computed and registered the use of his
time with the fidelity with which a careful business man writes down
the investments of his capital. And an incident, such as the affair
with Miss Hopkey, which moved him so deeply, would naturally be
recorded with special care. This makes credible the somewhat doubt-
ful authenticity of another version of this incident, apparently in

110

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Wesley naturally contemplated Miss Hopkey, when she
became Mrs. Williamson, with new and changed eyes, and
that ingenious young lady probably felt no longer under
any obligations to consult in dress or conduct the tastes
of her former, and quite too leisurely, lover. This was To
Wesley only another painful surprise. "God," he gravely
records in his Journal, "has shown me yet more of the
greatness of my deliverance by opening to me a new and
unexpected scene of Miss Sophie's dissimulation." Later,
Wesley felt called upon to mention to her "some things
in her conduct which he thought reprehensible," and was
much astonished — simple man ! — at finding "Miss Sophie"
resenting with shrill vehemence his rebukes. Her hus-
band was kindled by his wife's anger, and forbade her 1o
speak to Wesley, or to attend his services; but his self-
willed bride seems to have disobeyed him. Wesley now
contemplated debarring Mrs. Williamson from the Lord's
Supper, and he asked Mr. Causton, the magistrate, "Sir,
what if I should think it the duty of my oflBce to repel
one of your family from the Holy Communion?"

"If you repel me or my wife," answered Mr. Causton,

Wesley's own handwriting, known to exist. Miss Hopkey, according
to this story, was only eighteen years of age ; her affections had become
entangled with some unworthy object, and her guardians had broken
off all intercourse between the two. The girl was in much grief, and
Wesley, as a clergyman, was asked to pay special attention to her.
This drew the two into close relationship, and Wesley presently dis-
covered that he had not only a high esteem for Miss Hopkey, but a
tender affection for her, an affection which he persuaded himself was
that for a sister. He, on his part, was convinced that a celibate life
was better for all men, and for himself was almost imperative ; while
she, with the facile resolve of a grieved maiden, had also vowed to live
for ever single. Intercourse betwixt the two was at its most perilous
stage, when they took a trip by boat from Frederica to Savannah.
Wesley's tenderness at this period is confessed, but still, after his
pedantic fashion, he tests his emotions by extracts from the Greek
Fathers. Did he actually propose to Miss Hopkey is a question the
narrative after all leaves unsettled. He tells how he sat by the camp
fire and asked her whether she was engaged to the person for whom
she was supposed to be mourning. She replied, "I am promised to
that young man or none," and straightway took refuge in tears.
"Miss Sophie," said Wesley, "I should count myself happy if I could
spend my life with you." These sudden words, he adds, "were not
spoken of design" ; the young lady replied with more tears, but the
simple-minded fellow of Lincoln College was persuaded that if even
he broke through his resolve for a single life Miss Hopkey would be
heroically firm to her pledge of celibacy. This belief kept Wesley
silent ; yet, looking back on this incident, he calls it "a very narrow
escape." "I wonder to this hour," he says, "I did not say, 'Miss
Sophie, will you marry me?' " Plainly he believed that in express
terms he never did speak the decisive words.

A iKK/r fr'.i" -li'hn 1! V.>/. y/'v Jnnrn.il in G,;,r,jin,
re Mist Uopkey

A STRANGE MISSIONARY

111

"I shall require a legal reason ; but I shall trouble myself
about none else."

In those days, when the Lord's Supper was, in Cowper's
phrase, a "pick-lock of oflBce" for men, and a sign of
social respectability for women, to be debarred from the
table of the Lord was a serious injury. On August 7 —
five months after her marriage — Wesley refused to allow
Mrs. Williamson to join the Lord's Supper. On the very
next day a warrant was issued for the api)rehension of
"John Wesley, clerk, to answer the complaint of William
Williamson for defaming his wife, and refusing to ad-
minister to her the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in a
public congregation without cause." The enraged hus-
band assessed his damages at £1000.

Wesley was arrested, but discharged on pledge to ap-
pear at the next session of the court. He was asked to
put in writing his reasons for refusing to admit Mrs.
Williamson to the Lord's Supper ; he wrote to the lady :
"If you offer yourself to the Lord's table on Sunday, I
will advertise you, as I have done more than once
wherein you have done wrong, and when you have openly
declared that you have truly repented, I will administer
to you the mysteries of God." But Mrs. Williamson
would not formally "notify the curate of her intention to
present herself at the communion" ; till she did so Wesley
would not "advertise her wherein she had done wrong" ;
and so the sad nature of Mrs. Williamson's offence re-
mains to this day unknown.

Meanwhile, a grand jury of forty-four persons — about
one-fifth of the adult male population of the town — con-
sidered the case. There were twelve charges against
Wesley, ranging from one of "inverting the order and
method of the liturgy," to "searching into and meddling
with affairs of private families." A majority of the grand
jury found ten of the.se charges proved ; a minority of
twelve acquitted Wesley, and declared that the charges
were "an artifice of Mr. Causton's, designed to blacken
Mr. Wesley's character." We.sley, when called upon to
plead, took the ground that nine of the ten charges were
of an ecclesiastical nature, as to which the court had no
jurisdiction. The tenth, that of speaking and writing
to Mrs. Williamson, was of a secular character, and he
demanded to be heard upon it at once.

112

WESLEY AND HIS CENTUKY

His enemies, however, were in no haste to bring the
issne to a trial. They wished to use the charges as a
device for driving Wesley from the colony. The military
chaplain at Frederica was appointed to conduct religious
services in Savannah, and Wesley's oflBce was thus prac-
tically taken from him.

The weeks crept on ; Wesley found that he could neither
secure a trial nor do his work as chaplain, and he deter-
mined to sail for England. He posted up a paper in the
great square, with the announcement, "Whereas John
AVesley designs shortly to set out for England," &c. He
was notified that he must not leave the settlement till he
had answered the charges against him. Wesley answered
that he had already attended seven sessions of the court
for that purpose, and had been refused the opportunity of
jjleading. He refused to sign any bond pledging himself
to appear before the court, and an order was published
requiring all loyal persons to prevent him leaving the
settlement. He was, in substance, a prisoner at large.
Wesley's enemies, it is clear, wished not only to drive
him from the settlement, but to make his departure wear
the look of a flight from justice.

Wesley conducted evening prayers that day ; and then,
he says, "about 8 o'clock, the tide then serving, I shook
off the dust from my feet and left Georgia, after having
preached the Gospel there not as I ought, but as I was
able, one year and nearly nine months." A troublesome
journey, partly by boat, and partly on foot, brought Wes-
ley and his three companions to Charleston, and ten days
later, on December 22, he set sail for England. A
strangely troubled chapter in his life was closed.

CHAPTER VIT

REACHING THE GOAL

Wesley returned from America a visibly defeated man.
His ministry had failed ; his character was damaged ; his
future was dark. He was not exactly a fugitive from the
law, but his own flock had used the law to drive him from
their shores. He would land in England hojjelessly dis-
credited; and as he meditated during the long eventless
days of the return voyage, Wesley saw all this in clearest
vision. His career was marred, if not wrecked.

But Weslej^ was the last man in the world to dwell on
any injury to his reputation, or to his pocket, or to his
secular career. The tragedy of the situation, he felt, lay
in the fact that he was a spiritual failure. His religion,
with its passionate zeal, its heroic intensity, its unsparing
self-sacrifice, yet gave neither peace to his own heart nor
power to reach the hearts of others. This is the bitter
analysis of his own spiritual state at this moment : —

"Tuesday, January 24, 1738. — I have a fair summer religion.
I can talk well ; nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near :
but let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor
can I say, 'To die is gain!'

'I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread I shall perish on the shore!'

"I think, verily, if the Gospel be true, I am safe; for I not
only have given, and do give, all my goods to feed the poor; I
not only give my body to be burned, drowned, or whatever God
shall appoint for me; but I follow after charity (though not as I
ought, yet as I can), if haply I may attain it. I now believe the
Gospel is true. 'I show my faith by my works,' by staking my all
upon it. I would do so again and again a thousand times, if the
choice were still to make. Whoever sees me, sees I would be a
Christian. Therefore 'are my ways not like other men's ways.'
Therefore I have been, I am content to be, 'a byword, a proverb
of reproach.' But in a storm I think, 'What if the Gospel he not
truer "

This is a bitter record ; it makes plain the shadow under
which Wesley was living.
Wesley was a lonely man, too, on that sad voyage.
113

114

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Delamotte was left behind in America; Charles Wesley
and Ingham were already in England. Wesley had no
comi)auionship but his own bitter thoughts, and his mood
of depression is reflected in every line of his Journal. He
describes himself as being "sorrowful and very heavy,
though I could give no particular reason for it." He
notes in himself "a fearfulness and heaviness," which
almost continually weighed him down. There is a touch
of keenest pathos in the sentences he writes in his Journal.
"I went to America to convert the Indians, but, oh, who
shall convert me?" He proceeds to deliberately assess
himself, and it is with a severity of self-j\idgment little
less than cruel. His words must be quoted in full, with
the significant footnotes in brackets and in italics, which
Wesley himself appended in later years, and which repre-
sent his own wiser judgment on himself : —

"It is now two years and almost four months since I left my
native country, in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature
of Christianity; but what have I learned myself in the meantime?
Why (what I the least of all suspected), that I who went to
America to convert others was never myself converted to God.
[7 am not sure of this.] 'I am not mad,' though I thus speak;
but, 'I speak the words of truth and soberness'; if haply some of
those who still dream may awake, and see, that as I am, so are
they.

"Are they read in philosophy? So was I. In ancient or
modern tongues? So was I also. Are they versed in the science
of divinity? I, too, have studied it many years. Can they talk
fluently upon spiritual things? The very same could I do. Are
they plenteous in alms? Behold, I gave all my goods to feed the
poor. Do they give of their labour as well as of their substance?
I have laboured more abundantly than they all. Are they willing
to suffer for their brethren? I have thrown up my friends, repu-
tation, ease, country; I have put my life in my hand, wandering
into strange lands; I have given my body to be devoured by the
deep, parched up with heat, consumed by toil and weariness, or
whatsoever God should please to bring upon me. But does all
this (be it more or less, it matters not) make me acceptable to
God? Does all I ever did or can know, say, give, do, or suffer,
justify me in His sight? Yea, or the constant use of all the
means of grace (which, nevertheless, is meet, right, and our
bounden duty)? Or that I know nothing of myself; that I am
as touching outward moral righteousness, blameless? Or, to
come closer yet, the having a rational conviction of all the truths
of Christianity? Does all this give me a claim to the holy,
heavenly, divine character of a Christian? By no means. If the
oracles of God are true; if we are still to abide by 'the law and the
testimony,' all these things, though, when ennobled by faith in
Christ [J had even then the faith of a servant, though not that of

REACHING THE GOAL

115

a son], they are holy and just and good, yet without it are 'dung
and dross,' meet only to be purged away by 'the fire that never
shall be quenched.'

"This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth, that I
'am fallen short of the glory of God'; that my whole heart is
•altogether corrupt and abominable'; and, consequently, my whole
life; seeing it cannot be, that an 'evil tree' should 'bring forth
good fruit': that 'alienated' as I am from the life of God, I am
a 'child of wrath' [7 believe not], an heir of hell: that my own
works, my own sufferings, my own righteousness, are so far from
reconciling me to an offended God, so far from making any
atonement for the least of those sins, which 'are more in number
than the hairs of my head,' that the most specious of them need
an atonement themselves, or they cannot abide His righteous
judgment. . . .

"If it be said that I have faith (for many such things have I
heard, from many miserable comforters), I answer. So have the
devils — a sort of faith; but still they are strangers to the cove-
nant of promise. So the Apostles had even at Cana in Galilee,
when Jesus first 'manifested forth His glory'; even then they, in
a sort, 'believed on Him'; but they had not then 'the faith that
overcometh the world.' The faith I want is [the faith of a son],
'A sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of
Christ, my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the favour of
God.'

That, even allowing for the qualifying footnotes of a
later date, is a bit of very terrible self -description. Wes-
ley, it is clear, was in no mood to write soft things about
himself. Later, we may discuss whether the verdict Wes-
ley passes on himself in this mood of depressed feeling
was quite accurate; meanwhile, the mood itself is worth
noting. His pride is gone. The sense of defeat and fail-
ure is complete. He knows there is something in Chris-
tianity not yet attained. His mood is one of utter self-
abasement : —

"All my works, all my righteousness, my prayers, need an
atonement for themselves; so that my mouth is stopped. I have
nothing to plead. God is holy; I am unholy. God is a consum-
ing fire; I am altogether a sinner, meet to be consumed."

The Wesley who embarked for Georgia in 1735 and the
Wesley who returned to England in 1738 are thus wholly
different men. Wesley had put his theology once more,
as at Wroot, to the test of actual life, and it had failed.
He had not converted the Indians; he had only learne<l
that he was not converted himself. There must be some
fatal flaw in his creed or in his methods. The essential

'Journal, February 1, 1738.

116

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

secret of Christianity — its gift of peace to the conscience,
and of power over men — evaded him. Why had he failed?
What was it turned such high courage, such splendid
devotion, such unsparing self-denials, to mere failure?
Who reads the secret of Wesley's failure has got to the
very heart of Christianity,

This new mood had, of course, its gains. For one thing,
Wesley's theology, from this point, passes out of the
pendulum condition. He had already, as we have seen,
abandoned mysticism; he had seen its deadly nature.
Ritualism, too, had failed. It only bred strife. His own
austere legalism left the spirit unfed. This ascetic found
that a harried body did not ensure a soul at peace. And
from this point conscience and intellect in Wesley swung
definitely to the evangelical reading of Christianity.

All this was, visibly, a stage in a great spiritual proc-
ess. Wesley was being prepared for the touch of another
teacher, and for the entrance into his life of a new
experience.

As Wesley landed, the ship in which Whitefield was
about to sail for America lay at anchor in the Downs.
Wesley had looked forward to the inspiration of White-
field's comradeship; and he grudged sending so fine a
spirit to the thankless work he himself had abandoned at
Savannah. He promptly sent a note to Whitefield on
board his ship. "When I saw God by the wind which was
carrying you out brought me in," he wrote, "I asked coun-
sel of God. His answer you have enclosed."

The enclosure was a slip of paper with the sentence on
it, "Let him return to London." Wesley had settled the
question of whether Whitefield should go or stop by
sortilege, with this result. But Whitefield had a sortilege
of his own, and the sudden emergence in his memory of
the story of the prophet that turned back at the bidding
of another prophet, and was devoux'ed by a lion in con-
sequence— as told in the Book of Kings — decided him
to go on his voyage; and Wesley, at the most critical
moment of his life, was thus left without his great
comrade.

Whitefield was just then in the dawn of his amazing
popularity in England. He was little more than a lad,
yet crowds hung enchanted on the music of his lips. And
the contrast betwixt Wesley creeping back to England a

REACHTNG THE GOAL

117

spirit-broken and defeated man, and Wliitefield sailing
out at the same moment witli a nimbus of brilliant popu-
larity about bim, is little less than dramatic.

Wesley landed at Deal on the morning of February 1.
and immediately proceeded to read prayers and preach in
the house in which he lodged. Whatever was clouded in
his spiritual sky, the point of duty always shone with
luminous clearness. Whether his own spiritual condition
was happy or unhappy, he must try to mend the spiritual
condition of others. He lived in the spirit of the words
which he afterwards made part of the Covenant service
read every year in all the Churches he founded, "If I
die, I will die at Thv door. If I sink, I will sink in Thv
ship !"

He went .straight to London, where he had to give an
account of himself to the trustees of the settlement in
Georgia, and here he met his brother Charles, to whom
his arrival was an astonishment. His acquaintance with
the Moravians in Savannah naturally made him turn to
Moi"avians in Loudon, and, on Tuesday, February 7 —
"a day much to be remembered," as he says in his Journal
— he met at the house of a Dutch merchant Peter Bohler,
a man destined to profoundly influence his life.

Bohler had been educated at Jena L^uiversity, and had
joined the Moravians while jet a lad. He had been
ordained as a Moravian missionary by Count Zinzendorf,
and was on his way to Carolina when Wesley met him.
He was just then delivering addresses, through an inter-
preter, to little audiences in London, and some strange
spiritual influence accompanied his words.

Wesley and Bohler recognised each other, almost at
the moment they met, as kindred spirits. The Moravian
described Wesley to Count Zinzendorf as "a man of
good principles, who knew he did not properly believe on
the Saviour, and was willing to be taught." Of Charles
Wesley he says. "He is at present very much distressed
in his mind, but does not know how he shall begin to
be acquainted with the Saviour. Our mode of believing
in the Saviour seems so easy to Englishmen, that they
cannot reconcile themselves to it. If it were a little more
diflScult, they would much sooner find their way into it.
They take it for granted," said this shrewd but simple-
hearted Moravian, "that they believe already, and try to

118

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

prove their faith by their works, and thus so torment
themselves that they are at heart very miserable."

Wesley went with Bohler to Oxford and listened
eagerly to the teaching of his new friend. He guessed
dimly that here, at last, lay the secret which had evaded
him so long. And yet the simple speech of the Moravian
sounded, in Wesley's ears, like the accents of an unknown
tongue. "I understood him not," he said, "and least of
all when he said, 'Mi f rater, mi frater; excoquenda est
ista tua philosophia.' " What had Wesley's "philosophy"
done that it was necessary to jettison it !

But Wesley was teachable, and on March 4 he records
that he spent a day with Teter Bohler, "by whom, in the
hands of the great God, I was, on Sunday, the 5th, clearly
convinced of unbelief ; of the want of that faith whereby
alone we are saved." Later, Wesley says, "Bohler amazed
me more and more by the account he gave of fruits of
faith, the love, holiness, and happiness that he affirmed to
attend it." Wesley frankly accepted this teaching. True
faith must produce these fruits. But Wesley was first
and last a logician, and he asks himself, "How can I
preach to others who have not faith myself?" Bohler's
advice was direct and practical, "Preach faith till you
have it," he said, "and then because you have it you will
preach faith."

Coleridge burlesques this by saying that it amounts to
"Tell a lie long enough and often enough, and you'll be
sure to end by believing it." But then Coleridge fails
completely to understand the sense of Bohler's advice!
Wesley himself was in no mood to cavil. "On the very
next day, Monday, 6th," he records, "I began preaching
this new doctrine, though my soul started back from the
work. The first person to whom I offered salvation by
faith alone was a prisoner under sentence of death," and
Wesley confesses that he found the task, in this particu-
lar shape, the more difficult, "as I had been man}' years
a zealous asserter of the impossibility of a death-bed
repentance." The condemned man promptly confuted
Wesley's doubts by accepting the new doctrine, and, in
the divine strength bred of it, showing "a composed
cheerfulness" and "a serene peace," while he stood on the
very scaffold.

Wesley was convinced that Bohler's teaching as to

REACHING THE GOAL

119

faith and its fruits was Scriptural; nay, it was the doc-
trine of the Church of England itself. But a doubt yet
remained. How could the great spiritual process by
which a man passed from death unto life be an instanta-
neous work? Yet, on examination, Wesley found that al-
most every conversion recorded in the New Testament was
an instantaneous work. It might well be, however, that
what was common in the first century had become im-
possible in the eighteenth century. But, "on Sunday
the 22nd," records Wesley, "I was beat out of this retreat,
too, by the concurring evidence of several living wit-
nesses, who testified God had thus wrought in themselves,
giving them, in a moment, such a faith in the blood of His
Son as translated them out of darkness into light, out of
sin and fear into holiness and happiness. Here," writes
Wesley, "ended my disputing. I could now only cry out,
'Lord, help Thou my unbelief !' "

During all these days of stress and search, of doubt and
of yearning, Wesley's zeal in practical work never re-
laxed. It grew even more urgent. Whatever his own
spiritual fortunes, he must warn others of their perils
and of their duties. To every one — man or woman, rich or
poor, with whom he was for a moment in company — he
would speak some word for his Master. The passing
traveller on the road, the ostler who took the bridle of
his horse, the servant of the house, the chance guest at
the table — to each, in turn, Wesley uttered some brief,
solemn, unpreluded word of counsel and always with
strange effect.

At one inn, Wesley and his companion were served by
a gay young woman, who at first listened to them with
utter indifference. When they went away, however, "she
fixed her eyes, and neither moved nor said one word, but
appeared as much astonished as if she had seen one risen
from the dead." And there must have been something to
compel astonishment, and even to startle, in these sudden
and unconventional challenges of Wesley. His appear-
ance— the thin, clear, intense face, the level, steady eyes,
the dress of the clergyman, the brow of the scholar, the
accent of the gentleman — all these gave startling power
to the unprefaced and sudden appeal, that seemed to
break out of eternity, and to have something of the awe
of eternity about it.

120

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Charles Wesley had already found the spiritual de-
liverance he sought. He was just recovering from
pleurisy; and when the new-born joy broke into his soul,
Wesley records, "his bodily strength returned, also, from
that hour." Colel'idge regards this as an inversion of
cause and effect. All that had happened, he thinks, was
that the pleurisy was gone ; and Charles Wesley mistook
the improvement of his health for a spiritual change. In
the misinterpreted physical ferment of that vanished
pleurisy, Charles Wesley, according to Coleridge, some-
how lived to the end of his days ! So simply can a great
philosopher explain away spiritual phenomena!

The conversion of Charles Wesley was marked by a
curious incident. He was lying ill, sad, and burdened;
trembling at the point of a faith he was yet imable to
exercise. A devout woman in the house, who assisted in
nursing him, was seized with the conviction that she
ought to speak some words of comfort to him. But he
was a clergyman, and she onlj a servant. How could she
venture on such an impertinence?

She took Mr, Bray, in whose house Charles Wesley was
lying, aside, and with a burst of tears told him of the
impulse which pressed with overpowering energy upon
her, and asked how could she, a poor, weak, sinful crea-
ture, imdertake to guide a minister?

''Go, in the name of the Lord," said Mr. Bray; "speak
your words. Christ will work."

The pair knelt down and praj^ed together; but after
they had parted, the trembling woman knelt down by
herself, and prayed afresh. Then, walking with timid
feet to the door of the room where Charles Wesley was
lying, she said, softly, but clearly, "lu the name of Jesus
of Nazareth, arise! Thou shalt be healed of all thy
infirmities !"

Wesley, according to his own version, was compos-
ing himself to sleep when these words, coming from un-
seen lips, fell on his ears. "They struck me," he says,
to the heart. I never heard words uttered with like
solemnity. I sighed, and said within myself, 'Oh that
Christ would thus speak to me !' I lay musing and trem-
bling."

He made inquiries, and presently the poor maid said,
"It was I, a weak, sinful creature, that spoke. But the

REACHING THE GOAL

121

words were Christ's. He commanded me to say them,
and so constrained me that I could not forbear." And
those words, spoken by the lips of an ignorant woman,
and under that mysterious impulse, brought spiritual
deliverance to Charles Wesley !

Meanwhile Wesley was beginning to reflect how ill his
teachers had served him. He had sat at the feet of
k Kempis, of Jeremy Taylor, and of William Law. He
had been the most docile of scholars; he had followed
their counsels at all costs; and they had left him bank-
rupt! A Kempis and Taylor were beyond his reach, but
William Law still lived. He was the teacher, indeed, of
thousands; and Wesley turned upon him with a sort of
fierce challenge, kindled by the sense of wasted years, and
the memory of needless suflferings. For two years, he
wrote to Law, he had lived by his theology; he had taught
it to others. It had been to Wesley himself a hateful
yoke, and to those to whom Wesley preached an idle
sound. Wesley, by God's mercy, had found, at last, a
wiser teacher, who had taught him the true secret of
Christianity, "Believe, and thou shalt be saved! Believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ with all thy heart, and nothing
shall be impossible to thee; strip thyself naked of thine
own works and righteousness, and flee to Him."

In that teaching Wesley saw the promise of the fulfil-
ment of all his needs : —

" 'Now, sir,' he cries to Law, 'suffer me to ask. How will you
answer it to our common Lord that you never gave me this
advice? Why did I scarcely ever hear you name the name of
Christ; never so as to ground anything upon faith in His blood?
If you say you advised other things as preparatory to this, what
is this but laying a foundation below the foundation? Is not
Christ, then, the First as well as the Last? If you say you
advised them because you knew that I had faith already, verily
you knew nothing of me ; you discerned not my spirit at all.' "

Wesley goes on to say, "I beseech you, sir, by the mercies of
God, to consider deeply and impartially whether the true reason
of your never pressing this upon me was not this, that you never
had it yourself."

Never, perhaps, was a great teacher so suddenly ar-
raigned by his own pupil! Law, in reply, reminds Wes-
ley, that he had other teachers, whom he might, on the
same grounds, arraign. "Did you not above two years
ago," he says, "give a new translation of Thomas k

122

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Kempis? Will you call Thomas to account, aud to auswer
it to God as you did me for not teaching you that doc-
trine?"

But Law goes on to say he did teach Wesley exactly
what Bohler taught him. "You have had a great many
conversations with me, and I dare say that you never was
with me for half-an-hour without my being large upon
that very doctrine, which you make me totally silent and
ignorant of." Law was a controversialist as formidable
as Wesley himself, and he ended his letter by a very keen
thrust : —

"If you had only this faith till some weeks ago, let me advise
you not to be too hasty in believing, that because you have
changed your language or expressions, you have changed your
faith. The head can as easily amuse itself with a living and
justifying faith in the blood of Jesus, as with any other notion;
and the heart, which you suppose to be a place of security, as
being the seat of self-love, is more deceitful than the head."

It is easy to understand Wesley's sudden fierceness with
Law, and yet to sympathise with Law's defence. Law
had completely failed ; his teaching cost Wesley years of
wasted suffering; yet the fault did not lie wholly in the
teacher. It is true that in Law's books, and, no doubt, in
his personal talks with Wesley, could be found frequent
and full expositions of the evangelical way of salvation.
But the emphasis lay elsewhere. There was no true per-
spective in Law's theology. Nor was Wesley, in that
softened mood, bred of the consciousness of utter failure,
in which Bohler found him, and which explains why
Bohler's teaching proved so instantly effective. The
secret of Law's failure as a teacher, in a word, lies largely
in the spiritual condition of his pupil.

But Wesley was standing on the verge of a new life.
Wednesday, May 24, 1738, was for him the great day
of deliverance, and he has described it in words that
have become historic. For days he had been seeking
peace, as Bohler had taught him, "(1) by absolutely re-
nouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my
own works or righteousness, on which I had really
grounded my hope of salvation, though I knew it not from
my youth up : (2) by adding to the constant use of all the
other means of grace continued prayer for this very thing
— justifying, saving faith; a fuller reliance on the blood

REACHING THE GOAL

123

of Christ shed for me; a trust in Him as my sole justi-
fication, sanctification, and redemption." There still,
however, lay on him "a strange Indifference, dulness, and
coldness, and a constant sense of failure." But the dawn
of a new and great experience was near.

All through the memorable day of his conversion it is
curious to note how Wesley was eagerly listening as if for
some voice calling to him out of the eternal world. He
seemed to catch, everywhere, prophetic echoes of some
coming message. The very air was full of whispers and
omens. When he opened his New Testament at five
o'clock in the morning, he tells how his eyes fell on the
words, "There are given unto us exceeding great and
precious promises that we should be partakers of the
divine nature." Just before he left his room Wesley
opened the book again, and, as with the force of a personal
message, there gleamed on him from the open page the
sentence, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God."
These strange whispers met him and pursued him every-
where. In the anthem in St. Paul's he heard trans-
lated into stormy music the cry of his own heart, "Out
of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord. Lord,
hear my voice; let Thine ears consider well the voice of
my complaint." Then, through the chant of the sweet-
voiced choir, the thunder of the organ, ran, like a thread
of still diviner music, a personal message, a voice whisper-
ing to him in reply : "O Israel, tnist in the Lord, for with
the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous re-
demption, and He shall redeem Israel from all his sins !"
"In the evening," he says, "I went very unwillingly to
the society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading
Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Eomans," and
across more than two centuries the great German spoke
to the great Englishman.

What followed must be told in Wesley's own words.

"About a quarter before nine, wbile he was describing the
change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ,
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ,
Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that
He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the
law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for
those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me
and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I
now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy

124

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

suggested, 'This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?' Then
was I taught that peace and victory over sin are essential to
faith in the Captain of our salvation; but that, as to the trans-
ports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in
those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, some-
times withholdeth, them according to the counsels of His own
will.'"

The fluctuations in Wesley's gladness during those first
moments of deliverance really prove Wesley's kinship
with all believing hearts in every age. Human nature is
hardly capable of one sustained, unshadowed, perpetual
joy. But Southey fastens on this very feature in Wesley's
experience and extracts from it an argument against its
genuineness. "Here," he says, "is a plain contradiction
in terms; an assurance which did not assure him." Cole-
ridge, as happens with amusing frequency, disagrees with
both Southey and Wesley.

" 'This assurance,' he says, 'amounted to little more than a
strong pulse or throb of sensibility, accompanying the vehement
volition of acquiescence, an ardent desire to find the position true
and a concurring determination to receive it as truth. That the
change took place in a society of persons all highly excited aids
and confirms me in this explanation.' "

Coleridge, it will be seen, invents his facts. There was
no "excitement" in the little company in which a single
voice was audible, reading nothing more exciting than
a bit of exposition translated from the German. But
though Coleridge distrusts Wesley he contradicts Southey,
"Surely," he says, "it is rendering the word 'assurance'
too absolutely to aflSrm its incompatibility with any in-
trusive suggestion of the memory or the fancy." There
is a flash of real insight in those words !

Charles Wesley was not present in that little room at
Aldersgate at the supreme moment of his brother's life.
He was lying at home sick, and was engaged in prayer.
The first impulse of John Wesley and those about him
was to carry the news to the younger brother. "Towards
ten," writes Charles Wesley, "my brother was brought in
triumph by a troop of our friends, and declared, *I be-
lieve.' We sang a hymn with great joy and parted with
prayer." The hymn is supposed to be that beginning with
the verse: —

'Journal, May 24, 1738.

REACHING THE GOAL

125

"Where shall my wondering soul begin:

How shall I all to heaven aspire?
A slave redeemed from death and sin,

A brand plucked from eternal fire.
How shall I equal triumphs raise.
Or sing my great Deliverer's praise?"

Charles Wesley had just composed that fine hymn iu
the glow of his own conversion, and it was published a
few months later. Its music runs through the whole
history of Methodism ; the experience it reflects is re-
peated wherever a human soul with intelligent faith re-
ceives Christ.

It is interesting to note the historic relations of Wes-
ley's conversion. The two Reformations — of Germany
and of England — touch here. They touched, indeed, at an
earlier stage. Who traces the great spiritual movement
under Luther, which transfigured Germany and created
Protestantism, must go back beyond Luther to another
Lincolnshire parsonage — to Lutterworth, where John
Wycliffe translated the Bible into English, and was the
centre of the spiritual movement which during the four-
teenth century swept over England. The English re-
former influenced Germany almost as much as he influ-
enced his native land. John Huss himself made no secret
of the debt he owed to Wyclift'e, and the Council of Con-
stance, which burnt the body of John Huss, directed
Wycliffe's bones to be also burnt. Englishman and
Bohemian, in its judgment, represented twin forces, and
must be smitten with like penalties. The Moravian
Brethren come, through the stormy generations which
followed, by direct spiritual descent from Huss; Luther
was his spiritual heir. And so, after more than three
hundred years, Wycliffe's teaching came back to England
in Bohler; it spoke to Wesley from Luther's lips in the
little gathering in Aldersgate Street. Great debts are, in
this way, sometimes greatly paid.

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT HAD HAPPENED

The question may now be asked, What was it really
happened in that little room in Aldersgate Street on the
night of May 24, 1738? Something did happen: some-
thing memorable, something enduring. It changed
Wesley's life. It lifted him, at a breath, out of doubt
into certainty. It transfigured weakness into power.
Nay, it did something more; it changed the course of
history! A purely secular witness like Lecky declares
the movement which had its starting-point in that little
room on that night is historically of greater importance
than all the splendid victories by land or sea won under
Pitt. But for it there would be no Methodist Church
under any sky, and English-speaking Protestantism it-
self, if it still survived — or if it had not found another
Wesley — would be bankrupt of spiritual force.

Now, science requires for such an effect an adequate
cause; and some of the causes assigned, though they
bear the authority of famous names, are of quite humor-
ous inadequacy. Coleridge, as we have seen, discovers in
Charles Wesley's conversion nothing more than a re-
covery from pleurisy. It represented a fall of tempera-
ture in his blood, not the entrance of new spiritual forces
into his character. Southey is disposed in the same way
to resolve Wesley's spiritual experiences into physical
terms. He traces the emotions of that great hour on the
night of May 24 to the state of his pulse or of his stomach.
But to make John Wesley's stomach, and not his soul,
the scene of such wonderful phenomena, the source whence
radiate such far-reaching forces, can only be regarded as
one of the most surprising feats of unconscious humour
on record. The "explanations" of Coleridge and Southey
explain nothing; they simply reflect that obstinate re-
luctant to admit the existence and validity of spiritual
forces which is the last disguise of unbelief.

Wesley's own explanation is that in that little meeting,
126

WHAT HAD HAPPENED

127

and at that hour so precisely fixed, he was "converted."
And he probably understood what happened a little better
than his as yet unborn critics.

But to this view many persons object that Wesley was
really converted long before that night. If John Wesley
was not a Christian when toiling on his spiritual tread-
mill at Oxford and in Georgia, then, cries Canon Overton,
"God help all those who profess and call themselves Chris-
tians!" And multitudes, no doubt, will join in emphatic
— and, indeed, in somewhat alarmed — agreement with
Canon Overton. Let that great expei'ience be recalled
which came to Wesley after reading Bishop Taylor's
"Holy Living." "Instantly," he says, "I resolved to dedi-
cate all my life to God, all my thoughts and words and
actions, being thoroughly convinced that there was no
medium, but that every part of my life, not some part
only, must either be a sacrifice to God or myself, that is
the devil." Was not that the true turning-point of Wes-
ley's life?

Jeremy Taylor's teaching certainly acted as a pre-
cipitating shock to all the longings and convictions of
Wesley's spiritual nature. They crystallised at its touch
into an unshakable purpose. He did at that moment
surrender to the great forces and accept the great duties
of religion. And he did this with a decision and com-
pleteness rare in human experience. "Instantly," he
says, "I resolved !" To Wesley, no half measures, no easy
compromises, were at any time possible. Even though
his reading of truth was sadly mistaken, his loyalty to
it was of heroic fibre. Religion for him was no pleasant
anodyne, a premium paid to secure eternal safety, a
decorous fringe to the outer garment of his life. It was
the chief business of existence. There was in Wesley's
religion, too, at every stage, the essential note of passion.
He would follow the truth as he saw it at all risks and
through all worlds.

Was this not a conversion? Did it not bring him into
the household of God's children? Here was certainly
that root of all religion, the submitted will. Why, fol-
lowing this rhythm betwixt the human soul and God, did
there not come, in Wesley's case, that eternal music of
peace, hushing all discords, which is its product? If he
had died then, would he not have been saved?

128 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

As to this Wesley himself doubted. He offers con-
flicting judgments. "I, who went to America to convert
others," he says, "was never myself converted to God."
But, later, with a wise doubt, he writes: "1 am not sure
of this." Later still, and with clearer insight, he wrote
of himself as having at that time "the faith of a servant,
not of a son."

The truth is, Wesley simply did not understand at that
stage the Christianity in which he had been nurtured
and of which he was a teacher. He had sat at the feet of
many instructors and had read many books. He had been
a sacerdotalist, an ascetic, a mystic, a legalist, all in turns
— nay, all together! And yet, through all these stages,
he had persistently misread the true order of the spirit-
ual world. He believed that a changed life was not the
fruit of forgiveness, but its cause. Good works, he held,
came before forgiveness and constituted the title to it;
they did not come after it and represent its effects. He
had, in every mood of his soul, that is, missed the great
secret of Christianity, lying so near, and level to the
intelligence of a child; the secret of a personal salvation,
the free gift of God's infinite love through Christ; a salva-
tion received through Christ and by faith ; a salvation
attested by the Spirit of God and verified in the conscious-
ness.

Wesley himself supplies the evidence that up to this
time he had missed this conception of religion. We have
his spiritual chronology drawn out of by his own hand,
in a series of self-judgments, all dated and catalogued,
and making a complete map of his religious experience.^
He gives this by way of preface to his own account of
what took place at the room in Aldersgate Street, and
he explains what, at each successive stage, had been the
foundation of his religion. We may qiiote these, prefixing
to each mood the stage in Wesley's life to which it be-
longed : —

The Child. — "I was carefully taught that I could only be saved
by universal obedience; by keeping all the commandments of
God; in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed. And
those instructions, so far as they respect outward duties and sins,
I gladly received and often thought of. But all that was said to
me of inward obedience, or holiness, I neither understood nor

'Journal, May 24, 1738.

WHAT HAD HAPPENED

129

remembered. So that I was indeed as ignorant of the true mean-
ing of the law as I was of the Gospel of Christ.

The Schoolboy. — "The next six or seven years were spent at
school; where, outward restraints being removed, I was much
more negligent than before. . . . However, I still read the Scrip-
tures, and said my prayers morning and evening. And what I
now hoped to be saved by vjas: (1) Not being so bad as other
people; (2) having still a kindness for religion; (3) reading the
Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers.

The University Student. — "Being removed to the university
for five years, I still said my prayers both in public and pri-
vate. ... I cannot well tell what I hoped to be saved by now,
when I was continually sinning against that little light I had,
unless by those transient fits of what many divines taught me to
call repentance.

Holy Ordeus. — "I began to alter the whole form of my conver-
sation. ... I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retire-
ment. I communicated every week. I watched against all sin,
whether in word or deed. I began to aim at and pray for inward
holiness. So that now doing so much, and living so good a life,
I doubted not but I uas a good Christian.

The DiscrPLixE of William Law. — "Meeting now with Mr.
Law's 'Christian Perfection' and 'Serious Call,' although I was
much offended at many parts of both, yet they convinced me more
than ever of the exceeding height, breadth, and depth of the law
of God. ... I cried to God for help and resolved not to prolong
the time of obeying Him as I had never done before. And by my
continued endeavour to keep His whole law, inicard and outward,
to the utmost of my poxcer, I was persuaded that I should be
accepted of Him, and thought I ^cas even then in a state of salva-
tion.

The "Holy Cll^b." — "In 1730 I began visiting the prisons,
assisting the poor and sick and doing what other good I could
by my presence or my little fortune to the bodies and souls of all
men. To this end I deprived myself of all superfluities and
many that are called the necessaries of life. ... I carefully used,
both in public and private, all the means of grace at all oppor-
tunities. I omitted no occasion for doing good. I for that reason
suffered evil. And all this I knew to be nothing unless as it was
directed towards inward holiness. Accordingly this, the image of
God, was what I aimed at in all, by doing His will and not my
own. Yet when, after continuing for some years in this course, I
apprehended myself to be near death, I could not find that all this
gave me any assurance of acceptance with God. At this I was not
a little surprised, not imagining I had been all this time building
on the sand nor considering that 'other foundation can no man
lay than that which, is laid' by Ood, 'even Christ Jesus.'

The Mystic. — "Soon after a contemplative man convinced me
yet more than I was before convinced that outward works are
nothing, being alone ; and in several conversations instructed how
to pursue inward holiness or a union of the soul with God. But
even of his instructions (though I then received them as the
words of God) I cannot but now observe: (1) That he spoke so
incautiously against trusting in outward works that he discour-

130

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

aged me from doing them at all; (2) that he recommended
mental prayer and the like exercises as the most effectual means
of purifying the soul and uniting it with God. Now these were,
in truth, as much my own works as visiting the sick or clothing
the naked; and the union with Ood, thus pursued, was as really
my otvn righteousr^ess as any I had before pursued under another
name.

The Missionary. — "In this refined way of trusting to my own
works and my own righteousness I dragged on heavily, finding
no comfort or help therein till the time of my leaving England.
. . . All the time I was at Savannah I was thus beating the air.
Being ignorant of the righteousness of Christ, which, by a living
faith in Him, bringeth salvation to 'every one that believeth,' I
sought to establish my own righteousness, and so laboured in the
fire all my days. . . . Before I had willingly served sin; now it
was unwillingly, but still I served it. I fell and rose and fell
again. . . . During this whole struggle between nature and grace,
which had now continued above ten years, I had many remark-
able returns to prayer, especially when I was in trouble. I had
many sensible comforts. . . . But I was still 'under the law,' not
'under grace.'

The Return to England. — "On my return to England, January
1738, being in imminent danger of death and very uneasy on that
account, I was strongly convinced that the cause of that uneasi-
ness was unbelief, and that the gaining of a true, living faith
was the 'one thing needful' for me. But still I fixed not this faith
on its right object; I meant only faith in Ood, not faith in ot^
through Christ. I knew not that I was wholly void of this faith,
but only thought I had enough of it."

That long self-analysis is clear, sustained, and final.
As a matter of intellectual knowledge, Wesley, it is need-
less to say, was familiar with the true sense of Chris-
tianity. His Moravian teacher's theology was, and is, in
the Thirty-nine Articles. But for Wesley, as for his
generation, these had become a set of pale and colourless
syllables out of which all reality had drained. And his
experience proves afresh that a creed may survive as a bit
of literature; it may be chanted in hymns, and woven
into prayers and solemnly taught as a theology, and yet
be exhausted of all life. The great phrases may be de-
polarised, not to say dead.

And this is a warning for all time. Wesley's Church
holds to-day, and holds tenaciously, the doctrines which,
up to this stage, Wesley himself had missed. These,
indeed, are for us weighted by the history they have
shaped. They are authenticated by the literature and the
hymnology they have inspired. They have so completely
passed out of controversy that they have become plati-

WHAT HAD HAPPENED

131

tudes. The peril is they may become unverified formulae
again.

Wesley declares that he owed his conversion to the
teaching of Peter Bohler. What, then, exactly was that
teaching? Bohler did unconsciously the supreme work
of his life during those few days in London and at Oxford
when he was conversing with Wesley. The humble-
minded Moravian, wise only in spiritual science, touches
Wesley — and then vanishes! But he helped to change
the religious history of England, little as he himself
dreamed of it.

And what he taught Wesley is suflSciently clear. In
substance, it was three things, things which lie in the
very alphabet of Christianity, but which, somehow, the
teachings of a godly home, of a great University, of an
ancient Church, and of famous books had not taught
Wesley. These are that salvation is through Christ's
atonement alone and not through our own works; that
its sole condition is faith; and that it is attested to the
spiritual consciousness by the Holy Spirit. These truths
to-day are platitudes ; to Wesley they were, at this stage
of his life, discoveries.

Wesley's mistake was, of course, fatal. It is perfectly
clear that through all the stages of his experience up to
this point self, in many disguises, had taken the place of
Christ. Wesley always puts the emphasis on himself, on
his own motives, acts, self-denials, prayers, aspirations,
and not on his Saviour. And woe to the soul that shifts
the centre of its faith in this fashion and finds that centre,
not in the redemming offices, the great and radiant figure
of the living Christ, but in the imperfect and broken
fragment of its own acts and merits! Not even what
the Holy Ghost does in us can at any stage take, as the
reason of our confidence before God, the place of what
Christ has done for us.

But now, as a result of Bohler's teaching, there broke
on Wesley's eyes a true vision of the redeeming work and
offices of Jesus Christ. Up to this point he had taken
part of those offices on himself — a mistake common in all
ages, repeated in myriads of lives, and always mo.st
deadly. In the after years of his life his favourite text
was that great passage which declares that Christ is
"made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctifica-

132 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

tion, and redemption." But in the sad years which went
before that memorable hour in Aldersgate Street Wesley
never had conceived that Christ is made, in some deep and
mysterious sense, righteousness to the believing soul. As
he himself puts it : "I had faith, but 1 fixed not this faith
on its right object. I meant only faith in God, not faith
in and through Christ."

Now not even God's mercy — if that mercy could come
to us in some other shape than that presented in the
mystery of Christ and His redemption — would satisfy
llie human conscience. Wesley had, as few men ever had,
the sense of sin and its hatefulness : a vision of the divine
law — holy, stainless, august — dishonoured by sin. And
the sense of the profound and eternal discord betwixt
his sinful consciousness and the stainless righteousness of
God forbade all peace. To be barely forgiven, spared by
divine mercy, was for Wesley not enough, as it cannot be
enough for any human soul. There must be some abiding
and fundamental reconciliation with righteousness. Here
were two eternal contradictories, mercy and justice. And
would it be enough to walk through all the paths of
eternity spared of God's mercy, but still condemned by
His justice?

What the human soul needs is some meeting-point in
its own consciousness betwixt those two mighty opposites.
And Wesley learned from Bohler the great secret of
Christianity — that in Christ is found that sublime meet-
ing-point. God's gift to the believing soul is not merely
pardon, but justification. Christ becomes for that soul
"the Lord our righteousness." So the vision which trans-
figured Wesley's life was that of the complete and all-
suflBcient ofBces of Christ in redemption — offices of a
grace high beyond our very hopes, and deep beyond our
comprehension.

But Bohler taught him, too, the secret of personal and
saving faith. Had not Wesley faith before May 24, 1738?
Yes, and he himself has told us what kind of a faith it
was. It was, he says, "a speculative, notional, airy
shadow which lives in the head and not in the heart."
The homilies of his own Church, it is true, might have
taught Wesley a better definition of faith than this! It
is "a sure trust and confidence which a man hath in God
that by the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven and he

WHAT HAD HAPPENED

133

re reconciled to the favour of God." Wesley held this
defiuitiou of faith with perfect intellectual clearness; but
it was a mere unrealised abstraction.

Dr. Dale points out that this definition is itself a para-
dox. "If faith is the condition precedent to salvation,
how can it be a belief that we are saved already?" He
tries to solve the paradox by asking, "Is it not true that
God has already given us — believers and unbelievers alike
— eternal redemption in Christ?" Faith does not create
a new fact, but only accepts, and brings into the realms
of consciousness, a fact which exists already and inde-
pendently of it.

But that is teaching which easily runs into perilous
realms! It may be added that the paradox of faith lies
elsewhere. If it is "the gift of God," how can it be itself
the condition of other gifts? If faith is the gift of God,
the responsibility of its non-existence lies on God! How
can it be held for guilt in a man that he does not pos-
sess what can only come to him by the gift of God?

The truth, as far as it can be expressed in the terms of
human thought, is that faith represents the concurrence
of two wills, the Divine and the human. It is impossible
without the grace of God ; so that grace is an essential,
but ever-present, condition of its exercise. But even the
grace of God does not produce faith without the consent
of the human will. Wesley learned, but learned late and
slowly, that faith is not merely the struggle of the un-
aided soul to reach some act and mood of confidence. It
is the surrender of the soul to the helping grace of God ;
and only when that surrender is made is the soul up-
lifted by a divine impulse to the great heights of rejoicing
trust.

Wesley learned from Bohler, too, that the pardon re-
ceived from Christ is attested to the pardoned soul by
the direct witness of the Holy Spirit ; so it brings, as an
immediate fruit, a divine peace. This doctrine, of course,
was already embedded in Wesley's creed, and he held it
with perfect intellectual clearness. "If we dwell in
Christ and Christ in us," he had written to his mother
many years before, "certainly we must be conscious of
it. If we can never have any certainty that we are in a
state of salvation, good reason it is that every moment
should be spent, not in joy, but in fear and trembling.

134 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Then, undoubtedly, in this life we are of all men most
miserable."

And yet, unconsciously, Wesley had hitherto acted on
the theory that the only confidence as to his own spiritual
state a man can have, is that which he derives from the
contemplation of his own good works, or which he ex-
tracts, by a strictly logical process, from such good works.
He practically held his mother's belief, that any divinely
given consciousness of acceptance with God was a rare
experience and one confined to great saints. He tells
with much simplicity how Peter Bohler "now amazed me
more and more by the account he gave of the fruits of
faith, of the holiness and happiness that he affirmed to
attend it."

Yet, if any doctrine has on it writ large the authority
of Scripture and the assent of reason, it is the doctrine of
what is technically called "assurance." To deny it is to
say that our spiritual consciousness has no office, or that
it lies. As a result of forgiveness the most stupendous
change has passed over the soul. Its relation to God and
to His universe is transfigured. The forgiven sinner is
no longer an outcast, but a child. Can we persuade
ourselves that this amazing change does not, somehow,
report itself to the consciousness? Can it be God's
purpose that the child He has received into His family
again should continue to believe, what is now a lie, that
he is still an outcast? Though God smiles upon him
must he still think that He frowns? After sin's dark
substance is gone, can it be God's will that its shadow
should remain ; that the pardoned soul should carry the
burden of sin no longer reckoned against it, and feel the
imaginary stains of a guilt that has been washed away?
Is it credible that the only soul to whom God's face wear.s
a mask is the soul He has forgiven? And He wears a
mask to hide His forgiveness!

Surely this is a paradox of incredible quality! "I be-
lieve in the forgiveness of sins." That is a triumphant
credo. But who will rejoice in a forgiveness so furtive
that not even the soul to which it is granted knows
whether or not it has happened?

The denial of the witness of the Spirit involves the
most amazing contradiction. The soul before pardon
believes, what is true, that it is condemned; but after

WHAT HAD HAPPENED

135

the great act of pardon it believes, what is a lie, that it
is still condemned. And God keeps silence! He sends
no sign or whisper of comfort. It is pleasing to Him —
the God of truth ! — that His restored and forgiven child
should still live in the atmosphere of a falsehood! This
is an incredibility of transcendent scale! It is in direct
contradiction to God's Word : ^'The Spirit itself beareth
witness with our spirit that we are the children of God."

This divine witness does not belong to the realm of
miracle. It is not independent, as Wesley's experience
shows, of human conditions. It varies with the mood
of the human heart itself ; it wanes with waning faith or
grows clearer with deepening earnestness.

It is striking to notice the variations in Wesley's own
mood even after this great experience came to him. On
the very night of May 24, after he had left the little room
in Aldersgate Street, he says, "I was much buffeted with
temptations, but cried out and they fled away." They
returned again and again. Two days later he describes
himself as "in heaviness because of manifold tempta-
tions." Still later he finds "a want of joy," and traces
its cause to "want of timely prayer." In Wesley's ex-
perience, in brief, as in the experience of all Christians,
there are fluctuations of spiritual mood. But his experi-
ence now had one new feature. He had still to maintain
a daily flght with the forces of evil ; but he says, "herein
I found the difference between this and my former state.
Then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered. Now I
was always conqueror!" Here was struggle; but here,
too, was victory!

BOOK III
THE QUICKENING OF A NATION

CHAPTER I

ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

"Our light looks like the evening of the world f in those
pathetic and expressive words a "Proposal for a National
Reformation of Manners," published in 1694, described
the moral condition of England at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. A new century was dawning, but it
seemed as if in the spiritual sky of England the very
light of Christianity itself was being turned, by some
strange and evil force, into darkness. And it was upon
a moral landscape of this sort, dark with the shadows
as of some dreadful and swift-coming spiritual eclipse,
that Wesley was about to begin his work. It is impos-
sible to understand the scale and power of that work
without some preliminary attempt to realise the field
upon which it was done.

It would be easy to multiply testimonies showing how
exhausted of living religion, how black with every kind
of wickedness, was the England of that day. Its ideals
were gross; its sports were brutal; its public life was
corrupt; its vice was unashamed. Walpole, indeed, did
not invent political corruption, but he systematised it;
he erected it into a policy ; he made it shameless ! Cruelty
fermented in the pleasures of the crowd, foulness stained
the general speech. Judges swore on the bench ; the
chaplain cursed the sailors to make them attentive to
his sermons; the king swore incessantly, and at the top
of his voice. The Duchess of Marlborough, a story runs,
called on a lawyer without leaving her name. "I could
not make out who she was," said the clerk afterwards,
"but she swore so dreadfully she must be a lady of
quality."

Ferocious laws still lingered on the Statute-Book. Jus-
tice itself was cruel. As late as 1735 men were pressed
to death who refused to plead on a capital charge. The
law under which women were liable to be publicly flogged,
or to be burned at the stake, was not repealed till 1794.
139

140 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Temple Bar was adorned with a perpetually renewed
fresco of human heads. It was the age of the pillory
and of the whipping-post; of gin-hells, and of debtors'
j)risous, hideous enough to have darkened Dante's Inferno
with a new gloom. Drunkenness was the familiar and
unrebuked habit even of Ministers of the State. Adultery
was a sport, and the shame lay not on the false wife or
on the smiling gallant, but on the betrayed husband.

But it is unfair to judge any age by its vices. Human
wickedness blackens, more or less, every century. Who
wants to know how low England had sunk in the eigh-
teenth century must judge of it, not by its worst, but
by its best elements — by its religion, or what in it was
mistaken for religion ; and by the teachers of that reli-
gion. For there is no surer test of a religion than the
sort of teachers it produces.

It is hardly fair, perhaps, to go to a satirist in search
of a portrait; and Thackeray's portraits of eighteenth-
century divines are, no doubt, etched in acid. But they
are not untrue to life; their power, indeed, lies in their
truth. Of George II., the little, hot-tempered, pugnacious
monarch, with the morals and manners of a Jonathan
Wild in purple, Thackeray writes in sword-edged phrases.
And George II. had divines who matched his morals; who
even consented to treat his amazing morals as virtues!

The King was dead; and "it was a parson," says
Thackeray, "who came and wept over this grave, with
Walmoden (one of the dead King's many mistresses!
sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the poor old man
slumbering below. Here was one who had neither dig-
nity, learning, morals, nor wit — who tainted a great so-
ciety by a bad example; who in youth, manhood, old age,
was gross, low, and sensual ; and Mr. Porteus, afterwards
my Lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was not good
enough for him, and that his only place was heaven 1
Bravo, Mr. Porteus! The divine who wept these tears
over George the Second's memory wore George the Third's
lawn."

Thackeray draws a life-like picture of another divine
of that day — the type of a class — Selwyn's chaplain and
parasite, who has written down his own character in his
own letters. And Thackeray sets the dreadful portrait
in the perspective of history, when

ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 141

"all the foul pleasures and gambols in which he revelled were

played out; all the rouged faces into which he leered were worms
and skulls; all the fine gentlemen whose shoebuckles he kissed
lay in their coffins. This worthy clergyman takes care to tell us
that he does not believe in his religion, though, thank heaven,
he is not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on Mr. Selwyn's
errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that gentle-
man's proveditor. He waits upon the Duke of Queensberry —
•old Q' — and exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He
comes home 'after a hard day's christening,' as he says, and
writes to his patron before sitting down to whist and partridges
for supper. He revels in the thoughts of oxcheek and burgundy
— he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his master's shoes
with explosions of laughter, and cunning smack and gusto, and
likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best claret in old
Q.'s cellar. He has 'Rabelais' and 'Horace' at his greasy fingers'
ends. He is inexpressibly mean — curiously jolly; kindly and
good-natured in secret — a tender-hearted knave, not a venomous
lickspittle. Jesse says that at his chapel in Long Acre, 'he at-
tained a considerable popularity by the pleasing, manly, and
eloquent style of his delivery.' "

"Was infidelity endemic, and corruption in the air?"
asks Thackeray, as he contemplates such amazing divines.
The bad morals of George II., he goes on to say, bore
their fruit in the early years of George III., and the
result was a court and a society as dissolute as England
ever knew. Thackeray was a satirist, but these pictures
owe nothing to the gall in his inkpot. The satire, we
repeat, lies in their truth.

Now, a religion has always the sort of clergy it de-
serves ; and, taken as a class, the clergy of the eighteenth
centui-y were gross and unspiritual because they repre-
sented a faith exhausted of all spiritual force. If, in the
England of that day, we look behind all mere failures
in external morality to the spiritual causes which account
for them, these are clear. It was the age of a shallow
and confident Deism; a Deism exultant and militant,
served by wit and humour as well as defended by logic.
It had captured literature ; it coloured the general imagi-
nation; it stained the common speech; it sat enthroned
in the place of Christian faith.

Now Deism of any type is morally impotent; and
Deism of the eighteenth-century type is nothing but a
little patch of uncertain quicksand set in a black sea of
atheism. It does not deny God's existence, but it cancels
Him out as a force in human life. It breaks the golden

142 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

ladder of revelation betwixt heaven and earth. It leaves
the Bible discredited, duty a guess, heaven a freak of
the uncharted imagination, and God a vague and far-
off shadow. Men were left by it to climb into a shadowy
heaven on some frail ladder of human logic. And while
in those sad days there was this obscuring mist of Deism
outside the Churches, inside them there was a mist almost
as evil and dense. Open and confessed Arianism had
captured almost completely the dissenting Churches ; and
an unconscious and practical Arianism reigned, in spite
of its Articles, in the Angelican Church. The sense of
sin was faint ; and with it had grown faint, too, the
doctrine of a divine and redeeming Christ.

The religious literature of that age shows how curiously
pale and ineffective the notion of God had become for
even those who professed to be His ministers. In the
theology of the time "God," says Sir Leslie Stephen,
"was an idol compounded of fragments of tradition and
of frozen metaphysics."^ There was a God ; and He had
once touched human life. But it was a long time ago,
and in a far-off land. He had now emigrated from His
own world. The grotesque Deity of Bishop Warburton
was, to quote Leslie Stephen again, "a supernatural chief-
justice whose sentences were carried out in a non-natural
world ; a constitutional monarch who had signed a con-
stitutional compact and retired from the active govern-
ment of affairs." Of God as the Father of our spirits, as
actually living in His own universe and ruling men's
lives ; God of whom it might be said in Tennyson's words :

"Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet,"

no trace is to be found in the theology of the eighteenth
century. Superstition, according to its theologians, con-
sisted in the belief that God ever revealed Himself in the
affairs of the modern world. Fanaticism was the imagi-
nation that He revealed Himself by any touch, or breath,
or thrill of influence to the personal soul.

Deism, we repeat, thick with Arctic fogs and frozen
with Arctic chills, constitutes the working theology of
that unhappy age. In that theology Christ is attenuated

•"History of English Thought," &c., vol. ii. p. 338.

ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 143

to a shadow. He serves as a label for a creed, but He
has only the oflBces of a label. His Gospel did not consist
of "good news," but only of good advice. It was not a
deliverance, but a philosophy. A decent Chinaman who
took Confucius seriously might almost have preached
nine-tenths of the sermons of that period. If he had
concealed his pig-tail, altered his complexion, disguised
himself in cassock and bands, learned a few technical
i phrases, and spoken of the Gospels as true but very re-
mote histories, he might have passed for a sound divine,
with a very orthodox appetite for a fat benefice. Lecky
says, with cruel acciiracy, "Beyond a belief in the doctrine
of the Trinity and a general acknowledgment of the
veracity of the Gospel narratives, the divines of that day
taught little which might not have been taught by the
disciples of Socrates or the followers of Confucius."

Now Christianity does not consist in a code of ethics.
It is not a chapter of remote history. It is a group of
great and majestic truths; truths which transcend the
understanding, and are robed in mystery ; but which must
shape our lives. First and last it is a message of redeem-
ing love. The mystery of a divine propitiation through
the blood of Christ, of access to God through the priestly
offices of Christ, is of its very essence. Its supreme gift
is the life of God restored in the soul by the mighty
grace of the Holy Spirit.

But all these great doctrines, which do not so much
belong to Christianity as constitute it, had somehow
slipped, not merely from human faith, but almost from
human recollection at this stage of English-speaking
j Christianity. The message of "entrance into the Holiest
I by the blood of Jesus" had no meaning for men who
I believed they could saunter into God's presence with a
j few polite compliments at any time. In the religion of
I that day there were no tears of repentance. The note
of passion is silent; the hush of reverence is missing.
And all this because the vision of God had grown faint :
the sense of sin — of what sin means, and of God's remedy
for it — had perished.

Now a religion exhausted of its supernatural contents
in this fashion has no power over the human conscience.
It transfigures no lives. It inspires no martyrs. It
creates no saints. It sends out no missionaries. It gen-

144 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

erates a morality of ignoble temper. It resembles nothing
so much as an atmosphere exhausted of oxygen.

And the religion of the eighteenth century was treated
as it deserved to be treated. Its very sacraments, "the
symbols of atoning grace," became, in Cowper's phrase,

"An oflSce key, a pick-lock to a place."

Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, writes: "I was
early in to see the Secretary, Bolingbroke, but he was
gone to his devotions and to receive the Sacrament;
several rakes did the same. It was not for piety, but
for employment, according to Act of Parliament." Such
a religion could not inspire a saintly or an heroic min-
istry ; and certainly there was not much that was saintly,
and still less that was heroic, in the temper of the Angli-
can clergy in the days of the early Georges. The first
great duty of religion was to be tepid. There must be
no enthusiasm, no heroics. Extremes were to be shunned.
"We should take care never to overshoot ourselves, even
in the pursuits of virtues," was the counsel of one of the
preachers of that age. "Whether zeal or moderation be
the point we aim at, let us keep fire out of one and frost
out of the other." "Those words," says Miss Wedgwood,
"are the motto of the Church of the eighteenth century."
Its divines were much more afraid of being suspected of
believing too much, than of doubting everything.

Christianity was diligently watered down, by its own
teachers, into insipid platitudes. The sin against the
Holy Spirit is by Bishop Clarke diluted into "a perverse
refusal to be convinced by the highest evidence of the
truth of Christianity." The motive by which religion was
urged on the conscience was at bottom an appeal to
cowardice. Bishop Sherlock, indeed, resolves religion
into a judicious balance of odds. "It is ten to one," he
says, in substance, "that religion is true. If it turns
out to be false the Christian has only lost one-tenth of
the amount he staked. If it turns out to be true, the
sinner has made a very bad bargain indeed." Lo^c is
the one instrument of a tepid religion. So all the teach-
ing and preaching of the eighteenth-century divines is
in the terms of logic, and has the chill of logic. The reli- :
glous teachers of that day, in a word, had but half -beliefs, *

ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 145

and out of half-beliefs no heroic morality can be ex-
tracted.

Leslie Stephen says of Ihe most famous ])ie:i< li(M' of
that day, Blair, tiiat "he was a mere washed-out dealer
' of second-hand commonplaces, who gives the impression
that the real man has vanished and left nothing but a
wig and gown." Bishop Warburton's conception of the
Christian Church may be gathered from a sentence in
one of his letters. "The Church," he says, "like the ark
of Noah, is worth saving, not for the sake of the unclean
beasts that almost fill it and make most noise and clamour
in it; but for the little corner of rationality that is much
more depressed by the stiuk within than by the tempest
without." Middleton, another Church dignitary of that
day, wrote a letter to Lord Hervey ridiculing the Articles
which he was about to sign in order to take possession
of a living.

"Though there are many things in the Church (he says) that
I wholly dislike, yet while I am content to acquiesce in the ill
I shall be glad to taste a little of the good, and so have some
amends for that ugly assent and consent which no man of sense
-will approve of. We read of some of the earliest disciples of
Christ who followed Him, not for His works, but for His loaves.
To us who had not the happiness to see the one it may be allowed
to have some inclination to the other. Your lordship knows a
j certain person who, with a very low notion of the Church's sacred
bread, has a very high relish for a very large share of the tem-
poral. My appetite for each is equally moderate. I have no
pretensions to riot in the feast of the elect, but with the sinner
In the Gospel to gather up the crumbs that fall from the table."

Now a religion of this type, and served by such min-
isters, inevitably bred ignoble lives. Piety was but a skin
of external habits, a form of prudence extended into the
j spiritual world. If the dusty sermons of that age are
put into the retort and their essence distilled, it will be
seen to consist of exhortations like these : "Don't be
drunk, or you shall ruin your health ; nor commit murder,
or you shall be hanged. Every man should be happy, and
the way to be happy is to be thoroughly respectable."

The opinion that Christianity was untrue, but useful
tft -Society, represents the working creed of the educated
classes. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu reports a plan
on foot for taking the "not" out of the Commandments
and putting it in the Creed. That is a flash of feminine

146

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

satire ; but it represents the theory on which whole mul-
titudes lived.

Bishop Butler has painted the spirit of his time in dark
and imperishable colours. "The deplorable distinction of
our age," he says, "is an avowed scorn of religion, and a
growing disregard of it." But Butler himself, with all his
high gifts, supplies, in his own person, an expressive proof
of the spiritual blindness and death which lay on the
Churches of that day. He forbade Whitefield and the
Wesleys to preach in his diocese, though all around his
cathedral city lay the most degraded and hopeless class
in England — the coal-miners of Kingswood, as untouched
by any of the forces of Christianity as if they had been
savages in Central Africa. That the best, the wisest, the '
most powerful, the most earnestly convinced of the
bishops of that day should take this attitude towards
Wesley and his work shows what was the general temper
of the clergy of that time. Butler's conscience was not
disquieted by the lapse into mere heathenism of a whole
class within sound of the bells of his cathedral; but he
grows piously indignant at the spectacle of an ecclesi-
astical irregularity ! Enthusiasm in good men was, in
his eyes, a more alarming spectacle than vice in bad men.
What more significant inversion of spiritual values can
be imagined!

No feature of the eighteenth century, indeed, is more •
curious, or more deeply characteristic, than its dread of
"enthusiasm." It was the accursed thing! A sound
divine was much more anxious to purge himself of the
suspicion of enthusiasm, than of the scandal of heresy. It
was an age of compromise ; of compromises in politics, in
philosophy, in theology; and compromises are fatal to
enthusiasm. They must kill it, or be killed by it.

Let it be remembered that two great waves of passion
had recently swept over England — the Puritan wave that
culminated and broke in the Civil War; and the recoil
from Puritanism which found its triumph in the Restora-
tion. Great debates, fought with sword and musket, with
the prison and the pillory, with Acts of Parliament and
sentences of the courts, had left England exhausted. The
Whig spirit of compromise which explains the Revolution
of 1688 had captured the realm of religion. Men were i
still sore with the wounds of the strife. The public mind I

ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 147

was iu a mood of reflux. It dreaded passion. It hated
fanatics. Enthusiasm was a word suspect. Moderation
was the chief thing.

Now enthusiasm has, or ought to have, its last strong-
hold in religion, and in the men who are the teachers of
religion. But in the eighteenth century the clergy were
the one class in the whole nation in which the fires of
euthusiam were most completely extinct; and this as a
result of their own acts. Within a single generation they
had, first, taught the divine right of kings, and fiercely
persecuted all who doubted that doctrine. Then, after
1688, they swallowed their principles, took the oath of
allegiance to William, and proceeded to hunt out of
rectory and parsonage the stubborn remnant of their own
brethren who declined to turn their back on their prin-
ciples with the same cheerful facility I Principle of the
high and austere sort was, for the moment, discredited in
this dreadful fashion by the example set by the clergy
themselves.

There were some bright spots, it is true, even in this
dark landscape. Amongst the fat, well-beneflced, un-
spiritual bishops of that day stand the almost saintly
figures of Butler and of Berkeley. The century which
counted William Law amongst its theologians, and Watts
and Doddridge amongst its singers, still had some of the
divine glow of religion in its veins. And there must have
been many an English rectory, beside Epworth Parson-
age, in which burned the clear flame of household piety.

And yet the spiritual life of England at this moment
was beyond all doubt swiftly draining away. Its public
life corrupt ; its clergj- discredited ; its Church frozen ; its
theology exhausted of Christian elements. This was the
England of the eighteenth centurj'! It needed a spiritual
revolution to save such a people. The airs of Pentecost
must blow afresh over the dying land; the fires of a new
Pentecost must fall to kindle the flame of faith in men's
souls once more. And Wesley was called, and trained by
God, for that great task.

CHAPTER II

BEGINNING THE WORK

Wesley's conversion perplexed some of his friends and
alarmed others. "If you were not a Christian ever since
I knew you," said Mrs. Button, the mother of his friend,
you were a great hypocrite, for you made us all believe
you were one." Samuel Wesley received the news with a
sort of bewildered anger which is almost amusing. His
brother, he held, was suffering from an attack of "enthu-
siasm"— a disease much more deadly than any known to
medical science. "Falling into enthusiasm," he writes,
"is being lost with a witness. I pleased myself with the*
expectation of seeing Jack, but now that is over, and I
am afraid of it. I heartily pray God to stop the progress
of this lunacy. . . . What Jack means by his not being
a Christian till last mouth I understand not," cries this
bewildered High Churchman. "Is baptism nothing?
. . . He must be either unbaptized or an apostate to
make his words true."

But then John Wesley had already moved to another
spiritual climate. In his spiritual chronologj' the birth-
day of a Christian was now shifted from his baptism to
his conversion ; and "in that change," as Miss Wedgwood
says, with a flash of profound insight, "the partition line
of two great systems is crossed."

Wesley, however, was the last man to be moved by
the alarms and perplexities of his friends. Already, on
June 13 — only three weeks after his conversion — he was
on his way to Germany to visit the Moravian settlements.
He loved to study religion in the concrete, to try it by
the supreme test of life. The actual experience of the
human soul was for him the final logic. In the Moravian
settlements at Herrnhut he would find a whole com-
munity living by the great truths he had just learned,
and he hastened to cross-examine the experiences of these
simple-minded Moravians; to study the social order they
had evolved and the manner of life they lived.

He spent three months in this business, returning to
148

BEGINNING THE WORK

149

England on September 16, and his Journal gives a picture,
half amusing and half pathetic, of Wesley's conversations
with group after group of these goldly peasants, and the
anxious yet simple-minded questions by which he interro-
gated their beliefs and emotions. In the rough guttural
of peasant's German, or filtered through a Latin transla-
' tion, the experiences of one devout Moravian after another
reached Wesley, and he listened with musing brow and
patient eyes. Here was the work of the Holy Spirit trans-
lated into terms of human life and spread out before his
eyes. Here was Christ's Gospel verified ! Wesley wrote
to his brother Samuel, "I am with a Church whose con-
versation is in heaven, in whom is the mind that was in
Christ, and who walk as He walked. Oh, how high and
holy a thing Christianity is, and how widely distinct from
that — I know not what — which is so called, though it
I neither purifies the heart nor renews the life."
I Wesley met Count Zinzendorf, the head of the Moravian
i community, a man with a genius for religion and in a
hundred ways remarkable; but it is curious to note that
Zinzendorf, who in social standing and in education was
so much nearer Wesley than Bohler, impressed Wesley
much less than did that lowly-minded missionary. There
was a narrower spiritual interval betwixt Bohler and
Wesley than betwixt Zinzendorf and Wesley ; and Wesley
was in that mood when social distance does not count.

Wesley took part in the religious services of the Mora-
vians with keenest sympathy, and sat, with the simplicity
1 of a child, at the feet of peasant-elder or carpenter-
I preacher in turn. But he could not part with his ob-
I stinate English common-sense, and he studied the whole
I system and the type of piety it produced with shrewd
eyes. On his return to England he wrote to Count Zin-
zendorf a grateful letter, full of the praise of what he had
seen ; but, he added, he hoped later to give his Moravian
friends "the fruit of my love by speaking freely on a few
things which I did not approve, perhaps because I did not
understand them."

What those "few things" were of which Wesley's keen
common-sense disapproved is described later, and at
length. But on the whole Wesley came back from his
Moravian tour with faith reinforced. His new spiritual
experiences were really not new. They belonged to a

150

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

line of human experience which ran back through all
the saints to the days of the Apostles. He had seen
them shared by hundreds of living men and women, in
whom they bore all their ancient fruits of saintship.
Wesley brought back from Herrnhut the exultant sense
that he stood in a goodly companionship.

From this moment the character of Wesley's work
changes. He is living in a new spiritual climate. Re-
ligion is for him uo longer an experiment. It is an at-
tainment! It belongs to the realm of certainties. He
has an exultant confidence in proclaiming it, and his
work gains instantly a new and strangely concentrated
energy.

The story of his first week's work in a striking expres-
sion of zeal. He reached London on Saturday night,
September 16, preached four times on Sunday, met the
little Moravian society, which now numbered thirty-two
persons, on Monday; on Tuesday he visited the con-
demned felons at Newgate and preached in the evening
at Aldersgate Street. All the days of the week were, in
fact, filled up with preaching and private visitations.
And at last Wesley has somehow found the key to the
human heart. His speech had always possessed strange
power to disquiet the conscience, but now there is a new
quality in his message. It brings peace to those con-
sciences it formerly could only disquiet.

His Journal is rich with brief and sometimes appar-
ently unconscious records of success, both in preaching
to great congregations and in dealing with individuals.
"One who had long scoffed at spiritual religion" sent an
urgent message to Wesley to visit him. "He had all
the signs," says Wesley, "of settled despair, both in his
countenance and behaviour. He said he had been en-
slaved to sin many years, especially to drunkenness. . . .
I desired that we might join in prayer. After a short
space he rose, and his countenance was no longer sad;
he said, 'Now I know God loveth me, and hath forgiven
my sins, and sin shall not have dominion over me, for
Christ hath set me free." "And," says Wesley, "accord-
ing to his faith it was unto him."

He records again: "At St. Thomas's, a young woman
raving mad, screaming and tormenting herself continu-
ally ; I had a strong desire to speak to her. The moment

BEGINNING THE WORK 151

I began she was still. The tears ran down her cheeks
all the time I was telling her 'Jesus of Nazareth is able
and willing to deliver you.' ... I expounded at Mr.
Fox's, as usual, the great power of God with us, and one
who had been in despair several years received the witness
that she was a child of God." Such records as these
begin to shine like stars in the hitherto clouded and
troubled firmament of Wesley's Journal.

Wesley, it is clear, now stands fitly equipped on the
threshold of the true work of his life — the religious
awakening of his countrymen. His spiritual training, in
a sense, is complete. He has a real Gospel to preach;
the good tidings of religion as a deliverance, not as a
new and intolerable bondage. And he can proclaim this
' Gospel with a new accent of certainty. It is verified
in his own experience, and confirmed by the witness of
multitudes. He has all his old thoroughness, his utter
sincerity, his scorn of compromise, his unsparing self-
sacrifice ; but through these fine qualities there now runs
something new — a note of victory, a fire of gladness.

Here, surely, is a fit instrument in God's hands for a
great task. It is not merely that Wesley's spirit is now
a transparent medium through which truth shines clear
to other spirits. It is a channel through which great
forces — the living energies of the Holy Spirit — stream
into other lives. Wesley, under these new conditions,
resembles an electric wire thrilling with subtle and
strange energy. Hejias power! Power other than that
of the eloquent tongue or the logical brain; power that
riin^J)ax^kJ;o e±e that belongs to the spiritual order,
and gives him a strange mastery over the souls of those
who listen to him.

But Wesley's preaching, if it produced more direct and
visible results than before, now provoked, curiously
enough, almost more of active opposition than ever. His
disquieting earnestness, the steel-like edge and hardness
of his speech, had always been too severe a trial for the
drowsy congregations of that day. For them religion
had only the offices of an opiate; it was a process as
entirely mechanical as the revolutions of a Thibetan
prayer-wheel. But now the disturbing energy of Wesley's
speech for hearers who asked only to be let alone was
somehow enormously multiplied; and the Churches, one

152 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

after another, shut promptly and almost automatically
against him, after he had once preached in them. Before
the end of 1738 he was little better than an ecclesiastical
outcast.

His Journal at this period is full of such records as
these : "Preached twice at St. John's, Clerkenwell, so that
I fear they will bear me there no longer. . . . Preached
in the evening to such congregations as I never saw before
at St. Clement's, in the Strand ; as this is the first time of
my preaching here, I suppose it will be the last. ... I
preached at St. Giles's. . . . How was the power of God
present with us ! I am content to preach here no more."

We do not stop just now to analyse the secret of the
opposition Wesley aroused at this stage amongst the
clergy and the average churchgoers. It is suflQcient to
note the fact that at this precise moment, when he really
had a message he could proclaim with exultant confi-
dence— a message through whose syllables some strange
spiritual iorce ran like a flame — well-nigh all the church-
doors in London were shut with a loud and energetic
bang against him !

As the Churches refused to hear him, Wesley betook
himself to the gaols, and he found his most eager hearers,
and his best results, amongst the felons in the condemned
cells. Felons waiting to be hanged, it must be remem-
bered, sat in crowds — a witness to the cruelty of the law
in those harsh days — in every English gaol. Charles
Wesley records preaching to one sad company of the con-
demned, fifty-two in number, and amongst them a child
of ten. Rogers, the poet, as late as 1780, relates seeing a
cart full of young girls, in dresses of various colours —
the feminine instinct for adornment surviving to the last
— on their way to Tyburn to be executed, after the Gordon
Riots. Wesley's work amongst these hurrying candidates
for the gallows fills a large space in his Journal. Here
is a typical story — one of many : —

"On Wednesday my brother and I went, at their desire, to
do the last good office to the condemned malefactors. ... It was
the most glorious instance I ever saw of faith triumphing over
sin and death. On observing the tears run fast down the cheeks
of one of them, I asked him, *How do you feel your heart now?'
He calmly replied, 'I feel a peace which I could not have believed
to be possible, and I know it Is the peace of God which pasaeth
all understanding.' "

BEGINNING THE WORK 153

In his Journal it is almost amusing to note the rigour
with which Wesley still continues to test himself, and
the care, not to say the eagerness, with which he collects
and records all varieties of spiritual experience which
he sees. He writes to many persons who have come
under his influence, asking them to describe the effects
religion produces in them; and Wesley, himself the
frankest of men. had some secret charm which awakened
frankness in others. As a result, his Journal is packed
with human documents which, when read even a hundred
and lifty years afterwards, affect the reader with a curi-
ous sense of realit}' and honesty.

It was no vulgar and peeping curiosity which made
Wesley seek and write down these stories. The truth
is that no one ever looked at religion in a more scientific
waj^ or tried it more absolutely by scientific methods,
than did Wesley. For him it was not a theology to be
recited, a history to be learned, a philosophy to be in-
terpreted, or even a code of external ethics to be obeyed ;
it was a divine force entering human life, and undertak-
ing to produce certain results in human character and
exijerience. And Wesley was always testing it. in him-
self or in others, by the question, "Does it, as a matter of
fact, produce the results it claims to yield?"

"Experience first, inference second. This," says Hux-
ley, "is the order of science." And Wesley's attitude
towards his own work is, in Huxley's sense, completely
scientific. He resembles a chemi.st who is trying some
new combination. He must watch, note, verify the re-
sults, in terms of human experience, which this combina-
tion produces.

Meanwhile, the three men who were to be henceforth
linked in a memorable partnership of Christian service
found themselves together in Loudon. Wesley landed
from Germany on September 16, 1738; WTiitefield re-
turned from a brief visit to America in December;
Charles Wesley was acting as curate at Islington. Thus,
at the beginning of 1739, the three comrades, for the
first time since the Holy Club at Oxford broke up, found
themselves side by side again. They were young men
with no ecclesiastical position, and no sense as yet of
the greater career they were to pursue in common. But
all tiree had, somehow, relearned the last secret of Chris-

154 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

tianity. Something of its early power had fallen upon
them. A gleam of the fiery tongues of Pentecost was in
their speech ; a breath of its mighty, rushing wind was
in their lives.

The evidence of that strange power is found abun-
dantly in each of the three. Charles Wesley, during his
brother's absence in Germany, did amazing work in the
condemned cells of the prisons, and amongst the social
wrecks of the workhouses of London. Crowds gathered
round Whitefield whenever he stepped into a pulpit. In
the little societies already in existence the presence of the
three was a sort of embodied flame, and remarkable meet-
ings were held. Sometimes whole nights were spent in
prayer.

"On the first night of 1739," says Wesley himself, "Mr. Hall,
Kinchin, Ingham, Whitefield, Hutchins, and my brother Charles,
were present at our love-feast, with about sixty of our brethren.
About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in
prayer, the power of God came mightily amongst us, insomuch
that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the
ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and
amazement at the presence of His majesty, we broke out with one
voice, 'We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the
Lord!'"

Such meetings, of course, shocked the drowsy sense of
propriety in the average clergyman. The preaching of
the three comrades might incidentally yield results of a
praiseworthy sort. It had to be confessed that they made
thieves honest, drunkards sober, wife-beaters gentle.
They lit human faces with the glow of a strange -joy,
and sent even condemned men to the gaUows with hymns
on their lips. But their work had one fatal vice, the worst
that age knew — it was irregular! It was tainted with
that dreaded, hated, and most dangerous thing, enthusi-
asm ! Even Southey, telling the story a hundred years
afterwards, cannot quite forgive the Wesleys for saving
men and women in an unconventional fashion ; and Cole-
ridge breaks upon his text with one of his amusing foot-
notes : —

"O dear and honoured Southey! this is the favourite of my
library among many favourites; this is the book which I can read
for the twentieth time with delight, when I can read nothing
else at all. . . . This darling book is nevertheless an unsafe book
for all of unsettled minds. The same facts and incidents as

BEGINNING THE WORK

155

those recorded in Scripture, and told in the same words — and
the workers, alas! in the next page — these are 'enthusiasts,'
'fanatics.' "

The incidents of the first chapters in the Acts of the
Apostles re-emerging in actual life after eighteen cen-
turies— this was, indeed, for many good people an alarm-
ing, not to say a shocking, spectacle. How many there
are still who can tolerate spiritual phenomena only as
long as they are safely locked tip between the covers of
the Bible, and at a distance of centuries !

The two Wesleys, who had no disquieting dream of
separation from the Church, and were anxious for noth-
ing more than the approval of their spiritual superiors,
waited on the Bishop of London to explain and justify
their methods. Gibson was a diplomatist, an antiquarian,
a man of affairs; but anything more remote than his
temper from the fiery zeal of the reformer, the consum-
ing ardour of the evangelist, can hardly be imagined.
He looked with perplexed eyes at the two brothers. The
brown of American suns was as yet upon their faces;
but they were scholars, gentlemen, university men. The
pity was that some strange fire of zeal burned fiercely
in them. There was no touch of the dissenter about
them. They had no quarrel with the Articles or the
ritual of the Church. The disquieting thing was that
they took these too literally.

They discussed with their Bishop, for example, the
propriety, nay, the necessity, of re-baptizing Dissenters.
"Sure and unsure," Charles Wesley argued, "were not
the same" ; and where the fate of eternal souls was at
stake no risks ought to be taken. But Bishop Gibson
was anxious only to leave the Dissenters alone, no matter
how inconsistent with the High Church theory that policy
might be. Charles Wesley waited upon Gibson later to
notify that he intended to perform such a baptism.

'"It is irregular,' said the Bishop; 'I never receive any such
information but from the minister.'

" 'My lord, the Rubric does not so much as require the minister
to give you notice, but "any discreet person." I have the minis-
ter's leave.'

" 'Who gave you authority to baptize?'

" 'Your lordship,' replied Charles (for he had been ordained
priest by him), 'and I shall exercise it in any part of the known
world.'

156 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

" 'Are you a licensed curate?' said the Bishop. 'Do you not
know that no man can exercise parochial duty in London without
my leave? It is only sub silentio.'

" "But you know many do take that permission for authority,
and you yourself allow it.'

" 'It is one thing to connive,' said the Bishop, 'and another to
approve. I have power to inhibit you.'

" 'Does your lordship exert that power?' asked Charles, all the
Wesley in him hardening into stubborness at a threat. 'Do you
now inhibit me?'

" 'Oh, why will you push matters to an extreme?' cried the
perplexed Bishop."

Plainly troublesome young men these, who refused to
dilute religion into platitudes, or button it up in polite
conventions !

Of the three comrades, the Wesleys — perhaps because
they were older and better known — were regarded with
more suspicion. All official brows frowned upon them.
Their opportunities of preaching steadily narrowed. The
Church at best was a hard stepmother to the brothers.
John Wesley was his father's curate for three years, the
sole ecclesiastical charge, in England, he ever held.
Charles held, without a title, a curacy at Islington for
about as many mouths, and was driven from it practically
by violence. This was the only preferment the Anglican
Church had to otter two of its sons who represented the
greatest religious force that has stirred in Protestant
England.

It is usual to say that the startling physical manifesta-
tions which attended the early preaching of the Wesleys
explain, and justify, the general shutting of all pulpits
against them ; but the mere dates in the almanac wreck
that theory. In the spring of 1739 only one instance
of the physical manifestations, afterwards so remarkable
a result of Wesley's preaching, had occurred, and already
the Church had closed her doors upon her enthusiastic
son for ever. Southej' finds justification for the exclu-
sion of the Wesleys in the love-feasts and watch-night
services held by the little Moravian societies, in which
the Wesleys joined. We have described one such meet-
ing which lasted till three o'clock in the morning, and
was swept by a wave of remarkable spiritual influence.
"Such a meeting," said Southey, "set prudence at de-
fiance. It was an example of that excessive devotion

BEGINNING THE WORK

157

which gave just offence to the better part of the clergj-.
Such excessive devotion," he adds, "if it find a mind
sane, is not likely to leave it so." Coleridge, with a flash
of keener insight, traces the opposition of the clergy to
the new movement to what he calls "the subtle poison
of the easy-chair."

To such a spiritual mood "prudence" seems the first
of virtues, and zeal the last and worst of offences. The
Wesley's disquieted the conscience of the clergy of their
day by their uncomfortable earnestness. They were "en-
thusiasts." This was but a polite way of saying they were
dangerous lunatics. So in mere self-defence there was
an unconscious conspiracy to suppress them. But it
remains, after all explanations, the scandal of the Church
of that day, the final and overwhelming proof of its
blindness, that it shut its doors against the Wesleys.

But Whitefield was the youngest of the group ; he had
as yet provoked less criticism than his comrades. His
matchless preaching powers gave him a strange popu-
larity; and so, in the order of God's providence, it fell
to him to break through the narrow limits of mechanical
Church order and make a way for the new forces begin-
ning to stir in the religious life of England.

There is something almost amusing in the slowly
awakening suspicion of the London clergy towards White-
field. Here was a strange clerical i)henomenon, a preacher
who used words of fire in the pulpit; who wept over his
hearers in a passion of pity, and somehow set their tears
running too. It was jdain that no starched convention-
alities would long restrain a divine at once so youthful
and so ardent. No one knew quite what he would do
next. He was preaching in Bermondsey Church to a
great crowd, while a still vaster crowd filled the church-
yard outside, unable to find admittance. Why, asked
Whitefield, should he not go out, turn a tombstone into
a pulpit and preach to that great multitude eagerly
waiting to listen? These spectacle of that dumb waiting
crowd in Bermondsey churchyard, he said afterwards,
"put me first upon thinking of preaching without doors.
I mentioned it to some friends, who looked upon it as
a mad notion. However, we knelt down and prayed that
nothing may be done rashly."

At St. Margaret's, Westminster, one Sunday morning

158

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Whitefield was practically pushed into the pulpit, and
preached against the protest of the oflBcials, and to the
scandal of all ecclesiastical sensibilities. A few days
later he went to Bristol, but by this time the clergy
generally had taken alarm. The chancellor of the diocese
sent for him, and asked him by what authority he
preached in the diocese of Bristol without a licence, and
read to him those canons which forbade any minister from
preaching in a private house. "V^Tiitefield contended these
did not apply to ministers of the Church of England.
When he was informed of his mistake, he said : —

"There is also a canon, sir, forbidding all clergymen to
frequent taverns and play at cards; why is not that put
in execution?" Then he added what, to the shuddering
chancellor, seemed the worst of blasphemies. There were
things — the souls of men, for example — which this highly
irregular young curate counted of more value than even
the most venerable canons. At all risks he must preach
to lost men wherever he found them. "Notwithstanding
the canons," he said, "he could not but speak the things
which he knew."

The answer was solemnly written down, and the chan-
cellor then said grimly : "I am resolved, sir, if you preach
or expound anywhere in this diocese, I will first suspend,
and then excommunicate, you." They parted at this
point; and Whitefield goes on to tell how "after I had
joined in prayer for the chancellor," he conducted a serv-
ice in St. Nicholas Street with signal power. "It is re-
markable," he adds, "that we have not had such a con-
tinued presence of God amongst us as since I was
threatened to be excommunicated."

r

CHAPTER III

THE FIELD-rRE ACHING

Now an attempt to put an ecclesiastical muzzle on
Whitefield was i)recloome(l to failure. Whitefield, it is
true, was only twenty-five years of age, a newly-ordained
curate, without a charge and without influence. The
chancellor of a diocese, with frowning official brows and
the threat of excommunication on his lips, was a figure
of sufficiently awe-inspiring quality. The ordinary curate
would have been extinguished by the vision ! But White-
field was a curate of quite unconventional qualities. A
spirit so daring as his was not to be chilled by the frown
of even episcopal brows; a zeal so flame-like could not
be restrained by even the menace of lawn sleeves! At
that precise moment, too, Whitefield foimd himself in
the presence of what seemed an urgent and overwhelm-
ing call to preach. Here were the Kingswood miners, a
community ignorant, vicious, forgotten, who, beyond all
others, needed the care and teaching of the Christian
Church, and yet were left completely outside, not merely
of its agencies, but even of its very remembrance. When
Whitefield was setting out for America some wise and
keen-sighted friend said to him, "If you have a mind to
convert Indians, there are colliers enough in Kingswood."
How could one of Christ's ministers — one, too, of White-
field's gifts and temperament, with the consciousness both
of a divine message and of a divine power to utter that
message — stand before such a crowd and consent to be
dumb? The silent, sunless faces were a call too urgent
to be denied.

The churches could find no room for Whitefield, and
on Saturday afternoon, February 17, 1739, he took his
stand on a little rising ground outside Bristol, called
Rose-green, and preached his first open-air sermon. There
.was a congregation of only some two hundred staring,
<|pen-mouthed listeners. Here was a strange spectacle,
a clergyman in bands and gown, with a voice that had
159

160

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

in it a note of thunder, preaching a sermon at the road-
side. "I thought," says Whitefield, in his magnificent
way, "I might be doing the service of my Creator, who
had a mountain .for His pulpit and the heavens for a
sounding-board."

It was just five months since John Wesley landed on
his return from Germany. They had been months of
waiting, of uncertainty, of discouragement, of apparently
narrowing opportunities for work. The doors of all the
churches were being shut one after another against Wes-
ley and his comrades. It seemed as if England had no
place for them, and could offer them no career. Those
five months constitute a dramatic pause on the threshold
of a great work. Then Whitefield, first of the three im-
mortal comrades, broke through the imprisoning lines
of conventional usage and of ecclesiastical law, and
preached in the open air. With that act he stepped into
a freer, larger world, and from that moment the new
spiritual forces beginning to stir in England found — or
rather made for themselves — a free channel.

The open-air services begun by Whitefield were at-
tended, almost instantly, with startling results. His first
audience numbered 200, the second rose to 3,000, the third
to 5,000, and the crowds swiftly extended to vast gather-
ings of 20,000 people. Whitefield looked on the far-
stretching mosaic of upturned countenances, black with
the coal-dust of the pits, and tells in unforgettable words
how, while he preached, he saw the white streaks made by
the tears running down those grimy faces. "The open
firmament above me," he afterwards wrote, "the prospect
of the adjacent fields, with the sight of thousands and
thousands, some in coaches, some on horseback, and some
in the trees, and at times all affected and drenched in
tears together, to which sometimes was added the
solemnity of the approaching evening, was almost too
much for and quite overcame me." "Blessed," he adds,
"are the eyes which see the things we see."

The ecclesiastical authorities, of course, found fresh
argument for a quarrel in these services. They were a
new and yet more alarming expression of "enthusiasm."
The wrong thing was being done, in the wrong place, and
in the wrong way. It is an amusing illustration of the
frost-bitten formalism of that day to find so sensible a

THE FIELD PREACHING

161

man as Samuel Wesley overcome with horror by the
circumstance that Whitefield "never read the Liturgy to
his tatterdemalions on the common !"

But if the services shocked the clerical conscience they
stirred the heart of the common people. The affection
Whitefield won from his hearers was childlike and touch-
ing. They hung on his words; they blessed him as he
passed by them on the road; they gave him of their scanty
earnings for that far-off orphan-house on American soil
which already Whitefield was contemplating. They fol-
lowed him with tears when he left them. These open-air
services resembled the tapping of an artesian well. The
dark, sunless, forgotten waters rushed up to the light.

But Whitefield had to sail for Georgia, and he sum-
moned Wesley to leave London and come to Bristol to
take up the strauge work begun there. In the little
society in Fetter Lane that call was heard with dread.
Some dim sense of great issues hanging upon the answer
to it disquieted the minds of the little company. The
Bible was consulted by lot, and repeatedly, in search of a
text which might be accepted as a decision. But only
the most alarming passages emerged. "Get thee up into
this mountain and die on the mount whither thou goest
up, and be gathered to thy people," ran one. When one
chance-selected text proved disquieting in this fashion the
lot was cast again and yet again, but always with the
same result. There was a quaint mixture of superstition
and simplicity in the Bibliomancy of the early Methodists.
If the text which presented itself did not please it was re-
jected, and the sacred pages were interrogated by chance
afresh, in the hope of more welcome results.

Wesley at last decided to go, but even in his ears the
call to Bristol seemed a summons to the grave. Yet his
purpose was unshaken, and that step decided the whole
character of his after work.

He reached Bristol and stood beside Whitefield while
he preached in the open air. Wesley looked with amazed
eyes and gravely pondering brow on the strange and vast
congregation assembled. Then, on the morrow, in his
own words, "I submitted to be more vile and, standing
on a little grassy mound, preached to a great crowd from
the words,^ 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
He h^tL-anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.^"

162

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Whitefield preached bis first open-air sermon on Febru-
ary 17, 1739; six weeks later, on April 2, John Wesley
held his first open-air service, and Charles Wesley fol-
lowed the example. of his comrades still later, on June 24.
In his case, too, he was driven from the churches into the
fields. The ecclesiastical authorities had grown sternly
hostile. Charles Wesley was acting as curate, but with-
out a licence, and preached repeatedly in Bexley Church ;
and the irregular vicar and still more irregular curate
were summoned, on June 19, to appear before the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. Charles Wesley in his Journal
says : —

"His Grace expressly forbade him to let any of us preach in
his church, and charged us with breach of the canon. I men-
tioned the Bishop of London's authorising my forcible exclusion.
He would not hear me; said he did not dispute. He asked me
what call I had. I answered, 'A dispensation of the Gospel is
committed to me.'

"'That is, to St. Paul; but I do not dispute, and will not pro-
ceed to excommunication yet.'

" 'Your Grace has taught me, in your book on Church govern-
ment, that a man unjustly excommunicated is not thereby cut off
from communication with Christ'

" 'Of that,' he replied 'I am the judge.'

"I asked him if Mr. Whitefield's success was not a spiritual
sign, and sufficient proof of his call; and recommended Gamaliel's
advice. He dismissed us; Piers, with kind professions; me with
all the marks of his displeasure."

This was on the Thursday. Whitefield urged him to
preach in the open air on the following Sunday. "If I do
this," writes Charles Wesley in perplexed meditation, "I
shall break down the breach and become desperate." He
decided, however, at last, and he tells in his Journal the
story of that fateful Sunday.

"Sunday, June 24, St. John Baptist's Day.— The first Scripture
I cast my eye upon was, 'Then came the servant to Him and said,
Master, what shall we do?' I prayed with West and went forth
in the name of Jesus Christ. I found near ten thousand helpless
sinners waiting for the word in Moorfields. I invited them in
my Master's words, as well as name, *Come unto Me, all ye that
labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' The Lord
was with me, even me. His meanest messenger, according to His
promise. At St. Paul's the psalms, lessons, &c., for the day put
fresh life into me. So did the Sacrament. My load was* gone,
and all my doubts and scruples. God shone upon my path, and
I knew this was His will concerning me."

THE FIELD-PREACHING

163

Archbishop Potter threatened to excommunicate
Charles "Wesley for preaching at Moorfields and Ken-
nington Common, and the laity, too, shared the prejudices
of the clergy. One surly landowner served Charles Wes-
ley with a writ for walking over his field to address the
crowd. Proceedings were settled by the payment of £10,
and the bill still survives as an historical record. It
runs : —

"Goter versus Westley. Damages, £10; costs taxed, £9, 16s.
8d. July 29, 1839, Received of Mr. Westley, by the hands of Mr.
Joseph Varding, nineteen pounds sixteen shillings and sixpence,
for damages and costs in their cause.

"William Gason, Attorney for the Plaintiff."

At the bottom of this instrument Charles Wesley has
written, "I paid them the things I never took," and on
the back the significant sentence, "To be rejudged on
that day."

It is almost amusing to notice the air — as of men
stepping oS the solid earth into mere space, or of adven-
turers beginning a revolution — with which Whitefield
and the Wesleys, in turn, began open-air preaching. What
was there so alarming in preaching a sermon under the
open sky, with the green turf for a floor, and the wide
heavens for a sounding-board? As Wesley himself re-
flected, there are excellent precedents for open-air preach-
ing in the New Testament. Yet he tells us, as he watched
Whitefleld preaching to the Kingswood colliers, how
deeply the sight shocked him. "All my life till very
lately," he says, "I have been so tenacious of every point
relating to decency and order that I should have thought
the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done
in a church." Whitefield himself writes, on April 3 :
"Yesterday I began to play the madman in Gloucester by
preaching on a table in Thornbury Street." Yet both
John and Charles Wesley preached often in the open air
on the river bank, or under the shade of a great tree in
Georgia, and this without a sense of doing anything of
doubtful propriety. What was it made an open-air serv-
ice in England so alarming?

They were unconsciously influenced by their environ-
ment. In convention-oppressed England, upon which
mere decorous use and wont lay hard and deep as a frost,

164 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

to preach outside a pulpit, or anywhere except under a
church roof, was little less than impiety. It was charged
with the most deadly risks. Religion had to be kept
under a glass shade and packed in cotton-wool. To take
it into the jostling street, to expose it to the rough winds
that blew on the hill-side or across the open moor, was to
imperil its very existence!

England, too, it must be remembered, was a mere net-
work of ecclesiastical parishes, and each parish was a
spiritual freehold, with jealouslj^-guarded boundaries.
These new preachers were mere trespassers! They were
trespassers, too, of a very disquieting quality. To the
drowsy divines of that period, the spectacle of clergymen
betaking themselves to the market-place, or to the village
green, in search of a congregation was nothing less than
alarming. And the vastness of the congregations they
drew, the depth of the feelings they aroused, made the
spectacle only more alarming in clerical eyes. These men
were kindling a conflagration !

To Wesley and his comrades themselves the business of
field preaching was at first, as we have seen, utterly dis-
tasteful. John Wesley says he "consented to become
more vile" when he preached on the hillside at Kings-
wood. All the sensibilities of the strait-laced, order-
loving High Churchman were shocked, in a word, by the
experience of having to stand on common earth, while
the wind blew on his bare head, and preach to a passing
crowd. But Wesley, after his logical fashion, made up
his mind once for all on this subject, and his conscience
obeyed his logic. He was but following a great and
sacred i)recedeut in consenting in this fashion to become
"a fool for Christ's sake." He puts the case with match-
less force in a letter to a friend who warned him against
these vagrant and unauthorised services : —

"On Scriptural principles, I do not think it tiard to justify
what I do. God in Scripture commands me, according to my
power, to instruct the ignorant, reform the wicked, confirm the
virtuous. Man forbids me to do this in another's parish, that
is, in effect, to do it at all, seeing I have now no parish of my
own, nor probably ever shall. Whom, then, shall I hear, God or
man? 'If it be just to obey man rather than God, judge you. A
dispensation of the Gospel is committted to me, and woe is me
if I preach not the Gospel.' But where shall I preach it upon
the principles you mention? Why not in Europe, Asia, Africa,

THE FIELD PREAOHTXa

165

or America; not in any of tliese Christian parts, at least, of the
habitable earth. For all these are, after a sort, divided into
parishes. If it be said, 'Go back, then, to the heathens from
^vhence you came' — nay, but neither could I now (on your prin-
ciples) preach to them, for all the heathens in Georgia belong
to the parish either of Savannah or Frederica.

'"Suffer me now to tell you my principles in this matter. I
look upon all the world as my parish, thus far, I mean, that in
whatever part of it I am I judge it meet, right, and my bounden
duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear the glad tidings
of salvation. This is the work which I know God has called me
to do; and sure I am that His blessing attends it.'"

Its early field-preaching best expresses the essential
genius of Methodism. It makes audible what may be
culled the imperial note in it; it makes visible, too, its
])assion of zeal to save lost men and women. There was
in the Church life of that day little of the militant spirit.
J^till less was there any representation of that divinest
element of Christianity, the pity that seeks the lost, seeks
them with passion and sorrow; seeks with scorn of suffer-
ing and difficulty and of mere convention. All the terms
of Christ's great parable were in those sad days — as too
often in all days — inverted in Christ's own Church. The
ninety-nine sheep were lost in the wilderness, there was
only one fat, well-wooled sheep iu the fold. And beside
that one comfortable sheep the equally fat and drowsy
shepherd slumbered, and left the ninety-nine in the
wilderness to seek him! The wandering sheep, that is,
must pursue the shepherd, and not the shepherd the
sheep! But when Whitefield and the Wesleys, with a
thousand locked church doors behind them, stood before
a crowd of unwashed miners at Kingswood, or a ragged
multitude from the London slums at Moorfields, and pro-
claimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then faith came out
from behind its defences. The drowsy, slippered, arm-
chair religion of the day became aggressive. It attacked,
instead of waiting to be attacked. Open-air preaching in
tiiese modern days has itself become almost a convention,
hut in 1739 it was a revolution !

^Journal, July 11, 1739.

CHAPTER IV

THE THREE GREAT COMRADES

Here^ at the threshold of the revival, it is worth while
to sketch the three great comrades who were the chief
human forces in its development. At the outset it is
not Wesley but Whitefield who is most conspicuous. He
leads the way in the new path; he fills the largest space
in the public eye. The Church doors are shutting re-
lentlessly against Wesley. His field seems narrowing to
the condemned cells where felons sat in the shadow of the
gallows, and to the little societies which, on the inspira-
tion of Peter Bohler, had been formed. But Whitefield is
in the rich dawn of his fame as a preacher. Orthodox
pulpits are still open to him. Charmed crowds hang on
the magic of his eloquence. Whole cities stir at his
coming. When he visited Bristol a second time crowds
on foot, in coaches, or on horseback came out to meet him
on the road. The people blessed him as he passed along
the streets. In the church where he preached eager
hearers clung to the rails of the organ loft, others climbed
up on the leads of the very roof to catch the vibration of
his matchless voice.

"In the early stages of any movement," Miss Wedg-
wood says, with a touch of genuine insight, "it is impulse
and not weight that has most efl'ect." And Whitefield, by
a rare combination of natural gifts and of spiritual
fervour was exactly fitted to communicate impulse to the
revival beginning to stir in English life.

Whitefield and Wesley, of course, represent very unlike
types, and were products of unlike forces. Whitefield
lacked Wesley's sure logic, his faculty for government, his
Ijassiou for order and method. Wesley had the graver,
deeper, stronger nature. He was slower in attainment,
but more resolute in grasp. Whitefield was swifter, more
ardent and impulsive : but he possessed as profound a
genius for religion as Wesley himself. He lived, more-
over, in a realm of spiritual ardours unknown to Wesley.

THE THREE GREAT COMRADES 1G7

It may be added that he had the supreme gift of the orator
in a form to which Wesley could not pretend. And the
union of two such men, with gifts so diverse, helps to
explain the great religious movement of the eighteenth
century.

The contrasts and the agreements of the two men are
alike remarkable. Wesley was nurtured in the gravities
of a parsonage and passed straight from the shelter of
the rectory roof to a great public school, and then to an
ancient University. Whitefield was the son of an inn-
keeper, and spent his early years in the atmosphere of an
inn. In his own words, "he wore a blue apron, washed
mops, cleaned rooms, and did the work of a tapster. His
confessions of youthful vices are pitched in an almost hys-
terical key, and they reveal a curiously mixed character.
He pilfered money from his mother's pocket — but shared
the ill-got coins with the poor. He stole books — but they
were pious books intended to develop religious character.
He was sent to the local grammar school, found study
distasteful, and swung back again to the maternal inn,
with its servile tasks and ignoble companionships. The
boy, however, had gleams of genius, and by happy chance
secured admission to Pembroke College, Oxford, as a
servitor.

He did not excel as a student, but the religious influ-
ences of the Holy Club took hold of him. The Wesleys
became his spiritual guides, though he lacked their bal-
ance and sobriety. He passed through religious experi-
ences, indeed, which would seem in place in the biography
of a mediaeval saint, or of an ascetic of the early Christian
centuries. Vehement in everything else, he was vehe-
ment in his penitence, and in the austerities with which
he afflicted his body. He clad himself in mean clothes,
vexed his body by denying it sleep, ate the most dis-
tasteful food. "Whole days and weeks," he says, in his
exaggerated fa.shion. "have I spent in lying prostrate on
the ground in silent and watchful prayer." He chose the
beautiful and famous AValk of Christ Church for the scene
of some of his self-mortifications, and would kneel under
the trees in the darkness, in the winter rain or amid the
falling snow, until the sound of the great bell warned him
that the college gates were about to close. Reviewing his
youth, Whitefield passes a terrible sentence^on himself.

168

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"From in J cradle to my manhood," he cries, "I see noth-
ing in me but a fitness to be damned." There is a touch
of the histrionic in Whitefield, even in the recital of his
own spiritual biography!

Spiritual deliverance came to him at last, and came
in a flood of rapture. "Oh," he cried, as he tells the
story, "Oh, with what joy, joy unspeakable, even joy
full of glory, when the weight of sin went off and an
abiding sense of the love of God broke in. . . . Go where
I would I could not avoid singing psalms almost aloud."

There was a radiant brightness in Whitefield's very
nature that won universal affection, and his new spiritual
mood increased that radiance. His natural gift for ora-
tory, too, had already made itself manifest. He was
recognised as being of a saintly earnestness in religion,
and the one inevitable career for him was the pulpit.
His friends, indeed, urged him to precipitately in that
direction. "My friends," wrote Whitefield, "wanted me
to knock my head against the pulpit, and how some
young men stand up here and there and preach I do
not know. ... I have prayed a thousand times till the
sweat has dropped from my face like rain, that God of
His infinite mercy would not let me enter the Church,
till He called me and thrust me to the work."

He was just twenty-one when he received deacon's
orders, and he at once leaped into fame as a preacher.
"I intended to make 150 sermons," he says, "and thought
I would set up with a good stock-in-trade." As a matter
of fact, this greatest of English preachers only possessed
a single sermon when he began his preaching career. lu
his humility he put his first and solitary discourse into
the hands of a friendly clergj-man, to show how unpre-
pared for the work of the pulpit he was. The clergyman
used one-half of the sermon at his morning service, and
the other half at his evening service, and returned it to
its astonished author with a guinea by way of payment.
In his very first effort in the pulpit Whitefield discovered
he had no need of a manuscript. So great indeed was
the effect of that discourse that complaint was made to
the bishop that he had driven no less than fifteen persons
mad I

Whitefield was not a student, and not in any deep
sense a thinker. He had few of the gifts of a leader of

THE THREE GREAT COMRADES im

men. But his religious sensibilities were singularly keen.
He saw the great truths of Christianity, where other men
only reasoned about them ; and the facts of the spiritual
world were as real to him, and in some senses as clear,
as the facts of earth and sky with which his pliysical
senses dealt. They overwhelmed him without crushing
him. "Few men," says Sir James Stephen, "ever moved
amongst the infinitudes and eternities of invisible things
with less embarrassment or less of silent awe than White-
field." "Silent awe," indeed, was not possible to a man so
loudly and musically vocal as Whitefield.

He was above middle height, with singularly fair com-
plexion, regular features, and small deep-set, dark -blue
eyes, which seemed to flash with brightness. One, as it
happened, was set at a conflicting angle with the other,
but the resultant squint — as in the case of another famous
preacher, Edward Irving — only added expressiveness to
his face. Whitefield had probably the most musical and
"carrying" voice that ever issued from a human throat.
Its sweetness hung in the charmed ears of the crowd ; its
cadences resembled the rise and fall of the notes of some
great singer. Whitefield had, in addition, a body of iron
and nerves of steel. Except Wesley himself, no other
human being ever talked to such multitudes, or talked for
so many hours a day, and for so many years in succession,
as did Whitefield. His biographer says that "in the com-
pass of a single week he spoke in general forty hours,
very often sixty hours, and that to thousands of people."
And he did this for years, and "after his labours, instead
of taking rest, he was engaged in offering up prayers and
interce.ssions, or in singing hymns, as his manner was,
in every house to which he was invited." Whitefield,
in a word, almost as much as Wesley, seems, in his well-
nigh miraculous capacity for work, to belong to another
race.

Whitefield achieved his greatest triumphs as an orator
in the open air. Sir James Stephen gives this picture of
one of his open-air sermons : —

"Taking his stand on some rising knoll, his tall and graceful
figure dressed with elaborate propriety, and composed into an
easy and commanding attitude, Whitefield's clear blue eye' ranged
over thousands, drawn up in close files on the plain below, or
clustering into masses on every adjacent eminence .... But

170 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

the rich and varied tones of a voice of unequalled depth and
compass quickly silenced every ruder sound — as in rapid suc-
cession its ever-changing melodies passed from the calm of simple
narrative, and the measured distinctness of argument, to the
vehemence of reproof, and the pathos of heavenly consolation.
Sometimes the preacher wept exceedingly, stamped loudly and
passionately, and was frequently so overcome that for a few
seconds one would suspect he could never recover, and when he
did, nature required some little time to compose herself. The
agitated assembly caught the passions of the speaker, and ex-
ulted, wept, or trembled at his bidding."

Whitefield preached under conditions and to audiences
known to no other orators. Passing over Hampton
Common he finds a crowd of 12,000 people collected to
see a man hung in chains. Here is an audience, a pulpit,
a text; and straightway he captures the crowd! He
preaches to another vast multitude assembled to see a
man hanged, and the hangman himself suspends his oflBce
while Whitefield discourses. Some wandering players
have set up their stage at a country fair; the crowd
rushes together to grin and to jest. But Whitefield sud-
denly appears, turns the whole scene to religious uses,
spoils the players' harvest, and preaches a sermon of
overwhelming power.

As an orator Whitefield had some strange character-
istics. An ordinary preacher, if he has delivered one
discourse a dozen times, feels that he has preached it to
rags; the sound of it becomes hateful to his own ears.
The discourse is exhausted of all vitality. But White-
field never reached his highest point of effectiveness in
a sermon until he had preached it forty times! Then it
became on his lips a perfect instrument of persuasion.

It is computed that he preached over 18,000 sermons;
sixty-three of these were published by himself during
his lifetime, and the puzzled reader searches them in vain
to discover the secret of their marvellous power. They
seem commonplace, familiar, egotistical, and even tawdry.
The secret of their power lay in the personality of the
preacher — the expressive eyes, the matchless voice, the
trembling lips, the face that seemed to shine as with a
mystic light. And all these were but the instruments
and servants of a passionate and spiritual earnestness,
such as seldom burned in a human soul. Here was a
man with a single purpose, who believed with absolute

THE THREE GREAT COMRADES

171

convictiou every syllable of his message. His vision of
heaven and of bell was as direct as that of the great
Florentine. And what be saw he bad the orator's power,
the great actor's power, of making others see. And
through all Whitefield's oratory glowed — sometimes
flamed — a passion of love for his hearers. "You feel,"
says Sir James Stei)hen, "that you have to do with a
man who lived and spoke, and who gladly would have
died, to turn his hearers from the path of destruction
and to guide them to holiness and peace."

All Whitefield's sermons, it may be added, are but so
many variations of two ideas: man is guilty, but may
obtain forgiveness through Jesus Christ; man is death-
less; he stands at a point betwixt the two mighty op-
posites of eternal suflfering and of eternal bliss. The
great preacher's oratory was thus a fiddle with only two
strings. But what deep and moving harmonies they
yielded I

Wesley and Whitefield differed at many points both
of theology and of practical morality. Whitefield was an
ardent Calvinist, Wesley a convinced Arminian. Wesley
branded slavery as the sum of all villainies; Whitefield
bought slaves in the interests of his orphan-house in
Georgia, includes them as cattle in the list of his stock,
and piously thanks God for their increase. But in spite
of all their points of difference Wesley and Whitefield
belong to the same spiritual type, lived under the empire
of the same lofty motives, and had almost equal part-
nership in the greatest religious movement in English
history. Southey, indeed, declares that "if the Wesleys
had never existed Whitefield would have given birth to
Methodism"; and there was perhaps never written a
sentence of less insight. Whatever Whitefield might
have done, he himself, the most erratic and planless of
men, could never have built the enduring and stately
fabric of Methodism. Whitefield's influence resembles
the gale sweeping over the surface of the sea. The effect
is instant, and visible to every sense. But of Wesley's
work the true symbol is the coral reef, built up slowly,
and cell by cell, in the sea depths, over which the soil
forms, and on which great cities will rise and unborn
nations live. The one stirred the surface ; the other built
up from the depths, built deeply, and built for all time.

172

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Whitefield's ideal was to fly from one crowd of waiting
hearers to another. Wesley had the social instinct. He
knew the forces born of companionship, the shelter
created by compajiionship. So from the very beginning
of his work he was busy organising little societies where
spiritual life could be sheltered and nourished ; societies
which supplied an external retlex for the inner spiritual
experience of those who belonged to them. While White-
field was moving the crowds, Wesley was organising these
tiny centres of living structure; and the societies Wesley
gathered were the cells in the coral reef !

Wesley, of course, did not invent the societies into
which he gathered his converts. Such societies sprang
into existence by way of protest against the black night
of immorality which settled down over England after the
Restoration and before Wesley himself was born. Bcihler
revived these societies, and gave them a more spiritual
tone. Miss Wedgwood, in view of this, says that "Eng-
land gave the form of the societies, and Germany the
spirit." This is one of those plausible generalities whidi
delight the ear but do not endure the test of facts. All
that need be noted just now, however, is that when Wesley
returned from Germauj'^ and began the real work of his
life, by some wise, unconscious instinct he busied himself
in nourishing and multiplying the societies which, in
concert with Peter Bohler, he had already begun to form.
This work was less dramatic and immediately visible than
that of Whitefield's, but it was more eudui'ing.

It is the fashion to say of Whitefleld and John and
Charles Wesley that the fiirst was the orator, the second
the statesman, the third the singer, of the great religious
movement of the eighteenth century. But the three
actors in that great drama are hardly to be packed into
separate compartments, and labelled, in this fashion.
John Wesley had more than a touch of the poet, as well
as the genius of a statesman ; and if oratory is the art
of using human speech as an instrument of overwhelming
persuasion, then Charles Wesley was an orator as truly
as his elder brother, or as Whitetield himself, though of
a quite different type.

Charles Wesley, tried by the test of the work he accom-
plished, was one of the greatest masters of persuasive
speech. For fifteen years he moved through the towns

THE THREE GREAT COMRADES 173

and villages of England and Ireland, preaching in crowded
churches or to vast multitudes under the open skies, and
always with strange power. There is something almost
awe-inspiring in the sight of a multitude of 15,000 or
20,000 people standing silent, hushed, and expectant,
waiting for the sound of a single human voice. White-
field himself, the greatest of field-preachers, has told how
the sight impressed him. "All was hushed when I began,"
he says, "and the people, standing round the hill in the
profoundest silence, filled me with admiration. To be-
hold such crowds standing together in such a silence, or
to hear the echo of their singing running from one end
of them to the other, was very solemn."

To draw such a crowd, to hold it spell-bound, to sway
it with religious emotion, to melt it into penitence, to
kindle it to joy, is one of the greatest tasks for which
human speech has ever been used. To do it day after
day, sometimes two or three times in a single day; to
do it for fifteen years as the ordinary business of life.;
to do it intermittently till old age, is a task the mere
vision of which might have stricken Demosthenes with
despair. And Charles Wesley performed this strange
feat! He had not the organ-like voice and the dramatic
genius of Whitefield, nor yet his brother's strange secret
of calm and overwhelming solemnity of address. The
secret of Charles Wesley's power in preaching lay in
the realm of the emotions. The tears ran down his
cheeks; his voice took cadences of infinite tenderness.
It shook with a trembling pathos of emotion; and the
contagion of his feeling melted whole crowds.

In old age Charles Wesley's preaching took a curious
character. He preached with his eyes closed, making
long pauses, with bent and listening head, as though
waiting for some message from unseen realms. He
fumbled with his hands about his breast, or leaned upon
the pulpit Bible with his elbows. He sometimes paused
and asked the congregation to sing a hymn until his
message came to him. But in the prime of his life he
was a preacher of almost unsurpassed power, talking in
sentences which had the rush and impact of bullets, but
which vibrated with electric thrills of emotion.

Charles Wesley's development of extraordinary power
in preaching was both sudden and unexpected. He notes

174

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

with characteristic accuracy the exact date when he first
attempted to preach without notes. "At St. Antholin's
Church, on Friday, October 20," he says, "seeing so few
present, I thought of preaching extempore. I was afraid;
yet I ventured on the promise, *Lo, I am with you al-
ways.' " Only a few months afterwards he could stand
up before a crowd of 15,000 people and speak without
fear, or pause, or failure of power, for two unbroken
hours.

Charles Wesley had his limitations. He never could
succeed, for example, in getting his natural feelings and
his formal ecclesiastical beliefs to agree together. His
best biographer, Thomas Jackson, says that through many
years he entertained on various subjects two conflicting
sets of principles, and acted on them alternately with
equal sincerity, and without even suspecting their in-
consistency! But this is hardly just to Charles Wesley.
The fact is he felt truth rather than reasoned about it,
and his feelings were wiser than his reasoned beliefs.
But it is quite true that he remained delightfully and
permanently unconscious of the discord betwixt his
theories and his feelings.

He was in theory a High Churchman of the narrowest
order. He declared that if he left the Church of England
he would be afraid to meet the disembodied spirit of his
father in Paradise. That most irascible of High Church-
men, in such a cause, would quarrel with him even in
those celestial realms! Charles Wesley's inconsistencies,
bred of the unconscious conflict betwixt his generous
impulses and his ecclesiastical prejudices, are amusing.
He was the first to administer the Sacrament to the
new converts in an unconsecrated building, yet he was
filled with pious horror when the Methodists asked to re-
ceive the Sacrament at the hands of their own preachers.
He spent his earlier years in open-air preaching, and the
years of his old age in preaching in City Road Chapel;
yet he made it his dying charge that his bones should
not lie in the grounds of that cha^jel, because they were
unconsecrated. "It is a pity," wrote his wiser brother
John, afterwards, "that my brother's bones were not
deposited where my bones will lie. Certainly that ground
is as holy as any in England ; it contains many bonny
dead." It is an example of the irony of things that

THE THREE GREAT TOMRADES

175

Charles Wesley's sacerdotal honor at the thought of
his bones resting in the grounds of City Road Chapel
has had the effect of dismissing them to soil still less
sacred. The particular part of the churchyard where they
sleep was, it seems, never consecrated !

Charles Wesley said, "My brother is all hope, I am
all fear;" but that is not quite accurate. Charles was
in temperament as sanguine as his brother John, but
one side of his nature made him fear the results of the
very things which the other and nobler side of his nature
made him do.

He was a little, short-sighted man, of hurrying speech,
odd in manner, desultory in mental habit, hot in his
resentments, most loyal in his friendships, and with a
simplicity of mind which niade him eminently lovable.
He lacked the strength, the fixity of purpose, the keen
logic, the ordered and .systematic intellect of his greater
brother. But he outran him in some things, and was,
perhaps, the more lovable of the two for the very reason
that he was less faultlessly perfect. For love is sometimes
nourished by the things it has to forgive.

CHAPTER V

WESLEY AS A PREACHER

The great revival was by this time in full progress, and
even at this early stage two concurrent and parallel lines
of work are visible in it. One is aggressive, and consists
of a great chain of preaching services stretching through
the whole of Wesley's lifetime, and covering the three
kingdoms. The other is conservative, and is represented
by the tiny societies which were formed everywhere, and
within whose sheltering curves the new converts were
gathered.

Wesley's supreme instrument was preaching. He used
other forces ; he built schools, he organised societies, he
published books, he waged great controversies, he was
tireless in correspondence and conversation. But not
literature, or controversy, or personal influence is Wes-
ley's trusted and most effective instrument. First and
last the movement Wesley represents is the revival on an
unprecedented scale, and with unprecedented effects, of
the office and work of the preacher. "It pleased God,"
wrote Paul, as the spokesman of the earliest Christian
generations, "by the foolishness of preaching to save them
that believe." And in Wesley's movement Christianity
simply reverted to its first and greatest instrument of
power.

But the preaching of the new movement, as we have
seen, broke away from traditional forms. It was open-air
preaching, not imprisoned in stone walls. It was itiuer-
i ant preaching, not confined to fixed spots. It took the
! three kingdoms for its field. It turned aside from the
drowsy handfuls in the churches, and sought with eager
pity the forgotten multitudes outside them, fast drifting
into a worse heathenism than that which lay on British
soil before Augustine landed. Instead of the pulpit the
preachers of the great revival took the hill-side, the
market-place, the village green, the stony city lane ; wher-
ever men would listen there they delivered their message.
176

WESLEY AS A PREACHER

177

Aud the new conditions created new methods. The dec-
orous platitudes of drowsy divines, mumbled to nodding
congregations, gave place to the living speech of living
men ; of men with a message, who felt themselves to be
the direct spokesmen of the Spirit of God. If Wesley
and his comrades had not been thrust out of the churches,
the essential genius of the movement, the nature of the
work to be done, the methods necessary for its accom-
l»lishment, would have taken them out. The ancient
( hannels through which truth ran were narrow at best.*'
Kud they had become fatally clogged. No current could
stir in ihem. New channels must be opened ; new forces
called into exercise ; new classes reached. So at its very
first step the great revival breaks out of existing ecclesi-
astical boundaries. It betakes itself to the biisy street,
the wind-swept moors, wherever men and women for
whom Christ died could be gathered. This was preaching
as the first Christian century knew it.

And Wesley quickly became the most commanding
figure in the new crusade. He lacked some of Whitefield's
special gifts as an orator, yet he somehow was as suc-
cessful in open-air preaching as even his great comrade;
and he brought to tlie work more orderly plans, and a
more concentrated purpose, than even Whitefield.

What was the secret of Wesley's power as a preacher?
In many respects it might be imagined that he was the
last man to sway an eighteenth century crowd. He was
a gentleman by birth and habit, a scholar by training, a
man of fine and almost fastidious taste, with an English-
mau\>' uneasy dislike of emotion, and a High Churchman's
hatred of irregularity. He had little imagination and no
descriptive power. He told no ancedotes. as a rule, and
certainly fired off no jests. What fitness had he to talk
to peasants, to miners, to the rabble of the city, to the
slow-thinking farmer drawn from his plough-tail?

Yet he stood up, a little, trim, symmetrical figure; his
smooth black hair exactly parted; his complexion clear
and pure as that of a girl ; his hazel eyes flashing like
points of .steel. And beneath his words the crowd was
melted and subdued until it resembled a routed army
shaken with fear and broken with emotion; men and
women not seldom falling to the ground in a passion of
distress. His voice had no trumpet notes; but it was

178

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

clear as a silver flute, and ran across the wondering crowd
to its farthest verge.

There was undoubtedly something of prophet-like force
in Wesley's preaching. He drew his inspiration from far-
off realms. His printed sernions are only the bones of his
spoken discourses, and they are commonly dry as bones,
though they have something of mastodon-like scale. But
his spiritual insight was hardly less than terrible. He
seemed to see into men's souls; to put his finger upon the
hidden sin, the unconfessed fear. He had the power of
making each man feel as though he talked to him alone.
And there was something in his discourse — a note in his
voice, a flash in his eye — that thrilled the crowd with awe,
awe that not seldom deepened into dread. The mood of
tlie speaker was one of perfect calmness. But it was the
calm of power, of certainty, of an authority which ran
back into the spiritual world. Nelson gives perhaps the
best picture of John Wesley as a preacher. He says : —

"Mr. Whitefield was to me as a man who could play well on
an instrument, for his preaching was pleasant to me, and I loved
the man; so that if any one offered to disturb him, I was ready
to fight for him. But I did not understand him. I was like a
wandering bird cast out of its nest till Mr. John Wesley came
to preach his first sermon at Moorfields. ... As soon as he got
upon the stand, he stroked back his hair and turned his face
towards where I stood, and, I thought, fixed his eyes upon me.
His countenance fixed such an awful dread upon me, before I
heard him speak, that it made my heart beat like the pendulum
of a clock; and when he did speak, I thought his whole discourse
was aimed at me. When he had done I said, 'This man can tell
the secrets of my heart; he hath not left me there; for he hath
showed the remedy, even the blood of Jesus.' I thought he spoke
to no one but me, and I durst not look up, for I imagined all the
people were looking at me. . . . But before Mr. Wesley con-
cluded his sermon he cried out, 'Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto
the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God,
for He will abundantly pardon.' I said, 'If that be true, I will
turn to God to-day.' "

Who can wonder that a preacher with this strange
power could shake the hearts of multitudes, and stamp
himself on the imagination of the three kingdoms !

With the exception of a few brief visits to London, and
a hasty run into Wales, Wesley spent the remainder of
1739 in Bristol. In nine months, it is reckoned, he de-
livered at least five hundred sermons and expositions,

WESLEY AS A PREACHER

179

and only six of these were in churches. His plan was
to expound the Bible in one or other of the little societies
every night, and spend the days in open-air services. He
has left on record his teaching at this period, and to his
open-air audiences. Religion, he proclaimed, does not
consist in negatives ; in external morality ; in orthodox
opinions. It is the creation of a new nature in us. The
sole condition is repentance towards God and faith in our
Lord Jesus Christ. He that believes is justified by the
redemption which is in Christ Jesus, and, being justified,
has the consciousness of a new relation to God and of
power over sin.

This is simple and obvious teaching, but it is curious
to note that the doctrine that we are saved through faith,
which is the very essence of Christianity, and which was
now the burden of Wesley's sermons, kindled the most
active enmity. Says Wesley : —

"We could hardly speak of anything else, either in public or
private. It shone upon our minds with so strong a light that
it was our constant theme. It was our daily subject, both in
verse and prose; and we vehemently defended it against all man-
kind. But, in doing this, we were assaulted and abused on every
side. We were everyw^here represented as mad dogs, and treated
accordingly. We were stoned in the streets, and several times
narrowly escaped with our lives. In sermons, newspapers, and
pamphlets of all kinds, we were painted as unheard-of monsters.
But this moved us not."

The preaching begun under these new conditions was
attended by marvellous results. It was the preaching of
early apostolic times, and with many of the results of the
apostolic age. Whole pages of John Wesley's Journal,
indeed, resemble a new chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,
written in modern terms. It is inscribed with the records
of conversions; of conversions sudden in point of time,
dramatic in character, rapturous in joy. Later Wesley,
after his methodical fashion, asked some of his converts
to write in plain and sober prose the story of their spirit-
ual experiences, and the result is a series of human docu-
ments of enduring and curious interest. The fight of a
century still leaves them vivid.

Wesley's own account of the practical results of the
work is thus given in rej)ly to an angry critic : —

"The question between us turns chiefly, if not wholly, on
matter of fact You deny that God does now work these effects;

180 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

at least, that He works them in this manner. I affirm both;

because I have heard these things with my own ears, and have
seen them with my eyes.' I have seen (as far as a thing of this
kind can be seen) very many persons changed in a moment from
the spirit of fear, horror, despair, to the spirit of love, joy, and
peace; and from sinful desire, till then reigning over them, to
a sure desire of doing the will of God. These are matters of
fact, whereof I have been and almost daily am an eye or ear
witness. . . . And that such a change was then wrought, appears
(not from their shedding tears only, or falling into fits, or crying
out; these are not the fruits, as you seem to suppose, whereby
I judge, but) from the whole tenor of their life, till then, many
ways wicked; from that time holy, just, and good.

"I will show you him that was a lion till then, and is now a
lamb, him that was a drunkard, and is now exemplar ily sober;
the whoremonger that was, who now abhors the very 'garment
spotted by the flesh.' These are my living arguments for what
I assert, viz. 'that God does now, as aforetime, give remission of
sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, even to us and to our
children.' " '

But a feature begau presently to emerge iu Wesley's
meetings which is still a puzzle to science, and which at
the moment seemed to justify the worst things Wesley's
angriest critics could say about the revival. Remarkable
scenes of physical agitation and distress broke out. It
was as if some sudden blast of energy, outside the order
of nature — whether evil or good could not be easily deter-
mined— swept over the listening multitudes. The first of
these strange scenes occurred on April 17, 1739, at a meet-
ing of one of the societies. Wesley tells the story in his
Journal : —

"At Baldwin Street, we called upon God to confirm His word.
Immediately, one that stood by cried out aloud, with the utmost
vehemence, even in the agonies of death. But we continued in
prayer, till a new song was put into her mouth, a thanksgiving
unto our God. Soon after, two other persons were seized with
strong pain and constrained to roar for the disquietude of their
heart. But it was not long before they likewise burst forth into
praise to God their Saviour."

A still more remarkable scene took place in the
same locality a fortnight later. Wesley records in his
Journal : —

"May 1. — At Baldwin Street, my voice could scare be heard
amidst the groanings of some, and the cries of others calling
aloud to Him that is mighty to save. A Quaker, who stood by.

•Journal, May 20, 1739.

WESLEY AS A PREACHER

181

was very angry, and was biting his lips, and knitting his brows,
when he dropped down as thunder-struck. The agony he was In
was even terrible to behold. We prayed for him, and he soon
lifted up his head with joy, and joined us in thanksgiving. A
bystander, John Hayden, a weaver, a man of regular life and
conversation, one that constantly • attended the public prayers
and Sacrament, and was zealous for the Church, and against
Dissenters, laboured to convince the people that all this was a
delusion of the devil; but next day, while reading a sermon on
'Salvation by Faith,' he suddenly changed colour, fell off his
chair, and began screaming, and beating himself against the
ground. The neighbours were alarmed and flocked together.
When I came in I found him on the floor, the room being full of
people, and two or three holding him as well as they could. He
immediately fixed his eyes on me, and said, 'Ay, this is he I said
deceived the people. But God has overtaken me. I said it was
a delusion of the devil; but this is no delusion.' Then he roared
aloud, '0 thou devil! thou cursed devil! yea, thou legion of devils!
thou canst not stay in me. Christ will cast thee out. I know
His work is begun. Tear me in pieces if thou wilt, but thou
canst not hurt me.' He then beat himself against the ground;
his breast heaving as if in the pangs of death, and great drops
of sweat trickling down his face. We all betook ourselves to
prayer. His pangs ceased, and both his body and soul were set
at liberty. With a clear, strong voice he cried, 'This is the Lord's
doing; and it is marvellous in our eyes. Blessed be the Lord
God of Israel, from this time forth for evermore.' I called again
an hour after. We found his body weak as that of an infant,
and his voice lost; but his soul was in peace, full of love, and
rejoicing in hope of the glory of God."

On May 21 the sceue was repeated, but this time in one
of the open-air services : —

"While I was preaching, God began to make bare His arm, not
in a close room, neither in private, but in the open air, and
before more than two thousand witnesses. One, and .another,
and another were struck to the earth; exceedingly trembling at
the presence of His power. Others cried, with a loud and bitter
cry, 'What must we do to be saved?' In the evening, at St.
Nicholas Street, I was interrupted, almost as soon as I had begun
to speak, by the cries of one who strongly cried for pardon and
peace. Others dropped down as dead. Thomas Maxfield began
to roar out, and beat himself against the ground, so that six men
could scarcely hold him. Many others began to cry out to the
Saviour of all, insomuch that all the house, and indeed all the
street for some space, was in an uproar. But we continued in
prayer, and the greater part found rest to their souls."

These extraordinary manifestations startled and dis-
quieted even Wesley's comrades. Whitefield wrote to
him on June 25, blaming Wesley for "giving so much

182

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

encouragement to these convulsions. Were I to do so,"
he said, "how many would cry out every night." Twelve
days later Whitetield was in Bristol, and found that the
same scenes attended his own service: —

"In the application of his sermon, four persons sank down
close to him almost in the same moment. One of them lay with-
out either sense or motion. A second trembled exceedingly. The
third had strong convulsions all over his body, but made no noise
unless by groans. The fourth, equally convulsed, called upon
God with strong cries and tears."

These outbreaks of physical anguish were not confined
to public services and to crowds; they seized individuals
in their homes. Here is one terrible story which Wesley
records in his Journal : —

"October 23. — I was pressed to visit a young woman at Kings-
wood. I found her on the bed, two or three persons holding her.
Anguish, horror, and despair, above all description, appeared in
her pale face. The thousand distortions of her whole body
showed how the dogs of hell were gnawing at her heart. The
shrieks intermixed were scare to be endured. She creamed out,
'I am damned, damned; lost for ever! Six days ago you might
have helped me. But it is past. I am the devil's now, I have
given myself to him; his I am, him I must serve, with him I
must go to hell; I will be his, I will serve him, I will go with
him to hell; I cannot be saved, I will not be saved. I must, I
will, I will be damned!' She then began praying to the devil.
We began to sing, 'Arm of the Lord, awake! awake!' She im-
mediately sank down as asleep; but, as soon as we left off, broke
out again, with inexpressible vehemence: 'Stony hearts, break!
I am a warning to you. Break, break, poor stony hearts! I am
damned that you may be saved. You need not be damned,
though I must' She then fixed her eyes on a corner of the
ceiling, and said, 'There he is. Come, good devil, come. You
said you would dash my brains out; come, do it quickly. I am
yours, I will be yours.' We interrupted her by calling again
upon God; on which she sank down as before."

A similar instance took place a few days after-
wards : —

"October 27. — I was sent for to Kingswood again, to one of
those who had been so ill before. A violent rain began just as I
set out. Just at that time, the woman (then three miles off)
cried out, 'Yonder comes Wesley, galloping as fast as he can!'
When I was come she burst into a horrid laughter, and said, 'No
power, no power; no faith, no faith. She is mine, her soul is
mine. I have her, and will not let her go.' We begged of God
to increase our faith. Meanwhile her pangs increased more and
more; so that one would have imagined, by the violence of her

WESLEY AS A PREACHER

183

throes, her body must have been shattered to pieces. One, who
was clearly convinced this was no natural disorder, said, 'I think
Satan is let loose. I fear he will not stop here,' and added, 'I
command thee, in the name of the Lord Jesus, to tell if thou
hast commission to torment any other soul.' It was immediately
answered — 'I have. L y C r, and S h J s.' We be-
took ourselves to prayer again; and ceased not till she began,
with a clear voice, and composed, cheerful look, to sing, 'Praise
God, from whom all blessings flow.' "

The persons named in this case lived at some distance ;
they were at the moment in perfect health ; but a day
afterwards they were affected in exactly the same way as
the unfortunate woman whose case has been described.

Many explanations of these curious phenomena are
offered. Southey resolves them into mere animal mag-
netism and the contagion of excitement. "There are
passions," he says truly enough, "which are as infectious
as the plague, and fear itself is not more so than fanati-
cism." But the sensibilities and emotions to which Wes-
ley was making his appeal when these scenes broke out
certainly cannot be placed under the category of "fanati-
cism"; nor was there anything being said or done at the
moment to awaken "fear." Isaac Taylor finds in these
scenes a reproduction in modern terms of the demoni-
acal possessions recorded in the New Testament. To the
purely secular mind they perhaps recall the dancing
mania of the fourteenth century, or the convulsionnaircs
of France in the sixteenth century. Only in Wesley's
case the subject of these manifestations wei*e solid Eng-
lishmen, and not excitable French women and children.

As a matter of fact similar phenomena have made their
appearance at widely remote points of time and under
very unlike circumstances. Exactly such scenes occurred
in Scotland under Erskine's preaching, and in America
under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards. But Edwards
undoubtedly preached a terrifying gospel, and preached
it in a terrifying way. Wesley's methods were parted by
a very wide interval indeed from those of the great New
England evangelist.

Wonder is often expressed that these manifestations
began, not under the preaching of Wbitefield, with his
lion-like voice and dramatic powers; nor yet under that
of Charles Wesley, with his concentrated and overwhelm-
ing appeal to the emotions. They occurred while John

184

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Wesley, with his grave brow, his composed look, his clear
and level voice, his appeal to reason and conscience, was
preaching. And yet it is intelligible why these phenomena
began under the preaching of John Wesley rather than
under that of either of his comrades. Whitefield appealed
to the senses and to the imagination, Charles Wesley
to the emotions. But John Wesley, for all his strange
calmness, struck a deeper note, and moved his hearers
with mightier forces. Thei'e was something in him — in
his look, in the cadences of his voice, in his solemn and
transparent earnestness — which brought irresistibly home
to those who looked on him and listened to him a sense of
eternal things. Wesley, says Miss Wedgwood, "wrought
in his hearers such a sense of the horror of evil, of its
mysterious closeness to the human soul, and of the need
of a miracle for the separation of the two, that no one
perhaps could suddenly receive without some violent
physical effect."

But this does not cover the whole case. The truth is,
Wesley saw with Dante-like vision, and had the power to
make others see, that supreme fact of the spiritual world,
the close relation in which the human soul stands to God;
how near God is to man ; in what relation man's sin
stands to God's purity, man's need to God's pity, and
all man's acts to God's judgment. So from the dim,
remote, far-off spaces of the heavens, God appeared to
Wesley's hearers, a Figure loving and awful, and above
all, at the very touch I And as Wesley preached, and
there suddenly broke upon his hearers this sense of the
eternal world with its tremendous issues, of sin and its
infinite guilt, of God and the relation of the soul to Him —
what wonder that the shaken souls of his hearers not
seldom communicated their tremors to the bodies that
held them !

Many human elements were, no doubt, amongst the
forces which produced these scenes: imposture, hysteria,
the contagion of strong emotions, the fire of excitement
burning in the senses. But when allowance has been
made for these there is a residuum of strange fact which
they do not explain. All that can be said is that body
and soul are strangely interknitted ; their boundaries
cannot be exactly defined; they act and react on each
other. A wasting disease affects every mood of the mind.

WESLEY AS A PREACHER

185

The wine of a strong and deep emotion, poured through
the feelings, thrills every physical organ. And spiritual
emotions, since they awaken at a greater depth, and beat
with a stronger pulse than any other of which the human
soul is capable, may well, when once they are aroused,
affect with strange force the body itself. Only those will
doubt this who have never felt the awe of deep spiritual
feeling.

It can be easily understood how these strange pheno-
mena supplied those who hated the whole movement with
new arguments against it. They constituted a loud, wide-
spread, and clamorous scandal. But at least they adver-
tised the revival. They filled all minds with wonder and
all lips with gossip. A strange force seemed to have
broken out of the unseen world on mankind. It was
easy to suspect the new movement, to vehemently dis-
like it, to argue loudly against it. It was not possible to
ignore it !

CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT ITINERANT

Weslet quickly came to his natural place as the leader
and representative of the new movement. He was not
merely its theologian and statesman, its scholar, its chief
controversialist; he was its foremost and most diligent,
if not the greatest, preacher. His career as an evangel-
ist, now in full progress, deserves some study, for there
is no other, for range, continuity, and permanent results,
to approach it in modern history.

Wesley preached his first open-air sermon on April 2,
1739, and his last at Winchelsea on October 7, 1790.
Betwixt those two dates lie fifty-one years, filled with a
strain of toil almost without parallel in human experi-
ence. At the beginning of this period his two comrades,
Whitefleld and his brother Charles, were in gifts and zeal
his peers. Charles Wesley married in 1749, and his work
as an itinerant shrank at once to very narrow limits,
Whitefield died in America on September 30, 1770. Wes-
ley thus, in what may be called the full stain of aggres-
sive work, exceeded his brother by more than forty years,
and Whitefield by more than twenty. His work, it may
be added, was of a more concentrated type than that of
either of his two comrades. In mere scale of labour
Wesley far outran Whitefield. Whitefield preached, it
is computed, 18,000 sermons, more than ten a week for
thirty-four years of evangelistic life. Wesley preached
42,400 sermons after his return from Georgia, an average
of more than fifteen a week ; and he travelled, it is com-
puted, in his itinerant work, more than 250,000 miles.
Wesley, in a word, was a man who, if he had the brain
of a statesman, the culture of a scholar, the message of
an apostle, had also the glowing and tireless zeal of a
preaching friar of the Middle Ages.

His work throughout these fifty-one years was of an
unvarying type. It was the proclamation to the crowd,
wherever he could gather one — on hill-side or river-bank.
186

THE GREAT ITINERANT

187

in the village luarket-place or under a church roof — of
the unchanged and unchanging message of Christ's
Gospel. Wesley never wearied, never faltered, never
doubted, never turned aside. His comrades lagged be-
hind him; his friends forsook him; a world of angry
controversy eddied about his name and character. None
of these things affected Wesley. The clear flame of his
zeal burned long, burned undimmed, burned still, when
even the fire of life turned to ashes.

Who plots on a map of England Wesley's preaching
tours becomes sensible of certain constant features in the
lines along which these tours moved. They did not
cover the whole of England. They ran in certain well-
marked geographical curves. In his evangelistic cam-
paigns Wesley — to borrow the terminology of the soldier
— had three bases — London, Bristol, and Newcastle-on-
Tyne. They formed, roughly, an isosceles triangle; and
Wesley's tours — allowing for a certain percentage of
oscillation — ran to and fro betwixt these three points.
He must have known the road westward from London to
Bristol, and northward from London to Newcastle-on-
Tyne, as a city postman knows his round. Why did
Wesley keep so obstinately to these particular lines?
Why did he leave such wide spaces of England prac-
tically unvisited?

A little consideration supplies the explanation. The
chief feature of English history from the middle of the
eighteenth century is the rise of the great manufacturing
towns. In the last fifty years of the eighteenth century
the population of England increased fifty per cent. This
was the result of the industrial revival, which changed
the whole life of England and gave to her the leadership
of commercial Europe. Now, Wesley's preaching tours
followed roughly the lines of England's industrial de-
velopment. He travelled where population was thickest.
He left almost unvisited the wide green fields of rural
districts, with their slow-moving, scanty population. But
where the stream of life was deepest ; where tiny villages
were growing into busy cities ; where tall chimneys filled
the skies with their blackness, there Wesley preached
and toiled. His mission began with the miners of Kings-
wood. It ran, almost throughout his whole career,
amongst the crowds of the manufacturing cities. Wesley

188

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

thus — with perhaps uncouscious wisdom — was baptizing
with divine forces the new fermenting life of his day.

His tours, it may be added, were planned out in ad-
vance with great minuteness — the places he was to visit,
the hours at which he would arrive, the services to be
held. There were no wasted moments, no omitted oppor-
tunities, no intervals of rest. And Wesley carried out his
"appointments" with iron resolution. Nor storm, nor
distance, nor weariness availed to intercept his planet-
like course. His custom was to preach in the morning
at five o'clock, or even earlier. He then mounted his
horse, or entered his chaise, and rode or drove to the
next place he had appointed, where another great crowd
waited for him. So throughout all the hours of the day,
and all the days of the week, and all the weeks of the
year, for a long half-century. He lived like a soldier on
a campaign — lightly equipped, and ready at a moment
to march. But for him it was a campaign of fifty years I

And yet he was a man of exquisite neatness and order,
with the delight of a scholar in having everything perfect
about him. "In his chamber and study, during his winter
months of residence in London, not a book was misplaced
or even a scrap of paper left unheeded. He could enjoy
every convenience of life; and yet he acted in the smallest
things like a man who was not to continue an hour in one
place. He appeared at home in every place — settled,
satisfied, and happy; and yet was ready any hour to take
a journey of a thousand miles."

The mere physical strain of such a career can hardly be
estimated. The incessant travelling under the wet and
changeful English skies, and on the rough English roads
of that day, was a stupendous toil. Wesley travelled
usually 4,500 miles a year, mostly on horseback, and this
down to nearly his seventieth year. And while travelling
at this rate he generally preached two, three — sometimes
even four — sermons a day. He lived in crowds. His life,
for so many hours each day, was full of noise, hurry, and
agitation. And yet in all this incessant travelling and
preaching he carried with him the studious and medita-
tive habits of the philosopher !

His light, compact figure had the consistency and
toughness of so much india-rubber. Nothing tired him ;
few things disturbed him. He was as insensible to vicis-

THE GREAT ITINERANT

189

situdes of weather as a North Sea pilot. There was not
a soft fibre, not an unhealthy nerve or a relaxed muscle,
not an ounce of unnecessary flesh, in his wonderful little
body. Every waking moment had its task, and no one
ever gave fewer hours to sleep than did John Wesley.

He records that he rode in one day a distance of more
than ninety miles between Bawtry and Epworth ; and, at
the end, "was little more tired than when he rose in the
morning." In Scotland, he reached Cupar, "after travel-
ling near ninety miles," and "was not in the least tired."
"Many a rough journey," says Wesley, "have I had before,
but one like this I never had, between wind and rain, and
ice and snow, and driving sleet and piercing cold." Under
such harsh conditions he had ridden 280 miles in six days.

There is something almost amusing in the brevity,
and more than philosophic coolness, with which Wesley
records his experiences as a traveller, in the wild weather,
and on the rough roads of that time. He gives us little
vignettes of the scenery and weather — snow landscapes,
pictures of dripping skies, of bitter, blowing winds — in
spite of which he is seen struggling on indomitably to his
appointments. He is too busy, perhaps, to attend to the
weather very much, or to describe his own feelings about
it. He tells the simple, matter-of-fact story in the most
matter-of-fact way. Here is one of his little weather
vignettes : —

"The hills were covered with snow, as in the depth of winter.
About two we came to Trewint, wet and weary enough, having
been battered by the rain and hail for some hours. I preached in
the evening to many more than the house would contain, on the
happiness of him whose sins are forgiven."

A companion picture, which may well make the soft-
fibred and comfort-loving modern reader shiver, comes a
little later: —

"There was so much snow about Boroughbridge that we could
SO on but very slowly, insomuch that the night overtook us when
we wanted six or seven miles to the place where we designed to
lodge. But we pushed on, at a venture, across the moor, and,
about eight, came safe to Sandhutton. . . . We found the roads
abundantly worse than they had been the day before; not only
because the snows were deeper, which made the causeways in
many places unpassable — and turnpike-roads were not known in
these parts of England till years after — but likewise because the
hard frost, succeeding the thaw, had made all the ground like

190

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

glass. We were often obliged to walk, it being impossible to
ride and our horses several times fell down while we were lead-
ing them, but not once while we were riding them, during the
whole journey. It was past eight before we got to Gateshead
Fell, which appeared a pathless waste of white. The snow filling
up and covering all the roads, we were at a loss how to proceed,
when an honest man of Newcastle overtook and guided us safe
into the town.

"Many a rough journey have I had before, but one like this I
never had; between wind, and hail, and rain, and ice, and snow,
and driving sleet, and piercing cold. But it is past; those days
will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never
been."

It is to be noted that Wesley had not always the
exhilaration of admiring crowds to inspire him. Some
of his open-air services were begun under circumstances
which might well have taxed the courage of an apostle —
if only because the human conditions were so chilling.
Thus he describes an open-air meeting in Scotland : —

"At eleven I went into the main street, and began speaking to
a congregation of two men and two women. These were soon
joined by above twenty children. ... At six William Coward
and I went to the Market-house. We stayed some time, and
neither man, woman, nor child came near us. At length I began
singing a Scotch psalm, and fifteen or twenty people came within
hearing, but with great circumspection, keeping their distance, as
thought they knew not what might follow."

This, it may be added, was on his third visit to Scot-
land, when he was a man of fame.

An example of how Wesley attacked a great town is
found in the story of how he conducted his first service
in Newcastle : —

"At seven I walked down to Sandgate, the poorest and most
contemptible part of the town and, standing at the end of the
street with John Taylor, began to sing the Hundredth Psalm.
Three or four people came out to see what was the matter; who
soon increased to four or five hundred. I suppose there might be
twelve or fifteen hundred before I had done preaching; to whom
I applied those solemn words: *He was wounded for our trans-
gressions.' Observing the people, when I had done, to stand
gaping and staring upon me, with the most profound astonish-
ment, I told them: 'If you desire to know who I am, my name
is John Wesley. At five in the evening, with God's help, I de-
sign to preach here again.' At five, the hill on which I designed
to preach was covered from the top to the bottom. I never saw
so large a number of people gathered together, either in Moor-
fields or at Kennington Common. I knew it was not possible
for the one-half to hear, although my voice was then strong and

THE GREAT ITINERANT

191

clear; and I stood so as to have them all in view, as they were
ranged on the side of the hill. The Word of God which I set
before them was: 'I will heal their backsliding; I will love them
freely.' After preaching, the poor people were ready to tread me
under foot, out of pure love and kindness. It was some time
before I could possibly get out of the press. I then went back
another way than I came; but several people were got to our inn
before me; by whom I was vehemently importuned to stay with
them, at least, a few days; or, at least, one day more. But I
could not consent, having given my word to be at Birstal, with
God's help, on Ttiesday night."

Wesley, however, had to face not merely stormy skies
and weary, interminable journeys. He had to endure an
amazing amount of obloquy and public abuse, hardening
not seldom into gusts of stern and cruel persecution. The
England of the latter half of the eighteenth century was
brutal and untaught. Its temper was cruel; its very
sports were marked by an almost incredible savagery.
And the crowds of that day found as much pleasure in
harrying an tinfortunate Methodist preacher as in watch-
ing a prize fight or in baiting a bear. Wesley tells the
story of these persecutions in his own brief, composed
fashion, without comment or complaint; but behind his
calm syllables are records of human brutality — and of
human courage — not easily paralleled.

At Wednesbury, for example, there was a whole cycle
of persecution, which stretched from June, 1743 to
February, 1744. For these eight months the town was
practically — so far as Methodists were concerned — under
i mob-rule. The magistrates and clergy conspired with the
I rabble against Wesley's followers. They suffered almost
as many wrongs as did the Jews at Kischineff, under
Russian rule. They were plundered, beaten, hunted
through the cities, and outraged almost at the pleasure
of the mob. Wesley sums up the story : —

"Ever since June 20 last, the mob of Walsal, Darlaston, and
Wednesbury, hired for that purpose by their betters, have broken
open their poor neighbours' houses at their pleasure, by night
and by day; extorted money from the few that had it; took away
or destroyed their victuals and goods; beat and wounded their
bodies, threatened their lives; abused their women (some in a
manner too horrible to name), and openly declared they would
destroy every Methodist in the country; the Christian country
where his Majesty's innocent and loyal subjects have been so
treated for eight months, and are now, by their wanton perse-
cutors, publicly branded for rioters and incendiaries."

192

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

A favourite and very deadly trick was to seize and
impress for the Army or Navy tlie more active of Wes-
ley's followers and preachers. The story of Thomas Beard
deserves to be told as it stands in Wesley's Journal : —

"I left Newcastle, and in the afternoon met John Nelson, at
Durham, with Thomas Beard; another quiet and peaceable man,
who had lately been torn from his trade, and wife, and children,
and sent away as a soldier; that is, banished from all that was
near and dear to him, and constrained to dwell among lions, for
no other crime, either committed or pretended, than that of call-
ing sinners to repentance. But his soul was in nothing terrified
by his adversaries. Yet the body, after a while, sunk under its
burden. He was then lodged in the hospital, at Newcastle, where
he still praised God continually. His fever increasing, he was
let blood. His arm festered, mortified, and was cut off; two or
three days after which God signed his discharge, and called him
up to his eternal home."

Of Wesley's personal experiences some examples deserve
to be given : —

"I made haste to Goston's-green, near Birmingham, where I
had appointed to preach at six. But it was dangerous for any
who stood to hear, for the stones and dirt were flying from every
side, almost without intermission, for near an hour. However,
very few persons went away. I afterwards met the Society and
exhorted them, in spite of men and devils, to continue in the
grace of God."

A still more exciting experience awaited him a little
after at Falmouth : —

"I rode to Falmouth. Almost as soon as I was set down the
house was beset on all sides by an innumerable multitude of
people. A louder or more confused noise could hardly be at the
taking of a city. The rabble roared with all their throats, 'Bring
out the Canorum. Where is the Canorum?' (an unmeaning word
which the Cornish generally use instead of 'Methodist'). No
answer being given, they quickly forced open the outer door and
filled the passage. Only a wainscot partition was between us,
which was not likely to stand long. I immediately took down a
large looking-glass which hung against it, supposing the whole
side would fall in at once. When they began their work, with
abundance of bitter imprecations, poor Kitty was utterly aston-
ished and cried out '0, sir, what must we do?' I said, 'We must
pray.' Indeed at that time, to all appearances, our lives were
not worth an hour's purchase. She asked, 'But, sir, is it not
better for you to hide yourself, to get into the closet?' I an-
swered, 'No; it is best for me to stand just where I am.' Among
those without were the crews of some privateers which were
lately come into the harbour. Some of these, being angry at the

THE GREAT ITINERANT

193

slowness of the rest, thrust them away, and coming up all to-
gether set their shoulders to the inner door, and cried out, 'Avast,
lads, avast.' Away went all the hinges at once and the door fell
back into the room. I stepped forward at once into the midst
of them and said, 'Here I am. Which of you has anything to say
to me? To which of you have I done any wrong? To you? or
you? or you?' I continued speaking till I came, bareheaded as
I was (for I purposely left my hat that they might all see my
face), into the middle of the street, and then, raising my voice,
said, 'Neighbours, countrymen, do you desire to hear me speak?'
They cried vehemently, 'Yes, yes. He shall speak. He shall. No-
body shall hinder him.'

"I never saw before — no, not at Walsal itself — the hand of God
so plainly shown as here. There I had many companions who
were willing to die with me, here not a friend but one simple girl,
who, likewise, was hurried away from me in an instant, as soon

as ever she came out of Mrs. B 's door. There I received

some blows, lost part of my clothes, and was covered over with
dirt. Here, although the hands of perhaps some hundreds of
people were lifted up to strike or throw, yet they were one
and all stopped in the midway, so that not a man touched me
with one of his fingers, neither was anything thrown, from first
to last, so that I had not even a speck of drit on my clothes.
Who can deny that God heareth the prayer, or that He hath all
power in heaven and earth?"

Under such couditious as these Wesley still pressed on,
with unresting swiftness, in his great work. The area of
his labours widened. He went north to Scotland, mak-
ing no less than twenty-one tours through Scottish towns
and villages. He crossed St. George's Channel forty-two
times, and put the impress of his strong personality and
ardent zeal on Ireland. He drew comrades to his side,
found helpers and jjreachers amongst his converts, and
became not a solitary combatant, but the general of an
army. And the business of preaching — constant in strain,
vast in scale, and intense in ardour as this was — formed
only part of Wesley's work. Side by side with these
preaching tours is an unbroken chain of other forms of
work. Great controversies, to be described hereafter,
rose, ran their course, and died ; persecutions were en-
dured and forgotten ; churches were built. A thousand
wild scandals broke on Wesley himself. His friends fell
from him, his comrades often proved faithless. He was
pelted by the crowds, sneered at by the educated, frowned
on by the clergy, and not seldom the very men who were
plucked from sin and death turned against him. His
brother Charles married a well-to-do wife, and gathered

194 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

about himself the comforts of a settled home. Whitefield
was absorbed iu his orphanage scheme in America.

The one steadfast, unshakable soul who never doubted,
never faltered, never grew discouraged, was Wesley ! He
was an Itinerant Apostle almost to the hour of his death.
And he stamped the characteristics of his own life for
all time on the Church he founded. It is the Church of
an itinerant ministry.

Later, Wesley's work took a new shape — a shape more
wearisome than even his interminable journeys — and
infinitely more distressing. False doctrines crept in
among his followers; strange forms of immorality mani-
fested themselves; spiritual life grew faint. During the
latter years of his apostolate Wesley was incessantly
"purging" his Societies, casting out unworthy members
and enforcing wholesome discipline. He was, in a word,
building a Church without knowing it or intending it.
And, through all the dust and tumult of his preaching
tours, who watches can see the lines of a great Church
emerging, as will be described later. It is a Church not
shaped in the calm of a philosopher's study, but in the
fires of conflict and controversy. Each new feature of the
great structure is wrought at the bidding of necessity, and
to meet some visible and urgent need. It is tested by
the stern and hard logic of facts.

And when the tale of Wesley's work as an itinerant
preacher has been told, great spaces in his life are still
left untouched and undescribed. He was a student, an
administrator, the general of a great campaign, as well as
a preacher; and if he had been none of these, his mere
correspondence, his reading, his literary productions,
were sufficient to fill to the brim any ordinary human
life. But when all these separate forms of industry — as
preacher, student, traveller, administrator, controver-
sialist, writer — are crowded into the tiny curve of one lit-
tle human life the sum-total of energy they represent is
nothing less than amazing.

How did he do it? He wrote, he read, he corresponded,
he preached; he was the unordained bishop of a great
spiritual flock. He was always in the saddle or in the
pulpit — and he was never in a hurry! What was his
secret?

The truth is his toils as a preacher were interspaced

THE GREAT ITINERANT

195

with frequent islets of leisure. This man, who seemed to
live in crowds, had yet in his life wide spaces of solitude.
He preached to his flve-o'clock-in-the-morning congre-
gation, then mounted his horse, or stepped into his chaise,
and rode or drove olf to the next gathering. Betwixt the
two crowds he had hours of solitude — to think, to read, to
plan. He was the master, it may be added, of the peril-
ous art of reading on horseback. His work itself was a
physical tonic. Preaching at five o'clock in the morning
may, perhaps, seem an heroic form of diligence; as a
matter of fact "Wesley proved it to be the most healthy
variety of physical exercise! Preaching in the open air,
with the free winds of heaven about him, was — looked
at from the physical side — a very wholesome form of
gymnastics.

These open-air preachings find their best record in
Wesley's Journal. The famous Journal consists in the
main of brief notes of sermons and texts, with tiny, swift
vignettes of the crowds that listened to them — their size,
their behaviour, the manner in which the discourse af-
fected them, &c. These accounts are curiously condensed
aud vivid. They are written, so to speak, in mental as
well as literal shorthand. Wesley sees his crowd for a
moment, compresses the story of the sermon and its re-
sults into a sentence, adds a pious wish for a blessing,
and then hurries on to the next crowd with abrupt haste.
And that note of hurrying speed, that breathless economy
of description, is characteristic of the whole Journal.
Then come, thrust in betwixt these notes of sermons and
texts and crowds, stories of strange conversions, of puz-
zling spiritual experiences, of odd characters met and of
odd talks with them, with notes on books, scenery, events.

One does not easily realise, as the eye runs over these
compressed and breathless sentences, what intense toil
lies behind them. To talk to a crowd of 5,000 people —
few living speakers know what that means: the expendi-
ture of nervous force, the strain on throat and brain, on
body and soul. But Wesley did this, not only every day,
but often twice and three times in a day. He did it for
fifty years, and the strain did not kill him!

Gladstone's Midlothian campaign in 1879 is famous in
history; but it was confined to a little patch of Scotland;
it lasted fifteen days, and represented perhaps twenty

196 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

speeches. But Wesley carried on his campaign on a
scale which leaves Mr. Gladstone's performances dwarfed
into insignificance. He did it on the great stage of the
three kingdoms, and he maintained it without a break
for more than fifty years!

Mr. Gladstone, at Gravesend, in 1871, spoke for two
hours to an audience of 20,000, and Mr. John Morley,
his astonished biograjjher, declares the speech to be, both
physically and intellectually, the greatest achievement
of Mr. Gladstone's career. But for Wesley to address
audiences as vast, and in circumstances as trying, was
an ordinary experience, and one which was repeated in-
cessantly to extreme old age. Gladstone was sixty-two
years old when he delivered his Gravesend speech. When
Wesley was of the same age his Journal is packed with
records like this: — "Sunday, August 10, 1766. After
prayers had been read in the church, preached in the
churchyard to a large congregation; at 1 p. m. to 20,000;
and between five and six to another such congregation.
This was the hardest day's work I have had since I left
London, being obliged to speak at each place from the
beginning to the end at the utmost stretch of my voice.
But my strength was as my day."

Seven years later (August 23, 1773) he records: —
"Preached at Gwenuap pit to above 32,000, the largest
assembly I ever preached to, perhaps the first time that
a man of seventy had been heard by 30,000 persons at
once." Wesley's voice, it may be added, must have far
outranged Gladstone's. He writes in his Journal, under
date April 5, 1752: — "About one I preached at Bristol.
Observing that several sat on the opposite side of the
hill, I afterwards asked one to measure the ground, and
we found that it was seven score yards from where I
stood, yet the people heard perfectly. I did not think
.any human voice could have reached so far."

It is no exaggeration to say that Wesley preached more
jsermons, rode more miles, worked more hours, printed
imore books, and influenced more lives than any other
jEnglishman of his age, or perhaps of any age. And the
t[>erformance did not even tire him! In 1776 he writes:
"I am seventy-three years old. and far abler to preach
than I was at twenty-three." Ten years later this amaz-
ing old man writes, "I have entered into the eighty -third

THE GREAT ITINERANT

197

year of my age. I am a wonder to myself. I am never
tired, either witli preaching, writing, or travelling."

In his address to crowds, it must be remembered, Wes-
ley was dealing with the most awful themes; he roused
the deepest emotions of his hearers. And when he had
lifted one vast multitude of men and women up to some
high and intense mood of religious feeling he passed from
it to hurry to some other crowd and worked the same
miracle there. He himself maintained a strange calm —
a calm which represented the equipoise of great emotions,
not their absence — through all these services. But the
emotions which his words kindled in the listening multi-
tudes were often of tremendous intensity. He was some-
how the instrument and channel of strange forces. He
would hold a vast multitude of Ttlnglish peasants and
artisans in fixed, unbreathing, and almost awful stillness.
Suddenly a wave of overpowering feeling would sweep
over his hearers, and men would fall as if suddenly struck
by a thunderbolt under his words. Often he records that
while preaching he had to stop to sing or pray, to allow
the emotions of his hearers to express themselves. He
gives many instances of the effect — instant, visible, and
dramatic — of his sermons.

For the gathering of these crowds Wesley employed
none of the familiar modern devices. There were no
advertisements, no local committees, no friendly news-
papers, no attractions of great choirs. It is a puzzle still
to know how the crowds were induced to assemble, for
Wesley gives no hints of any organisation employed. His
hearers seemed to wait for him, to spring up before him
as if at the signal of some mysterious whisper coming out
of space. Wesley's familiar habit was to preach every
morning at five o'clock, and he was often awakened long
before that hour by the voices, sometimes by the hymns,
of the multitude already gathered. How did he succeed
in gathering in the grey dawn, and often while the stars
yet hung pale in the sky, such crowds to listen to him?

Who reads Wesley's Journals and Letters during this
period finds in them one most significant change. Some-
thing has dropped suddenly out of Wesley's life. The
old, ever-gnawing, self-discontent — the weariness, the
bitter self-judgments, the sigh of defeated longings — all
are gone! These for fourteen years had made up his

198

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"religion." Now everything is changed. Here is a man
who has attained certainty. Religion for him is not an
aspiration. It is an attainment. He is a man of lowlier
spirit than ever; and yet linked to the humility of a child
is the exultant confidence of a great saint — the serene
calm of a soul that has passed beyond conflict and at-
tained victory. His serenity of temper, which no care
could darken and no anxiety disturb, is nothing less than
wonderful. If it seems to fail for a moment, it is only
for a moment, and to Wesley's own surprise. Thus he
says : —

"I had often wondered at myself (and sometimes mentioned it
to others) that ten thousand cares of various kinds were no
more weight or burden to my mind than ten thousand hairs were
to my head. Perhaps I began to ascribe something of this to my
own strength. And thence it might be that on Sunday 13
strength was withheld and I felt what it was to be troubled
about many things. One and another hurrying me continually,
it seized upon my spirit more and more, till I found it absolutely
necessary to fly for my life, and that without delay. So the next
day, Monday 14, I took horse and rode away for Bristol. As
soon as we came to the house at Bristol my soul was lightened
of that insufferable weight which had lain upon my mind, more
or less, for several days."

"A little more work," to this life so packed and crowded
with work, was, as Wesley says in another passage in his
Journal, a tonic that killed care !

What force was it which knitted a life divided amongst
so many interests into unity; which gave to a single
human will a resisting power as of hardened steel; and
which made a fallible man a force so tremendous, and
kept him at a level so high? The explanation lies in the
spiritual realm. Wesley had mastered the central secret
of Christianity. He lived, he thought, he preached, he
wrote, he toiled, under the undivided empire of the august
motives, the divine forces of religion.

CHAPTER VII

A NEW OEDER OF HELPERS

Wesley, even after his couversiou, had all, or nearly all,
the stubborn prejudices of a High Churchman ; and
amongst the most obstinate of these was the prejudice
against a layman preaching. To touch that point, as he
himself said, was to touch the apple of his ej'e. Only a
duly ordained divine, linked by a chain of many-centuried
ordinations to the Apostles themselves, had the right to
stand in the pulpit and preach to his fellow-men. That
a mere layman, ordained by nobody, should mount to
that sacred eminence, and dare with secular lips to in-
terpret Scripture to his fellow-men, seemed to Wesley
nothing short of sacrilege. He felt, as he contemplated
that spectacle, as a Jewish priest would have felt had he
seen some one who did not belong to the tribe of Levi
ministering at that altar. And yet — such is the satire of
history — Wesley was destined to found a Church which
employs more lay preachers, and employs them with
greater effect and honour, than any other Church known
to history !

It was the resistless compulsion of facts — always for
him the highest form of logic — which vanquished Wes-
ley's prejudices. His work took a range and scale which
outran his powers. The fast-multiplying numbers of the
converts made provision for their oversight imperative.
He must have helpers and associates. At first a few
clergymen of spiritual temper stood by him; but they
I were only few. The public opinion of their order, too,
was against them. They were anchored to their parishes.
They could not keep pace with the rush of Wesley's work
and the tidal sweep of the great movement hp represented.
They grew, in fact, afraid of the movement and of the
strange forces stirring in it. Those who hated the work
drew comfort from the reflection that it hung — or seemed
to hang — on the slender thread of a solitary human life.
Only a single pair of lips had to be silenced by weariness,
199

200

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

or sickness, or death, and all the tumult of the revival
would be hushed. When Wesley died, they believed, his
work would disappear. He had no allies, and could have
no successors. But Wesley wrote afterwards : —

"When they imagined they had effectually shut the door, and
locked up every passage whereby any help could come to two or
three preachers, weak in body as well as soul, who they might
reasonably believe would, humanly speaking, wear themselves
out in a short time; when they had gained their point, by secur-
ing (as they supposed) all the men of learning in the nation. He
that sitteth in Heaven laughed them to scorn, and came upon
them by a way they thought not of. Out of the stones He raised
up those who should beget children to Abraham. We had no
more foresight of this than you. Nay, we had the deepest preju-
dices against it, until we could not but own that God gave wisdom
from above to these unlearned and ignorant men, so that the
work of the Lord prospered in their hands, and sinners were
daily converted to God."'

It was, in advance, one of the certainties of the revival
that Wesley would draw about himself a body of helpers
from amongst his own converts ; yet it is almost amusing
to note how grudgingly, and with wliat reluctant, not to
say resisting, steps, he moved in this direction. But he
was borne away by forces too strong to be resisted. The
new and glad spiritual energies awakening in multitudes
broke inevitably into speech. The attempt to keep them
decorously inarticulate was vain.

After Whitefield had preached one afternoon at Isling-
ton Churchyard a layman named Bowers, in all the joy
of his new-found spiritual life, stood up on the table when
Whitefield had finished and began to address the crowd.
All ecclesiastical sensibilities were fluttered by the spec-
tacle. Charles Wesley, who was present, tried in vain to
stop Bowers, and at last withdrew indignantly, by way of
protest. The zeal of this too daring layman was in-
extinguishable. He attempted to preach afterwards in
the streets of Oxford, was arrested by the beadles, and
scourged with stern rebuke for his obstinately vocal
tongue by Charles Wesley.

This volunteer orator, it may be conceded, needed to be
suppressed ; but Wesley was compelled to choose amongst
his comrades men whom his shrewd eyes — and he had f
the eye of a great captain for fit instruments — saw to be

•Southey, vol. i. p. 307.

A NEW ORDER OF HELPERS

201

prudent and trustworthj-, as well as zealous and gifted,
to watch over the converts in one place while he moved
on to preach elsewhere. His helpers were in all cases
volunteers. Thus, at the latter end of 1739 Wesley re-
cords : "A young man named Thomas Maxfield came and
desired to help me as a son of the Gospel. Soon after
came another, Thomas Richards, then a third, Thomas
Westall. These, severally, desired to serve me as sons,
as helpers, when and where I should direct." The names
of these men deserve to live in history. They were the
advance guard of a great and noble host.

But if Wesley took their help, he did it in very grudg-
ing measure, with plentiful doubts, and only on the
avowed grounds of necessity. He could not forbid, he
would not expressly sanction, and at first he satisfied
himself with merely "permitting" lay preaching. But
he did this with doubts, and doubts that looked both
ways; doubts whether he ought to do so much, and also
whether he ought not to do more.

"It is not clear to us (he says) that presbyters, so circum-
stanced as we are, may appoint or ordain others; but it is that
we may direct, as well as suffer them to do, what we conceive
they are moved to by the Holy Ghost. We think that they who
are only called of God and not of man, have more right to preach
than they who are only called of man and not of God. Now,
that many of the clergy, though called of man, are not called of
God to preach His Gospel is undeniable. First, because they
themselves utterly disclaim, nay, ridicule the inward call;
secondly, because they do not know what the Gospel is; of con-
sequence they do not, and cannot preach it. That I have not
gone too far yet, I know; but whether I have gone far enough, I
am extremely doubtful. Soul-damning clergymen lay me under
more diflSculties than soul-saving laymen." »

Wesley at first allowed his helpers to exhort, but rigor-
ously forbade them to preach. They might expound the
Scriptures; but they must not venture on the solemn
business of delivering a "sermon." This, however, was
obviously an arrangement which could not last. Who
can decide the exact point at which an exhortation attains
the awful dignity of a sermon? And why should an
address which was legitimate, and even praiseworthy, as
an exhortation, suddenly become a mere impiety, when
identified as a sermon? Wesley was at Bristol when
'Southey, vol. i. p. 307.

202 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

the tidings reached him that Maxfield, his earliest helper,
whom he had left in London, was preaching. All the
sacerdotalist in him — and there was much of sacerdotal-
ism behind his long nose and beneath his flowing wig —
took fire. He hastened to London, brooding as he went
in angry alarm over this scandal. "John," said his wise
mother when they met, "take care what you do with
respect to that young man, for he is as surely called by
God to preach as you are. Examine what have been the
fruits of his preaching and hear him for yourself."

His mother's words touched a very sensitive chord in
Wesley's intellect and conscience. The "fruits of his
preaching"! These were final! The sermon that con-
verts men has written upon it the signature of God's
approval. Wesley's prejudices were stubborn, but they
always yielded to facts. He listened, watched, meditated,
decided. "It is the Lord," he said, "let Him do what
seemeth Him good."

Wesley quickly found another instance more striking
and decisive than even that of Maxfield, where upon a
layman's preaching was written, in characters visible to
all men, the signature of God's approval and use. John
Nelson, whose spiritual history is one of the romances of
early Methodism, had been for some time exhorting his
neighbours at Birstal. He says of himself at that time
that "he would rather be hanged on a tree than go to
preach." But the crowds that gathered about him and
hung upon his words, and found in them a converting
energy, drew him on; and Nelson, to his own alarm,
found himself at last guilty of delivering a sermon. He
wrote to Wesley begging for advice "how to carry on
the work which God had begun by such an unpolished
tool as myself." Wesley accordingly went down to
Birstal. "He sat down by my fireside," records Nelson,
"in the very posture T dreamed about four months before,
and spoke the same words I dreamed he spoke." Wesley
found both preacher and congregation in Birstal raised
up without his act or knowledge, and as he looked and
listened he realised that the question of lay preaching
was settled for all time. He recognised, indeed, in this
new order of Christian workers springing up under his
eyes the solution of a great problem.

What sort of men were these helpers who thus gathered

A NEW ORDER OF HELPERS

round Wesley and gave range, continuity, and permanence
to his work? Their story lies written in fadded and well-
uigh forgotten biographies. And from these ancient
volumes their faces look out upon us with a curious
effect. The art of the eighteenth century was very cruel
to its subjects; and the portraits of Wesley's helpers, it
must be confessed, are not seldom of an alarming quality.
They are not often the faces of scholars. Sainthood has
not yet had time to refine the coarse, strong features of
the ploughman, or the stonemason, or the private soldier.
Southey describing the portrait of John Haime, gives a
cruel category of his features: "Small, inexpressive eyes,
scanty eyebrows, and a short, broad, vulgar nose, in a
face of ordinary proportions, seem to mark out a subject
who would have been content to travel a jog-trot along
the high-road of mortality, and have looked for no greater
delight than that of smoking and boozing in the chimney-
corner. And yet John Haime passed his whole life in a
continued spiritual ague."

But John Haime's "spiritual ague," with its alterna-
tions of fire and ice, of anxious dreads and exultant rap-
tures, was, after all, infinitely nobler than the animal-like
content in which the majority of his fellow-countrymen
at that moment lived.

These men, for all their limitations, deserve to be
counted among God's heroes. They had a touch of the
divine patience, the courage which no terrors could shake,
of the early Christian martyrs. They were saints like
Francis of Assisi, dreamers like Bunyan. They had a
perpetual vision of the spiritual world. To Bunyan
"above Elstow Green was heaven, beneath was hell." And
Wesley's first preachers saw all men set betwixt such
dread opposites. They had all the zeal of the preaching
Friars of the Middle Ages, with a better theology than
they and an infinitely nobler morality. Their speech was
the channel of a j)ower which lay beyond alike the com-
prehension or the analysis of reason. The more, indeed,
their sneering critics emphasise the lowly birth, the scanty
training, the untaught simplicity of these early Methodist
preachers, the more wonderful becomes their work. What
strange force was it that seized these untaught men,
transfigured them, lifted them up to the height of great
and sacred emotions, made them not merely orators who

204

WESLEY AND HIS CENTUEY

could sway crowds, but apostles who could save souls?
For the great, perpetual miracle of Christianity, the
miracle of making drunkards sober, thieves honest, and
liarlots chaste, was, somehow, wrought by the preaching
of Wesley's helpers. It was wrought, indeed, on a scale
which left the decorous and orderly ministry of the
Church of that day utterly bankrupt !

The lives of the early Methodist preachers belong, alas!
to the realm of forgotten literature; yet he who explores
these dead biographies will find some strange and rich
booty in them. They are written for the most part in
homely English, the English of Bunyan or of Cobbett.
They are rich in strange incidents, and in amazingly vivid
portraits of strange characters. The story of John Nel-
son, for example, might be described as Bunyan's "Grace
Abounding" translated into human terms once more.

Nehson was a typical Yorkshireman, strong-bodied,
stubborn, rich in quaint humour and in homely common-
sense, and rich, too, in the capacity for profound religious
feeling. He had, as even Southey says, "as high a spirit
and as brave a heart as ever Euglivshraan was blessed
with." The religious struggles through which he passed
desei've to be classed with those of Bunyan or of Francis
de Sales, and they are described with equal vividness.
He had a stormy youth, and at thirty years of age re-
cords that, "rather than live another thirty years like
those already passed, he would choose to be strangled."
"Surely," said he, "God never made man to be such a
riddle to himself, and to leave him so! There must be
something in religion that I am unacquainted with, to
satisfy the empty mind of man, or he is in a worse state
than the beasts that perish." He heard Whitefield, but
that most mellifluous of all preachers did not suit the
brooding nature of this stubborn I'^orkshireman. Later
he heard Wesley. "Oh," he says, "that was a blessed
morning for my soul." His description of Wesley as a
preacher is classic and has already been quoted.

In how heroic a temper Nelson took his religion can
be imagined. He knew no half-measures. He carried
his fearless spirit into his piety and rebuked sin in high
or low. He was a stonemason, and was working at the
time at the Exchequer, a royal building. He was re-
quired by his foreman to work ou the Sabbath day, on

A NEW ORDER OF HELPERS 205

the ground that it was the king's business, and even the
Ten Commandments must yield to royalty. The honest
Yorkshireman declared he would not work on the Sabbath
for any man in England. "Religion," said the foreman,
"has made you a rebel against the king." "No, sir," he
replied, "it has made me a better subject than ever I was.
The greatest enemies the king has are Sabbath-breakers,
swearers, drunkards, and whoremongers, for these pull
down God's judgments both upon king and country."
He was told that he must lose his employment if he
would not obey his orders; his answer was, "he would
rather want bread than wilfully offend God." The fore-
man swore that he would be as mad as Whitefield if he
went on.

" 'What hast thou done,' said he, 'that thou needst make so
much ado about salvation? I always took thee to be as honest
a man as any I have in the work, and could have trusted thee
with five hundred pounds.' 'So you might,' answered Nelson,
'and not have lost one penny by me.' 'I have a worse opinion of
thee now,' said the foreman. 'Master,' he replied, 'I have the
odds of you; for I have a much worse opinion of myself than
you can have.' "

Nelson's zeal was of so ardent a type that out of his
scanty earnings he actually hired one of his fellow-work-
men to go to hear Wesley preach, and so give his soul
a chance. Religion shot through with gleams of poetry
the untaught imagination of this Yorkshire mason; and
describing his own feelings he says, "My soul seemed to
breathe its life in God as naturally as my body breathed
life in the common air." The vicar of Birstal, where
Nelson lived, by way of suppressing this inconveniently
earnest Christian, had him pressed for a soldier, in de-
fiance of the law, and the story of what he suffered
sheds a curious light on the social condition of England
in that day.

As a pressed man, Nelson was marched through Y'ork,
where his reputation as one of these new, fanatical, and
much-hated Methodists was well known. It was, says
Nelson, "as if hell were removed from beneath to meet
me at my coming. The streets and windows were filled
with people, who shouted and huzzaed as if I had beeu
one that had laid waste the nation. But the Lord made
my brow like brass, so that I could look on them as grass-

206

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

hoppers, and pass through the city as if there had been
none in it but God and myself." Nelson, though forced
into the ranks, still held that a red coat did not discharge
him from his obligations as a preacher, and he rebuked
his astonished officers to their face for their oaths. An
uncomfortable soldier this ! One youthful ensign set him-
self to suppress this strange recruit, and showed much
ingenuity in inventing insults and crudities to be ex-
pended upon him. At this stage of his story the mere
unregenerate Yorkshireman emerges for a moment in hon-
est John's autobiography.

" 'It caused a sore temptation to arise in me,' he says, 'to
think that an ignorant, wicked man should thus torment me —
and I able to tie his head and heels together! I found an old
man's bone in me!'"

Nelson obtained his discharge at last through the in-
fluence of Lady Huntingdon, but his story is as moving
a bit of English as there is to be found in the literature
of the eighteenth century. And the lives of many of
these preachers are rich in such stories, heroic, pathetic,
sometimes absurd, but with a gleam of nobility running
through their simplest performances.

Alexander Mather, for example, had by virtue of his
Scottish blood a toughness of body and a certain fierce
energy of industry that to an ordinary man might well
seem incredible. He was a baker, working hours which
the modern temper Avould find intolerable, yet he found
time to be one of Wesley's most effective helpers: —

"I had no time for preaching but what I took from my sleep,
so that I frequently had not eight hours' sleep in a week. This,
with hard labour, constant abstemiousness, and frequent fasting,
brought me so low that my master was often afraid I should kill
myself, and perhaps his fear was not groundless. I frequently
put off my shirts as wet with sweat as if they had been dipped
in water. After hastening to finish my business abroad, I have
come home all in a sweat in the evening, changed my clothes,
and ran to preach at one or another chapel, then walked or ran
back, changed my clothes, and gone to work at ten, wrought hard
all night, and preached at five the next morning. I ran back to
draw the bread at a quarter or half-an-hour past six, wrought
hard in the bake-house till eight, then hurried about with bread,
till the afternoon, and perhaps at night set off again." ;

Another of Wesley's hel})ers, Thomas Olivers, was a
Welshman, with all the qualities of the Welsh tempera-]

A NEW ORDER OF HELPERS

207

ment, its fervour, its simplicity, its gleam of poetry, its
capacity for sudden anger. Describing his own spiritual
condition after conversion, he says — "I truly lived by
faith. I saw God in everything — the heavens, the earth
and all therein showed nie something of Him — yea, even
from a drop of water, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand
I often received instruction."

Of Olivers's emotional susceptibilities many striking
amusing illustrations are given. While he was dining
one day about noon a thought came over him that he was
not called to preach. The food which then lay before
him did not belong to him, and he was a thief and a
robber in eating it. He burst into tears and could eat
no more; and, having to oflSciate at one o'clock, went to
the preaching-house, weeping all the way. He went
weeping into the pulpit, and wept sorely while he gave
out the hymn, while he prayed, and while he preached.
A sympathetic emotion naturally spread through the con-
gregation ; many of them "cried aloud for the disquiet-
ness of their souls."

Wesley proved an ideal captain for these ecclesiastical
irregulars. They were his spiritual children, as well as
his helpers. His government over them had in it a
fatherly strain; and yet he enforced upon them a disci-
pline of an almost heroic pitch. They were soldiers on a
campaign, and there is more than a touch of military
severity in the rules enforced upon them. These rules
descend to the homeliest details of food, dress, manners,
hours of sleep, methods of work, and general conduct.
Never did a body of men work more diligently, fare
harder, and receive smaller pay in earthly coin than did
this first generation of Methodist preachers. "Never be
unemployed, never be trifiingly employed," was Wesley's
rule for them — a rule which was but the reflex of his own
practice.

Wesley's care for his preachers was not unqualified by
an ample knowledge of the weakness of human nature.
Here are some of his regulations: —

"Be serious; let your motto be, Holiness to the Lord. Avoid
all lightness as you would avoid hell-fire, and trifling as you
would cursing and swearing. Touch no woman; be as loving as
you will, but the custom of the country is nothing to us. Take
money of no one; if they give you food when you are hungry,
and clothes when you want them, it is enough; but no silver or

208

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

gold; let there be no pretence for any one to say we grow rich
by the Gospel."

The thoroughness with which Wesley investigated and
regulated the domestic habits of his preachers, finds many
entertaining illustrations.

" 'Do you,' said he, 'deny yourselves every useless pleasure
of sense, imagination, honour? Are you temperate in all things?
To take one instance — in food, do you use only that kind, and
that degree, which is best both for the body and soul? Do you
see the necessity of this? Do you eat no flesh suppers? No late
suppers? These naturally tend to destroy bodily health. Do
you eat only three times a day? If four, are you not an excel-
lent pattern to the flock! Do you take no more food than is
necessary at each meal? You may know, if you do, by a load at
your stomach; by drowsiness or heaviness; and, in a while, by
weak or bad nerves. Do you see only that kind, and that de-
gree, of drink which is best both for your body and soul? Do you
drink water? "Why not? Did you ever? Why did you leave it
off, if not for health? When will you begin again? To-day?
How often do you drink wine or ale? Every day? Do you
want or waste it?' "

He declared his own purpose, of eating only vegetables
on Fridays, and taking only toast and water in the morn-
ing; and he expected the preachers to observe the same
kind of fast.

Wesley was so much in advance of his age as to under-
stand the educational power of the Press, and he used his
preachers, systematically, as its vehicle. No preacher was
to make any personal excursion into authorship with-
out Wesley's consent; but a parcel of the books Wesley
himself published was part of the travelling equipment
of every itinerant. "Carry them with you," said Wesley,
"through every town. Exert yourselves in this. Be not
ashamed ; be not weary ; leave no stone unturned."

The itinerancy of Wesley's helpers was, at first, of a
very active sort. A preacher, he thought, would exhaust
his message to any one community in seven or eight
weeks. After that period, Wesley argued, "neither can
he find matter for preaching every morning and eve-
ning, nor will people come to hear him ; hence, he grows
cold by lying in bed, and so do the people. Whereas,
if he never stays more than a fortnight in one place, he
will find matter enough, and the people will gladly hear
him." "I know,". says Wesley frankly, "were I to preach

A NEW ORDER OF HELPERS

209

one whole year in one place, I should preach both myself
and niy cougregatiou to sleep."

Wesley, with a wise beuevoleuce for both preachers
and congregations, insisted that his helpers shonld preach
short sermons. One of his regulations, indeed, might
with great advantage be painted in golden characters on
every church in the world to-day. His preachers were
enjoined "to begin and end always precisely at the time
appointed, and always to conclude the service in about
an hour; to suit their subject to the audience; to choose
the plainest text, and keep close to the text; neither
rambling from it, nor allegorising, nor spiritualising too
much." They were not to be vociferous.

" 'Scream no more,' Wesley wrote to one of liis helpers, 'at the
peril of your soul. God now warns you, by me, whom He has
set over you, speak with all your heart, but with moderate voice.
I often speak loud, often vehemently, but I never scream; I

I never strain myself. I dare not. I know it to be a sin against

I God and my own soul.' "

There is assuredly the salt of common-sense in all this.
When before in history, indeed, was there such a com-
bination of zeal, which, by its mere temperature, suggests
fanaticism, linked to so much of cool-eyed sanity, and of
practical sense !

Southey says, scornfully, of these early preachers, that
"they possessed no other qualification as teachers than
a good stock of animal spirits and a ready flow of words,
a talent which, of all others, is least connected with sound
intellect." But this is one of the many passages in his
"Life of Wesley" in which Southey's prejudices blind him
to facts. These men were, no doubt, as one of them de-
scribes himself, "brown-bread preachers." But at least
they knew, and knew well, and by that surest form of
knowledge — the knowledge born of verified experience —
all they taught. Wesley says, energetically, of them : "In
the one thing, which they profess to know, they are not
ignorant men. I trust there is not one of them who is not
able to go through such an examination in substantial,
practical, experimental divinity as few of our candidates
for holy orders, even in the University (I speak it with
sorrow and shame, and in tender love ) , are able to do."^

'Southey, vol. i. p. 310.

210

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Wesley himself, however, had a scholar'.s hate of ignor-
ance, and he toiled with almost amusing diligence to
educate his helpers. He insisted that they should be
readers, and scourged them with a very sharp whip if
he found them iieglecting their books. Thus he writes
to one : —

"Your talent in preaching does not increase. It is Just tlie
same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep. There
is little variety; there is no compass of thought. Reading only
can supply this, with daily meditation and daily prayer. You
wrong yourself greatly by omitting this. You can never be a
deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian.
Oh, begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises.
You may acquire the taste which you have not. What is tedious
at first will afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or not,
read and pray daily. It is for your life! There is no other
way ; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a pretty, super-
ficial preacher. Do justice to your own soul; give it time and
means to grow; do not starve yourself any longer."

Wesley was wisely anxious as to the pulpit style of his
helpers, and the chief of all pulpit virtues, of the literary
sort, he held to be clearness.

" 'Clearness,' he writes to one of his lay-assistants, 'is necessary
for you and me, because we are to instruct people of the lowest
understanding. Therefore we, above all, if we think with the
wise, must yet speak with the vulgar. We should constantly use
the most common, little, easy words (so they are pure and
proper) which our language affords. When first I talked at Ox-
ford to plain people, in the castle of the town, I observed they
gaped and stared. This quickly obliged me to alter my style,
and adopt the language of those I spoke to; and yet there is a
dignity in their simplicity which Is not disagreeable to those of
the highest rank.' "

These early Methodist preachers, if they did not know
much of "high thinking," at least had an abundant ex-
perience of plain living. Wesley proposed that Mather
should go with him on a preaching tour in Ireland, and
he was asked how much he thought would be suflScient
for the support of his wife during his absence. Mather
fixed the sum at the modest rate of 4s. a week, and this
was counted excessive! The wife of a Methodist helper
in those heroic days must have been of an even more
frugal mind than John Gilpin's wife, sung by Cowper.
The helper, when on a preaching tour, was expected to
find his food amongst those who heard him. When he

A NEW ORDER OF HELPERS

211

was at home, his wife was allowed Is. 6d. a day for his
board, with the understanding that whenever her husband
was invited out for a meal the price of that meal was to
be deducted from the Is. 6d. The wife's allowance was
4s. a week, with the further allowance of £1 a quarter
for each child.

At the ninth Conference, held in October, 1752, at
Bristol, it was agreed that the preachers should receive
a stipend of £12 per annum, in order to provide them-
selves with necessaries. Their list of "necessaries" must
have been of Spartan brevity. But more than twelve
years afterwards, at the Conference of 1765, a deputation
from the York circuit was admitted and allowed to plead
against the '^arge sum of £12 a year"! Before 1752,
each circuit made its own financial arrangements with
the preachers, and sometimes they were of a quaint order.
As late as 1764, the practice in the Norwich circuit, for
example, was to divide the love-feast money among the
preachers, and "this," says Myles, with a certain accent
of melancholy, "was very little indeed."

When before in history was there such an inexpensive
order of preachers as these early helpers of Wesley? They
laid up much treasure in heaven, but had very empty
pockets on earth. One of them, John Jane, died at Ep-
worth. His entire wardrobe was insuflBcient to pay his
funeral expenses, which amounted to £1, 17s. 3d. All the
money he possessed was Is. 4d., "enough," records Wes-
ley briefly, "for any unmarried preacher of the Gospel
to leave to his executors."

Many of these early preachers, it is true, sooner or later
failed Wesley. They settled down to the charge of dis-
senting congregations, or they accepted orders in the
Anglican Church. Some were swept away by one theo-
logical craze or another. Many excuses are to be made
for them. Their position was undefined; their place in
the great movement unsettled. They did the work of
ministers without having as yet any claim to the minis-
terial office. But the part they played in Wesley's move-
ment can hardly be exaggerated. The Methodist ministry
of to-day comes by direct descent from them. Out of
them, too, has grown the great order of lay preachers,
without which Methodism itself could not exist.

For every Methodist minister in the world to-day there

212

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

are, roughly speaking, ten lay preachers ; and out of every
seven sermons preached in Methodist pulpits every Sun-
day, six are preached by the lips of laymen. Every minis-
ter who stands in a Methodist pulpit has passed through
this order. The 'great sign and pledge of the non-sacer-
dotal character of Methodism is found in two facts. Its
ministers share their preaching office with the lay
preachers, and their pastoral office with the leaders.

CHAPTER VIII

HOW THE NEW CONVERTS WERE SHELTERED

Converts were now multiplying fast; they had grown
to the scale of an army, and a new and most perplexing
problem was born of Wesley's very success. How was he
to watch over his converts? They had the untaught sim-
plicity of children ; they were scattered over a vast area ;
the spiritual atmosphere about them was ungenial. The
clergy, their natural shepherds, had towards them too
often the temper of wolves. They treated them as out-
casts and drove them from the sacramental table. The
converts looked to Wesley as their spiritual leader; yet
how could he, an evangelist hurrying perpetually on to
preach to new crowds, keep in personal touch with the
converts behind him? The most difficult problem of the
whole revival had to be solved, and on its solution de-
pended the permanency of Wesley's work.

It is, therefore, with something of the joy of discovery,
the accent of a spiritual Archimedes crying "Eureka,"
that, amid the hurry of his work and the fast-multiplying
crowds of his converts, Wesley catches his first vision of
the class-meeting, and sees of what uses it is capable.
"This," he cries, "is the thing; the very thing that we
have wanted so long."

Yet Wesley's note of surprised gladness is not a little
puzzling. A religious society of some sort is a constant
and familiar feature of his whole history up to this date.
While he was yet a student at Oxford, he records in his
Journal how some "serious man," otherwise nameless,
said to him, "You must find companions or make them ;
the Bible knows nothing of a solitary religion." And
certainly Wesley, with some wise, dumb instinct, always
gave to his religion a social form. He founded one society
at Oxford; established another on board the ship that
took him to America ; organised a third as soon as he got
to Savannah, and betook himself to the Moravian society
in London directly he landed in England. He dates his
213

214

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

religious almanac, indeed, by the various societies that
came into existence; the society at Oxford in 1729, in
Savannah in 1736, in London in 1739, &c. It was in the
little society in Aldersgate Street that Wesley himself
was converted. And Wesley not only organised new so-
cieties, but gladly availed himself of those which existed.

Societies within the Church came into existence long
before Methodism. They make their appearance in the
dissolute times that followed the Restoration, and repre-
sent an attempt on the part of the Christian conscience of
that day to organise itself, if only in self-defence, against
the shameless vice by which all decency was affronted,
and the jesting unbelief which threatened to destroy reli-
gion. In Woodward's account of these societies we have,
says Miss Wedgwood, "an exact description of a Meth
odist class-meeting, written four years before Wesley was
born." But that is a somewhat wild over-statement.
These early societies lacked the essentially spiritual ele-
ments of the class-meeting.

The Moravians, too, planted their little societies here
and there on English soil, or captured those which already
existed. So it is true, though it is only half the truth,
that We.sley did not invent religious societies in England.
But he gave those which existed a new form ; he charged
them with a new office. The religious societies Woodward
describes were tiny nurseries of morals. The Moravian
societies were, or became, mere centres of quietism. The
Methodist society, in its final form — the class-meeting —
is something profoundly different.

Wesley, of course, found the great principle of religious
fellowship in active operation in the Apostolic Church.
In his class-meetings he merely organised that principle
afresh, translated it into new terms, and made it a per-
manent element and condition of church life. And in
doing this he was faithful to the highest ideals of church
order.

There are two possible theories of church relationship.
One is what may be called the tram-car theory. Here is
an accidental group of people who sit side by side for a
few moments, who are going in the same direction, are
impelled by the same forces, and cared for by the same
agencies. But they are strangers to each other. They
have no common language. No articulate or conscious

NEW CONVERTS WERE SHELTERED 215

kinship links them together. "Society," except in the
mechanical — or, say, the geographical — sense, does not
exist betwixt them.

Then there is what may be called the family theory of
the Church. Here is a circle of human beings knitted
together by conscious and acknowledged kinship. They
talk a common language. They have common joys and
sorrows and perils. They have offices of help and pro-
tection towards each other; what touches one is felt by
all. Which of these two conceptions of church member-
ship— that of the tram-car, or that of the fireside — comes
nearest to God's ideal it is needless to say.

No such household fellowship existed in the Church
of that day, and this was one of the secrets of its decay.
Southey, describing a stage in John Nelson's history, says
that "a judicious minister who should have known the
man could have given him the teaching he needed. But,"
he adds, with unconscious severity, "the sort of inter-
course between a pastor and his people which this would
imply hardly exists anywhere, and cannot possibly exist
in the metropolis." Coleridge, on this, breaks out in a
pregnant footnote. "Is this true?" he asks; "and can
a Church of which it is true be a Church of Christ?"
Wesley, who knew the Church of his day well, says of it :
"Look east, west, north, or south, name what parish you
please, is Christian fellowship there? Rather, are not
the bulk of the parishioners a mere rope of sand? What
Christian connection is there between them? What in-
tercourse in spiritual things? What watching over each
other's souls?"

But if in the Church of that day there was little direct
fellowship betwixt the minister and his hearers, still less
was there betwixt the hearers themselves. The Church
had lost — perhaps it never possessed — one of its noblest
functions, the unifying office betwixt men and women of
all ranks. And Wesley was supplying what is one of the
primitive and imperishable necessities of Christian life
in every age, and under all conditions, when, in the shape
of his societies — and later of the class-meeting — he erected
fellowship into a permanent feature of Church life.

It is curious to note how, by what might almost be
called accident — by the mere compulsion of events, and
not by conscious plan — the Methodist societies came into

216 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

existence. Wesley founded the society which afterwards
met in Fetter Lane on Bohler's advice. But, in 1738,
after the separation from the Moravians, the Foundry
became the centre of his work. "At the latter end of
1739," he records, "from eight to ten persons came to me
in London who appeared to be deeply convinced of sin.
They desired that I would spend some time with them in
prayer, and advise them how to flee from the wrath to
come." Wesley fixed Thursday evening for this purpose.
The numbers grew fast. "The first evening about twelve
persons came, the next week thirty or forty. These grew
to a hundred ; and then," says Wesley, "I took down their
names and places of abode, intending to call upon them
in their homes. Thus," he adds, "without any previous
plan, began the Methodist society in England — a company
of people associated together to help each other, to work
out their own salvation." A similar society was formed
at Bristol, and later at other places.

Here, then, was the Methodist society, but not yet the
Methodist class-meeting. This did not emerge till 1742,
three years later; and it was an effort to clear off the
first of Methodist Church debts which yielded the class-
meeting.

On the meeting-house at Bristol was a considerable
debt, and the members of the society were consulting how
it should be paid. One, Captain Foy, whose name de-
serves to live, stood up and said, "Let every member of the
society give a penny a week, till the debt is paid." An-
other answered, "Many of them are poor, and cannot
afford to do it." "Then," said the first speaker, "put
eleven of the poorest with me; and if they can give any-
thing, well ; I will call on them weekly ; and if they can
give nothing, I will give for them as well as myself.
And each of you call on eleven of your neighbours weekly ;
receive what they give, and make up what is wanting.'*
It was done; and the plan was quickly discovered to yield
more than pence. "In a while," writes Wesley, "some of
these informed me, they found such and such an one did
not live as he ought. It struck me immediately, 'This
is the thing, the very thing, we have wanted so long.' "
Here was the suggestion of an oversight far-stretching
and yet minute; the most effective pastorate the wit of
man has yet devised or the grace of God used.

NEW CONVERTS WERE SHELTERED 217

Wesley's iustinct of thoroughness, his habit of following
out a hint till it became an institution, came at once into
play. The class-meeting was system ati sed ; it was made
co-extensive with the revival. His trained and scholarly
mind ran through all history in search of precedents and
details, and these he found in abundance. So dispassion-
ate a witness as Paley found in the mode of life, its form
and habit, of the early Christian Church, "a close re-
semblance to the Unitas Fratrum and to the modern
Methodists." The tesserae, the symbols of membership in
the Apostolic Church, were reproduced in the familiar
"ticiiet," the sign of membership in the Methodist
Church.

The value of the societies — especially in their later
form of the class-meeting — was simply measureless. They
gave the revival coherence; they nourished its vitality.
Each new convert brought into the class-meeting found
himself one of a group bound by great emotions held in
common — sorrow for sin, joy in jjardon, the consciousness
of a new life, a common passion for the salvation of
others, a common aspiration after higher attainments in
Christian experience. He caught from the society the
inspiration, and he found in it the safeguards, of com-
panionship. The sheltering office of these societies was
thus of inexpressible value. The mere chill of the secular
world would have killed the new-born spiritual life of
multitudes. The spell of ancient companionships would
have asserted itself. But in the new companionships into
which the converts were brought was found a counteract-
ing energy.

Wesley quickly recognised in the class-meeting the
most effective instrument of discipline a founder or the
head of a Church could desire.

" 'It can scarcely be conceived,' he says, 'what advantages have
been reaped from this little prudential regulation. Many now
happily experienced that Christian fellowship of which they had
not so much as an idea before. They began to bear one another's
burdens and naturally to care for each other. Evil men were de-
tected and reproved. They were borne with for a season; if they
forsook their sins we received them gladly; if they obstinately
persisted therein it was openly declared that they were not of
us.' "

Each class had a leader, and the leaders' meeting be-

218

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

came the disciplinary court in the Church. The ticket
which was the symbol of membership was renewed every
three months during a personal visitation of each class
by Wesley himself or by one of his helpers. The simple
withholding of the ticket broke the tie of membership
and excluded the unworthy ; and Wesley, who with a wise
instinct put efficiency before bulk, purged his classes in
this way year by year with unshrinking thoroughness.

What Methodism has gained in every land and through-
out its whole history from the class-meeting can hardly
be expressed in words. The device gives range, con-
tinuity, and permanence to the pastoral work of the
Church. And for a Church with an itinerant ministry
such an organisation is imperative. Without it no effec-
tive pastorate can exist. This great institution not only
influenced Wesley's work profoundly while he lived, it
has left a deep and permanent mark on Methodism it-
self. The class-meeting gives religion speech; it slays
that dumb and obstinate shyness about spiritual things
which lies like some chilling frost on so many good people.
If Methodism has developed in its laity gifts of speech,
of prayer, and of service beyond most Churches, it is due
to the class-meeting. And the stamp of the class-meeting
is on the Methodist ministry itself. In the class-meeting
each minister learns, so to speak, the grammar of his
spiritual language. He brings from it a glow, a certainty,
a strength which no other institution yields.

The class-meeting has its characteristic risks. It is
not seldom discredited by want of elasticity and fresh-
ness in its conduct. But for Methodism itself it is a
sj)i ritual nerve-centre whence radiate a thousand spiritual
forces. And it may be predicted with great, if melan-
choly, confidence that when the class-meeting dies Meth-
odism itself, if it survives, will undergo some silent but
profound and disastrous change. It will begin to ossify.
Forms will once again seem more than fact. The familiar
and mournful cycle of change by which a great Church
I)etrifies, and fits itself for being thrust aside by some new
and more intensely spiritual agency, will have begun.

Just now, however, we are only concerned to note the
contribution which his societies made to the success of
Wesley's work during his lifetime, and the degree in which
they as a consequence influenced England. The societies

NEW CONVERTS WERE SHELTERED 219

undoubtedly met and satisfied what was at the uiomeut
the special need of religion in England. Says Miss Wedg-
wood : —

"The yearning for some common standing-ground broader than
that of mere Icinship, stronger than that of mere nationality, must
be strong at every time; perhaps it was especially strong during
the eighteenth century. A reaction from the work of the Refor-
mation swept many at that time into Romanism, and collected
many more into little societies cemented by a common interest
in the things of eternity. But nowhere did this instinct meet
with such absolute satisfaction as in the ranks of Methodism."

In Wesley's societies, to sum up, a new and far-stretch-
ing brotherhood came into existence. It spread like a
living net over England. It linked men and women,
parted from each other by the widest differences of educa-
tion and social position, of wealth and poverty, into a
common household. It bred a thousand kindly oflBces
betwixt them. And as a contribution to the social life of
England in that day these societies had a value never yet
sufficiently recognised. It was not merely that they had
the office of a salt in the blood of the body social ; and
that each little class-meeting was a centre of religious
energies affecting everything within its reach. The
classes were a brotherhood; a brotherhood woven of
spiritual ties, and so made indestructible. And this
brotherhood overleaped social barriers ; it bridged separat-
ing gulfs betwixt classes. It made society not only purer,
but closer and stronger. The social offices of religion are
seldom adequately realised ; and these offices never found
a happier or more effective expression than in Wesley's
societies.

CHAPTER IX

SOLDIER METHODISTS

A GREAT religious movement in, of course, misread if it is
translated into merely personal terras. It resembles the
stirring of a sea-tide. It is the result of planetary forces.
It rises from unsounded deeps. It makes itself felt at
widely distant points. It fills, with its sound and foam,
at the same moment a hundred little bays. Certainly
the great religious movement of the eighteenth century,
though it has the Wesleys and Whitefleld as its most
commanding figures, extended far beyond their personal
influence. It ran like some viewless contagion through
the very air; and some of its developments, with which
neither Whitefield nor the Wesleys had personally much
to do, were of a remarkable character.

The forces of the great revival, for example, reached
the army and produced there some very picturesque re-
sults. The British Army in Flanders is best known to the
man in the street by the famous saying in "Tristram
Shandy" describing its swearing performances. That
unfortunate army, with the Duke of Cumberland for
Commander-in-chief, marching and fighting beside strange
allies, on foreign soil, and for a cause about which it knew
little and cared less, was, no doubt, in very evil con-
ditions. Religion amongst the Huguenots of Henry of
Navarre, or Cromwell's Ironsides, or the sturdy Dutch
Protestants of William of Orange, is thinkable. But who
can imagine any of the tempers and emotions of religion
breaking out spontaneously in the ill-led, hard-swearing,
hard-drinking, hard-fighting British Army in Flanders in
the days of Fontenoy and Dettingen ! And yet the litera-
ture of Methodism gives us glimpses of the inner life of
that army of which historians are unconscious, but which
have amazing human interest.

In May 1744, for example, with Dettingen a year be-
hind and Fontenoy not quite a year in front, the British
Army lay camped on the side of a hill near Brussels, and
220

SOLDIER METHODISTS

221

not far from Waterloo. One afternoon a cluster of red-
coats set up a little flag on the hill-slope across the vaUey
and began to sing. The soldiers came streaming from the
camp and gathered round. A British private, the very
type of his class — square-bodied, short-necked, with broad
face, scanty eyebrows, and inexpressive eyes — began to
preach. His voice carried far, but it was the voice of
an untaught man. He talked in such English as a peas-
ant might use, and which peasants would have under-
stood, of sin and judgment, of Christ and His salvation.
The crowd about him — war-battered soldiers, familiar
with the hardships of the march, the roughness of camp
life, the perils of the battle-line — hung breathlessly on his
lips. They numbered some thousands ; the sound of their
singing filled the valley.

And this scene was repeated in British camps every
day — sometimes twice, sometimes thrice a day! The
preacher was John Haime, afterwards one of Wesley's
helpers, and already, though he had not yet seen Wesley's
face, one of the fruits of the great religious movement of
which Wesley was the symbol.

Here, again, is a little battle vignette, taken from the
bloody field of Fontenoy: Two Methodist soldiers meet
each other in the darkness after the fight is over. They
had both taken part in that long and bloody struggle
on the road which runs betwixt Fontenoy and the wood
of Barri. They had stood in the stubborn ranks, while
scourged on front and flank by the French guns; they
had fallen back at last with the broken but unconquer-
able fragments of the British column. Haime tells the
story of how they fared in the battle : —

"When W. Clements had his arm broken by a musket-ball, they
would have carried him out of the battle. But he said, 'No; I
have an arm lelt to hold my sword. I will not go yet' When a
second shot broke his other arm he said, 'I am as happy as I can
be out of paradise.' John Evans, having both his legs taken off
by a cannon-ball, was laid across a cannon to die; where, as long
as he could speak, he was praising God with joyful lips.

"For my own part I stood the hottest fire of the enemy for
about seven hours. But I told my comrades, 'The French have no
ball that will kill me this day.' After about seven hours a
cannon-ball killed my horse under me. An officer cried out aloud,
'Haime, where is your God now?' I answered, 'Sir, He is here
with me, and He will bring me out of this battle.' Presently a
cannon-ball took off his head. My horse fell upon me and some

222

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

cried out, 'Haime is gone!' But I replied, 'He is not gone yet.
. . .' I had a long way to go through all our horse, the balls
flying on every side. And all the way lay multitudes bleeding,
groaning, or just dead. Surely I was in the fiery furnace; but
it did not singe a hair of my head. The hotter the battle grew,
the more strength was given me. I was as full of joy as I could
contain."

Then Hainie tells how he meets his comrade in the
confusion of the night, after the sound of the guns had
died away : —

"As I was quitting the field I met one of our brethren with a
little dish in his hand, seeking water. I did not know him at
first, being covered with blood. He smiled and said, 'Brother
Haime, I have got a sore wound.' I asked, 'Have you got Christ
in your heart?' He said, 'I have, and I have had Him all this
day. I have seen many good and glorious days, with much of
God, but I never saw more of it than this day. Glory be to God
for all His mercies!' "'

What stranger illustration of the supernatural power
of religion can be imagined than that aflforded by the
picture of these two smoke-blackened soldiers, who, com-
ing out of a great fight, tell each other how signally they
have realised the comforting presence of God all through
it!

The fashion in which the great revival affected the
army, the material upon which it worked there, the phe-
nomena it produced, are best illustrated by personal
narrative. Wesley, who had a wise interest in religion
as translated into the terms of personal experience, made
his helpers write the story of their religious life, and
published many of these in The Arminian Magazine, and
amongst these are the biographies of some who had been
soldiers. They are true human documents in the modern
sense, marked with reality in every sentence, and as the
records of actual human beings caught in the sweep of
a great religious movement they are of real historical
value.

As an example may be taken the story of Stanniforth,
who was a soldier till he was twenty-nine years of age,
and a preacher of the Gospel under Wesley for fifty years
afterwards.

It is hardly possible to imagine a rougher or more
'Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, vol. i. p. 169.

SOLDIER METHODISTS

223

hopeless bit of huniniiity than Stauniforth in bis younger
days, as described by himself. The son of a Sheffield
cutler — wild, sullen, untaught, ungrateful — he sinned
grossly, and sinned without remorse. He had the appe-
tites of an animal, and apparently no more moral sense
than an aninuil. He drifted into soldiership, drawn by
the charms of rough soldier companionship. In the story
of his youth a mother's figure is dimly seen, who wept
over her lawless son, hung round vile haiints to fetch
the worthless lad home, mourned over his vices, bought
him off, at the cost of all her little savings, when he had
enlisted. "All this," records Stauniforth, "made not the
least impression upon me. I felt no gratitude to either
God or man." He re-enlisted, and marched off, leaving
his broken-hearted mother weeping in the streets; and
Stauniforth, in his autobiography, adds one dreadful
touch. "I was not only tierce and passionate, but also
sullen and malicious without any feeling of humanity.
Instead of weeping with my mother, I even rejoiced in her
sorrow !"

Stanniforth's story gives us a grim picture of the brutal
life, and of the brutal vices, of a British soldier in the
eighteenth century. He was of a wild and stubborn
spirit, familiar with the military prison and the cruel
military punishments of that day; and more than once
narrowly escaped being shot off-hand for breaches of
soldiery duty. In 1743 his regiment sailed for Flanders
and joined the army a few days after the battle of Det-
tingen. If the British Army of Flanders swore terribly
in those days. Private Stauniforth certainly contributed
more than his personal share to its exercises in blas-
phemy. The far-off and broken-hearted mother sent him
sorrowful letters, and little gifts of her hard-earned
savings; but this drunken, plundering, blaspheming
private had no touch of gratitude for her love.

At this stage Stauniforth made the acquaintance of
another private, a lad from Barnard Castle, named Mark
Bond, who was in every detail of training, character, and
temper the exact opposite of Stauniforth. But betwixt
the two there sprang up a friendship of the antique sort,
and such as cannot be easily paralleled. Bond and Stan-
niforth were simply Damon and Pythias translated into
the eighteenth century, and transformed into British

224

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

privates. Bond's story was very simple. He was the
son of godly parents and feared God from three years
old. As a child he was assailed with strange and terrible
temptations. He was, in Stanniforth's words, "violently
and continually importuned to curse God" ; and one fatal
day, when he was not yet seven years old, he went into
a field, crept under the hedge, and with his childish
lips whispered the dreadful words — words, which, to his
boyish conscience, sealed his doom, and which certainly
blackened his life for many years to come. Where did
this child of seven learn anything about ''blaspheming
God"? He kept his dreadful secret; concluded his per-
dition was certain, and carried an almost broken heart
about with him. At eighteen he enlisted with the hope
that he would be soon killed! Soldiership was for him
a circuitous form of suicide. This sad-faced private,
who plodded silently in the ranks, who never drank or
swore, and was always meditating on that far-off childish
blasphemy, is surely a very odd figure in tlie army of
that day.

Bond came under the teaching of the soldier-preacher
Haime, and stepped into the gladness and freedom of a
divine forgiveness. And the new forces in him must
find utterance. He must tell some one of his deliver-
ance: and by some strange impulse he chose the worst
man in the company, Stanniforth, as his confidant. A
stranger story to stranger ears was never yet told. "He
came to me," records Stanniforth, "and recorded what
God had done for his soul. But this was an unknown
language to me; I understood it not; and soon as he
was gone I used to make sport of all he said." But
Bond was patient and invincible in his affection for his
wild comrade ; and at last he conquered him.

" 'He met me one time,' says Stanniforth, 'when I was in dis-
tress, having neither food, money, nor credit. On his coming and
asking me to go and hear the preaching, I said, "You had better
give me something to eat or drinlc; for I am both hungry and
dry." He took me to a sutler's, and gave me both meat and
drink. Then he took me by the hand, and led me to a place
erected about half a mile from the camp. I had no desire to hear
anything of religion, but on the contrary went with great re-
luctance. Who it was that was preaching I do not know. But
this I know, that God spake to my heart. In a few minutes I
was in deep distress — full of sorrow, under a deep sense of sin
and danger, but mixed with a desire for mercy. And, now, I

SOLDIER METHODISTS

225

that never prayed in my life was continually calling upon God.
In time past I could shed tears for nothing; but now the rock
was rent; a fountain was opened, and tears of contrition ran
plentifully down my cheeks. A cry after God w^s put Into my
heart, which has never yet ceased, and, I trust, never will.' "'

Bond rejoiced over his troubled comrade with ruuuing
tears. A strange and instant transformation took place
iu Stauuiforth's habits. The rough, drunken, plundering,
hard-swearing i)rivate was a new man. He drank no
more. He fell strangely silent. He had the sharpest
hunger for religious .services. He went to one of the
little soldier-gatherings, and stood, awkward and solitary,
among.st his comrades. One came up and asked him
how long he had come to the preaching. "I answered,
'last night was the first time.' He took me aside, and
said, 'Let's go to prayer.' I said, 'I cannot pray; I never
prayed in my life.' " His comrade made him kneel down
beside him, and just then Bond came up. After prayer
Stanniforth was asked if he had a Bible, or any good
book. "I said, 'No.' I knew not that I ever had read
any." Bond had as his chief treasure a piece of an old
Bible. "Take it," he said; "I can do better without it
than thou."

Stanniforth was still wholly uncomforted, but his com-
rades tried in vain to tempt him back to his old haunts.
"I had now a tender conscience," he says; "I could neither
drink, swear, game, nor plunder any more. I would not
take so much as an apple, a bunch of grapes — not any-
thing that was not my own."

Bond took charge, not only of the spiritual condition
of his troubled comrade, but of his affairs generally.
"He inquired into all my affairs, and, finding I had
contracted some debts, said, 'The followers of Christ must
be first just, and then charitable. We will put both our
pay together, and live as hard as we can; and what we
spare will pay the debt.' " What finer examine of chival-
rous friendship can be imagined!

The two comrades were now on fire with a comman
impulse; they must rebuke sin. They must tell the
strange and wonderful story of Christ and His love. Old
comrades listened, stared, were melted, joined them ; and,

-'"Lives of Early Methodist Preachers," vol. ii. p. 156.

226

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

as Stanniforth records, "the flame spread through all
the camp, so that we had a large number of hearers."

At (iheiit, where the army was iu camp tor some weeks,
Bond and Stanniforth hired two rooms, one for preach-
ing, one for private meetings, and here little crowds of
soldiers met twice every day. All this time, however,
Stanniforth himself was in the deepest spiritual distress.
His spiritual condition, indeed, was a paradox. He was
living a godly life yet carrying the burden of unforgiven
sin. By a strange gate he at last found enti-ance into
a world of light.

"I thought myself the most miserable creature on earth, far
beneath the brute and inanimate creatures; all of which an-
swered the end of their creation, which I have never done!
From twelve at night till two it was my turn to stand sentinel
at a dangerous post. I had a fellow-sentinel; but I desired him
to go away, which he willingly did. As soon as I was alone I
kneeled down, and determined not to rise, but to continue crying
and wrestling with God till He had mercy on me. How long I
was in that agony I cannot tell. But as I looked up to heaven
I saw the clouds open exceeding bright, and I saw Jesus hanging
on the cross. At the same moment these words were applied to
my heart, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee.' My chains fell off; my
heart was free. All guilt was gone, and my soul was filled with
unutterable peace. I loved God and all mankind, and the fear of
death and hell was vanished away. I was filled with wonder and
astonishment.'"

Who is not moved by this picture of a lonely sentinel
at midnight keeping watch in front of an enemy's camp,
praying, weeping, struggling? And suddenly there breaks
upon him out of the darkness a vision as wonderful as
that which fell upon Paul outside the gates of Damascus.
Was the vision real? Who can undertake to say how
God may manifest Him.self to such a soul as that of this
untaught and despairing soldier? When Bond the next
morning met his comrade, no words of explanation were
needed. Stanniforth's face told the tale. "I know God
has .set your soul at liberty," cried Bond. "I see it in
your countenance."

The work spread now with new energy. The meetings
were more frequent, and drew larger crowds. "God in-
creased our number every day, so that we had some in
almost every regiment."

'"Lives of Early Methodist Preachers," vol. ii. p. 161.

SOLDIER METHODISTS

227

Stanniforth had his first experience of battle at Fou-
tenoy. Just before the fight began his regiment was
ordered to stand at ease. The men threw themselves
on the ground. Stanniforth tells how he went a few
paces ahead, flung himself with his face in the grass, and
"prayed that God would deliver me from all fear, and
enable me to behave as a Christian and good soldier.
Glory be to God, He heard my cry, and took away all
my fear I I came into the ranks again, and had both
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."

And how did these preaching and praying Methodist
soldiers fight? On that subject there is abundant evi-
dence. Wesley records dining with the colonel of one of
the regiments which served in Flanders, who told him,
"No men fight like those who fear God. I had rather com-
mand five hundred such than any regiment in the army."
Their religion touched the rough spirits of these soldier
Methodists to a strange, tenderness, even towards their
enemies. "On the 29th," says Haime, "we marched close
to the enemy, and when I saw them in their camp my
bowels moved toward them in love and pity for their
souls." That was a strange and noble mood of feeling
for a British private in sight of the enemy's columns !

" 'Some days before the late battle,' says another of these
Methodist soldiers, 'one of them, standing at his tent-door, broke
out into raptures of joy, knowing his departure was at hand, and
was so filled with the love of God that he danced before his com-
rades. In the battle, before he died, he openly declared, "I am
going to rest from my labours in the bosom of Jesus." I believe
nothing like this was ever heard of before, in the midst of so
wicked an army as ours. Some were crying out in their wounds,
"I am going to my Beloved." Others, "Come, Lord Jesus, come
quickly." And many that were not wounded were crying to their
Lord to take them to Himself. There was such boldness in the
battle among this little despised flock that it made the officers,
as well as common soldiers, amazed. And they acknowledge it
to this day.'

Fontenoy is one of the most bloody fights in history.
It is diflBcult to name a battle in which there was less
of leadership amongst the generals, and more of dogged
courage in the ranks. Stanniforth 's regiment shared in
the fiercest struggle of the day. "All the day," he records,

'"Lives of Early Methodist Preachers," vol. ii. p. 168.

228

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"I was in great spirits, and as composed in my mind as
if I had been liearing a sermon. I neither desired life
nor death, but was entirely happy in God." After the
fight was over the surviving Methodists gathered together.

"We then began to inquire who of our society was gone home.
We missed many out of our regiment. One was saying, 'Oh how
happy I am!' And just as he spoke a cannon-ball came and took
off his head. We lost four preachers and many of the society.
But my dear companion, with the other bretheren in the regi-
ment, were still as the heart of one man. Such was the religion
of the soldiers at this time, before any of them were corrupted
by new opinions! I then thought, 'This state of life is the only
one to love and serve God in. I would not change it for any
other under the sun, upon any consideration whatever.'

Stanniforth's regiment was recalled to England by the
rising of the Highlands in favour of Prince Charlie. After
Culloden, the regiment was in barracks at Canterbury,
and Stanniforth fell in love, was married; but on his
very wedding-day was called upon to join his regiment,
then under sudden orders for Holland. He kissed his
new-married wife and marched off. He took part in the
fierce and utterly useless fight in front of Maestricht, and
here he lost his faithful comrade Bond. The commander,
Prince Charles, abandoned his rear-guard to destruction,
and marched off with his main body. "We lay waiting
for orders to retreat," says Stanniforth, "but the Prince
forgot to send them, being busy with his cups and his
ladies." The I'ear-guard was attacked by overwhelming
forces, fought stubbornly until almost cut to pieces, and
then fell back. Says Stanniforth : —

"All this time I found a constant waiting upon God. All fear
was removed. I had no tremor on my spirits, and the presence
of God was with me all the day long. My dear compaion was on
my right hand, and had been all the night. As we were both in
the front rank, a musket-ball came and went through his leg.
He fell down at my feet, looked up in my face with a smile, and
said, 'My dear, I am wounded.' I and another took him in our
arms, and carried him out of the ranks, while he was exhorting
me to stand fast in the Lord. We laid him down, took our leave
of him, and fell into our ranks again. In our farther retreat I
again met with my dear friend, who had received another ball
through his thigh. But his heart was full of love, and his eyes
full of heaven. I may justly say, 'Here fell a great Christian, a
good soldier, a faithful friend.' "

'/6id., p. 169.

SOLDIER METHODISTS

229

After his discharge from the army Stanniforth became
one of Wesley's preachers, and carried into his preaching
the energy and courage of his soldier days. He died an
old man, almost his last words being a fragment of a
Methodist hymn : —

"My God I am Thine;
What a comfort divine,
What a blessing to know that my Jesus Is mine."

Haime was a soldier of another type, and went through
very curious experiences. He was a Dorsetshire lad, vio-
lent in temi)er, gross in speech, utterly lawless in conduct.
He, like Bond, was visited with what is to-day an almost
unthiukable spiritual experience — a violent temptation to
blaspheme God. He yielded at last, in the silence of his
heart framed the dreadful words, and was then told by the
tempter, "Thou art inevitably damned." The unhap])y
youth was broken-hearted. He swung for a time betwixt
plans of suicide and wild rushes into vicious pleasure.
The terrors of sin haunted him. He had experiences
which can hardly be paralleled out of monkish literature,

"One night, as I was going to bed, I durst not lie down without
prayer. So, falling upon my knees, I began to consider, 'What
can I pray for? I have neither the will nor the power to do any-
thing good.' Then it darted into my mind, 'I will not pray,
neither will I be beholden to God for mercy.' I arose from my
knees without prayer, and laid me down; but not in peace. I
never had such a night before. I was as if my very body had
been in a fire; and I had a hell in my conscience. I was thor-
oughly persuaded the devil was in the room."

He was violently tempted to repeat the act of blas-
phemy against God, and one day when the temptation
was upon him in overpowering violence he records, "Hav-
ing a stick in my hand, I threw it towards heaven, against
God, with the utmost enmity. Immediately I saw in the
clear element a creature like a swan, but much larger,
part black, part brown. It flew at me, and went just over
my head. Then it went about forty yards, lighted on the
ground, and stood staring upon me. This was in a clear
day, about twelve o'clock."

Haime now enlisted in a dragon regiment, leaving his
wife and children. When his regiment was on the march
to Scotland the first gleam of light broke into the un-

^30 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

happy soldier's darkness. He came across Bunyan's
"Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners"; and across
the space of more than a hundred years the voice of the
Bedfordshire tinker talked to the heart of this tormented
soldier.

"One day, as I walked by the Tweed side, I cried aloud, being
all athirst for God, 'Oh that Thou wouldst hear my prayer, and
let my cry come up before Thee!' The Lord heard. He sent a
gracious answer. He lifted me up out of the dungeon. He took
away my sorrow and fear, and filled my soul with peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost. The stream glided swiftly along, and all
nature seemed to rejoice with me. I was truly free; and had I
had any to guide me I need never more have come into bondage."

But the gleam of light soon faded, and again poor
Haime walked in a world of terrors. "Many times," he
says, "I stopped in the street afraid to go one step farther
lest 1 should step into hell."

What is the secret of the experiences of such men as
Haime and Bond ? They were not born under the shadow
of any dreadful creed. No gloomy theology poisoned
their imagination. They practically had no theology,
good or bad. The secret lies in the dim, unconscious
sense of the terrors of an offended God, awakened in the
human conscience, unaccompanied by any vision of the
forgiving mercy of God in Christ.

Haime's regiment was ordered to Flanders, and slowly,
with many struggles and many relapses, he found his
way into light and gladness. He wrote to Wesley, and
Wesley's reply is interesting as furnishing a glimpse of
the correspondence he carried on with multitudes of all
ranks.

" 'It is a great blessing,' wrote Wesley, 'whereof God has al-
ready made you a partaker; but if you continue waiting upoa
Him you will see greater things than these. This is only the
beginning of the kingdom of Heaven which He will set up in
your heart. If He give you any companion in the narrow way,
it is well; and it is well if He do not. So much the more will
He teach and strengthen you by Himself. He will strengthen
you in the secret of your heart. But by all means, miss no op-
portunity. Speak and spare not. Declare what God has done
for your soul. Regard not worldly prudence. Be not ashamed
of Christ, or of His word, or of His servants. Speak the truth
in love, even in the midst of a crooked generation.'

'"Lives of Early Methodist Preachers," vol. ii. p. 158.

SOLDIER METHODISTS

2.31

Haime acted on Wesley's counsel, and commenced to
speak of Christ to his comrades. He took part in the
battle of Dettingen, and his account of it is curiously
interesting.

"I had no sooner joined the regiment than my left-hand man
was shot dead. 1 cried to God, and said, 'In Thee have I trusted;
let me never he confounded.' My heart was filled with love, peace,
and joy more than tongue can express. I was in a new world.
I could truly say, 'Unto you that believe He is precious.' I stood
the fire of the enemy seven hours. And when the battle was over
I was sent out with a party of men to find the baggage-waggon,
but returned without success. In the meanwhile the army was
gone, and I knew not which way. I went to the field where the
battle was fought, but such a scene of human misery did I never
behold! It was enough to melt the most obdurate heart. I
knew not now which way to take, being afraid of falling into
the hands of the enemy. But as it began to rain hard, I set out,
though not knowing where to go; till, hearing the beat of the
drum, I went towards it, and soon rejoined the army. But I
could not find the tent which I belonged to, nor persuade them
to take me in at any other. So, being very wet and much fatigued,
I wrapped myself up in my cloak and lay down and fell asleep.
And though it still rained upon me, and the water ran under
me, I had as sweet a night's rest as ever I had in my life."

After the battle the army fell back to Flanders, and
remained in quarters near Ghent. Haime tells the story
of how he began meetings there : —

"Being in Ghent, I went one Sunday morning to the English
Church at the usual time. But neither minister nor people came.
As I was walking in the church, two men belonging to the train
came in, John Evans and Pitman Stag. One of them said, 'The
people are long in coming.' I said, 'Yet they think, however they
live, of going to heaven when they die. But most of them, I
fear, will be sadly disappointed.' They stared at me, and asked
me what I meant. I told them, 'Nothing unholy can dwell with a
holy God.' We had a little more talk, and appointed to meet in
the evening. We took a room without delay, and met every
night to pray and read the Holy Scriptures. In a little time we
were as speckled birds, as 'men wondered at.' But some began
to listen under the window, and soon after desired to meet with
us. Our meetings were soon sweeter than our food."

It must have been diflBcult to maintain, religious serv-
ices amongst troops constantly on the march ; but Haime
explains their methods. "Our general plan was, as soon
as we were settled in any camp, to build a tabernacle,
containing two, three, or four rooms, as we saw con-

232 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

venient. One day three oflScers came to see our chapel,
as they called it. They asked many questions. One in
particular asked me what I preached. I answered, 'I
preach against swearing, whoring, and drunkenness; and
exhort men to repent of all their sins, that they may not
perish.' He began swearing horribly, and said, if it were
in his power, he would have me whipped to death. I
told him, 'Sir you have a commission over men ; but I
have a commission from God to tell you, you must either
repent of your sins or perish everlastingly.' "

The fire, fed with such courage, spread. "We had now,"
says Haime, "three hundred in the society, and six
preachers beside myself." Fonteuoy sadly reduced the
little godly band ; but still the good work was main-
tained. OflScers not seldom were amongst Haime's
hearers, and one day the Duke of Cumberland came and
stood amongst the crowd who listened.

But human experience is liable to tragical changes.
Haime was tempted, and fell. He gives the date with
sorrowful exactness. "April 6, 1746, I was off my watch,
and fell by a grievous temptation. It came as quick as
lightning, I knew not if I were in my senses; but I fell,
and the Spirit of God departed from me." For twenty
years poor Haime walked iu the shadow of that fall.
He passed through religious experiences which resemble
nothing so much as the darkest circles in Dante's inferno.
His grief broke his health and affected his very senses.

"I could not see the sun for more than eight months. Even
in the clearest summer day it always appeared to me like a mass
of blood. At the same time I lost the use of my knees. I can-
not describe what I felt. I could truly say, 'Thou hast sent fire
into my bones.' I was often as hot as if I were burning to death.
Many times I looked to see if my clothes were set on fire. I
have gone into a river to cool myself; but it was all the same.
For what could quench the wrath of His indignation that was
let loose upon me? At other times, in the midst of summer, I
have been so cold that I knew not how to bear it. All the clothes
I could put on had no effect, but my flesh shivered, and my very
bones quaked. God grant, reader, thou and I may never feel how
hot or how cold it is in hell!"

But no matter in what deep waters poor Haime waded,
he still preached, warned, exhorted. "Some may inquire,
what could move nie to preach while I was iu such a
forlorn condition? They must ask of God, for what I

SOLDIER METHODISTS

233

cannot tell. His ways herein are past finding out." He
tells again : "When Satan has strongly suggested, just as
I was going to preach, '1 will have thee at last,' I have
answered (sometimes with too much auger), 'I will have
another out of thy haud first.' And many, while I was
myself in the deep, were truly convinced, and converted
to God."

It is not easy to imagine a figure at once more pathetic
and more heroic than that of this soldier-preacher, carry-
ing the burden of that far-off sin, and yet preaching" to
others a Gospel he did not himself realise. After his
discharge from the army Haime went to Wesley and
asked to be accepted as one of his preachers. Wesley
looked with his shrewd but kindly eyes on the worn face
of the veteran, and accepted him. Later he made him
for a while his personal companion, and took him with
him when travelling. Haime found his way into clear
experience at last and died when nearly eighty years of
age. His last prayer, spoken with failing voice, was:
"O Almighty God, Who dwellest in light which no mortal
can approach, and where no unclean thing can enter,
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts; grant us continually
sweet peace, quietness, and assurance of Thy favour !"

Such men as Haime, Stanniforth, and Bond are types
of a class; they are figures which symbolise the forces
of a spiritual revolution. These men, during the early
stages of their religious life at all events, owed little to
Wesley personally. Haime, in his first letter to Wesley,
says: "I am a stranger to you in the flesh. I know not
if T have seen you above once, when I saw you preaching
on Kenniiigton Common. And then T hated you as
much now as (by the grace of God) T love you." They
went through dreadful struggles before they saw his face.
But Wesley was their natural leader. His sympathy
with the army was always alert and keen. He records
in his Journal, speaking of Ireland, "The first call is to
the soldiery." Wesley's character was one that specially
appealed to what may be called the soldierly imagination
— ^his courage, his instinct for discipline, his look and
accent of command. He was the one visible figure, too, in
the whole spiritual movement by which these soldiers were
aflfected. They talked of him on the march, wrote to him
from their camps, passed from hand to hand as treasures

234

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

the letters he had written to some of them. And when
they were discharged they naturally joined his Societies.

These brave Methodist soldiers lie in forgotten graves
scattered over the 'Continent; but it is worth while to
recall their memory. They show how the new spiritual
forces sweeping through England reached classes that
seemed quite beyond the reach of the preachers and
leaders of that movement.

CHAPTER X

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : SCOTLAND

It was certain, in advance, that a spiritual revolution,
such as that which was now in progress, could not be
confined within narrow geographical limits. The very
winds would carry it over land and sea.

Whitefield was the avant courier of the movement,
the Prince Rupert of the new spiritual army. Wesley
had less imagination and more practical sense than his
great comrade. Remoter horizons did not tempt him.
His mind was concentrated on the work immediately
under his hands. With the wise instinct of a great
leader, he loved to make each step he took secure before
taking the next. Ten years, therefore, in advance of
Wesley, Whitefield invaded Scotland. The Erskines, who
headed a secession from the Scotch Church in the early
days of the eighteenth century, and had formed what
was known as the Associate Presbytery, urged him to
come, and in July, 1741, he visited Dunfermline and had
a conference with the elder Erskine.

Whitefield had at least one point of ardent agreement
with the Erskines. He was a convinced Calvinist, and
intercourse with Jonathan Edwards in America had given
his Calvinism a more resolute temper than ever. But
there was also one fundamental discord betwixt them.
The Seceders, after their stubborn Scottish fashion, were
fanatical on the question of Church government. They
were as eager for the rights of the people in the election
of ministers, as they were for the true doctrine of the
eternal decrees, or of the divinity of Christ. The "wicked-
ness" of the patronage laws was to them as detestable as
the worst forms of Arianism. Like their natural enemies,
the sacerdotalists, their theology had no perspective.

They wished, of course, to capture Whitefield. "Unless
you come with a design to meet and abide with us of the
Associate Presbytery I would dread the consequence of
your coming," wrote Ralph Erskine. But Whitefield was
235

236

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

the last man iu the world to be imprisoned within any
narrow ecclesiastical boundaries. He met the Associate
Presbytery, a set of grave and venerable men. He records
that, after a brief donversation, they were proceeding to
choose a Moderator : —

"I asked them for what purpose? They answered, to dis-
course, and set me right about the matter of Church government,
and the Solemn League and Covenant. I replied they might save
themselves that trouble, for I had no scruples about it, and that
settling Church government and preaching about the Solemn
League and Covenant was not my plan."'

Whitetield added that "he had never yet made the
Solemn League and Covenant the object of his study,
being busy about matters of greater importance." This,
in the ears of the venerable seceders, was nothing less
than flat blasphemy. "Every pin in the tabernacle was
precious," cried out several angry divines. In their eyes,
indeed, the "pin" was apt to seem more precious than
the whole tabernacle! Whitefield was asked to preach
only for them, until he had got further light.

"I asked why only for them? Mr. Ralph Erskine said, 'They
were the Lord's people.' I then asked whether there were no
other Lord's people but themselves, and, supposing all others
were the devil's people, they certainly had more need to be
preached to, and therefore I was more and more determined to
go out into the highways and hedges, and that if the Pope him-
self would lend me his pulpit I would gladly proclaim the
righteousness of Christ therein."*

To one correspondent who had tried to bring White-
field to correct ecclesiastical views the great preacher
expounded with much simplicity his entire theory of
Church order. "I wish," he said, "you would not trouble
yourself or me in writing about the corruption of the
Church of England. I believe there is no Church perfect
under heaven ; but as God, by His Providence, is pleased
to send me forth simply to preach the Gospel to all, I
think there is no need of casting myself out." The at-
tempt, in a word, to imprison Whitefield in a little net of
ecclesiastical theories was like trying to call some wide-
winged sea-bird from the upper spaces of the air, and to
shut it up in a cage.

'Butler's "Wesley and Whitefield in Scotland," p. 23.
*Il)id. , p. 24.

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : SCOTLAND 237

Whitefield at once commenced open-air preaching in
Edinburgh. Scotland is a land of good preachers, but
it had never yet listened to such preaching as that of
Whitefield. His deep, melodious voice rang over vast
crowds as with the vibrations of a great bell. His ardour,
the note of passion that ran through his rhetoric, the
trembling cadences of his eloquence, the visible tears
running down his face, the flame-like zeal which burned
in every syllable and gave energy to every gesture — these
fairly carried away the Scottish crowds. Scottish preach-
ing, as a rule, appeals to the reason rather than to the
emotions, and ordinarily a Scottish audience hates either
to see emotion or to express it. But there are fountains
of feeling hidden deep in the rugged Scottish character,
depths whose very existence is often unsuspected by
their own possessors; and Whitefield somehow could
reach thesie.

He paid, in all, fourteen visits to Scotland, and never
before or since were such oratorical triumphs won by any
single voice over Scottish audiences. He preached in
the fields round Edinburgh to crowds of 20,000 people.
In his second visit great rows of seats were erected in
the Hospital I'ark, and let out to hearers at fixed prices.
The concentrated and sustained energy of Whitefield's
work in Scotland may well seem in these modern times
incredible. On Sunday he preached four times in Edin-
burgh to vast crowds, and lectured in the evening in a
private house. On Monday he preached three times and
again lectiired at night. On Tuesday he preached seven
times, and writes, at the close of the amazing day, "I am
now as fresh as when I arose in the morning!" Of what
substance was such flesh and blood built?

Later, and when in the full rush of crowded services,
he calmly records in his Journal. "I am exceedingly
strengthened, both in soul and boi]y, and cannot now do
well without preaching three times a day." Preaching did
not exhaust his strength ; it seemed to renew it !

Butler, in his very interesting work, "John Wesley
and George Whitefield in Scotland," says that Whitefield
affected the Scottish towns by his preaching as Savonarola
affected Florence; but Whitefield's preaching was more
intensely spiritual than that of the great Florentine, and
took a loftier flight. Perhaps Whitefield's work in Scot-

238

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

laud reached its highest point in Cambuslang. Here a
Scottish divine, McCulloch, a man of fine gifts and intense
zeal, had prepared the way for Whitefield. The scene
when Whitefield preached may be told in his own
words : —

"At mid-day I came to Cambuslang and preached at two to
a vast body of people; again at six, and again at nine at night.
Such commotions, surely, were never heard of, especially at
eleven o'clock at night. For an hour and a half there was much
weeping, and so many falling into such deep distress, expressed
in various ways, as cannot be described. The people seemed to
be slain in scores. Their agonies and cries were exceedingly
affecting. In the fields all night might be heard the voices of
prayer and praise.'"

Later, still more extraordinary effects were produced : —

"I never before saw such a universal stir. The motion fled
as swift as lightning from one end of the auditory to the other.
Thousands were bathed in tears — some wringing their hands,
others almost swooning, and others crying out and mourning over
a pierced Saviour. All night, in different companies, persons
were praying to God and praising Him."

That Whitefield taught the spiritual life of the whole
Scottish Church to beat for the moment with quicker
pulse, cannot be doubted. And yet he left no permanent
mark on Scottish religion. Edinburgh to-day no more
bears his signature than does Florence that of Savon-
arola.

The Seceders who had invited Whitefield to Scotland
viewed his success with alarm and digust. Since he
would not march under their flag he was to them nothing
less than an enemy. They appointed a day of fasting
and humiliation for the countenance given to Whitefield,
"a priest of the Church of England who had sworn the
oath of supremacy and abjured the Solemn League and
Covenant." All the results of his preaching they bluntly
ascribed to the devil — so blind can fanaticism be!

In 1751, ten years after Whitefield had crossed the
Border, Wesley was invited by a pious soldier quartered
at Musselburgh, Captain Gallatin, to visit him. White-
field strongly advised him not to go. He told him
bluntly : —

"You have no business there, for your principles are so well
'Butler, p. 36.

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : SCOTLAND 239

known that If you spoke like an angel none would hear you; and
If they did. you would have nothing to do but to dispute with one
and another from morning to night."

Wesley, it must be admitted, had some obvious dis-
qualifications for a Scottish tour. He was known to abhor
the Calvinistic theology. He was himself a preacher of
what might be called the Scottish type, appealing to the
reason and the conscience rather than the emotions, and
he lacked the overwhelming emotional power of White-
field. His preaching, therefore, would, for his hearers
in Scotland, be without the charm of novelty. But as
Wesley wrote to Whitefield : —

"If God sends me, people will hear. And I will give them no
provocation to dispute; for I will studiously avoid controverted
points and keep to the fundamental truths of Christianity; and if
any still begin to dispute, they may, but I will not dispute with
them."

Wesley's first visit to Scotland lasted two days, but he
returned two years afterwards, in 1753, and from that
time a visit to Scotland every second or third year formed
part of his regular work. He visited Scotland in all
twenty-two times, and if his preaching never produced
the immediate and wonderful effects of Whitefield's, yet
he more permanently influenced Scotland than did his
great comrade. He created Scottish Methodism, a branch
of the great Methodist tree which, if dwarfed in mere bulk
by other branches, has borne very rich fruit.

The elder Erskine succeeded for a moment in kindling
much wrathful feeling against Wesley by reviving the
Calvinistic controversy. He republished in Scotland, with
an angry preface, the letters which had passed betwixt
Wesley and Hervey, the author of "Theron and Aspasio,"
and Wesley had to realise of what shrewish bitterness in
theological matters the Scottish temper is capable.

" 'The Seceders,' he says, 'who have fallen In my way are
more uncharitable than the Papists themselves. I never yet met
a Papist who avowed the principle of murdering heretics. But a
Seceding minister being asked, "Would not you, if it was in
your power, cut the throats of all the Methodists?" replied
directly, "Why, did not Samuel hew Agag in pieces before the
Lord?" I have not yet met a Papist in this kingdom who would
tell me to my face all but themselves must be damned;, but I
have seen Seceders enough who make no scruple to affirm none
but themselves could be saved."

240

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

But the Seceders, with their bitter spirit, did not re-
flect the general temper. Wesley was listened to every-
where by great crowds, and was shown great honour.
Only once, while preaching in the open air, was an act
of rudeness shown to him. More than one Scottish city
presented him with its freedom. He found in Lady Max-
well, in Edinburgh; and in Dr. (jillies, at Glasgow, friends
and helpers of quenchless loyalty and great influence.
Whitefleld says in one of his letters at the time that
Wesley was making in Scotland "a great mistake" in
forming societies after the pattern of his English work.
But Wesley had too profound a knowledge, both of human
nature and of the religious life, to believe that his con-
verts would survive if they were left without the shelter
and the stimulus of spiritual fellowship. And what
Whitefleld regarded as Wesley's "mistake" in Scotland
was in reality' the secret of his enduring work there.

In organising these societies, as a matter of fact, Wesley
was but following a noble Scottish precedent. The Scot-
tish reformers of the sixteenth century, like the Lollards
of the fifteenth century, formed meetings for "prophesy-
ing," which were almost the exact analogue of Wesley's
class-meetings. These religious societies were strong in
Scotland during the Covenanting period, and were the
deep and vigorous roots which kept religion alive on
Scottish soil. It is possible, indeed, to say that the Scot-
tish reformers had anticipated many features of Wesley's
own work. Intense spiritual life, of course, under any
sky, and set in any historical conditions, will naturally
express itself in living fellowship. And the meetings for
"prophesying" in Knox's time, with the class-meetings in
Wesley's Church, are independent expressions of a uni-
versal spiritual impulse.

It is still amusing to read Wesley's descriptions of his
Scottish audiences. They astonished him by their order,
their gravity, and their absence of emotion. "They hear
much, know everything, and feel nothing," he says. "They
are so wise that they need no more knowledge, and so
good that they need no more religion." The impassi-
bility of his Scottish hearers provoked Wesley to the
plainest speech. "I seldom speak," he says, "so roughly
as in 'Scotland, but I never knew any in Scotland offended
at plain dealing ; in this respect the North Britons are a

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : SCOTLAND 241

pattern to all mankind." "I am amazed at this people,"
he writes again. "I use the most cutting words, and
apply them in the most pointed way ; still they hear, but
feel no more than the seats they sit upon."

He learned to cherish the highest respect for Scottish
sense. "Only show them," he says, "the reasonableness
in Scotland, and they will conform to anything." But
Wesley was not in the least disposed to vary his methods
to suit Scottish tastes. The Scotch love a fixed pastorate;
if only because the stubborn instinct of property in the
average Scotsnum is affronted by having to share even his
minister with somebody else. So Wesley was urged to
modify the itinerancy of his helpers. He wrote in
reply :—

"While I live, itinerant preachers shall be itinerants; I mean,
if they choose to remain in connection with me. The society at
Greenock are entirely at their own disposal; they may either
have a preacher between them and Glasgow, or none at all. But
more than one between them they cannot have. I have too much
regard both for the bodies and souls of our preachers to let them
be confined to one place any more. I have weighed the matter,
and will serve the Scots as we do the English, or leave them."

One of his helpers in Glasgow had so far conformed
to Scottish usage as to organise a kirk-session. Wesley
writes to him from Cork : —

"'Sessions!' 'Elders!' We Methodists have no such custom,
neither any of the Churches of God that are under our care. I
require you, Jonathan Crowther, immediately to dissolve that
session (so-called) at Glasgow. Discharge them from meeting
any more. And if they will leave the society, let them leave it.
We acknowledge only preachers, stewards, and leaders among
us, over which the assistant in each circuit presides. You ought
to have kept to the Methodist plan from the beginning. Who
had my authority to vary from it? If the people of Glasgow, or
any other place, are weary of us, we will leave them to them-
selves. But we are willing to be still their servants, for Christ's
sake, according to our own discipline, but no other."

Wesley loved his Scottish work and his Scottish
hearers, and he maintained his tours in Scotland to the
last years of his life. Some of the most touching pictures
we have of Wesley in old age. pressing on with quench-
less ardour in his work, when his very .senses began to fail
him, are under Scottish skies. He was eighty-seven years
of age when he paid his twenty-second visit to Scotland,

242

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

and he planned his journey and his preaching services on
as daring a scale as ever. Here is a picture given by one
of his helpers of his last visit to a Scottish town, Dum-
fries : —

"He came from Glasgow that day (about seventy miles), but
his strength was almost exhausted, and when he attempted to
preach very few could hear him. His sight was likewise much
decayed, so that he could neither read the hymn or text. The
wheels of life were ready to stand still; but his conversation was
agreeably edifying, being mixed with the wisdom and gravity of
a parent and the artless simplicity of a child."

Wesley's own record of the service is, "I travelled yes-
terday nearly eighty miles, and preached in the evening
without any pain. The Lord does what pleases Him."

Butler, in his work on the influence of the Oxford
Methodists on Scottish religion, says that Wesley was
for Scotland "a spiritual splendour"; and if Methodism
as a separate body does not bulk large on the Scottish
landscape, yet its influence on the spiritual life of Scot-
land has been deep and enduring.

CHAPTER XI

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : IRELAND

Ireland was for Wesley a new field, strange, wild, un-
happy— the very paradox of civilisation ; a field in which,
not by any unkindness of nature or any ordinance of God.
but only by the follies and hates of mankind, good things
became evil. Law inspired crime. Religion bred hate.
Freedom became the author of tyrannj'. The Ireland of
the early Georges and of the penal laws I Was there auy
other patch of soil in the civilised world where the defeat
of the religion of Jesus Christ was so nearly absolute, and
the task of religion more hopeless?

Lord Hutchinson, it will be remembered, condensed the
Ireland of that day into one terrible sentence : "A corrupt
aristocracy, a ferocious commonalty, a distracted Govern-
ment, a divided people." Society was one tangled web
of dreadful hates. The Protestant hated and oppressed
the Catholic; the Anglican hated and oppressed the Non-
conformist; the Romanist hated and, where he had the
chance, slew both. Green says: "After the surrender
of Limerick every Catholic Irishman, and there were five
Irish Catholics to every Irish Protestant, was treated as
a stranger and a foreigner in his own country."^ The
Government was in the hands of one-twelfth of the popu-
lation, and was used by them to fill their pockets at the
expense of the other eleven-twelfths. Class fueds were
nouriished by law. The Irish Catholic was practically an
outlaw under his own native skies; the Irish Presbyte-
rian lived under the harrow of the Test Act; and even
the Irish Anglican had to stand hat in hand before an
Anglican who had the merit of being English.

But it is the dreadful paradox of Irish affairs in the
eighteenth century which most impresses the student in
the twentieth century. It represents an inversion, almost
without parallel in history, of all natural order. English-
men had won freedom in England only to deny it to

'"Short History," p. 811.
243

244 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Irishmen in Ireland. The two noblest forces in human
society are the authority of law and the authority of
religion. They are, or should be, allies. But in the
Ireland of that day they were sworn and deadly foes.
The main object of the law in Ireland was the extirpation
of what four out of every five of its inhabitants held as
their religion. Nowhere was Protestantism — or rather
what mistook itself for Protestantism — so strong, and
nowhere had it failed so absolutely. Nowhere else was
Romanism so harried and handicapped; and nowhere else
was it so nearly triumphant! It was persecuted; and
persecution hardened its priests into fanatics, it ennobled
them into martyrs.

The Protestantism which Ireland in those sad days
knew had borrowed the persecuting policy of Rome: and
persecution in its case was twin-sister to greed. It was
as eager to pick the pockets of its victim, or to confiscate
his farm, as to punish his deplorably corrupt theology.
The Irish peasant, in his turn, was wedded to his reli-
gion not simply by spiritual forces — often not in the
least by spiritual forces — but by a cluster of forces which
were titie contradiction of everything spiritual: by class
hate; by the memory of inexpiable wrongs, wrongs some-
times endured, sometimes committed; by loyalty to his
class ; by his ignorance, in a word, and by his hates. And
never was ignorance so complete or hate so bitter! They
were ancestral hates, that had their roots in history, and
were kept living and deep by oppression.

And never did Protestandsra sin so fatally against its
own genius as in the Ireland of that day. The Protestant
vicar took every tenth potato from the Romish peasant
for his own support; but he made no attempt to convert
him, to understand him, to talk his language, or to en-
lighten his ignorance. Lecky's picture of the Irish
Church of that day has in it a touch of the iron severity
of Tacitus :—

"The Irish Establishment was the Church of the poor in the
sense that they paid for it, but in no other. Its adherents were
certainly less than one-seventh of the population, and they be-
longed exclusively to the wealthiest class. And this astonishing
Establishment was mainly supported by tithes. The mass of
the Irish Catholics were cottiers living in an abject, hopeless
poverty hardly paralleled in Europe, and deriving a bare sub-
sistence for themselves and their families from little plots of

HOW THl-: WORK SPREAD : IRELAND 245

potato ground, often of not more than ten or fifteen perches. The
tenth part of the produce of these plots was rigidly exacted from
the wretched tenant for the benefit of a clergyman who was in
violent hostility to his religion, whom in many cases he never
saw, and from whose ministrations he derived no benefit what-
ever.'"

" 'A system of half persecution was pursued,' says Southey,
'at once odious for its injustice and contemptible for its ineffl-
cacy. Good principles and generous feelings were thereby pro-
voked into an alliance with superstition and priestcraft; and
the priests, whom the law recognised only for the purpose of
punishing them if they discharged the forms of their office,
established a more absolute dominion over the minds of the Irish
people than was possessed by the clergy in any other part of the
world. It would be difficult, in the whole compass of history, to
find another instance in which such various and such powerful
agencies concurred to degrade the character and to blast the
prosperity of a nation.'

What type of character did these evil conditions create?
The Irish are peculiarly susceptible to the influences
which stream upon them from history, from legislation,
and from the Church, "No people," says Lecky, "brooded
more upon old wrongs, clung more closely to old habits,
were more governed by imagination, association and cus-
tom." And history, the law, the Church, alike com-
bined to corrupt them. To quote Lecky again : —

"They were half-naked, half-starved, utterly destitute of all
providence, and of all education, liable at any time to be turned
adrift from their holdings, ground to the dust by three great
burdens — rack rents, paid not to the landlord but to the middle-
man; tithes, aid to the clergy — often the absentee clergy — of
the Church of their oppressors; and dues, paid to their own
priests.'"

And it was upon a field so hopeless as this, and sown
so thickly with evil tares, that Wesley was about to step.
Southey says that "all the circumstances were as favour-
able for the progress of Methodism in Ireland as they
were adverse to it in Scotland," and he proceeds to cite
these: the failure of the Established Church, &c. But
this is an absurd inversion of fact. In Scotland Wesley
was at least a Protestant speaking to Protestants. He
did not represent a foreign and hated race. But in Ire-
land the hate of a Romanist for a Protestant, the mistrust

'Lecky, vol. ii. p. 197.
'Southey, vol. ii. p. 107.
•Lecky, vol. i. p. 341.

246 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

of an Irishman for everything English, and the bitterness
bred of political wrongs and ancestral hates, whose origin
ran back into far-off centuries, were all against him.

And yet, great are the forces of simple and genuine
religion! By the magic of truth, truth with love as its
vehicle and minister, Wesley won in Ireland a success
certainly greater tlian that he won in Scotland, and
second only to that he won in England. What Methodism
did in Ireland is not to be measured by the chapels built,
the circuits formed, the societies gathered. Methodism
was the earliest and noblest of those healing forces which
touched Irish history, and have done so much to trans-
figure it. Here was a form of religion which did not carry
a pike in one hand, and a writ of proscription in the
other. Here were messengers of Christ's Gospel whose
chief characteristic was not a ruthless hunger for tithes
from the pockets of those who hated both them and their
creed. Methodism saved Protestantism as a spiritual
force in Ireland. It did something to arrest that dread-
ful divorce betwixt classes which threatened to destroy
society itself. When it stepped on to Irish soil there
became visible a form of Protestantism which suffered
persecution instead of inflicting it. It talked the lan-
guage of the first Christian century, and had something
at least of the spirit of that far-off century — its heroic
zeal, its exultant faith, its eager and tender sympathy.

Wesley himself brought no political cure to Ireland,
and he stood as resolutely aloof from Irish party disputes
as he did from Scottish theological quarrels. But he
looked, with at least a flash of the clear vision of a Chris-
tian statesman, into the black mist of Irish politics. He
was a "King and Church" man, with a strain of Oxford
Toryism in his very blood. And yet, as far as Ireland
was concerned, he was, in judgment and sympathy, a
Pittite before Pitt ! This is how he explains the Roman-
ism of Ireland : —

"At least ninety-nine in a hundred of the native Irish remain
in the religion of their forefathers. Nor is it any wonder that
those who are born Papists generally live and die such, when the
Protestants can find no better ways to convert them than penal
laws and Acts of Parliament."

He relates how, with the book before him on the saddle,
and riding along Irish roads, he read that not very accu-

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : IRELAND 247

rate work, Sir John Davies's "Historic Relation Concern-
ing Ireland," and in his Journal he comments : —

"None who reads these can wonder that, fruitful as it is, it
was always so thinly inhabited; for he makes it plain — (1) That
murder was never capital among the native Irish; the murderer
only paid a small fine to the chief of his sept. (2) When the
English settled here, still the Irish had no benefit of the English
laws. They could not so much as sue an Englishman. So the
English beat, plundered, yea, murdered them at pleasure. Hence
(3) arose continual wars between them, for three hundred and
fifty years together, and hereby both the English and Irish na-
tives were kept few as well as poor."

Wesley adds that in the general massacre of 1641, and
the war that followed, "not so few as a million men,
women, and children were destroyed in four years' time";
a bit of widly imaginative arithmetic which proves afresh
how diflScult it is for those who live near great historical
events to see their true size.

Wesley's mission to Ireland, however, was first and last
spiritual, alike in its methods and its ends. He arrived in
Dublin on August 9, 1747. It was Sunday, the church
bells were ringing, and he went, after his manner, straight
to the service in St. Mary's, and preached in the same
church in the evening. Methodism had already found a
place in Dublin. A lay helper from England, Thomas
Williams, had gathered a society there, and had hired an
old Lutheran chapel as a preaching place. Here Wesley
preached to crowds that filled the chapel yard as well as
the chapel.

He spent a fortnight in Dublin, and studied with keen
eyes the character of his Irish hearers. There was no
touch in them of Scottish gravity, with its unresponsive-
ness as of Scotch granite ; and none of the boorishness of
the English rustic. These new hearers were quick-witted,
courteous, impressionable; and, as Wesley records, "an
immeasurably loving people." Later, Wesley found that
an Irish convert, with his Celtic quickness and generosity,
his susceptibility to emotion, had the defects of his
qualities. "The waters," he said, grimly, after telling the
story of a congregation that was dissolved in tears at
his sermon, "spread too wide to be deep." He notes,
too, how little relation the Irish peasant's religion often
has to his understanding. Ignorance in his case does
not hinder or limit devotion. "The more I converse

248

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

with this people," he says, "the more I am amazed. That
God hath wrought a great work among them, is manifest ;
and yet the main of them, believers and unbelievers, are
not able to give a rational account of the plainest prin-
ciples of religion. It is plain, God begins His work at the
heart; then 'the inspiration of the Highest giveth under-
standing.' "

After only a fortnight's work in Dublin, Wesley writes :
"If my brother or I could have been here a few months I
question if there might not have been a larger society in
Dublin than even London itself."

But two weeks after he had left, his brother Charles,
accompanied by Charles Perronet, arrived, and took up
his work; and even in that brief interval betwixt the
departure of one brother and the arrival of another, the
changeful quality of Irish temper and the uneasy jealousy
of Romish priests found illustration. The priests had
taken alarm. Here was a new kind of Protestantism that
had for their flocks a strange magic. It must be arrested !
And an Irish priest would make his appearance on the
edge of a crowd listening to a Methodist helper, and drive
off his own people with gestures and curses, like a watch-
dog harrying a flock of sheep that had wandered into
forbidden pastures. A Popish mob broke into the Dublin
chapel, made a bonfire of the seats and the pulpit, and
threatened to murder any one assembled there. The
blasts of mob violence in Ireland usually had the support
of the local authorities, who in all cases were Protestants ;
and who not seldom hated Methodists even more than they
disliked Papists. Charles Wesley himself was stoned
through the Dublin streets. A woman was beaten to
death in an assault of the mob on one of the Methodist
gatherings. One of Wesley's helpers, John Beard, died
as the result of the ill-usage he received, and was the
first — but not the last — Methodist martyr in Ireland.

Wesley's second visit to Ireland (in 1748) lasted three
mouths, and was marked by intense toil, by some trium-
phant results, and by much persecution. He found that
his Irish hearers took their religion lightly. He missed
the deep convictions, the overwhelming sense of sin, which
marked his English and Scotch converts; and so, as he
records he "preached on the terrors of the law in the
strongest manner of which he was capable." Yet "still,"

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : IRELAND 249

he says, "those who were ready to eat up every word do
not appear to digest any part of it." But Wesley, some-
how— this prim, intense, methodical, and unemotional
Englishman — had the secret of winning the love of his
Irish hearers.

Thus at Athloue he preached to a vast crowd in the
market-jjlace, and found it difficult to escape from the
loving throng that pressed on him. He broke away at
last ; but a mile out of the town, on a hill-top which the
road crossed, he found another crowd waiting to intercept
him. They opened the way for him till he reached their
midst, then closed round him and would not let him go.
The crowd sang hymn after hymn together, and when at
last Wesley got free "men, women, and children lifted up
their voices and with a sound," Wesley declares, "he had
never heard before." "Yet in a little while," he adds, with
one quick, forerunning vision into the happier world, "and
we shall meet to part no more, and sorrow and sighing
shall flee away for ever."

The fiercest outbreak of popular violence was at Cork.
Here the crowd practically took possession of the city
under the leadership of an itinerant ballad-singer, half
fool and half rogue, named Butler, who was accustomed
to parade the streets in a burlesque of clerical attire, with
a Bible in one hand and a bundle of ballads in the other.
The magistrates sympathised with the crowd, and the
Methodists were hunted through the streets like vermin.
An appeal to the Mayor only produced the answer that
Popish priests were protected, but Methodists were not.
Many Methodists, both men and women, were beaten with
clubs or wounded with swords; their houses were plun-
dered and half destroyed. An information was laid
against Charles Wesley as "a person of ill-fame, a vaga-
bond, and a common disturber of his Majesty's peace,"
with a prayer that he might be transported. A similar
information was lodged against all the Methodist helpers
at that moment in Ireland.

When the case came before the court the judge in-
quired, "Where were the persons presented ?" He glanced
at Charles Wesley, with the company of his preachers
about him, as they came forward, and seemed for some
time visibly agitated, and unable to proceed. Here was
a group of strange criminals! The first witness for the

^0 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

prosecution was Butler, who being asked his occupation
answered that he was a ballad-singer. "Here," cried the
judge, lifting up his hands in wonder, "here are six gentle-
men indicted as vagabonds; and the first accuser is a
vagabond by profession."

Persecution, however, never slew even a bad creed.
It was not in the least likely to hinder Methodism. In
Ireland the Methodist preachers had many strange ex-
periences; much hardship; many odd conversions; many
queer followers ; but their success was great. Wesley him-
self, summing up the fruits of his work in Dublin, says : —

"In some respects the work of God in Dublin was more re-
markable than even in London. (1) It is far greater, in pro-
portion to the time and to the number of people. (2) The work
was more pure. In all this time, while they were mildly and
tenderly treated, there were none of them headstrong or un-
advisable; none that were wiser than their teachers; none who
dreamed of being immortal or infallible, or incapable of tempta-
tion; in short, no whimsical or enthusiastic persons; all were
calm and sober-minded.'"

Wesley, it may be added, adapted his methods to the
conditions of Irish society. He had to brace the morality
of his converts in some respects by the sharpest disci-
pline. He relentlessly expelled from his societies those
who assisted to plunder the cargo of a wrecked ship until
they made restitution. One who quoted the famous say-
ing that "cleanliness is next to godliness" naturally
looked with unrelenting eyes on the easy-going, unwashed
habits of many of his converts. He required his preachers,
in dress and habit, to be a rebuke to all slovenliness. Thus
to one of his Irish preachers he writes, instructing him,
with plain-spoken directness, "to avoid all laziness, sloth,
indolence" ; all "nastiness, dirt, slovenliness," &c. "What-
ever clothes you wear," wrote Wesley, "let them be whole :
no rents, no tatters, no rags." He even thought necessary
to add, "Clean yourself of lice," "Cure yourselves and
your family of the itch."

Many converts were won amongst the Irish Roman
(Catholics, and amongst them one — Thomas Walsh — who
would have been a remarkable man in any age and under
any form of society.

Southey dwells at length on Walsh's case, drawn visibly

•Journal, July 26, 1762.

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : IRELAND 251

into a mood of admiring sympathy by the scholarship
this strange convert achieved. Here was an Irish
peasant, the son of a carpenter, the child of fanatical
Romanists, who had renounced Romanism as the result
of mere intellectual recoil from its errors. He had been
brought into clear and happy spiritual life while hearing
a Methodist preacher at a street corner in Limerick ex-
pounding Christ's words, "Come unto Me, all ye that
labour," &c. This man made himself, in Wesley's words,
"the best Biblical scholar I have ever known." He knew
Hebrew and Greek as perfectly as he knew his native Erse.
If questioned concerning any Hebrew or Greek word in
the Bible he would tell after a pause how often and where
it occurred, and what it meant in every place.

But Walsh was something more than an amazing
scholar in certain lines. He had a genius for religion ;
and his life, to quote Southey, "might well convince even
a Catholic that saints are to be found in other com-
munions as well as in the Church of Rome." Walsh him-
self describes what may be called the mountain heights
to which he was lifted as the result of his conversion : —

" 'Now,' says he, 'I felt of a truth that faith is the substance
or subsistence of things hoped for and the evidence of things not
seen. God and the things of the invisible world, of which I had
only heard before by the hearing of the ear, appeared now in
their true light as substantial realities. Faith gave me to see a
reconciled God and an all-suflScient Saviour. The Kingdom of
God was within me. I drew water out of the wells of salvation.
I walked and talked with God all the day long: whatsoever I
believed to be His will I did with my whole heart. I could
unfeignedly love them that hated me and pray for them that
despitefully used and persecuted me. The commandments of
God were my delight.'"

Walsh carried his piety into his studies, and here is
the prayer with which he was accustomed to preface
each new hour of study : —

"Lord Jesus, I lay my soul at Thy feet to be taught and
governed by Thee. Take the veil from the mystery and show me
the truth as it is in Thyself. Be Thou my sun and star by day
and by night!"

His religion had in it a touch of something unearthly.
He seemed to breathe strange airs. His feet trod the

•Southey, vol. ii. p. 119.

252 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

earth, but his spirit was in the celestial realm. Sonthey
says : —

"His friends described him as appearing like one who had
returned from the other world, and perhaps it was this un-
earthly manner which induced a Romish priest to assure his
flock that the Walsh who had turned heretic and went about
preaching was dead long since; and that he who preached under
that name was the devil in his shape. It is said that he walked
through the streets of London with as little attention to all
things around him as if he had been in a wilderness, unobservant
of whatever would have attracted the sight of others, and as in-
different to all sounds of excitement, uproar, and exultation as
to the passing wind. He showed the same Insensibility to the
influence of fine scenery and sunshine; the only natural object
of which he spoke with feeling was the starry firmament — for
there he beheld infinity. . . .

"Sometimes he was lost, they say, in glorious absence, on his
knees with his face heavenwards and arms clasped round his
breast, in such composure that scarcely could he be perceived to
breathe. His soul seemed absorbed in God; and from the
serenity, and 'something resembling splendour which appeared on
his countenance and in all his gestures afterwards it might easily
be discovered what he had been about.' Even in sleep the de-
votional habit still predominated, and 'his soul went out in
groans and sighs and tears to Grod.' They bear witness to his
rapts and ecstasies, and record circumstances which they them-
selves believed to be proofs of his communion with the invisible
world.'"

If Walsh's religion had in it an ardour which rose to
the level of passion, it was yet marked by a fine charity
and sanity. This is how he discussed the Romish Church
he had left : —

"I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, though
not according unto knowledge. Many of them love justice, mercy,
and truth; and may, notwithstanding many errors in sentiment,
and therefore in practice (since as is God's majesty so is His
mercy), be dealt with accordingly. But I freely profess that
now, since God hath enlightened my mind and given_ me to see
the truth as it is in Jesus, if I had still continued a member of
the Church of Rome I could not have been saved. With regard
to others I say nothing; I know that every man must bear his
own burden and give an account of himself to God. To our own
Master both they or I must stand or fall for ever. But love,
however, and tender compassion for their souls constrained me
to pour out a prayer to God in their behalf. All souls are Thine,
0 Lord God; and Thou wiliest all to come to the knowledge of
the truth, and be saved. ... I beseech Thee, O eternal God,
show Thy tender mercies upon those poor souls who have been

'Southey, vol. ii. p. 122.

HOW THE WORK SPREAD : IRELAND 253

long deluded by the god of this world, the Pope and his clergy.
Jesus, Thou lover of souls and Friend of sinners, send to them
Thy light and Thy truth that they may lead them."'

It is almost am\ising to put side by side, as types of
the wide range of character from which Wesley drew
his helpers, John Nelson, the Yorkshire stonemason, and
Thomas Walsh, the Irish carpenter's son. The one was
a typical Saxon : square-headed, strong-bodied, with little
imagination but with much humour; rich in the salt of
common-sense, and with a command of homely Saxon
speech which suggests John Bunyan or William Cobbett.
Walsh represents the Celtic type, with its gift of imagina-
tion, its visions, its ardours, its touch of melancholy, its
kinship to the spiritual world. Walsh had neither the
strength of body, the sanity of intellect, nor the plodding
common-sense of John Nelson. And Nelson could never
have been the scholar, the dreamer, the mystic, such as
Walsh was. He never rose to his fervours, nor was
touched by his melancholy. But both men were alike in
the courage, the fire, the zeal with which they served
Methodism, and proclaimed its message with their dying
breath to crowds. And a religious movement which
created, and used spiritual types so diverse, was surely
very remarkable.

Wesley visited Ireland first in 1747, and betwixt that
period and his death he crossed the Irish Sea no less than
forty-two times. So successful was his work on Irish
soil that in 1752 he held the first Irish Conference. It
met at Limerick, lasted two days, the members consisting
of John Wesley himself and nine of his helpers. The
first Irish Conference, like the early English Conferences,
spent much time in a vigorous examination into the
theology of the helpers and their teaching; and the notes
of the "conversations" are sometimes almost humorous
in their directness and pungency. "How far do any of
us believe the doctrine of Predestination?" runs one
question. The answer to it is, "None of us believe it at
all!" Some of the questions and answers have a local
flavour. Irish congregations were apt to be talkative; so
comes the question, "How shall we all set an example to
the people of decency in public worship?" Answer:

'Ibid., p. 116.

254 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"First, let us constantly kneel at prayer, and stand during
singing and while the text is repeated. Second, let us be
serious and silent both while the service lasts, and while
we are coming in and going out."

There is a local flavour, again, in another question and
answer. "Should we not preach more expressly and more
strongly on self-denial than we have hitherto done?"
Answer : "By all means, in this kingdom more especially,
where it is scarce ever mentioned or thought of." "What
should we avoid next to luxury?" Answer: "Idleness,
or it will destroy the whole work of God in the soul ; and
in order to this let us not pass one day without spending
at least one hour in private prayer."

This was exactly the teaching, pungent, strong-fibred,
practical, which Wesley's emotional converts in the south
of Ireland, at least, needed. And such teaching, linked
to evangelical doctrine of the most fervent type, and
preached in the most fervent way, yielded in Ireland
very remarkable fruits.

CHAPTER XII

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

Who wants to see in what strange, unguessed ways — in
advance of all human plans, or independently of them — a
great religious movement such as that of the eighteenth
century spreads, may well study the story of how Wesley's
work spread to America. The forces of the great move-
ment flew across the wide Atlantic like burning sparks
blown with the wind — the wind that bloweth whitherso-
ever it listeth.

No human field could well be less promising — as far as
spiritual conditions are concerned — than that offered by
the United States of that day. It had the roughness of a
new settlement, with the forces and institutions of civil-
ised life only half developed. A scanty population was
scattered over an immense geographical area, and what
to-day are counted amongst the greatest cities of the
world were then little more than villages. Philadelphia
in 1739, for example, when Whitefleld arrived there, con-
sisted of only 2,076 houses, representing a population of
ten or eleven thousand persons. Whitefleld, with his far-
carrying voice, could have made himself audible to the
entire population at once. Social life was in its crudest
form ; industrial life was only beginning to stir ; the very
institutions of religion, over large areas, had yet to be
created. Franklin tells an odd story belonging to an older
period, according to which some one was pleading with
the Attorney-General of the day for a charter and funds
to establish a college in "Virginia, and he begged Mr.
Attorney to consider that "the people of Virginia had
souls to be saved as well as the people of England."
"Souls," cried this great legal authority, "damn your
souls! Make tobacco." And over wide tracts of primitive
settlements that brusque and pagan counsel had been
acted upon. People counted the business of "growing
tobacco" — or its equivalents — much more urgent and im-
255

256

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

portant than that of "saving their souls," if, indeed, they
had any souls to be saved. Already, too, the political
skies above the United States were black with the menace
of the coming war with the parent State, a war which
was to rend the Anglo-Saxon race in twain for unknown
years.

The story of the first planting of Methodism on Ameri-
can soil is very curious. In 1752 Wesley visited an odd
patch of German settlement from the I'alatinate on the
Rhine, in Ireland — a cluster of little villages, Ballingar-
rene, Killeheeu and Courtmatrix. His visit resulted in
many conversions and the creation of some Methodist
Societies. Wesley records the visit without comment in
his Journal; it was part of the day's work. And yet in
that little community of German-Irish he had, all un-
knowing, planted seed out of which was to spring under
other skies the great Methodist Church of the United
States.

One of his converts was Philip Embury, who became a
lay preacher; a man without any special endowment of
intellect, yet his name — almost by chance — has become
historic. Embury was one of a group of Irish-German
emigrants to the United States in 1760. He settled in
New York, but lacked courage to begin religious work
there, and by a natural and inevitable reaction his own
religious life began to die. Another party of these
German-Irish emigrants, from the same neighbourhood,
landed in New York the next year. Amongst them was
Barbara Heck, a peasant woman of courageous character
and an earnest Methodist. Her zeal kindled in womanly
vehemence when she found the first party of emigrants
had practically forgotten their Methodism. A familiar
but doubtful story relates how she went into a room one
day where Embury and his companions were playing
cards. She seized the pack, threw it into the fire, and
cried to Embury : "You must preach to us or we shall all
go to hell together; and God will require our blood at
your hands." "T cannot preach," stammered the rebuked
man, "for I have neither chapel nor congregation."
"Preach in your own house," answered Barbara Heck,
"and to our own company." And so the first Methodist
sermon in America was preached under a private roof
and to a congregation of five persons.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

257

It is sometimes said, in reference to this incident, by
way of sneer, that Anierican Methodism was "born at the
car(J-table"; bnt there is evidence that Endiui-y him-
self had not lost his Methodist habits and become a card-
player.

The work begun in this fashion spread ; a congregation
was formed, a Society organised. To this congregation
there came one Sunday a British officer in full uniform;
he fell on his knees with the other worshippers, and
joined in their singing when they rose. It was Cap-
tain Webb, of the 42nd, a gallant soldier who had been
converted while listening to a sermon by Wesley at
Bristol.

Webb was a soldier of distinction, and in many ways
a remarkable man. He fought at the siege of Louisburg
and was desperately wounded. A bullet struck him on
the right temple, glanced down through the eye-ball
and fell into his mouth, and in the shock of the wound
Webb swallowed the bullet. "He is dead enough," was
the comment of a comrade, as he stooped over him. But
Webb, most indomitable of men, whispered back, "No,
I am not dead." He lived to take a great part in a
nobler warfare. He was with the tiny and heroic column
that, at midnight on September 12, 1759, climbed the
crevice in the cliffs which led to the Heights of Abraham,
and in the fierce fighting next morning he saw Wolfe die
and the strength of France in Canada shattered.

He was stout-bodied and broad-faced, and the green
shade that hung over his eyeless socket gave to his
broad features a peculiar look. He was in the habit of
taking his sword into the pulpit with him and, before
he preached, laying it on the table or desk. It was a
bit of gallant steel, and with the battle-scarred face of
the preacher above it never failed to impress an audience.
John Adams, the second I'resident of the United States,
no mean judge of oratory, described Webb as "the old
soldier, one of the most eloquent men I ever heard." Webb
carried into his religion all the fine qualities of a soldier
— courage, loyalty, enterprise. He became a local
preacher, and was accustomed to go into the pulpit in
full uniform. He was quartered with a detachment of
his regiment at Albany, and hearing of the little society
at New York, came down the river, made himself known,

258

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

and at once put the impulse of a new energy into Meth-
odist affairs.

A woman leads the procession of converts to Chris-
tianity in Europe, the purple seller of Philippi; and a
woman's figure, that of Barbara Heck, stands at the head
of American Methodism. And beside her are the figures
of two laymen — Embury the carpenter, and Webb the
soldier.

The first Methodist chapel in America was built, Em-
bury making the pulpit with his own hands, and preach-
ing the first sermon in it, on October 30, 1768. It was a
low building of stone, GO feet by 42 feet, and was adorned
with a fireplace and a chimney. This was done to evade
the law which forbade the erection of other than Anglican
places of worship. The work spread fast, and a letter was
written to Wesley urging him to send them a leader, and
adding that if the English Conference could not afford to
pay the preacher's passage the members of the little So-
ciety in New York would sell their coats and shirts to
provide the funds.

Wesley, it will be remembered, had a very definite and
prudent strategy in his operations. He took short steps,
and never went far from his base. He did not cross
St. George's Channel till 1747, nor the Scotch border till
1751. To reach across the Atlantic to America seemed, to
his prudent eyes, a policy, if not too daring, yet too hur-
ried. When Wesley was urged, a little later, to visit
America himself he replied : "The way is not plain ; I have
no business there so long as they can do without me. At
present I am a debtor to the people of England and Ire-
land."

But the cry from America was very urgent. One per-
tinacious Methodist wrote : —

"Mr. Wesley says, the first message cf the preachers Is to the
lost sheep of England. And are there none in America? They
have strayed from England into the wild woods here, and they
are running wild after this world. They are drinking their wine
in bowls, and are jumping and dancing, and serving the devil in
the groves and under the green trees. And are not these lost
sheep? And will none of the preachers come here? Where Is
Mr. Brownfleld? Where is John Pawson? Where is Nicholas
Manners? Are they living, and will they not come?'"

'Southey, vol. ii. p. 202.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

259

It was impossible to refuse that appeal, and the Con-
ference of 1769 called for volunteers for America. Two
helpers, Richard Boardmau and Joseph Pilmoor, offered
themselves. They were not sent across the Atlantic with
empty hands. The members of the Conference, the hard-
est worked and worst paid company of men probably at
that moment in Great Britain, put their scanty coins
together. It took £20 to pay the passages of the volun-
teers across the Atlantic, and they carried in addition
the sum of £50 as a token of brotherly love from British
to American Methodism. These two Methodist helpers
thus set out with £50 to Christianise a continent !

The Conference of 1771 made a still more splendid
contribution to the religious life of the United States.
It sent Francis Asbury and Richard Wright to America ;
and Francis Asbury was certainly the noblest gift Eng-
land ever bestowed on her children beyond the Atlantic.
He has never yet come to his just fame, even in his own
Church. It was in the year after Whitefield died that
Asbury landed on American soil, and while this, as yet
unknown, Staffordshire peasant had none of Whitefield's
magnificent powers of oratory, he was destined to make a
deeper and more enduring mark on the religious life of
America than even the great preacher did.

This son of a peasant-household began to preach when
a lad of eighteen. He went to America when he had
been a travelling preacher for five years. He started
on that historic pilgrimage, which was to lead him to
goals unimagined, without a penny in his pocket. On the
rough, vast floor of America he played the part of an
apostle, without putting on the airs of one; without, in-
deed, in the least suspecting himself to be one. His
travels rival, if they do not outrun, those of John Wesley
himself, and they were maintained under far harsher
conditions. He found his lodgings in the rough cabins of
the pioneers; his track ran through shadowy and almost
untrodden forests, over wide prairies, across unbridged
rivers. His salary for the greater part of his life was
under £20 a year. Tall and thin, his gaunt body had
the toughness of steel, while his temper had the gentle-
ness of a woman.

He was a Fletcher without that awful look of other
worlds which lay like a continual presence on Fletcher's

260 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

brow; a Wesley without the masterful will and the ob-
stinate High Church bias of his great leader. But Wes-
ley himself could not have outridden, or outpreached,
or out-toiled him ; Fletcher's saintly life had hardly more
of the atmosphere of prayer about it than that of Asbury.
Prayer was woven into the very fibres of his life. He
touched with its magic every person with whom he came
in contact, if only for a moment. If he stayed a few
days in some settler's cabin he had household prayer
with every household meal. No visitor crossed the cabin
threshold without being welcomed, or dismissed, with
prayer. Asbury had not Wesley's genius for command,
but he suited the American character and the conditions
of American life better than even his great leader. He
had no class prepossessions. He belonged to no political
school. He had no stubborn High Church bias. And he
held together, as perhaps not even Wesley could have
done, the Methodist Societies in America during the
bloody civil war, and he held them by force of the wise
gentleness that love teaches.

For his only genius was that which love gives. In this
respect he resembled Fletcher rather than Wesley. He
was, in fact, an English and peasant version of that half-
angelic Swiss. Asbury was half seraph and half peasant
— a seraph with a touch of the peasant's homeliness
added, and hardly less seraphic on that account.

Wesley, brief as was his personal intercourse with As-
bury, had put upon him his characteristic stamp. It is
still visible in his pithy, short-sentenced English. It
was writ large before the eyes of his contemporaries in
his neatness of dress, his methodical industry, his hunger
for knowledge, and his student-like habits. This Staf-
fordshire peasant, travelling five thousand miles a year,
preaching incessantly, spending three hours a day in
prayer, and without a settled home, yet had it as a fixed
rule to read a hundred pages daily. He made himself
a scholar, and mastered Latin. Greek, and Hebrew.

To what mysterious order did such men belong? They
seem to have possessed faculties which lie undeveloped
in ordinary men, and to draw their life from richer
fountains. What to other men are rare and momentary
experiences — high moods of emotion and of vision, which
come and vanish at a breath — were to such men as Wesley

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

261

and Fletcher and Asbury the permanent and ordinary
conditions of life. They are revelations, indeed, of the
unused and unsuspected forces which slumber in religion.

It is needless to assess Asbury's intellect. Love taught
him wisdom, love gave him power. He reached by its
charm heights of influence impossible to mere intellec-
tual energy. He healed the schism of 1779-80 betwixt
the Northern and Southern branches of the infant Meth-
odist Church in America, not by his arguments, not by
mere tact or authority, but by his tears and prayers,
and by that love which shone in his tears and breathed in
his prayers. A wifeless, solitary man; a rustic by birth,
who owed nothing to the schools and little to natural
endowment ; who had no powers of debate, and seemed to
have no gifts of leadership; yet, in the history of His
Church, as God sees it, and writes it, and will ci'own it,
not many figures stand higher than that of the peasant
bishop of Methodism in the United States — Francis As-
bury.

Wesley, shrewd judge of men as he was, scarcely real-
ised at first Asbury's pre-eminent gifts. He had recog-
nised, it is true, the gentleness which was the characteris-
tic note of Asbury's character, but had hardly discovered
the strength and sagacity which underlay Asbury's gentle-
ness. And Wesley had a general's instinct. He believed
that in the shaping of a new Church on the rough soil of
America a strong hand was needed ; and in 1773 he de-
spatched Thomas Ranliin and George Shadford as rein-
forcements to America. His letter of commission to
Shadford is characteristic: "I let you loose, George, on
the great continent of America. Publish your message
in the open face of the sun, and do all the good you can."

Rankin, who figures familiarly as "dear Tommy" in
Wesley's letters, was a Scotchman by birth, a soldier by
training — a soldier of John Haime's school — and Wesley
made him general assistant of the Societies in America
for the express purpose of drawing more tightly the reins
of discipline there. Rankin certainly brought to his
religion something of the temper, and very much of the
discipline, of a soldier. Even the gentle Asbury, where
principle was concerned, was known to have a hand of
iron; but Rankin's touch was of wrought steel! His
sense of order was so profoundly shocked by the physical

262

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

manifestations which attended some revivals that he was
tempted to quarrel with the revivals themselves. He
carried the peremptory acceuts of a trooper into the
Society gatherings, and for a time it seemed as if the
gentler-natured Asbury, with the finer and wiser influ-
ences he represented, would be driven from the field,
^sop's fable of the' contest betwixt the sun and the wind
was illustrated afresh, in a word, by the contrast betwixt
the methods of the two men ; and, as in the historic fable,
the gentle sunshine of Asbury's genius proved more effec-
tive than the hard and blustering wind which Rankin's
administration suggested.

Methodism, from the first, grew with almost tropical
rapidity on American soil. It suited the genius of the
people. It exactly fitted their circumstances. An itin-
erant ministry, as mobile and as enterprising as the
light cavalry of an invading army, spread over the whole
vast continent. The first preachers brought the methods
of Wesley, and the traditions of the earliest heroic group
of his helpers, to America. They outmarched the immi-
grants; they out-toiled the settlers; they carried the
message and the spirit of religion everywhere. And year
by year the tale of new Societies, of multiplying chapels,
and of an ever-expanding army of helpers, was reported
to the British Conference.

Asbury greatly contributed to this by the skill of his
administration. He had many of the gifts of a great
commander. He knew how to choose men ; he could
look over a whole continent and see its strategic points,
and place everywhere exactly the man that suited the
post. He knew, too, how to suit the temper and genius
of a preacher to the exact spiritual stages of each Society ;
and with all his gentleness Asbury had enough resolution
to act on his own reading of the situation. He distri-
buted his helpers over the continent on the method, and
with much of the skill, by which a great general distrib-
utes his troops.

And yet Methodism in America was at first sadly handi-
capped. Civil war was on the point of breaking out.
The first Conference in America met on July 14, 1773,
but the historic meeting of Coke and Asbury in America,
on November 14, 1784, marks the starting point of the
great Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

263

But only four months before, the Declaration of Inde-
pendence had been signed, and the bond which united
the colonies to England was severed. To found a new
Church on a soil shaken with a political earthquake of
this scale was a task which might well seem too great
for the wit of man to accomplish. But something wiser
than human wit, and mightier than human strength, went
to the task.

The helpers Wesley had sent across the Atlantic were,
of course, English or Scotch by birth; their sympathies
were with their native land; they shared Wesley's obsti-
nate loyalty; and they were, not unnaturally, suspected
of being "unpatriotic," not to say anti-American, by
their own flocks. Wesley, on the other side of the At-
lantic, was declaring at that very moment that he would
as soon associate with a drunkard or a whoremonger
as with rebels. With what eyes could Rankin, the ex-
cavalryman, with more than a soldier's instinct for disci-
pline and a soldier's hate of disloyalty, look on rebels?
One by one Wesley's early helpers were driven out of
America. The preachers were, later, required by Con-
gress to take the oath of allegiance to the new Govern-
ment, and even the all-patient Asbury refused to do this.
He was fined £5 for preaching without taking the oath,
and was practically silenced for two years, and in hiding
for part of the time. The unhappy effects of the civil
war are reflected in the Minutes of the English Conference.
For ten years — ten sad, troubled years — 1773-1783 — there
is no record of the American work in them. It had dis-
appeared! The red furnace of war seemed to have de-
stroyed it. For eleven years — 1773-1784 — no published
Minutes of the American Conference made their appear-
ance.

Wesley, it may be added, greatly increased the diflS-
culties of his helpers in America by his political utter-
ances in England. In 1775 he issued a little pamphlet of
four pages, entitled "A Calm Address to our American
Colonies." Never before or since, perhaps, did so small
a bit of printed paper produce such a sensation. Over
40,000 copies were sold in a few weeks. The pamphlet
moved the almost tearful gratitude of the members of
the British Cabinet, astonished to find a man of Wesley's
knowledge of the common people, and influence with

264

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

them, on their side; but it deeply offended all who were
opposed to the war, and brought ou Wesley himself a
tempest of abuse. His friends in America tried to sup-
press the pamphlet there, and burned all the copies that
reached American soil. Wesley bluntly declared in his
pamphlet that the Americans had no grievances, and had
been robbed of no ' rights. The British I'arliament, he
argued, had power to tax the American settlements, and
the revolt was at bottom not a struggle for freedom, but
an attempt to overthrow the monarchy.

Now the "Calm Address" was, in fact, simply Johnson's
well-known pamphlet "Taxation no Tyranny" abridged,
and adorned with Wesley's name and a few sentences of
Wesley's nervous p]nglish. Its publication, in this form,
laid Wesley, not unreasonably, open to the charge of
plagiarism. The pamphlet, too, was in sharp contrast
with some of Wesley's earlier utterances. He had, for
example, on June 15, 1755, addressed a very noble letter
to Lord North, j)rotesting against the treatment to which
the Americans were subjected. He wrote : —

"AH my prejudices are against the Americans; for I am a
High Churchman, the son of a High Churchman, bred up, from
my childhood, in the highest notions of passive obedience and
non-resistance; and yet, in spite of all my long-rooted prejudices,
I cannot avoid thinking, if I think at all, that an oppressed
people asked for nothing more than their legal rights, and that
in the most modest and inoffensive manner that the nature of
the thing would allow. But waiving all considerations of right
and wrong, I ask, is it common-sense to use force towards the
Americans? These men will not be frightened; and, it seems,
they will not be conquered so easily as was at first imagined.
They will probably dispute every inch of ground; and, if they
die, die sword in hand."'

These are admirable sentiments; but while Wesley
wrote in this fashion in private, how did he come to write
so differently in public? The truth is that in politics
Wesley was apt to speak on half knowledge, since he was
too busily occupied in a greater realm to be able to master
all the facts belonging to a world so different. In political
matters, too, his natural bias, both of training and char-
acter, made him what was called in those days a Tory.
Only when his conscience became peremptory did his
political views correct themselves.

'Tyerman, vol. i. p. 198.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

265

It can be easily understood how Wesley's utterances
in England increased the diflSculties of his preachers in
America. But Wesley, it must be said, was far wiser for
his preachers than for himself. Thus he wrote to them :

"It is your part to be peacemakers; to be loving and tender to
all, but to addict yourselves to no party. In spite of all solicita-
tions, of rough or smooth words, say not one word against one
or the other side; keep yourselves pure; do all you can to help
and soften all; but 'beware how you adopt another's jar.'" In
the same spirit Charles Wesley wrote to them, saying, "As to
the public affairs, I wish you to be like-minded with me. I am of
neither side, and yet of both: on the one side of New England,
and of Old."'

The ecclesiastical situation in America quickly came
to a crisis — a crisis which hastened the solution of the
same difficulty in England itself. Wesley required his
helpers in America, as in England, not only to keep on
terms of friendship with the Church of P^ngland, but
to regard themselves as her humble and unrecognised
servants. They were not to administer the sacraments,
to hold services in church hours, or to label themselves
Dissenters. But the number of clergymen in the United
States was few ; their parishes were vast, and they were
too often men without either zeal or piety. It was absurd
to expect the energetic and fast-multiplying Societies of
Methodism to depend on the charity — too often the grudg-
ing and ungenerous charity — of a few Anglican clergy
for the administration of the sacraments.

The civil war, as a matter of fact, wrecked Wesley's
whole policy in this matter. Most of the Anglican clergj--
men abandoned their parishes and fled from the revolting
colonies. The administration of the sacraments, as far as
Wesley's Societies were concerned, threatened to become
— over wide spaces it did actually become — a lost and
almost forgotten thing.

The question of the sacraments thus became, in Amer-
ica, urgent and peremptory. Wesley appealed to the Eng-
lish bishops to ordain some of his helpers to meet the
crisis, and was refused. English bishops had no over-
tender anxiety to supply the ordinances of religion to
rebels at war with their mother country and their legiti-
mate sovereign. Wesley wrote to the Bishop of London :

'Southey, vol. ii. p. 210.

266

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"I mourn for poor America, for the sheep scattered up and
down therein ; part of them have no shepherds at all,
particularly in the northern colonies ; and the case of the
rest is little better, for their own shepherds pity them
not."

Wesley, with characteristic patience, waited for four
years before he acted. He wrote twice to Lowth, the
Bishop of London, a man of liberal mind and generous
sympathies, begging ordination for a single preacher who
might travel amongst the American Societies and ad-
minister the sacraments. But Lowth refused. "There
are three ministers in that country already," he said.
"And what are these," was Wesley's natural reply, "to
watch over a continent?" Not only were they too few
in number; they were visibly unfit in character for the
work they had to do. Wesley wrote to Lowth : —

"Your lordship did not see good to ordain him [Wesley's
helper], but your lordship did see good to ordain and send into
America other persons who knew something of Greek and Latin,
but who knew no more of saving souls than of catching whales."

Facts with Wesley had always a final logic. He, by
this time, had begun to look at the whole situation with
eyes purged of High Church prepossessions. It was as
well, perhaps, he reflected that the bishops had not
ordained his helpers.

"If they would ordain them now (he wrote) they would ex-
pect to govern them; and how grievously would this entangle us!
As our American brethren are now totally disentangled, both
from the State and the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle
them again either with the one or the other. They are now at
full liberty simply to follow the Scriptures and the primitive
Church; and we judge it best that they should stand fast in
that liberty wherewith God has so strangely made them free.'"

He determined to solve the diflSculty by ordaining a
superintendent or bishop for America. Wesley acted de-
liberately, and i)uts with great force the reasons that
weighed with him. Why did he do for America what
he refused to do for England ? He replies : —

"Here there are bishops who have a legal jurisdiction. In
America there are none, either any parish ministers; so that, for
some hundreds of miles together, there is none either to baptize

'Southey, vol. ii. p. 213.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

267

or to administer the Lord's Supper. Here, therefore, my scruples
are at an end; and I conceive myself at full liberty, as I violate
no order, and invade no man's right, by appointing and sending
labourers into the harvest.'"

Accordingly Wesley, with Creighton, a clergyman who
was also one of his devoted helpers, ordained Coke as
superintendent, Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey
as presbyters for America. Coke in turn was to ordain
Asbury. Wesley, after his practical fashion, would go as
far as he must, but no further. His principles, it is true,
ran far ahead of his acts; but he was the unimaginative
Englishman who kept his feet on the solid earth and
cared much for the concrete and nothing for the ab-
stract; much for practical eflSciency and little for logic.
Alike in England and America, he strained to the break-
ing-point the loyalty of his people in his desire to keep
on terms with the Anglican Church. In America, for
example, in 1779, the Methodist Churches in the Southern
States deliberately broke loose, and resolved to begin ex-
istence as an independent Church, since in no other way
could they secure the administration of the sacraments
amongst themselves. The schism was only healed by
Asbury's prayers and tears and matchless tact.

Wesley's characteristic tenderness for the High Church
theory his intelligence had long ago renounced, and which
he was in the very act of publicly repudiating, is amus-
ingly shown in the very ordination of Coke. He will not
name him ''bishop," though he is making him one, but
labels him "superintendent." It was American directness
and common-sense which later thrust aside the clumsy
word "superintendent," and made the name and the fact
to agree by the use of the term bishop. Wesley, too, at
another point was illogical. Lord King, he declared, had
satisfied him that presbyters and bishops were the same
order. Why, then, did he think it necessary to ordain
Coke as bishop under the alias of "superintendent"?
Southey's criticism at this point is perfectly sound. Ou
Wesley's principles the consecration was useless, for Dr.
Coke, having been regularly ordained, was already as
good a bishop as Wesley himself.

Coke was almost as splendid a gift to America as
Asbury. His tact, his zeal, his overpowering personality,

268 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

at once made him a power; and it may be added that
a gentleman by birth and position, and a scholar by
training, he had a social position to which Wesley's other
helpers could not pretend. Asbury was on a country
tour at the moment of Coke's arrival; but just as Coke
had finished preaching at a chapel in Delaware "a plain,
robust man came up to him in the pulpit and kissed him,
pronouncing at the same time a primitive salutation."
This was Asbury ; and the two men who were to impress
so profoundly the religious life of the United States at
once became the closest friends.

It does not fall within the scope of this book to further
describe the progress of the work in America. Methodism
there was but an ofifshoot of the English revival, planted
on strange soil, under strange skies, and under harsh con-
ditions. Yet it has grown to be the greatest and most
vigorous branch of English-speaking Protestantism his-
tory knows! Its geographical and political conditions
gave it the form of an independent Church earlier than
even the parent movement in England; and it is to-day
the most powerful religious body in a nation of eighty
millions. If Wesley's work had to be judged by this, in
a sense, one of its secondary results, how great is its
scale !

CHAPTER XIII

THE SECRET OF THE GREAT REVIVAL

Up to this point the range and scale of the revival
have been described ; but it is worth while to ask at this
stage what is the explanation of a movement which so
profoundly aflfected the whole nation; and where the
secret of its strange energy is to be sought.

The secret, of course, belongs to the spiritual realm.
It is idle to seek for it in the personal qualities of the
men who were its agents, in the overwhelming oratory
of Whitefield, the hymns of Charles Wesley, the ordered
and matchless industry, the genius for organisation, of
John Wesley. Nor does the explanation lie in the realm
of doctrine. England in the eighteenth century was not
revolutionised by the discovery of a new theology, nor
yet by the force of an old theology set in a new perspec-
tive and proclaimed in new accents. The revival of'the
eighteenth century, it is customary to say, is the supreme
historical re-birth of evangelicalism amongst the English-
speaking race. And that is true; but it is not the whole
truth. The most evangelical reading of theology is, in
itself, a powerless thing. It will not save an individual,
much less influence a nation.

In its last analysis the secret of the great religious
movement here described is lu w fvnud iu a rich out-
pouring of the living Spirit of God on the nation ; and in
the ( ivciiiii:-f ;iii<c iluit iU ti 1.^ particular moment that
Divine Spirit found, in a particular grouj) of men, fit
instruments, with fit measure of devotion and faith, for
a work so great. Flowing through the channel of true
doctrine, and using the agency of fit human instru-
ments, the grace of the Holy Spirit wrought this great
work.

But the question still remains, what was that particular
reading of Christianity which the revival represents, and
which serves to explain its scale and its enduring energy?
What are evangelical doctrines?

269

270

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

The Christian religion, as all history shows, lies open,
perpetually, to danger from two o])j)ositc extremes. One
extreme resolves it into a pale and attenuated Deism, a
theory which exhausts all the great words of Christianity
of their meaning, and all the great offices of Christ of
their reality. It ignores — it treats as non-existent or as
insignificant — that dread and measureless interval, a
moral gulf, which no wit or toil of man can bridge, be-
twixt sin and righteousness. Sin, on this reading, is
merely a stage in human development. It has no endur-
ing element of guilt, and is pursued by no eternal penal-
ties. Forgiveness, if any forgiveness indeed is necessary,
comes through no awful mystery of suffering running up
to the very person and throne of God. It is a cheap and
easy thing, the mere gift of God's good nature. Con-
version is a phrase. Christ's priesthood is, if not an im-
pertinence, at least an irrelevance; for man needs no
priest. A divine redemption accomplished through sacri-
fice is unintelligible. Christ has no redeeming oflBces. He
is simply a teacher, a little wiser than, say Epictetus or
Marcus Aurelius; or even perhaps not quite so wise!
Religion is a little scheme of moral reform, accomplished
easily by the unaided energy of the human will.

This theory evaporates the Bible into a mist ; it drains
its supreme passages of all meaning. It is a creed which
inspires no martyrs, creates no saints, sends out no
missionaries, writes no hymns, and has little use for
prayer. Jesus Christ, in its scale of values, is merely a
Jewish Confucius. The denied, or the forgotten, offices of
Jesus Christ — of Christ the seeker, of Christ the redeemer
— are the reproach of this theory of religion and the
secret of its weakness. And, as we have seen, this was
the version of Christianity which, at the moment when
the great revival began, had captured all the pulpits, and
nearly all the mind, of England.

The opposite misreading of Christianity is the sacer-
dotal version in all its moods and forms. It does not
deny Christ's priesthood, but betwixt the personal human
soul and the great High Priest of the human race it puts
the barrier of a human priesthood. Redemption, in this
reading of the Christian system, is robbed of its freeness,
of its simplicity, of its amazing grace. Religion becomes
a scheme of measured and mechanical duties; of pious

THE SP:(^RET op the great revival 271

efforts regulated by a clock, and undertaken in a temper
of bondage. The sacerdotalist, when analysed, is a man
who has never heard the great message of Christianity
to each accepted and forgiven soul — "Thou art no more
a servant but a son." On the sacerdotal theory, divine
grace flows exclusively through the ''lean and scrannel
pipe" — to borrow a Miltonic phrase — of a particular line
of ordained men. This is a theology which suits the
austere and select few, but has no message for the com-
mon crowd. It inspires great earnestness, but kindles
no sunshine. It sometimes evolves martyrs, but it never
makes a rejoicing .saint.

These opposite misreadings of Christianity stand in
sombre contrast with that great system of evangelical
belief which comes betwixt them both, and avoids the
falsehood of each. What are evangelical doctrines? A
chain of mountain peaks, that pierce to the crown of the
heavens, and on whose summits brood perpetual sunshine!
They constitute a close-knitted succession of truths that
break out of eternity and have its scale — truths that
relate to sin, and proclaim its measureless guilt, its
hurrying and inevitable doom ; but which also reveal
an immediate and personal deliverance from sin — a de-
liverance which comes as an act of divine grace, and on
the simplest terms of penitential acceptance. But it is
no light and easy deliverance which costs the Deliverer
nothing. It is the supreme miracle of the spiritual
universe, made possible only by the mystery of Christ's
redemption. It is brought near by the mystery of the
Holy Spirit's grace. It sets the forgiven soul in personal
and rejoicing relationship with a reconciled and loving
Father.

A divine redemption ; a realised pardon ; a restored
relationship to God through faith ; the entrance of super-
natural forces into the life by the grace of the Divine
Spirit; the present and perfect attainment of God's ideal
in the character. And all this made intelligible and
credible by the redeeming work and oflSces of Jesus Christ
— and by the saving energies of the Holy Spirit in the
human soul! This is the evangelical version of Chris-
tianity !

There is nothing new in these doctrines. They repre-
sent no theological discoveries. But they are the effec-

272 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

tive doctrines of Christianity. They differentiate it from
a mere scheme of morals. They make it something more
than a theology. They directly bear on character. All
the dynamic energies of Christianity find their spring in
them. These are the doctrines that send out missionaries,
that inspire martyrs, that regenerate slums! They
awaken deeper vibrations in the human soul than all
other truths put together. They are the doctrines in which
dying men find comfort. All tile gi'eat hymns of Christian
worship reflect them ; all the great prayers of human
need give them speech. They formed exactly the mes-
sage which the dying Christianity of the England of that
day needed. "Men," the message ran, "are in utmost and
instant peril ; they need, not some new and heavier chain
of duty, but a divine deliverance accomplished through
redeeming grace. And this salvation is possible. A
Saviour walks amongst men, touching them with hands
of tenderness. Hope is born ! All men may be saved
here and now."

No olher j)reachers painte<i .sin with colours so dark,
and yet so true to human consciousness, as did the men
who carried this message. N(me il^'pictf^d God's love in
Christ in such radiant sunshine, or proclaimed Christ as a
Saviour in tones so confident. These.doctrines, too, were
preached by men ^vIm- veri;i(i' Ibem. They had

brought them to that ultimate test of all religious theo-
ries, the forum of conscious experience. They were not
advocates, they were witnesses. Every syllable on their
lips rang with those accents of reality which no art can
feign. They challenged their hearers to an immediate and
personal verification of the trullis they proclaimed.

And in the speech of these men thrilled that strange
power which uses human logic and emotion as its instru-
ments, but which is something different from them all and
greater than them all — the power of the Holy Ghost; the
"power" that first made human speech its vehicle at
Pentecost, and has never been lacking since in those who
have learned the secret of Pentecost.

Is it any wonder that such a gospel — preached by such
men, in such a spirit, and at such a critical moment —
accomplished what is nothing less than a moral revolu-
tion? It permanently changed the very currents of reli-
gious history.

THE SECRET OF THE GREAT REVIVAL 27$

But it may be asked, Did not Wesley preach at least
some strange and startling doctrines of which sober
Christianity knows nothing, or at least knows only doubt-
fully? The whole question of the theology of the revival
is discussed later, but it may be asked here, What were
those two great doctrines of ''assurance" and of "per-
fection" with which the names of the Wesleys alid of
Whitefield are associated, and which in the judgment of
multitudes still discredit their work and blot their fame?

That these doctrines are still suspected only proves
how imperfectly the Christian religion, after nineteen
centuries of (Christian history, is understood even in
Christian lands. The doctrine of perfection, as Wesley
taught it, is only the belief that God's ideals in redemp-
tion for the human soul are capable of being realised, and
realised here and now. It is the doctrine that the highest
possibility of religion is not struggle merely, but victory;
that what God demands, man, with the help of God's
grace, may give. The first and great commandment, that
sums up in its brief syllables all human duty, is — "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul,
and mind, and strength." Is that to be for ever, and for
the souls which Christ has redeemed, and in which the
Holy Spirit dwells, a law unfulfilled; a challenge to the
human conscience unanswered ; its pain and condem-
nation? To assert this is to say that the Christian re-
ligion, when translated into the terms of human life and
experience, is a failure. It is to say that God's ideal and
man's character must be for ever in discord. This surely
is a theology of despair; a doctrine which is but a dis-
guised atheism.

There were, no doubt, many strange and wild mis-
readings of the doctrine of perfection in Wesley's time;
but as he held it, and taught it, it is a very sane and
Scriptural bit of theology, and its rejection is the denial,
not only of man's hope, but of God's grace.

What, again, was that doctrine of "assurance" which
to the wondering ears of multitudes in that day, seemed
a new and wild heresy; and which is still a thing suspect
— or a least uncomprehended — by multitudes in the Chris-
tian churches to-day? On Wesley's lips, it was, of course,
only a reassertiou of one of the forgotten offices of the
Holy Sj)irit. It was one of the essential gifts of the

274 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Christian religion drawn into the sunlight from the realm
of musty and ancient forgetfuluess. I'ardon, he taught,
was to find its verification and seal in the consciousness
of the pardoned soul. God's forgiveness was not to lie
always in the realm of doubt, a dark and perplexed un-
certainty; at best only a trembling hope; for most men,
indeed, a fear-haunted problem which only death could
solve. "The Spirit itself." r;in tlip iMossniyc of tlie great
revival, ' beui-.s witutrss with our .spirits thai we are the
children of flod." Why should that which was the glad-
ness ol the Christian consciousness in the first century,
be the despair of the Christian consciousness in the eigh-
teenth century?

And the doctrine of assurance, as Wesley taught it,
was an ajjpeal to the human consciousness. Forgiveness,
he insisted, wrought in the human soul a divine peace
which was its witness and seal. Alas! that this great
doctrine to-day, as in all days, finds a reflex so faint in
the personal experience of multitudes who are yet trying
to follow Christ. By so much has human narrowness
denied to God's grace some of its sweetest oflBces!

It is worth noting how steadfastly, from the moment
of his conversion to his dying breath, Wesley kept his
own experience and teaching within the shining curves
of evangelical belief. In them he himself, a wearied
sacerdotalist, foi^nd deliverance. He tells the tale of
the long despair which had lain like a blight on his life ;
of the spiritual weariness of those thirteen sad years
betwixt his entrance into the ministry and his conversion.
He was convinced, he writes in 1738, that the cause of
his spiritual disquiet was unbelief, and that "the gaining
of a true faith was the one thing for him." He had
faith, indeed, of a sort, but, he says, "I fixed not this
faith on its right object. I mean only faith in God, not
faith in or through Christ." Those words touch the very
kernel of this evangelical theory !

Wesley, as we have seen, found deliverance when he
came into personal touch with Christ as a personal
Saviour. Justifying, saving faith in the light of that
great experience he defines as "a full reliance on the
blood of Christ as shed for me; a trust in Him as my
Saviour, as my sole justification, sanctification, and re-
demption." The saving emphasis lies on the pronouns!

THE SECRET OF THE GREAT REVIVAL 275

Then Wesley tasted the gladness of that blessed experi-
ence he calls ";issi'rn\re." "An assurance was given me
that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and de-
livered me from the law of sin and death."

Wesley for the rest of his days, we repeat, kept on the
high lands of evangelical belief and experience. He
found in evangelical doctrines the keynote of all his
sermons. The text of his first open-air sermon was the
I)assage, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He
hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor."
More than fifty years afterwards he preached at Leather-
head his last discourse from the text, "Seek ye the Lord
while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is
near." The text ou which he i)rpached iriosi frequently
is that passage which declares how God in Christ is
"made unto us wisdom, rightoonsness, sanctification, and
i-edomptioii." Almost his last whispered sentences as
he lay dying consisted of the words, "There is no way
into the holiest but by the blood of Jesus." Who masters
the meaning of these words will understand what is that
evangelical doctrine which was the special message of
Wesley to his generation, and is indeed the great proc-
lamatiou of Christianity to all generations.

Wesley himself is almost more remarkable as a witness
to these truths than as a worker or leader. Paley has
built on the conversion of Paul an almost matchless
demonstration of the trnth of Christianity itself. The
moral transformation, sudden and permanent, of a strong,
proud, passionate nature is one of the most remarkable
facts in human history. To transform a zealot, at a
breath, into a saint, a persecutor of Christianity into a
martyr for the truths of Christianity — this is a miracle!
An event so amazing must have behind it a cause not
less wonderful. And this is the problem in Wesley's
history.

What explains the difference in the two stages of his
own experience — the doubted-tormented sacerdotalist of
early years, and the radiant saint of later years? Up to
May 24, 1738, Wesley wore his religion as a monk of
the thirteenth century might have worn his hair-cloth
shirt. It was a task, an anguish, a burden. But on
that date he suddenly stepped into a realm of certainty,
of freedom, of gladness.

276 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

That great hour at the humble meeting in Alders-
gate Street was certainly the turning point in Wesley's
career. It marks the dividing line of his life. On one
side are struggle, doubt, toil, failure. On the other side
are certainty, gladness, power, achievement. Something
happened in that supreme moment which explains the
change. It was Wesley's conversion. He received the
living Christ by personal faith as a living and personal
Saviour; and the sublime ideals of redemption, as they
exist in the mind and purpose of God, were fulfilled in
him.

But it may be said that this was a purely subjective
experience; valid, perhaps, for its subject, but of authority
for nobody else. What conclusion, having authority for
mankind at large, can be drawn from the subjective ex-
perience of a solitary human soul? Nor, perhaps, does it
strengthen the case to argue that Wesley's experiences
were repeated in thousands of other souls. Multiply a
cipher no matter how often, it remains a cipher.

But the change in Wesley was not merely subjective.
It took concrete form in his life. It registered itself
in history. It has the scale and permanency of history.
How was it that he, who in 1727 could not move a
village, after 1739 could shake three kingdoms? How
did it come to pass that the teacher who was driven
»ut of a little colony as a mere human irritant became
the teacher, the comforter, the trusted leader of whole
generations?

The explanation certainly does not lie in any personal
gifts of body or brain Wesley possessed. These were
exactly the same at both stages of his career. Wesley
at Wroot was twenty-five years of age. He had then
the scholar's brain, the zealot's fire, the orator's tongue;
and he failed — failed consciously and completely. "I
preached much," is his own record, "but saw no fruits
of my labour." Wesley, again, in Savannah, was thirty-
two years of age. At no stage of his life did he show a
higher passion of zeal, or more methodical and resolute
industry ; a self-sacrifice so nearly heroic in temper. And
yet he failed !

But something came into his life by the gate of his
conversion, something he never lost, something which
transfigured his career. It was a strange gift of power —

THE SECRET OF THE GREAT REVIVAL 277

power tliat used Wesley's natural gifts — his tough body,
his keen iutellect, his resolute will — as instruments, but
which was more than these. Who looks on Wesley's life
as a whole, and sees on one side of a particular date
doubt, weakness, and defeat; and on the other side cer-
tainty, gladness, and matchless j)ower, cannot doubt that
the secret of Wesley's career lies Iti the spiritual realm.
Wesley's story is simply one embodied, historic, and over-
whelming demon.stration of the truth of what is called
the Evangelical reading of Christianity.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW WESLEY AFFECTED ENGLAND

It seems a daring and extravagant thing to measure the
work of a single life by the changes that life has wrought
in the character of a nation. The most commanding
human figure, when set against the background of a
kingdom, may well seem dwarfed into microscopic dimen-
sions. In some rare cases, as with Peter the Great in
Russia, Cavour in Italy, or Bismarck in Germany, a test
so high may be applied without any startling sense of
disproportion. But in English history, such a test, when
applied even to Pitt or to Gladstone, seems too cruel.

In the case of Wesley, many of the ordinary elements
of power were visibly lacking. He was to the day of his
death a poor man, if only because he gave away everything
he possessed. He was, at the moment when his career
takes the scale of history, a clergyman without a charge,
a leader without a party, a preacher with every pulpit in
the three kingdoms shut against him. Yet when all this
has been said, it remains true that Wesley may challenge
the judgment of mankind by the test of the mark his
work has left on the history of the English-speaking race.

And his contribution to that history may be compressed
into a single sentence. He restored Christianity to its
place as a living force in the personal creed of men and
In the life of the nation. A change profound and wonder-
ful, carrying in itself the pledge and the secret of a thou-
sand other changes! For more than fifty years — from
the moment he broke through all ecclesiastical conven-
tions and preached on the open moors at Kingswood to
the roiigh miners, down to the moment speech failed on
his lips in the death chamber in City Road — Wesley was
the greatest personal force in England. And he was a
force for all that Christianity means.

He had a spiritual vision as keen as that of Thomas
k Kempis; a sense of eternity as profound as that of
William Law; spiritual convictions as overmastering as
those of John Henry Newman, and in infinitely closer
harmony with the essential genius of Christianity. And
278

HOW WESLEY AFFECTED ENGLAND 279

he was not, like the author of the Imitatio, imprisoned
in a cell. He was not, like Law, wrapped in cotton wool
by a cluster of rich feminine admirers. He was not,
like Newman, buried in semi-monastic seclusion at Little-
more. He lived in the open air. He turned the hill-side
and the city street into a pulpit. He preached to vast
crowds daily; he touched thousands of lives by his per-
sonal influence; and he did this for more than fifty years!
He gathered round himself a great order of preachers of
a quite new type. He built up a far-stretching spiritual
organisation embodying his own ideals, and on fire with
his own spirit. As a result he quickened the conscience,
not merely of his own followers, but of the Church which
had cast him out, and of the whole nation to which he
belonged. Christianity, not merely as a creed, but as a
conscience, was in this way re-born under British skies.

The range and character of Wesley's work may be
judged by the tests of history. And when those high
tests are applied it can be soberly claimed for Wesley
that he did not so much revive the evangelical tradition
of Christianity; he created it! He made it a permanent
element in the religious life of England. All great evan-
gelistic movements, from his time down to the present
day, have had in them a breath of Wesley's spirit. And
the evangelical tradition which dates from Wesley, it
may be added, is of the sanest and most practical type.

There is a current platitude just now that the next
revival must be ethical. If so, it will be a return to
Wesley ; for the revival which bears his name was ethical
in the most intense and practical fashion. Religion, as
AVesley defined it, and enforced it, consisted of godly
tempers and godly conduct. Even Leslie Stephen, who,
in the matter of theological belief, is parted by whole
horizons from Wesley, and who tries Wesley's work by
purely literary tests, bears emphatic testimony to the
practical qualities of that work. Wesley's aim, he says,
was "to stamp out vice, to suppress drinking and de-
bauchery, to show men the plain path to heaven." It
was, in other words, to set up in human life that Civitas
Dei of which all the saints have dreamed, a true and
imperishable Kingdom of God, a kingdom of righteous-
ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Lecky, in a score of passages, notes, with a certain

280

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

accent of admiring astonishment, the influence of the
Methodist revival outside Methodism. It was one of
the forces which produced Sunday-schools. It affected
the army, the Universities, literature, and this in spite
of the fact that the chief literary men of the day had
nothing for it but sneers. It is not easy to recite the
countless practical forms which Wesley's work took. He
set up a dispensary with free supply of medicine to the
poor; he fought against political corruption; he estab-
lished relief employment for the destitute. Says Lecky,
"It is no exaggeration to say that Wesley had a wider
constructive influence in the sphere of practical religion
than any other man who has appeared since the sixteenth
century."

All the great and characteristic contributions to Chris-
tian life in modern days come, in brief, by direct descent
from Wesley. And the indirect influence of his work —
its reflex on other bodies than his own — is, perhaps,
greater and more wonderful than even its direct fruits.
The Anglican Church, for example, cast Wesley out. It
rejected his work. Yet the Anglican Church of to-day
is profoundly influenced by Wesley. He created a new
conscience in that Church. He awakened a spirit which
killed silently and absolutely, as a breath of pure oxygen
kills some microbes, the idle and unspiritual clergy of his
day, who had attenuated Christianity into a sort of
Chinese morality — mere Confucianism with a Christian
label — and who were more alarmed at the suspicion of
believing too much than of believing nothing at all. Wes-
ley, preaching on his father's tombstone outside Epworth
Church, made impossible the drunken vicar inside. The
spectacle of the vast open-air crowds that hung on Wes-
ley's lips made the empty church for ever intolerable.

Wesley's influence outside his own Church runs some-
times in strange and unrecognised channels. It called
into existence, no doubt, the great evangelical school in
the Anglican Church. But it also helped to create the
opposite school. The Oxford Movement, if only because
it was served by more splendid literary talents, outbulks
in scale and importance for a considerable section of man-
kind Wesley's revival. No one as yet has adequately
traced the connection betwixt the two movements; and
yet the connection is undeniable, and constitutes a strik-

HOW WESLEY AFFECTED ENGLAND 281

ing, if almost unrecognised, example of the reflex influence
of the great revival. Wesley, in a sense, explains Newman
and made him possible.

There are the oddest resemblances and contrasts be-
twixt the two men. Newman was born ten years after
Wesley died, and so drew his earliest breath in the new
religious atmosphere Wesley created. Newman, indeed,
frankly acknowledges his debt to the revival. "The
writer," he says, "who made a deeper impression on my
mind than any other, and to whom, humanly speaking,
I almost owe my soul, is Thomas Scott." But Scott was
the disciple of Newton, and Newton was converted under
Whitefield, and the line of spiritual connection betwixt
Newman and the revival at this point is clear. Unlike
W^esley, Newman was an evangelical first, and a sacer-
dotalist afterwards. He came under Law's influence as
a mere boy; he was "converted" in an evangelical sense
at fifteen, and of that inward conversion he says in his
Apologia, nearly sixty years afterwards : "I am still more
certain than that I have hands and feet."

But though the order of events is inverted in the
lives of the two men, the correspondences are wonderful.
Newman, it is true, was an evangelical, not of Wesley's,
but of Whitefield's school. He was a Calvinistic evan-
gelical, that is; and when, like Wesley, he made the
discovery, in his own words, that "Calvinism is not a
key to the phenomena of human nature as they occur
in the world." he gave up, not merely Calvinism, but
the whole evangelical theory as well. Newman was,
perhaps, more credulous than even Wesley. Wesley be-
lieved in "Old Jeffrey"; but Newman, as a youth, thought
he himself was an angel and the solid earth about him
a dream. "I thought," he records in his Apologia, "life
might be a dream or I an angel, and all this world a
deception, my fellow angels by a playful device conceal-
ing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the
semblance of a material world." Nature was a parable
for him, Scripture an allegory.

The two men both held Fellowships at Oxford; both
were familiar figures in this historic pulpit of St. Mary's,
and both went, though in an inverted order, through the
same theological stages. Both men were, in turn mystics,
ascetics, sacerdotalists.

282

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

But where Wesley met Peter Bohler and stepped
through the shiuing gate of faith into the land of spiritual
freedom, Newman met Pusey and went through the nar-
row doors of sacerdotalism into the shadow-haunted
realm of a false theology. Wesley was thirty-two years
old when he sailed for America, and before Moravian
influences had touched him. Newman was thirty-two
years old when he parted from Froude at Rome on his
way to Sicily, and when on the narrow Sicilian waters
he wrote his hymn — "Lead, Kindly Light." If the two
men had met, how exactly they would have understood
each other ! And with what equal eyes of approval Arch-
bishop Laud would have looked on them both I They were
both his ecclesiastical offspring.

Wesley would have fought for the apostolic succession
and for the integrity of the Prayer-book as fiercely as
Keble or Newman. He would have thrust all dissenters
out of both the realm of his own charity and the King-
dom of God with a scorn as complete as theirs. With his
Oxford companions he might have set up, instead of the
Holy Club, a semi-monastic house at Littlemore, exactly
as Newman did a century later. Sacerdotalist, mystic,
and ascetic, we repeat, can be found in each of them.

But Newman is an arrested Wesley. Could Wesley,
like Newman, have forsaken Anglicanism for the Church
of Rome? His habit of unsparing logic, his courage in
hanging life, death, and eternity on a syllogism, makes
that possible. The sacerdotalist, indeed, who does not
end by becoming a Roman Catholic is an example of
arrested logic, a mere incomplete syllogism in flesh and
blood. Newman's argument is flawless: "To believe in
the Church" — in the sacerdotal sense — "is to believe in
the Pope." Wesley, in 1745, would, no doubt, have found
it harder to join the Church of Rome than Newman did in
1845. Romanism in the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury was, for an Englishman, linked to a hated system
of politics. It stood for Charles I. against Hampden ; for
the Stuarts against the House of Hanover; for the Star
Chamber against the Bill of Rights; for James II. against
William of Orange. And these things counted even for a
sacerdotalist. Had Newman himself lived a hundred
years nearer the trial of the Seven Bishops it would have
made his surrender to the Papacy more diflBcult.

HOW WESLEY AFFEC^TED ENGLAND 283

The differeute in their religion finds its expression in
the different atmosphere of the two men. Wesley's at-
mosphere is radiant with snnshine; Newman's is a sort
of sunless mist. Let any one compare the over-subtle
logic, the indefinable note of weariness which runs
through Newman's ''Grammar of Assent," and the exult-
ant energy, the gladness, the accent of triumphant cer-
tainty in, say, Wesley's "Appeal to Men of Reason and
Religion," and he will find expressed in literary terms the
spiritual interval betwixt the two men. Newman never
escaped from that sacerdotal treadmill in which Wesley
toiled for thirteen years. He only changed its direction.
Religion, Newman says in his "Grammar of Assent," is
"a system ; it is a rite, a creed, a philosophy, a rule of
duty." But he did not add with Wesley, it is a life ; nay
it is a partnership in the highest form and energy of
Life, the life of God Himself! Religion for Newman,
whether at Christ-churcli or at Littlemore, was a matter
of "prescribed rites embodied in institutions." For Wes-
ley, it was the inrush of supernatural forces out of the
spiritual realm, flooding every channel of human nature.

But it is curious to note how profoundly Newman and
Wesley agreed as to the validity of the spiritual con-
sciousness. Wesley, from first to last, tested religion in
the forum of his consciousness. Newman, following Kant,
rested his belief in God on the witness of his own con-
sciousness. We have, he asserted, "a direct and conscious
knowledge of our Maker." He found in the indestructible
facts of consciousness the one force capable of resisting
the all-dissolving scepticism of the intellect in the realm
of religion. "Personality," in Newman's philosophy, was
"the key to truth." Dr. Barry, his best biographer, says:
"Metaphysicians commonly started from the universal
to arrive at the particular; but he who is not of their
sect reverses the process. 'Let the concrete come first,'
Newman arg\ies, 'and the so-called universals second.'
He went back to the days of his childhood when he was
alone with the Alone, and on this adamantine basis of
reality he set up his religion."

In principle, it will be seen — in the value assigned to
personality — Newman and Wesley are alike; but Wesley
did not "go back to his childhood" in search of God. He
found a constant witness to the existence of God living

284

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

within him. His doctrine of the witness of the Spirit is
but a form of this great philosophy.

Wesley was saved from sacerdotalism by the touch of
his mother's hands; by the influence of Moravian teach-
ing; and beyond even these forces by the grace of the
Holy Spirit. Yet he, had a narrow escape. He might have
been an eighteenth-century Newman ! And though it
sounds a paradox, it is sober truth that Wesley at Oxford,
in 1730, made Newman at Oxford, in 1830, possible.
Wesley left the sacerdotal camp, but the breath of his
zeal made even those dry bones live. He created a new
conscience in sacerdotalism, and from that new con-
science, stirring like some strange wine in old bottles,
came the whole Tractarian movement of the Thirties.

High Church Anglicanism stands to-day on that via
media to which Newman led it, and at which point he
abandoned it. It would probably scorn the suggestion
that it owes any debt to Wesley. It certainly displays no
sense of obligation to the Church which Wesley founded.
And the Roman Catholic Church, too, would smile at
the notion that it owes Wesley anything for the gift of
Newman. And yet, if the indirect influences of Wesley's
work are followed, it will be seen that the debt is un-
deniable. If Wesley called into existence a new Church,
he stirred into life the conscience of the Church he left.

If we come down to later times, no one will deny that
the touch of Wesley's hand, the breath of his spirit, is
in the modern Church. The Salvation Army is one aspect
of Wesley's work — his work amongst the fallen and the
outcast — revived under modern conditions and in a pic-
turesque shape. The Christian Endeavour Societies are
Wesley's great institution of the class-meeting trans-
lated into modern terms and made to serve new uses.
All the great city missions springing up under every sky
have in them the very spirit of Wesley. If modern
religion is learning to take social forms, if it is expressing
itself in terms of practical, beneficence, this, too, is part
of the tradition caught from Wesley. For he first,
amongst the religious teachers of England, charged reli-
gion with social oflBces. There is hardly a form of prac-
tical beneficence the world knows to-day that Wesley did
not set into operation. It is a secular historian like
Lecky who says: "Not only the germs of almost all the

HOW WESLEY AFFECTED ENGLAND 285

existing zeal in England on behalf of Christian truth and
life are due to Methodism, but the activity stirred up in
other portions of Protestant Europe we must trace, in-
directly at least, to Wesley."^ And it is a writer of New-
man's school, Palmer, who declares that "the bold, aggres-
sive movement, of which Wesley was the symbol, once
more made Christianity the teacher of the world."

But we are discussing now the effect produced upon
national life and character by Wesley's work, rather than
any ecclesiastical change it wrought; and it is difficult
to write on this without seeming to exaggerate. What
was it that saved England from "the red fool-fury of the
Seine," and kept her undestroyed while the wild forces
of the Revolution were shaking throne and Church in
France into ruin? Maurice tells how his father was
accustomed to say that "England escaped a political
revolution because she had undergone a spiritual revolu-
tion"— that brought about by Wesley and Whitefield;
and Lecky's testimony to the same fact is emphatic.
"Many causes," he says, "conspired to save England from
the contagion of the revolutionary spirit in France, but
among them a prominent place must be given to the
new and vehement enthusiasm which was at that very
time passing through the middle and lower classes of
the people."^

It is historically certain that English Deism helped to
produce the French Revolution. The English Deists
supplied Voltaire and his school with arguments, and
in France these arguments found a soil in which they
struck deep root; or, to vary the figure, they acted as
sparks cast into some inflammable vapour. But why
did the very teaching which, although a foreign importa-
tion, produced such effects in France, fail completely in
England, its native soil? The answer is to be found in
Wesley and the revival linked to his name. If Wesley
had been an English Voltaire, corroding all belief with
the acid of his wit, and distilling the gall of his bitter
spirit into the blood of the nation, there might have
been a Reign of Terror in London as well as in Paris !

Let it be remembered that at this time a new social
movement — the rise of the great manufacturing industries

'Lecky, vol. ii. p. 521.
V6td., p. 686.

286

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

of Great Britain — was shifting the whole centre of na-
tional life. It was a movement which has yielded splen-
did results, but its birth was attended with the gravest
social perils. It was a movement of disintegration,
disordering the social relations of whole classes. It
altered the very type of national life. It increased the
sum total of wealth, but totally changed its distribution ;
it made for a time at least, the rich richer, the poor
poorer. It kindled a war which has not since found a
truce betwixt Labour and Capital. It drew together all
the inflammable elements of the nation. It tended to
weaken if not arrest moral forces, and to substitute for
them forces non-moral and anti social — greed of money,
class jealousy, selfishness. Lecky describes it as "pecul-
iarly fortunate" that the emergence of this great social
phenomenon in England should have been preceded by
"a religious revival which opened a new spring of moral
and religious energy among the poor, and at the same
time gave a powerful impulse to the philanthropy of the
rich." But was it merely a stroke of "peculiar good
fortune" which explains the api)earance, at this supreme
and critical moment in national history, of the great
Methodist revival? It was the providence of God, the
working of that divine Will which shapes human history
to the patern of the divine counsels.

Sometimes in nations, as in individuals, the creed has
no relation to the conscience. But the great revival
made Christianity authoritative on the moral sense of
the nation, and in that august change lay the secret of
a thousand other changes. Who watches the emergence
of that new force in English history, and traces its
workings in the national life, has the key to nearly every-
thing noble in modern British legislation.

There were of course many forces which, for the
moment, postponed, or obscured — though they did not
destroy — the growth of those seeds of justice and good-
ness which the revival planted on the soil of English
character. The Great War with France, for example,
had been in progress for ten years when Wesley died, and
it lasted ten years after his death. How profoundly
that war, both during its course and after it had closed,
deflected the national life is not easly realised. As
one result Parliament remained unreformed, and utterly

HOW WESLEY AFFECTED ENGLAND 287

failed to reflect the natioual conscience. It is difficult to-
day to realise the evils of the old electoral system. Two-
thirds of the House of Commons were simply appointed
by rich men. The Duke of Norfolk owned eleven mem-
bers, Lord Lonsdale owned nine. Old Sarum had two
members, but not a single inhabitant. Seventy members
were returned by thirty-five electorates which, all put
together, counted hardly as many voters. Three hundred
members, it was estimated, were returned by 160 persons,
while great cities had not a single member.

Under such conditions, the better ideals which Wesley's
work had created could not find expression in public law.
Legislation was partial, justice was still brutal. There
were still 25.*^ capital offences on the Statute-Book. If a
man injured Westminster Bridge he was hanged; if he
cut down a young tree, if he shot a rabbit, if he stole
property valued at five shillings, he was hanged. So late
as 1816 there were at one time in Newgate fifty-eight
persons under .sentence of death, one of them a child of
ten years old. Romney tells the story of two men, part-
ners in the same offence, who were tried for robbery. One
man moved the pity of the jury. They found him guilty
of robbery to the extent of 4s. lOd. ; the other was found
guilty of theft to the extent of 5s., and that extra two-
pence was for one man fatal. It measured the difference
betwixt life and death ! Cruelty, in brief, ran through the
whole gamut of .social life. Women worked in coal-pits,
crawling like animals on hands and feet in the darkness
of the mine. Children of six were habitually employed.
Down to 1804 the rights of working men to combine were
regulated by a law passed at the date of the battle of
Bannockburn. More than one-half of the entire children
of England grew up without education.

Taxes were inevitable; but the system of taxation was
cruel, and stupid to a degree almost incredible. Salt was
taxed to the extent of forty times its cost, and on the coast
the poor used sea-water to take its place in cooking.
Paper was taxed threepence per pound, newspapers four-
pence per copy, advertisements three shillings and six-
pence for each issue. The law, that is. was used to kill
the very opportunities of knowledge. England, too, was
cursed in the latter years of the eighteenth century by a
lunatic king and a distracted regency; and later by a

288

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

monarch, George IV., who would have been less of a
scandal to the nation if he had been a lunatic.

And all this was after Weslej' had quickened the con-
science of the nation, and poured the wine of a new
humanity into its veins! Why was that new conscience
so late in making itself effective? For an answer, let the
disturbing forces we have recited be considered; the dis-
tractions of the Great War, the mischiefs of a vicious
system of politics, the influence of a corrupt court, the
persistence of ancient and cruel forms of legislation ; and
it will be understood how even the new conscience which
Wesley had created in the nation found late and imperfect
expressions in public affairs.

Wesley's convinced and passionate opposition to slavery
is historic, and it is the more remarkable because it was
so much in advance of the sentiments of his age. The
British Parliament during the eighteenth century, it must
be remembered, passed no less than twenty-three Acts of
Parliament benevolently "regulating" the slave traflQc.
By the Treaty of Utrecht (1718) Great Britain undertook
to furnish annually to South America 4,800 negroes, and
to do this for thirty years ; and the contract was renewed
in 1748. Great Britain, that is, ignobly turned, on this
gigantic scale, slave-provider for the Spaniard! And it
was not the political conscience merely that was utterly
without sensitiveness to what Wesley described *'that
sum of all villainy," the slave trade; the clerical con-
science was equally torpid. A great ecclesiastical digni-
tary, the Bishop of London, in a pastoral issued in 1727,
declared that "Christianity and the embracing of the Gos-
pel does not make the least alteration in civil property,"
even though that "property" consisted of human flesh and
blood !

When at last a reform of the franchise made Parliament
a true expression of the national conscience then came the
great procession of humanitarian Acts. The revolt
against the slave trade, and Howard's reform of the
prisons, were the earliest and happiest expressions of the
new conscience thus created. The new sense of justice,
of human equality, of the dignity and worth of human
nature, which went with the Great Revival found expres-
sion in the reform of the courts, the purification of the
criminal code, the great Reform Bill of 1836, and the

HOW WESLEY AFFECTED ENGLAND 289

humane legislation linked to the name of Shaftesbury.
Wesley and the Evangelicals generally were against
Catholic relief, and against tlie repeal of the Test Act —
a fact which proves that they were imperfectly emanci-
pated from the evil conditions of their own times, and
that intelligence in them did not keep pace with con-
science. But the principles they taught, and the new
spirit they introduced into national affairs, were power-
ful dissolvents, in which the cruel legislation of earlier
years — legislation which undertook to make injustice
the guard, and cruelty the servant, of religion — disap-
peared.

A century, it may be added, is but a hand-breadth in
the life of a nation. Let the vision take a wider range,
and it will be seen that betwixt the England of 1703 and
the England of 1903 there is the most amazing difference.
The little cluster of islands, with its scanty fringe of
quarrelling colonies, has become an empire whose flag
floats over one-fifth of the surface of the planet, and
almost one-fourth of the human race. But the differ-
ence in scale and power which marks the empire is
even less impre.ssive than the advance in its ideals and
temper. A new conscience has been created ; a new
humanity breathes throughout society; new ideals of
legislation register themselves on the Statute-Book.
Great Britain has many problems still unsolved, many
characteristic evils yet unvanquished. But let it be set in
the perspective of history ; let it be measured against the
great empires of other days. And with all its imperfec-
tions it is certain that it more nearly approaches the
ideals of Christianity than any other community in which
men have ever dwelt together.

To the creation of this freer and nobler England a
thousand forces have co-operated. But if that tangled
web of contributing forces be disentangled, the richest
and strongest are those which belong to religion. And
who will deny that, of these, the most influential and
effective are those which gather round Wesley and the
evangelical revival of the eighteenth century! And the
secret lies not so much in the man, as in the message;
not in the teacher, but in the thing taught; not in the
human agent, but in the spiritual forces of which he was
the channel.

BOOK IV
THE EVOLUTION OF A CHURCH

CHAPTER I

WESLEY AS A CHURCH-BUILDER

In a life such as Wesley's a point is at last reached at
which its relation to history has to be determined. The
story ceases to be biography, and becomes, in some large
and permanent sense, history. Let Wesley be pictured
in mid-career as he stands, say, preaching to a crowd
of 10,000 people at Moorfields, or to one of 20,000 at
Gwennap Pit, and let him be looked at, say, through
John Nelson's eyes. The honest Yorkshireman had no
gift of imagination and no trick of literary picturesque-
ness. He can only describe what he sees, but he sees
with curiously direct and uncoloured vision. We have
already quoted his vivid account of the first time he
heard Wesley preach ; how "as soon as he got upon the
stand he stroked back his hair and turned his face towards
where I stood, and I thought he fixed his eyes on me.
His countenance struck such an awful dread upon me
before I heard him speak that it made my heart beat like
the pendulum of a clock, and when he did speak I thought
his whole discourse was aimed at me. When he had done
I said, 'This man can tell the secrets of my heart.' "

This, says Southey, was Wesley's secret of power as
a speaker. He never generalised. He spoke not to the
crowd, but to the individual.

"The preacher's words were like the eyes of a portrait which
seemed to look at every beholder.

" 'Who,' said the preacher, 'Who art thou, that now seest and
feelest both thine inward and outward ungodliness? Thou art
the man! I want thee for my Lord! I challenge thee for a child
of God by faith. The Lord hath need of thee. Thou who feelest
thou art just fit for hell, art just fit to advance His glory — the
glory of His free grace, justifying the ungodly and him that
worketh not. O come quickly! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou, even thou, art reconciled to God.' "

Multiply a scene like this, and utterances like these,
through half a century, and over the whole area of the
United Kingdom ! Here is visibly a man who is mov-
ing a nation. He is a man, too, who can translate his
293

294

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

message into terms of literature, and write it in im-
perishable words. Here is a passage, for example, from
his "Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion" which may
be taken as an example of the character and force of his
teaching : —

"Faith ... is with regard to the spiritual world what sense is
with regard to the natural world. It is the . . . feeling of the
soul whereby a believer perceives the presence of Him in whom
he lives, moves, and has his being, and indeed the whole in-
visible world, the entire system of things eternal. By this faith
we are saved from all uneasiness of mind, from the anguish of a
wounded spirit, from discontent, from fear, and sorrow of heart,
from that inexpressible listlessness and weariness both of the
world and ourselves which we had so helplessly laboured under
for so many years — especially when we were out of the hurry ot
the world, and sunk in calm reflection. This we know and feel,
and cannot but declare, saves every one that partakes of it both
from sin and misery, from every unhappy and every unholy
temper —

'Soft peace she brings; wherever she arrives
She builds our quiet, as she forms our lives;
Lays the rough paths of peevish nature even,
And opens in each heart a little heaven.' "

But is all this mere air-drawn rhetoric? Is it that sus-
pected, dread, hated thing, "enthusiasm"? No! Wesley
claims it is the highest form of reason. It belongs to the
realm of certainties: —

"We Join with you [i. e. the men of reason] in desiring a re-
ligion founded on reason, and every way agreeable thereto. But
one question remains: What do you mean by reason? I suppose
you mean the eternal reason, the nature of things, the nature of
God, and the nature of man, with the relations necessarily ex-
isting between them. Why, this is the religion we preach — a
religion evidently founded on, and every way agreeable to,
natural reason, to the essential nature of things: to the nature
of God, for it begins in knowing Him, it ends in doing His will:
to the nature of man, for it begins In a man's knowing himself
to be what he truly Is, foolfsh, vicious, miserable. It goes on
to point the true remedy for this, to make him truly wise, virtu-
ous, and happy, as every thinking mind (perhaps with some
implicit remembrance of what it originally was) longs to be.
It finishes all by restoring to due relations between God and
man; by uniting for ever the tender Father and the grateful,
obedient son, the great Lord of all, and the faithful servant,
doing not his own will but the will of Him that sent him."

Such a man, we repeat — with such a message, and such
energy to deliver it — is from any point of view a great
figure. He must profoundly affect his generation.

WESLEY AS A CHURCH BUILDER 295

But there is nothing necessarily permanent in his work.
The orator's voice is hushed ; the crowds are gone, the
emotions the ringing words awakened are dead. Who
to-day reads the "Appeal," even though it stands un-
matched for force in the religious literature of its cen-
tury? Had Wesley done nothing more than preach or
write, his memory might have faded. But at this stage
Wesley links himself by one great achievement, not merely
to English history, but to the history of religion. He
creates a Church ! He did not do this consciously, or of
deliberate purpose. He strove, indeed, not to do it; he
protested he would never do it. But as history shows, he
actually did it ! And since history is not so much philoso-
phy teaching by examples as God interpreting Himself
by events, we are entitled to say that Wesley, in laying
the foundations of a new Church, did something that, no
doubt, outran his own human vision, but which fulfilled
a divine purpose.

To destroy a Church is easy. But to build one is a
task requiring not only the highest gifts of intellect and
the richest endowments of spiritual energy, but a com-
bination of external circumstances and forces such as
does not often occur in human history. To set up a
sect is not diflScult. Small men can do it ; small passions
make it possible. A quarrelsome temper, a loud voice,
and a suflScient absence of humour to enable the per-
former to take himself seriously — to announce at the
top of his voice, for example, that he is the reincarnation
of Elijah or of John the Baptist — these are qualities and
performances that, for a time, will generate a sect. But
a Church, a true province of the spiritual kingdom of
the Lord Jesus Christ, within whose bounds millions of
devout souls may dwell; a Church which creates and
trains a ministry, sends out missions, builds great insti-
tutions, and lives with a life that grows ever richer while
generations pass — this is one of the great things of his-
tory. Its origin does not, indeed, belong to the category
of human forces. Its secret and explanation lie in the
divine realm. And that Wesley, without deliberately
intending it, built an indestructible Church is the fact
that gives to his career the scale of history.

Each Church is an attempt to translate Christianity
into a working formula; aud Wesley added one more

296 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

such formula to the spiritual history of the race. And
it is a formula which endures! No one can write a
history of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries and leave out Methodism.

Whitefleld stopped short of this great achievement.
He was a greater preacher than Wesley; but he was
only a preacher, and so his biography never takes the
imperishable scale and range of history. Charles Wesley
lives by his hymns. He found a vehicle for the religious
emotions which Churches of every name and type accept
and use, and will continue to use till the sound of the
last earthly hymn melts into the eternal harmonies of
heaven. But this, in the case of Charles Wesley, was but
an accident of spiritual genius. What place in history,
again, would Ignatius Loyola have apart from the great
religious Order he created? Wesley's fame is imperish-
able because, somehow, he created an imperishable insti-
tution.

And in the story of Wesley's work nothing is more
remarkable than the narrow limits of time within which
the movement he inspired crystallised into definite form,
a form which, as thouglf shaped by unseen hands to un-
seen ends, had the prophecy and the assurance of endur-
ing existence. Wesley, as we have seen, spent thirteen
sad, slow, blundering years in solving the problem of
religion for himself. But having solved it, the whole of
his life instantly gained a certain swiftness of movement
and certainty of goal it would be difficult to match in
religious history. And in five brief, hurrying years —
years full of controversies and distractions — he prac-
tically shaped, and shaped for all time, the Church which
bears his name. Two wonders, indeed, are visible in
this aspect of Wesley's work; the absence of any clear
intention to create a Church, and yet the swiftness, the
sagacity, the certainty of aim and stroke, with which that
work was actually done.

A cluster of dates in the almanac — dates covering only
five years — will serve to show with how little of delay,
of uncertain experiments, of wasted efforts, a great
Church was evolved : —

"1739— April 2. — Wesley preaches his first open-air sermon at
Kingswood. May 12. — Foundation of first Methodist preaching
place laid at Bristol. June. — Foundation of school laid at Kings-

WESLEY AS A CHURCH-BUILDER

297

wood. October 15— Wesley sets out for Wales, beginning his
itinerancy. November. — First Methodist preaching house, the
Fonudry, opened in London; first Methodist stewards appointed;
first hymn-book published; first Methodist Society formed; first
lay preacher, Maxfield, employed.

"1740.— Wesley separates from the Moravians; controversy on
Predestination with Whitefield begun; the theology of Meth-
odism shaped.

"1742 — February 15. — Societies divided into classes; first
mention of class-leaders. April. — First watch-night in London;
quarterly visitation of classes by preachers established; tickets
of membership used.

'•n43.~May 1.— Rules of the Society published.

"1744 — June 25. — First Conference met In London."

Here, compressed into a dozen lines, and into five brief
years, is Methodism in all its essential features, iu clear-
est outline. During the 160 years which have passed
since, Methodism has witnessed many changes in form,
but absolutely no change in principle. These great forma-
tive years determined what is characteristic and vital in
it. The first Methodist Conference in history assembled
on June 25, 1744. It consi.sted of only ten men. Its
record includes a description of "The Society and its
Officers," which might stand to-day, with some changes
in names, for contemporary Methodism.

The secret of the swift, definite, and symmetrical evolu-
tion of Methodism in a period of time so brief is found,
in the main, in Wesley himself; and it is curious to
note how much of the fitness which lies in unconscious
natural genius, as well as of the fitness which comes of
equally unconscious education and training for the work
of a Church-builder, Wesley had. These five great shap-
ing years found Wesley, for one thing, at the high-water
mark of energy and power. They cover the best years
of his life, say from thirty-six to forty-one. All the ap-
parently wasted experiences of his career now found
their office and use. His equipment of knowledge was
singularly wide. To the discipline of a godly home, of a
great public school, and of an ancient University had
been added the experiences of a new settlement in Amer-
ica, and the teaching of the Moravian settlements in
Germany.

Wesley, as we have seen, had personally gone through
the whole gamut of possible religious experience. He
was familiar with all schools of religious thought. He

298 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

knew Protestantism in its two great forms — Anglican
and German. He was familiar, indeed, with every school
of theology and every variety of ecclesiastical use. He
knew men, cities, books, churches, history. No develop-
ment of human nature and no turn of ecclesiastical polity
found him unprepared.

Wesley's temperament helped him, as well as his train-
ing. He was not of the French but of the English type.
He cared little for theories and much for facts. He was
always willing to be wiser to-day than he was yesterday.
He dealt with diflSculties as they arose, and not till they
arose. He had many prejudices, and they were of a
robust sort; but he only kept a prejudice so long as it
agTeed with facts. This side of his character finds an
almost amusing illustration in the way in which he dealt
with what was, to him, the alarming phenomenon of a
layman preaching. He heard at Bristol that his helper,
Maxfield, had crossed the mystic border line which sepa-
rates an exhortation from a sermon, and the story has
already been told of how Wesley rode post haste to
London to trample out the first sparks of what might
prove to be a conflagration. His mother's calm eyes and
quiet speech arrested him. She made the one appeal
which, to Wesley's reason and conscience alike, was
irresistible. This new and alarming phenomenon must,
after all, be judged by the question: "Does God use it?"

Wesley looks clear-eyed at the facts. They are in
conflict with the mental habits of a lifetime, and with
that most obstinate of all forms of human prejudice, the
bias of an ecclesiastic. But the facts are plain. God
visibly blesses the preaching of this layman, and Wesley
instantly surrenders his opposition. "It is the Lord,"
he says; "let Him do what seemeth Him good." And
so he gave to Methodism one of the supreme secrets of
its strength, the partnership of laymen with ministers
in the great business of preaching.

There Avas in Wesley, with all his daring and enthu-
siasm, no touch of the fanatic's scorn of prudence. Few
men ever lived who excelled him in the wise adaptation
of means to ends. At the first Methodist Conference in
1744, what may be called the whole strategy of the re-
vival was discussed. The question was proposed, "What
is the best way of spreading the Gospel?" The answer

WESLEY AS A CHURCH-BUILDER 299

is, "To go a little and a little farther from London,
Bristol, St. Ives, Newcastle, or any other Society, so a
little leaven wonld spread with more effect and less noise,
and help wonld always be at hand." There speaks the
practical genins of a true leader of men I Wesley, it is
clear, wonld have made a great soldier. In military
terms, he kept tonch with his base. He did not merely
overrun a district ; he took possession of it and entrenched
himself in it.

And not only by training, and by the practical bent of
his genius, but by the nature of his beliefs, Wesley at
this stage was admirably fitted for giving shape to a new
Church. Most Christians have an easy, careless belief
that the Holy Spirit once dwelt in the Church and shaped
its history; but the unspoken addition to that belief is
that He dwells in it no more. His gracious offices are
nineteen hundred years distant! Now Wesley believed
with enthusiastic certainty that the Holy Ghost was iu
the world on whose soil he trod, and was inspiring the
life and shai)ing the development of the Church about
him. That the offices of the Holy Ghost belong not merely
to history, but to biology, is a great and fruitful belief
carrying with it strange consequences; and it is much
rarer than we quite realise.

"Antiquity" is a word of irresistible authority to many
good people, but they discover antiquity at the wrong
point. In the true sense, "antiquity" lies about us ! The
Church of 1744, when Wesley i)ut his impress on reli-
gious history, was nearly eighteen centuries older than
the Church of apostolic days ; and unless God's education
of His Church had utterly failed, it ought to have been
illuminated with richer light and nearer the divine ideal.
Certainly the oflQces of the Holy Spirit in the Church of
to-day may be expected to be, not scantier, but ampler,
than in the first century. And Wesley learned to see
the movements of that divine Spirit in the events about
him, in the experiences of his converts, in the strange
forces which drew such vast crowds to his preaching,
and in the waves of emotion which swept over them. He
recognised the guidance of the Holy Spirit, too, in the
dim, half-seen outlines of the great institution — Society
or Church, Wesley himself hardly knew which — taking
shape about him.

300 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

If the movement, again, be looked at as a bit of human
history, it is clear that many of the features of Wesley's
work were determined by forces outside himself, and
represent not his choice, but the imperative compulsion
of events. He was an outdoor preacher, for example, by
mere necessity. The churches were shut against him ;
he could find no pulpit but the open moor, the street
corner, his father's gravestone.

How much open-air preaching shocked Wesley's pre-
judices as a divine and his fastidiousness as a scholar is
proved over and over again. He demands of his brother
clergymen what would induce them to face the discom-
forts and dangers of this strange service : —

" 'Who is there among you,' he says, 'that is willing (examine
your own hearts) even to save souls from death at this price?
Would not you let a thousand souls perish rather than you would
be the instrument of rescuing them thus? Can you bear the
summer sun to beat upon your naked head? Can you suffer the
wintry rain or wind, from whatever quarter it blows? Are you
able to stand in the open-air, without any covering or defence,
when God casteth abroad His snow like wool, or scattereth His
hoar-frost like ashes? And yet these are some of the smallest
inconveniences which accompany field-preaching. For beyond
all these are the contradiction of sinners, the scoffs both of the
great, vulgar, and small; contempt and reproach of every kind —
often more than verbal affronts — stupid, brutal, violence, some-
times to the hazard of health, or limbs, or life. Brethren, do
you envy us this honour? What, I pray you, would buy you
to be a field-preacher? Or what, think you, could induce any
man of common-sense to continue therein one year, unless he
had a full conviction in himself that it was the will of God con-
cerning him. Upon this conviction it is that we now do for the
good of souls what you cannot, will not, dare not do.'

In the same way, by the mere compulsion of events,
Wesley became an itinerant preacher, though most of his
habits, all his prejudices, and some of the deepest instincts
of his nature were opposed to it. There was in Wesley's
very blood a semi-monkish love of solitude; and had he
been by accident of birth and training a Roman Catholic,
he certainly, at one stage of his career at all events, would
have found his retreat in a cell. When the brothers
returned from America, his brother writes, they "were
resolved to retire out of the world at once, being sated
with noise, hurry, and fatigue." All he asked on this side

'Southey, vol. i. p. 292.

WESLEY AS A CHURCH-BUILDER

301

of eternity was solitude. "We want nothing, we look for
nothing more iu this world." Whitefield strongly ui'ged
Charles Wesley to accept a college living. To become a
pair of ecclesiastical vagrants, hastening from village to
village, and preaching to an unending succession of acci-
dental crowds, was the last thing of which the brothers
dreamed. "We were dragged out again and again," says
Wesley, "to preach at one place and another, and so
carried on we knew not how, without any design but the
general one of saving souls, into a situation which, had it
been named to us at first, would have appeared far worse
than death."

Wesley, in brief, was an itinerant malgre lui. There
were, of course, great historic precedents for an itinerant
ministry, ranging from the early Saxon bishops down to
the mendicant Orders of the Roman Church and the
chaplains of Edward VI. — of whom John Knox was one.
In Cromwell's time the proposal to turn all the parish
ministers of England into itinerants was only lost in what
is known as the "little" Parliament by two votes. Wesley,
however, was moved to undertake au itinerant ministry,
not out of any regard to ancient precedent, but by the
actual necessities of the work he had undertaken.

But these two features of that work — open-air preach-
ing and the itinerant nature of his ministry — determined
many other things. They determined, for example, the
general question of Wesley's relation to ecclesiastical
order. For that order he had been, and still was, a zealot ;
but he was slowly learning that there were things more
precious, as well as more urgent, than mere ecclesiastical
use and wont. England was mapped out, for example,
into parishes ; and were these faint lines of ecclesiastical
boundaries, drawn by human hands and guarding fancied
human rights, to arrest such a work as Wesley was begin-
ning? They were like films of cobweb drawn across a
track of an earthquake! And many an ecclesiastical
cobweb of the same kind had to be brushed aside to make
room for the new religious life beginning to stir in Great
Britain.

Wesley was curiously quick to seize each suggestion
that events offered him. He never ran before Providence,
and never lingered behind it. And his nimble intellect,
while he worked, glanced through all history, his wide

302

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

knowledge discovering everywhere helps, analogies,
guides. When, for example, the most characteristic of
all Methodist institutions, the class-meeting, suddenly
emerged, as if by happy accident, Wesley recognised its
values and possibilities; but he recognised, too, the his-
torical analogies of the institution. It was not merely,
in Wesley's words, "the very thing" the Church at that
moment wanted ; it was the re-emergence in modern form
of the fellowship the apostolic Church once possessed.

Who studies, in a word, Wesley's genius, training, and
beliefs will cease to wonder that, in a period so brief, and
apparently with no sense of the greatness of the work
he was doing, he determined, and determined for all time,
the essential characteristics of the great Church that
bears his name.

For the equipment of a Church, to sum up briefly,
great forces must be enlisted, great plans formed. Meth-
odism looked at as a Church in process of evolution needed
a theology, a philosophy, a discipline; and Wesley, with-
out formally proposing these special tasks for himself,
had undertaken them. He found his theology in the
Bible, his philosophy in the correspondence of its truths
to human character, and his discipline in the application
of common-sense to the actual facts of the moment. Her-
bert Spencer has defined science as "organised knowl-
edge"; and a Church, as Wesley saw it and planned it,
might be defined as organised religion.

CHAPTER II

THE BREACH WITH THE MORAVIANS

The first equipment of a Church is its theology. It stands
for some one special reading of Christianity, and its
theology, by its accent and i)erspective, expresses that
reading. And it may be said, generally, that the difference
betwixt the theologies of the various Christian Churches
is mainly one of accent, and of angle of vision. Now the
theology of the Methodist Church was decisively shaped
by three great controversies which belong to its early
years. Who studies the history of Wesley's work will
see that on its very threshold lay the certainty of these
controversies.

Wesley was a devoted son of the Anglican Church,
ordained to its ministry, a convinced believer of its doc-
trines, a passionate lover of its ritual. But he owed
his spiritual life to the Moravians. Whitefield was his
closest comrade, and in some fields of work his leader.
And in each of these relationships was hidden a latent
and profound discord sure to register itself in open con-
troversy.

By the necessity of its genius, and by the stamp of
Wesley's strong character put upon it, Methodism, it was
certain, must be English, and not German, in type. It
could not be a Church of mystics and dreamers. The
pulse of an energetic and practical morality beat in its
very blood. Sooner or later, therefore, it must break
with Moravianism, with its dreamy quietism, its mysti-
cism, shading off into the deadliest form of Antinomian-
ism.

Whitefield, again, was a satisfield and even an exultant
Calvinist. The doctrine that Christ did not die for all
men was, in his own words, "the children's bread"; he
would not give it to the dogs. But Wesley was a reasoned
and convinced Arminian. His theology at this point had
been settled by his mother's homely sense and spiritual
insight. That all men were included in the great sweep
303

304

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

of God's fatherly love and of Christ's redeeming purpose
was for hini the first of certainties. He had no gospel
for himself, or for anybody else, if this was not true.
Was Methodism to be Calvinistic or Arminian in its
theology? This great issue had to be determined, and
the discord betwixt the two great comrades on this point
made a far-reaching controversy inevitable.

Then the Anglican Church of that day had forgotten
the spiritual elements of Christianity. It put form before
fact. It resolved religion into a scheme of human ethics
that had no divine force behind it, or in it. It was
content to be the Church of a comfortable and tiny
minority. Its clergy cared much for the few sheep within
the episcopal fold, and much, too, for the wool on their
backs; but they had ceased to even remember the slieep
in the wilderness. All the divinest elements of Chris-
tianity— its. passion of i)ity for the lost, and its exultant
faith in the supernatural— had perished. How were such
great opposites to be reconciled ? How could the new and
strong wine of Methodism be retained in a wineskin so
dry and ragged ?

Was Methodism, in a word, to be German or English
in type; Ai-minian or Calvinistic in theology; a mere
scheme of decorous moralities or a living religion, with
the pulse of a supernatural life beating passionately in
it? Controversy was inevitable at each of these points.
The dispute with the Moravians was the struggle between
a religion that exi)ressed itself in an energetic morality
and a religion drowsed with more, and worse, than the
fumes of poppie«. The long debate with Whitefield was
a conflict between two irreconcilable readings of Christ's
Gospel. The controversy with the Anglican Church was
the quarrel of fire with ice. It meant the affirmation
that spiritual fact is more than ecclesiastical form, that
religion is not a mere form of social police, a system of
what may be called C'hinese moralities. It was a battle
for the spiritual reading of Christianity.

Now Wesley himself took short views. He was content
to do each day's work within the day, and never troubled
himself with the problems of to-morrow. He perhaps
had no clear vision of the fundamental discords which
lay hidden in his relations with those about him, nor of
the theology waiting to be shaped by controversy. So

THE BREACH WITH THE MORAVIANS 305

he stood, all uncouscious, on the verge of iuevitable dis-
putes; disputes with the Church of his infancy, with
the guides who had led him to Christ, with his own
closest comrade in the work lie was doing. These con-
troversies, it will be seen, determined for Methodism the
temper of its morality, the colour of its theology, the form
of its Church order.

In October, 1739, Philip Henry Molther, a Moravian
minister, came to London on his way to Pennsylvania. He
was a man of many gifts and of intense — if narrow —
piety ; and the Society in Fetter Lane — the common centre
of the new spiritual movement — at once fell under his
influence. He remained in London till the following
September, and during these few brief months Methodism
and Moravianism were rent asunder for ever.

There was a deep mystic strain in Molther's genius.
His vision of evangelical truth was intense but narrow,
and even distorted. Truth is often of a scale too large
for the tiny curve of human vision ; and in partial truth
there is deadly peril. Heresy Itself is often truth only
half seen, or seen in distorted perspective. Molther's
errors represent only a want of equipoise in his theology ;
but their practical results were gross, and even deadly.
Christ, he taught, was for a believer everything; "all
beside was nothing." And in the catalogue of things
dismissed as "nothing" — as irrelevant, or even evil — were
the ordinary duties of Christian morality and the sim-
plest acts of Christian worship. Molther taught that
there were no degrees in faith. Who had not perfect faith
had none at all. The single duty of a man wanting faith
was "to be still," and do nothing. The very means of
grace to him were hindrances — not to say .sins. "An
unbeliever, or one who has not a clean heart, ought not
to use them at all; ought not to pray, or search the
Scriptures, or communicate, but to 'be still'; and then he
will surely receive faith, which, till he is still, he cannot
have."^

In the "stillness" in which an unbeliever was to wait
the entrance of Christ into his soul he was not to go to
church, not to read the Scriptures, not to use private
prayer, not to do temporal good, not to attempt to do

'Journal, June 22, 1740.

306

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

spiritual good. The soul, in a word, was to dwell in a
spiritual and self-manufactured vacuum till Christ came
to it.

All Christian ordinances, on this theory, lost their
obligation and even their utility. Those who were with-
out faith must not use them ; those who had faith need
not. To those outside the spiritual household they were
hindrances, to those inside they were impertinences.

This is plainly a doctrine in quarrel alike with common-
sense and with the elementary laws of morality. As held
by Molther himself, and the group of fellow-mystics at
that moment about him, it might not produce any failure
in practical morality; but when filtered through minds of
coarser fibre — and bodies of stronger appetites — the
moral risks of such teaching were inevitable and tremen-
dous. As a matter of fact, Molther's teaching produced
iiistant and visible mischief. It disturbed the peace of the
Societies. Charles Wesley describes the effect on those
who accepted the new theology: "Lazy and proud in
themselves, bitter and censorious towards others, they
trample on the ordinances and despise the commands of
Christ."

Wesley hastened back from Bristol to check the course
of this evil. He found the Society full of strife and con-
fusion— its perplexed members driven, many of them, to
their wits' end. "I was," he says, "utterly at a loss what
course to take, finding no rest for the sole of my foot.
These vain janglings pursued me wherever I went, and
were always sounding in my ears." He describes in his
Journal the evil change Molther and his teachings had
already wrought on the meetings at Fetter Lane. "Our
Society," he says, "met at seven in the morning and
continued silent till eight." "At eight," he records on
another occasion, "our Society met at Fetter Lane. We
sat an hour without speaking, the rest of the time was
spent in dispute." He writes again: "In the evening
our Society met, but cold, weary, heartless, dead. I
found nothing of brotherly love amongst them now, but
a harsh, dry, heavy, stupid spirit. For two hours they
looked at one another when they looked up at all, as if
one-half of them were afraid of the other."

It is almost amusing to notice how W^esley resented
being called down from the high levels of spiritual service

THE BREACH WITH THE MORAVIANS 307

in which he was walking, to this sad controversy. And
the Moravian heresy shocked his common-sense by its
pretence of snperfine spirituality. It soared in realms too
high for him. He writes in his Journal : —

"My soul is sick of this sublime divinity. Let me think and
speak as a little child! Let my religion be plain, artless, simple!
Meekness, Temperance, patience, faith, and love, be these my
highest gifts; and let the highest words wherein I teach them be
those I learn from the Book of God!"

With characteristic frankness Wesley proceeded to dis-
cuss Molther's teaching with Molther himself. He trans-
lated his vague and misty ideas into plain English, with
the hope of shocking both Molther and his followers
by their nature, but in vain. Wesley's account of the
interview is amusing. "I weighed all his words," he says,
"with the utmost care, desiring him to explain what I
did not understand. I asked him again and again, 'Do I
not mistake what you say? Is this your meaning or is it
not?' So that I think if God has given me any measure
of understanding I could not mistake him mnch." At
the close of the interview Wesley wrote down what had
passed in the plainest words, but the whole process was
like trying to persuade a ghost to become solid flesh and
blood.

Wesley i)reached to the members every night for a
week, but his hearers were in a mood in which reason
has no office and controversy only hardens. He was told
bluntly that he was "preaching up the works of the law,
which, as believers, they were no more bound to obey
than the subjects of England were bound to obey the
laws of France. One of them said, when publicly ex-
pounding Scripture, that as many went to hell by praying
as by thieving. Another said, 'You have lost your "first
joy ; therefore you pray ; that is the Devil. You read the
Bible; that is the Devil. Y''ou communicate; that is the
Devil.' "

Finally, Wesley brought the matter to an issue. The
spurious treatise of Dionysius the Areopagite was a
favourite book amongst the Moravians. It is full — as
Wesley himself says — of "super-essential darkness," a
mere weltering chaos of mystic nonsense. Wesley took it
to the Society on the night of July 16, 1740, and read

308 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

some deadly extracts from it. Here is the passage from
it on which he challenged the little gathering: —

The Scriptures are good; prayer is good; communicating Is
good; relieving our neighbours is good; but to one who is not
born of God, none of these is good, but all very evil. For him to
read the Scriptures, or to pray, or to communicate, or to do any
outward work, is deadly poison. First let him be born of God.
Till then let him not do any of these things. For if he does, he
destroys himself.

After reading this twice or thrice over, as distinctly as I
could,' he says, 'I asked, "My brethren, is this right, or is it
wrong?" Mr. Bell answered immediately:

'It is right; it is all right. It is the truth. To this we must
all come, or we never can come to Christ.'

'Mr. Bray said, "I believe our brother Bell did not hear what
you read, or did not rightly understand."

'But Mr. Bell replied short, "Yes, I heard every word, and I
understand it well. I say, it is the truth; it is the very truth;
it is the inward truth." '

Matters, upon this, came quickly to a crisis, for this was
a doctrine which both shocked Wesley's conscience and
affronted his common-sense. Wesley himself was no
longer allowed to preach in Fetter Lane. "This place," he
was told, "is taken for the Germans." He had already
obtained possession of the Foundry — a large, disused
workshop in Moorfields — and had begun to hold services
there. If driven from Fetter Lane, he had thus a new
centre. On Sunday night, July 20, Wesley went to the
Love-feast in Fetter Lane, and read a short paper in
which he recited the reasons and the history of the dis-
pute. The paper ended : —

"You have often affirmed that to search the Scriptures, to
pray, or to communicate, before we have this faith, is to seek
salvation by works; and that till these works are laid aside, no
man can receive faith.

"I believe these assertions to be flatly contrary to the Word of
God. I have warned you hereof again and again, and besought
you to turn back to the "law and the testimony.' I have borne
with you long, hoping you would turn. But as I find you more
and more confirmed in the error of your ways, nothing now re-
mains— but that I should give you up to God. You that are of
the same judgment, follow me.'"

"I then," says Wesley, "without saying anything more,
withdrew, as did eighteen or nineteen of the society."
According to the Moravians themselves, the dramatic
'Jouraal, June 20, 1740.

THE BREAOH WITH THE MORAVIANS ?.09

effect of Wesley's departure from the building was spoilt
by a petty but iugenious trick. As the persons present
came into the room they placed their hats all together
on the ground in one corner; but Wesley's hat had been
— by design — carried off. When he had tinished his paper
and called upon all who agreed with hlni to follow him,
he walked across the room, but could not discover his
hat! The pause, the search which followed, quite effaced
the impress! veness of his departure, and, as Sou they puts
it, "the wily Molther and his followers had time to arrest
many who would have been carried away in his wake."

Zinzendorf sent another and wiser representative,
Spangenberg, to confer "with Wesley, and act as mediator
between the divided parties. Spangenberg decided that
Molther and his followers were wrong, and had treated
Wesley ill ; but this did not end the controversy. Peter
Bohler, in turn, was sent to Loudon to put matters right.
He was a man to be trusted, and Wesley's personal debt
to him, it was calculated, would outweigh all other con-
siderations. And much of the charm of Bohler and of
his influence over Wesley still survived. After an inter-
view with him Wesley wrote, "I marvel how I refrain
from joining these men. I scarce ever see any of them
b\it my heart burns within me. I long to be with them,
and yet I am kept from them."

But where practical morality was, no matter how re-
motely, concerned Wesley was inexorable, and at bottom
Moravian doctrine, as Molther had poisoned it, and as
it was now fermenting amongst Wesley's societies, was
a quarrel with morality. Wesley wrote to his brother
Samuel, whose obstinate good sense, in spite of wide
theological differences, weighed heavily with his younger
brother : —

"As yet I dare in no wise join with the Moravians; because
their general scheme is mystical, not Scriptural, refined in every
point above what is written, immeasurably beyond the plain
Gospel; because there is darkness and closeness in all their
behaviour, and guile in almost all their words; because they
not only do not practise, but utterly despise and decry self-denial
and the daily cross. For these reasons chiefly I will rather, God
being my Helper, stand quite alone than join with them."

Finally Zinzendorf himself came to England. The
question whether Moravianisra was to take root on Eng-

310 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

lish soil was at issue, and Zinaeudorf was anxious. Wes-
ley and he held a memorable conversation — not under
any roof, but in Gray's Inn Walk — at that time a little
patch of faded verdure set amid the dust and roar of
London streets.

They walked to and fro — a strange pair, the stately
German noble and the prim little Anglican divine. The
conversation wag in Latin, and is recorded in Latin in
Wesley's Journal. "Why," began Zinzendorf, "have you
changed your religion?" Wesley, of course, denied the
charge. The conversation wandered through the whole
realm of theology ; but the difference betwixt the two men
was fundamental : —

" 'You have afiQrmed,' said Zinzendorf, 'in your epistle, that
they who are true Christians are not miserable sinners; and this
is most false: for the best of men are most miserable sinners,
even till death. They who teach otherwise are either absolute
impostors, or they are under a diabolical delusion.' 'What Is
Christian perfection?' he demanded again. 'It is imputed — not
inherent. We are never perfect in ourselves.' Then he went on:
'We reject all self-denial; we trample on it. In faith we do
whatever we desire, and nothing more. We laugh at all morti-
fication; no purification precedes perfect love.""

These were, in Wesley's ears, words ra.sh, extravagant,
perilous! The conversation left the breach as wide as
ever, and later Wesley in a powerful letter formulates and
jrats on record the fundamental differences which parted
Methodism and Moravianism, and must always keej) them
asunder. Zinzendorf responded by publishing an adver-
tisement in the newsjiapers declaring that he and his
people had no connection with Joha and Charles Wesley.
Thus came to an end a goodlier fellowship than that of
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Many curious and even absurd explanations of this
breach are offered by the historians and critics of Meth-
odism. Southey blames Wesley's ambition for the con-
troversy. "John Wesley," he says, "could never have
been more than a member of the Moravian Church; the
first place was occupied, and he was not born to hold a
secondary place." Coleridge says the true reason of
the dispute is to be found in the diversity of the German
and English genius. Elsewhere he says that Zinzendorf

•Southey, vol. i. p. 220.

THE BREACH WITH THE MORAVIANS 311

was a metaphysician without logic, and Wesley a logician
without metaphysics : hence their hopeless quarrel. Later
still — and with true Coleridgean inconsistency — he finds
the blackest wicliedness in Wesley's spirit throughout the
whole transaction, and falls foul of his friend Southey for
dealing with Wesley too lightly : —

"Robert Southey (he says) is an historian worth his weight
in diamonds, and were he (which heaven forfend) as fat as
myself, and the diamonds all as big as bird's eggs, I should still
repeat the appraisal. . . . But here, I am vexed with him for not
employing stronger and more impassioned words of reprobation,
and moral recoil in this black blotch of Wesley's heart and
character."

But the cause of the dispute lies deeper than any mere
difference between English and German genius, or in the
mental characteristics of Zinzendorf and of Wesley.
Molther's teaching, in fact, was an aberration from
Moravian doctrine ; it declared, in the last analysis, that
religion had nothing to do with morality. Surely a
strange and dreadful doctrine !

Half-triiths are often whole heresies; and Molther was
led astray because he saw truth only in fragments, or in
false perspective. Christianity, in a sense, changes the
ethical order. It gives to obedience a new place, and
equips it with new motives. A forgiven soul obeys be-
cause it is forgiven, and under the motives which for-
giveness creates. But Molther was so eager to affirm that
we do not purchase our forgiveness by our obedience,
that he forgot to assert that we obey, and must obey,
under the inspiration of forgiveness.

The mischief of Molther's doctrine was immediate and
long-enduring. It poisoned the teaching of not a few of
Wesley's own helpers. It taught them what Wesley calls
"a luscious style of preaching." "They feed their people,"
he says, "with sweetmeats." They talked much of the
promises and little of the commands. "What are vulgarly
called 'Gospel sermons,' " he says again, "has now become
a mere cant word ; I wish none of our society would use
it. Let but a pert, self-sufficient animal, that has neither
sense or grace," he cries with angry energy, "bawl out
something about Christ or His blood, or justification by
faith, and his hearers cry out, 'What a fine Gospel ser-
mon.' Surely the Methodists have not so learned Christ."

312

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

The taint of Antinomianism in such teaching produced
— as was inevitable — some dreadful forms of immorality,
of which the notorious case of Wheatley, one of Wesley's
helpers, who corrupted a whole town, is an example. We
have only to i-emember the story of the Brethren and
Sisters of the Free Spirit in the fourteenth century, of
the Munster Anabaptists in the sixteenth century, and of
the New Lights in England in Cromwell's later days, to
understand the peril which overhung Wesley's work at
this stage.

Wesley's Journal gives many examples of the deadly
mischief wrought amongst his converts. Thus, in March,
1746, at Birmingham, he tells how one "came to me, and
looking over his shoulder, said, 'Don't think I want to be
in your Society; but if you are free to speak to me, you
may.' " After some conversation Weslej' asked : "Do you
believe you have nothing to do with the law of God!"

" 'I have not,' was the answer. 'I am not under the law; I live
by faith.' 'Have you, as living by faith, a right to everything in
the world?' 'I have: all is mine, since Christ is mine.' 'May
you, then, take anything you will, anywhere, suppose, out of a
shop, without the consent or knowledge of the owner?' 'I may,
if I want it; for it is mine; only I will not give offence.' 'Have
you also a right to all the women in the world?' 'Yes, if they
consent' 'And is that not a sin?' 'Yes, to him that thinks it is
a sin; but not to those whose hearts are free.' 'The same thing,'
comments Wesley, 'that wretch, Roger Ball, affirmed in Dublin.
Surely these are first-born ••hildren of Satan.' "

Seven years later Wesley records a conversation he
had, again at Birmingham, with a woman who had fallen
under Moravian influence: —

" 'I never pray,' she said, 'for what can I pray for? I have
all.' I asked, 'Do you not pray for sinners?' She said, 'No;
I know no sinners but one. I know but two in the world: God
is one and the devil is the other.' I asked, 'Did not Adam sin
of old; and do not adulterers and murderers sin now?' She
replied, 'No, Adam never sinned; and no man sins now; it is
only the devil.' 'And will no man ever be damned?' 'No man
ever will.' 'Nor the devil?' 'I am not so sure; but I believe not.'
'Do you receive the Sacrament?' 'No, I do not want it' 'Is the
word of God your rule?' 'Yes; the word made flesh, but not
the letter. I am in the spirit' "

"Upon inquiry," adds Wesley, "1 found these wild
enthusiasts were six in all — four men and two women.

THE BREACH WITH THE MORAVIANS 313

They had first run into the height of Antinomianism, and
then were given up to the spirit of pride and blasphemy."

Two years later still — so long-enduring are the forces
of evil — in 1755 — Wesley records in his Journal : —

"On Friday, April 4, to Birmingham, a barren, dry, uncom-
fortable place. Most of the seed which had been sown for so
many years the 'wild boars' have rooted up; the fierce, unclean,
brutish, blasphemous Antinomians have utterly destroyed it.
And the mystic foxes have taken true pains to spoil what re-
mained with their new Gospel."

All this shows not only how deadly, but how obstinate,
was the mischief wrought by the Moravian lapse into
Antinomianism.

Fletcher wrote his famous "Checks" to arrest the
poisonous taint which was creeping into the very blood
of the societies. These "Checks" are matchless in force
of logic and in grace of literary style ; but who now reads
them ? They are forgotten ! But this is only because the
evil which made them necessary has practically ceased
to exist. The blood of Christendom has been purged
of the Antinomian strain, and the universal Christian
conscience has arrayed itself on Wesley's side. Wesley,
indeed, did more than save his own movement from
ruin and defeat by the resolute stand he took at this
stage of his work. He helped, for all the Churches, and
for all time, to avert a peril which threatened Christian
morality itself. And how different might have been the
religious history of England if the great revival of the
eighteenth century had been captured by the my.stics; if
Zinzendorf and not Wesley had determined its theology
and stamped himself upon its character!

CHAPTER III

THE CONTROVERSY WITH WHITEFIELD

Whitefield, as we have seen, was a convinced and exult-
ant Calvinist. He believed in God's love passionately,
but he found it possible to believe that this love, high
beyond all dreams, deep beyond all sounding, had yet
a mysterious and tragical narrowness. It was certainly
narrower than the human race, since it left whole sec-
tions of that race in the outer darkness of a reprobation
lit with no gleams of mercy. The doctrine that God did
not love, the race, and that Christ had not died for all
men was, even in Whitefleld's eyes, "the children's bread,"
something precious and nourishing. To cast it away, to
leave it unproclaimed, was to rob Christ's household.

To Wesley, on the other hand, that doctrine was a
denial of the whole Gospel. It left him without a mes-
sage. There was, at this point, betwixt the leaders of the
great revival a breach of doctrinal belief deep and im-
passable. Wesley's great rule in all theological differ-
ences, however, was to "Think and let think." He had
no doctrinal tests for his societies, and he certainly would
not separate from a great and loyal comrade like White-
field, who agreed with him in so many essential beliefs,
because, at one point of metaphysical divinity, their
theologies differed.

Yet the breach in doctrine betwixt the two men was
something more than a question in metaphysics. It
was fundamental. It pierced to the very heart of their
creed. It carried with it far-reaching moral issues. It
must, sooner or later, cause a division in their work. The
mere impulse of the controversialist, the natural desire
to win converts and to refute opponents, made either
silence or peace as a permanent condition impossible.

The rupture came from Whitefleld's side. He was no
logician. His beliefs and his feelings were kept in sepa-
rate compartments; his creed was a mosaic of unrelated
fragments. Yet there are signs that in his conscience
314

THE CONTROVERSY WITH WHITEFIELD 315

there was au unacknowledged disquiet with his own the-
ology. He was conscious, too, of Wesley's greater in-
tellectual strength and wider range of scholarship; and
the knowledge that the man who was his natural leader,
at whose feet he had sat for years, differed so profoundly
from him at a point so serious, was to Whitefield a guaw-
ing, if unconfessed, disquiet. He coiild not leave the sub-
ject betwixt them alone. He writes to Wesley begging
him "for once to hearken to a child who is willing to wash
your feet" : —

"The doctrine of election, and the final perseverance of those
who are in Christ, 1 am ten thousand times more convinced of
— if possible — than when I saw you last. You think otherwise.
Why, then, should we dispute when there is no probability of
convincing?"^

But Whitefield himself could not rest. He must try
to convince Wesley. He writes to him from America : —

"The more I examine the writings of the most experienced
men and the experiences of the most established Christians the
more I differ from . . . your denying the doctrines of election
and the final perseverance of the saints. I dread coming to
England unless you are resolved to oppose these truths with less
warmth than when I was there last I dread your coming over
to America, because the work of God is carried on here and that
in a most glorious manner by doctrines quite opposite to those
you hold. God direct me what to do. Perhaps I may never see
you again till we meet in judgment; then, if not before, you will
know that sovereign, distinguishing, irresistible grace brought
you to heaven."

There is something almost amusing in the brief, com-
po.sed, matter-of-fact reply Wesley makes to Whitefield's
agitated appeals. He tries to cool his alarms with a few-
drops of patient ink : —

"The case is quite plain. There are bigots both for predes-
tination and against it. God is sending a message to those on
either side, but neither will receive it unless from one who is of
their own opinion. Therefore for a time you are suffered to be
of one opinion, and I of another. But when His time is come,
God will do what men cannot — namely, make us both of one
mind."-

Wesley's large-mindedness at this point was, on his
part, both genuine and habitual. He acted upon it as a

'Southey, vol. i. p. 226.
»7bta., p. 227.

316 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

steadfast policy. He was perfectly williug to give to his
own followers the largest liberty of disagreeing with him-
self ou abstract points, so that in the realm of practical
conduct they agreed.

Smaller controversialists meanwhile were busy, and
their zeal was quite unflavoured by either prudence or
charity. A leading member of the Society in London,
named Acourt, insisted on turning the Society into a de-
bating class on the subject of predestination, until Charles
Wesley, in the interest of quiet, gave orders that he
should no longer be admitted. John Wesley was present,
as it happened, when this too zealous theologian next
presented himself, and demanded whether he was to be
expelled because he differed from them only in opinion.
He was asked, "What opinion?" and replied, "That of
election. I hold that a certain number are elected from
eternity, and these must and shall be saved, and the rest
of mankind must and shall be damned." And he aflBrmed
that many of the Society held the same ; upon which Wes-
ley observed that he never asked w^hether they did or not;
"only let them not trouble others by disputing about it."
Acourt replied, "Nay, but I will dispute about it." "Why,
then," said Wesley, "would you come among us, whom
you know are of another mind? "Because you are all
wrong and I am resolved to set you all right." "I fear,"
said Wesley, "your coming with this view would neither
profit you nor us." "Then," rejoined Acourt, "I will go
and tell all the world that you and your brother are false
prophets."

Whitefield, on his part, continued to exhort Wesley to
a silence, in his public discourses, on the subject about
which they disagreed, which he did not himself observe.
"For Christ's sake," he writes, "if possible never speak
against election in your sermons. No one can say that I
ever mentioned it in public discourse, whatever my private
sentiments may be." And jet, at the same time, White-
field records in his journal his resolve "to henceforth
speak more boldly and explicitly as I ought to speak on
these subjects." His memory, it is clear, betrayed him
when writing to Wesley!

Meanwhile the compulsion of events was too strong for
both men. Wesley was sharply accused by a correspon-
dent of "not preaching the Gospel" — the "Gospel" being,

THP] CONTROVERSY WITH WHITEFIELD 317

according to this particular theologian, the doctrine of
election and nothing else. The latter somehow moved
even Wesley's composed mind ; and, as was his custom in
matters of difficulty, he "sought counsel of God by cast-
ing losts." This yielded the message, "Preach and print."
He accordingly, in 1739, preached and printed the immor-
tal sermon on "Free Grace," the third discourse he ever
published.

That sermon is, amongst other things, a revelation of
Wesley's real qualities as a preacher. His other printed
sermons are, in the main, so many theological dry bones ;
dry bones upon which the prophet's breath had ceased to
blow. They are the petrified remains of sermons. They
lack living tissue; there is in them no throb of passion,
no breath of life. But in this sermon we have Wesley as
a living preacher. His sentences burn with fire. There is
a pulse of energy in the very syllables. Logic and
rhetoric have opposite and, in many respects, incom-
patible qualities. Logic borrows from ice its crystalline
clearness and its coldness. Rhetoric takes from fire its
heat and glow. But in this sermon Wesley somehow gives
his logic the rush and fire of eloquence, or rather he
teaches the fiery haste of his rhetoric to steal from logic
its ordered and close-linked strength. Lord Liverpool,
on whose impassive figure Pitt and Fox, Burke and
Sheridan, had expended all their matchless eloquence in
vain, declared that parts of Wesley's sermon on "Free
Grace" were unsurpassed either in ancient or modern
ora(o),>. Here is an example of its fire: —

"It [the doctrine of reprobation] represents the most holy God
as worse than the devil, as both more false, more cruel and more
unjust. More false because the devil, liar as he is, has never
said 'He willeth all men to be saved.' More unjust because the
devil, if he would, cannot be guilty of such injustice as you
ascribe to God when you say that God condemned millions of
souls to everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,
for continuing in win which for want of that grace which He will
not give them they cannot avoid. And more cruel because that
unhappy spirit seeketh rest and findeth none, so that his own
restless misery is a kind of temptation to him to tempt others.
But God resteth in His high and holy place, so that to suppose
Him of His own mere motion, of His pure will and pleasure,
happy as He is, to doom His creatures whether they will or no to
endless misery, is to impute such cruelty to Him as we cannot
impute even to the great enemy of God and man. It is to
represent the most High God (he that hath ears to hear let him

318 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

hear) as more cruel, false, and unjust than the devil. Here I fix
my foot. You represent God as worse than the devil.

"But you say 'you will prove it by Scripture.' Hold! What!
Will you prove by Scripture that God is worse than the devil?
It cannot be. Whatever that Scripture proves, it can never prove
this; whatever its true meaning be, this cannot be its true
meaning. Do you ask, 'What is its true meaning then?' If I
say I know not you have gained nothing; for there are many
Scriptures the true sense whereof neither you nor I shall know
till death is swallowed up in victory. But this I know, better it
were to say it had no sense at all than to say that it had such a
sense as this. It cannot mean, whatever it mean besides, that
the God of truth is a liar. Let it mean what it will, it cannot
mean that the Judge of all the earth is unjust."

Whitefield, by this time, had grown more sharply
admonitory. "Give me leave," he says, "with all humility
to exhort you not to be strenuous in opposing the doc-
trines of election and final perseverance, when by your
own confession you have not the witness of the Spirit
within yourself, and consequently are not a proper judge.
I am assured God has now for some years given me this
living witness in my soul."^

Whitefield finds in the very fact that Wesley does not
fill his letters with arguments about election, a darkly
suspicious circumstance. "I wish," he writes, "I knew
your principles fully. Did you write oftener and more
frankly, it might have a better effect than silence and
reserve."

A controversialist in distress for arguments is apt to
take refuge in moral admonitions addressed to his oppo-
nent, as to the quality of his motives and conduct; and
Whitefield about this time discovers that Wesley's bad
theology has a root in the mournfully defective moral
condition of Wesley himself. "My dear brother," he
writes, "take heed. Beware of a false peace. . . . Ke-
member you are but a babe in Christ, if so much. Be
humble. Talk little. Think and pray much. ... If
you must dispute, stay till you are a master of the sub-
ject."

"Meanwhile, you will not own election," he complains
again, "because you cannot own it without believing the
doctrine of reprobation. What then," he asks indig-
nantly, "is there in reprobation so horrid?" Southey,

'Southey, vol. i. p. 228.

THE CONTROVERSY WITH WHTTEFIELD 319

who as a general rule sides with Whitefiekl against Wes-
ley, here is compelled to answer Whitefield's question : —
" 'The doctrine,' he says, 'implies that an Almighty and AUwise
Creator has called into existence the greater part of the human
race to the end that, after a short, sinful, and miserable life,
they should pass into an eternity of inconceivable torments, it
being the pleasure of their Creator that they should not be able to
obey His commands, and yet incur the penalty of everlasting
damnation for disobedience.'

Events were now moving fast. A discord in belief so
acute was certain to register itself in outward form.
Wesley strove manfully, first, to escape debate, or if this
was not possible, to carry it on in a generous temper ; but
Whitefield, for a moment, at least, fell to lower levels. He
printed and privately circulated a bitter letter against
Wesley, in which he ridiculed Wesley's habit of casting
lots to settle difficult questions, and gave instances of a
very private and confidential kind. The letter was printed
by some of Whitefield's adherents, and copies distributed
at the door of the Foundry. A copy was handed to Wes-
ley. It was obviously a private letter. Wesley held it
up, saying, "I will do just what I believe Mr. Whitefield
would were he here himself," and he tore it to pieces ; and
every person in the congregation followed his example!

But Wesley and Whitefield, of course, had followers
more vehement — more jealous for victory, and less careful
for peace — than themselves. At Kingswood. John Cen-
nick, one of Wesley's earliest converts, was employed as a
teacher, and was greatly trusted by him. He was a Cal-
vinist of an almost more aggressive type than White-
field himself, and the Arminianism of the two Wesley's
kindled in him a mood of brooding and angry mistrust.
He wrote to Whitefield, then in America, calling upon
him to hasten to England.

" 'I sit,' he said, 'solitary, like Eli, waiting what will become
of the ark. . . . How gloriously the Gospel seemed once to
flourish in Kingswood! I spake of the everlasting love of Christ
with sweet power. Yet, now brother Charles is suffered to open
his mouth against this truth, while the frightened sheep gaze in
reply. . . . With universal redemption brother Charles pleases
the world; brother John follows him in everything. I believe
no atheist can more preach against predestination than they. . . .
Fly, dear brother! I am in the midst of the plague. If God
gives thee leave, make haste.' "

'Southey, vol. i. p. 230.

820

WEBLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Humour has a wholesome office even in theology, and a
lively sense of it would have saved the Church from many
disputes and not a few heresies. An atheist preaching
against predestination is a sufficiently non-humorous con-
ception ; and when John Cennick saw in "brother Charles"
nothing but this dreadful apparition, it is a sign that he
had temporarily lost all salt of humour.

The letter fell into Wesley's hands. He had the in-
stinct of a born leader of men for discipline. This was
not a question of liberty, but of loyalty. Could he see his
teaching attacked by one of his own teachers, and under
the roof of his own school? Charles Wesley put the case
with irresistible force to Cennick himself: —

"You came to Kingswood upon my brother's sending for you.
You served under him in the Gospel as a son. I need not to say
how well he loved you. You used the authority he gave you to
overthrow his doctrine. You everywhere contradicted it (whether
true or false, is not the question). But you ought first to have
fairly told him, 'I preach contrary to you. Are you willing, not-
withstanding, that I should continue in your house, gainsaying
you? If you are not, I have no place in these regions. You
have a right to this open dealing. I now give you fair warnine.
Shall I stay here opposing you, or shall I depart?' My brother,
have you dealt thus honestly and openly with him? No. But
you have stolen away the people's heart from him. And when
some of them basely treated their best friend, God only ex-
cepted, how patiently did you take it! When did you ever vindi-
cate us as we have you! Why did you not plainly tell them,
you are eternally indebted to these men?'"

Cennick had by this time formed a separate society;
and Wesley, who always believed in straightforward
measures, had a conference with the group of revolters.
"Who told you," he asked them, "that what we preach
is false doctrine?"

"I did say this," replied Cennick, "and I say it still.
However, we are willing to join with you ; but we will also
meet apart from you."

"You should have told me this before," said Wesley,
"and not have supplanted me in my own house ... by
private accusations separating very friends."

Cennick denied that he had privately accused Wesley.
"Judge," replied Wesley to the meeting ; and he produced
Cennick's letter to Whitefield.

'Southey, vol. i. p. 236.

THE CONTROVERSY WITH WHITEFIELD 321

The gathering separated to meet again in a week. But
when they met, Wesley offered them not arguments —
it was no time for debate — but authority. He quietly
stood up and read a brief paper: —

"By many witnesses it appears that several members of tte
Band Society in Kingswood have made it their common practice
to scoff at the preaching of Mr. John and Charles Wesley; that
they have censured and spoken evil of them behind their backs,
at the very time they professed love and esteem to their faces;
that they have studiously endeavoured to prejudice other mem-
bers of that society against them, and in order, thereto, have
belied and slandered them in divers instances; therefore,, not for
their opinions, nor for any of them (whether they be right or
wrong), but for the causes above mentioned, viz., for their
scoffing at the word and ministers of God, for their tale-bearing,
back->biting, and evil-speaking, for their dissembling, lying, and
slandering, I, John Wesley, by the consent and approbation of
the Band Society in Kingswood, do declare the persons above
mentioned to be no longer members thereof. Neither will they
be so accounted until they shall openly confess their fault, and
thereby do what in them lies to remove the scandal they have
given."^

One of Cennick's followers said : —

" 'It is our holding election which is the true cause of your
separating from us.' 'You know in your own conscience it is
not,' replied Wesley. 'There are several Predestinarians in our
societies, both in London and Bristol, nor did I ever yet put
one out of either because he held that opinion.' 'Well,' said the
objector, 'we will break up our society, on condition you will
receive and employ Mr. Cennick as you did before.' 'My brother
has wronged me much,' replied Wesley, 'but he doth not say,
'"I repent." ' 'Unless in not speaking in your defence, I do not
know that I wronged you at all,' said Cennick. 'Nothing then
remains, it seems,' said Wesley, 'but for each to choose which
society he pleases.' "

Whitefield landed from America shortly afterwards.
He was burdened with financial difficulties created by his
orphan house in Georgia, and he was suffering from a
temporary loss of popularity. His mood was bitter. He
told Wesley they preached two different Gospels; there-
fore he would not join . him, but would publicly preach
against him, if ever he preached at all again. If he had
ever promised not to do this, it was "due to human weak-
ness," and he was now of a more heroic temper.

Correspondence betwixt the two friends grew bitter,

'Southey, vol. i. p. 237.

322

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

and the dispute waudered into sad realms — the number
of candles burned at Bristol, the quality of the furniture
in Wesley's bedroom. "And do you grudge me this?"
asked Wesley — "a garret in which a bed is placed. Is
this the voice of niy brother, my sou, Whitefield?"

Whitefield told Wesley in reproachful accents, "infidels
of all kinds are on your side of the question. Deists,
Arians, Socinians arraign God's sovereignty and stand
up for universal redemption." It needs no particular
degree of scholarship to know that "Deists, Arians, and
Socinians" believe in no redemption at all; that all are
philosojihical necessitarians. But scholarship was not
Whitefield's forte.

Perhaps neither party in this great debate looked at
the strong point in his opponent's position. Here is the
fact which makes the tragedy of the universe, and seems
to impeach either the goodness or the power of God:
some of His creatures are in open quarrel with His laws.
They love what He hates, and hate what He loves; and
being in quarrel with His universe, they must perish.
Now, any system of theology is bound to supply some
explanation of this grim and dreadful fact.

Coleridge supplies a characteristically vague answer:
an answer which is not an explanation of the diflSculty,
but a flight from it : —

"In the question of Election relatively to the Divine Elector,
we have only to challenge the judicial faculty as incompetent
to try the cause; and this we prove at once, by showing the
incapability of the human understanding to present the idea to
Itself as it really is, and the consequent necessity it is under
of substituting anthropomorphic conception, determined by acci-
dent of place and time (pre, post, futurum — before, after, to
come) as feeble analogies and approximations. Having thus dis-
qualified both the faculty that is to judge, and the premises that
are to be judged of, the conclusion perishes per abortem."^

This, of course, is not a solution of the problem, but
an announcement that it is insoluble. Human reason,
Coleridge says, in efifect, is incompetent to try this case.
It has no oflSce in a realm so high ! What is this but a
proclamation of the bankruptcy of reason?

Whitefield's Calvinism had, in one sense, a noble root.
It sprang, in part, at least, from humility. He had so

^Southey, vol. i. p. 227.

THE CONTROVERSY WITH WHITEFIELD 323

overwhelming a cousciousness of personal ill-desert, that
it seemed incredible that any act or condition of his own
could be an element in his acceptance with God. But
Whitefield was driven into naked Calvinism by one dread-
ful, and what seemed flawless, bit of logic. To say that
God willed to save a man who, visibly, was not saved,
meant that God had suffered moral defeat in His own
world! It was to deny His omnipotence. "How could
all be universally redeemed," he asked, "if all are not
universally saved?" Whitefield preferred to say God
would not save, rather than that He could not. Calvin
himself calls this doctrine "tremendum, horrendum, in-
comprehensihle : et verissimum. ..." And it was veris-
simum" because to deny it seemed the denial of God's
omnipotence.

But Wesley, with nobler logic, refused to save God's
omnipotence at the cost of His moral character. It were
better to deny His omnipotence than His goodness!
Whitefield's doctrine could only be true on the theory
that right and wrong are not changeless, universal, and
eternal, running through all the ranks and orders of the
universe up to God Himself, of whose character they are
the transcript. But is it thinkable that a lie, if only
God tells it, is as sacred as truth ; that what would be
hateful and cruel, if found in human conduct, becomes
admirable and good if it is only God's act! That is to
unsettle all morality! As Miss Wedgwood puts it: —

"The human being who came nearest to the God of the
Calvinists would be a father who chose out certain of his children
to be sent away from his sight, at their birth, into some den of
wickedness, to be brought up there; and who afterwards took an
active share in bringing them to the gallows. And yet men who
would have died any number of deaths themselves to save one
soul from hell have regarded the decree by which the greater
portion of the human race was devoted to hell before the world
began not merely with reverent awe, but with delight."^

But did Wesley's theology save God's character at the
expense of His omnipotence? Assuredly not! The key
to the problem lies in the very nature of moral good-
ness itself. Moral freedom is the essential condition of
moral character. Goodness means the choice of obedi-
ence when disobedience is possible. And when God

•Wedgwood, p. 230.

324 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

created moral character He took the tremendous and
inevitable risks of that great act. \n Mjo realm of moral
charricter omuipotence has no office; and God has set
us in that high kingdom. But this represents not the
defeat of God's omnipotence, but only it.s self imposed
limitations.

"Thought, conscience, will — to make them all thine own
He rent a pillar from th' eternal throne.
Made in His image, thou must nobly dare
The thorny crown of sovereignty to wear.
Think not too meanly of thy low estate;
Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create."

The denial of this truth robs all moral terms of their
significance, and we must reconstruct human language.
If the human soul is only a machine which must obey
the impulse towards lust or purity, towards love or
cruelty, which its Maker has given it, what use is there
for the phraseology of either praise or blame? And how
does it come to pass, it may be asked, that a machine
has come to conceive a thought of goodness which is not
that of a machine?

We do not save the moral character of God by denying
the free will of man ; we only transfer the shame and
guilt of human sin to God Himself. He is its author!
He planned it; He ordained it. He meant the harlot
as well as the saint ; the betrayer as well as the martyr ;
Judas as well as John, and Domitian as well as Paul.
And He then pursues His own creatures with wrath
through all the chambers of His universe, and all the
ages of His eternity, for being what He made them.
We may vary Calvin's dreadful epithets. This doctrine
is "tremendum, horrendum, incomprehensible, et fal-

SISSIMUM."

It is certain that in human society we must act on
the theory that men are responsible for their acts, and
be justly punished or rewarded for them. It is certain
that God, too, acts on that theory; and if it is not true,
then not only human society, but the whole moral uni-
verse itself, is built on a lie. If goodness is compelled
and involuntary, it ceases to be goodness ; and compelled
and involuntary sin the human conscience, with its utmost
authority, declares to be no sin. The theory that denies

THE CONTROVERSY WITH WHITEFIELB 325

this is in conflict with the surest and deepest judgment
of the human soul. No! God has set up in the human
soul the august faculty of a free moral will ; a will that
has power to say "yes" or "no" to Himself. And the
key to the glory as well as the tragedy of the universe
lies there.

The general conscience of the race, we have said, has
arrayed itself finally on the side of Wesley as against the
Moravian reading of religion. And both the reason and
the conscience of mankind have declared themselves on
the side of Wesley as against Whitefield's perverse and
dreadful theology.

CHAPTER IV

THE ONFALL OF THE BISHOPS

In a famous passage Macaulay discusses the use the
Roman Catholic Church would have made of Wesley.
Rome certainly knows the value of enthusiasm, and has
the art of using enthusiasts. What is the secret of the
strange arrest which fell upon the Reformation of the
sixteenth century, so that while Northern Europe became
Protestant, Southern Europe remained, and remains,
Roman Catholic? The explanation, of course, is found
chiefly in the emergence of the great Order of the Society
of Jesus. Ignatius Loyola is the champion Rome evolved
against Luther. He was an enthusiast of the most fanati-
cal type, and the Roman Church, instead of quarrelling
with him, found a use for him ; permitted him to create
an Order, and turned him, and it, into the most formida-
ble of weapons against its enemies. "At Rome," says
Macaulay, "the Countess of Huntingdon would have been
given a place in the calendar as St. Selina; Joanna South-
cott would have founded an order of barefooted Carmel-
ites; Mrs. Fry would have been the first superior of the
Blessed Order of Sisters of the Gaols. Ignatius Loyola
at Oxford would have headed a secession; John Wesley
at Rome would have become the first General of a new
Society devoted to the interests and honour of the
Church."

This is one of those easy and picturesque generalisa-
tions which are the charm — and the peril — of Macaulay's
historical writings. Loyola was a Spaniard, a fanatic ; a
soldier with an intellect as narrow and as hard as his own
sword. Wesley was an Englishman, a scholar, a logician,
a saint. The two men under no conditions could have
exchanged parts. The Church of Rome, moreover, is a
spiritual despotism. In the Order of Jesus, its highest
expression, slavery is crystallised into a system. The
Church and the Order correspond to each other; for
despotism and slavery are eternal correlatives. But the
Anglican Church, with all its faults, represents spiritual
326

THE ONFALL OF THE BISHOPS 327

freedom. It failed to find a place for Wesley, and that
failure is the scandal and tragedy of its history. It jus-
tifies the description of Anglicanism as "the Church of
missed opportunities." But under no conditions could it
have produced an Ignatius Loyola, or found a use for one.

But how did it happen that the Anglican Church could
not find a use for Wesley and his great comrades? These
men were more than its children ; they were God's great
and special gifts to it. They had an unquestioning faith
in its doctrines, and were fanatically zealous for its ritual
and its services. Whitefleld, if his sermons are judged by
their immediate effects, was perhaps the greatest preacher
the English race has ever produced. John Wesley had
imsurpassed gifts of leadership. Charles Wesley is one
of the immortal hymn-writers of the Christian religion.
What Church might not have welcomed such men as
divine gifts! These men, too, brought to the religion of
the eighteenth century exactly what it wanted; the note
of passion, the contagious energy of intense enthusiasm.
And they were specially fitted to render the one service
the social and religious life of that day needed — the serv-
ice of bridging the fast widening chasm betwixt the
(vhurch and the common people. On one side they were
scholars and gentlemen ; on the other they were them-
selves trained in poverty, and could talk the language of
the common people. Wesley could preach from the pulpit
of St. Mary's, at Oxford to the Heads of colleges, to Fel-
lows and under graduates and proctors, and hold them
breathless. But he could preach, too, in Gwennap Pit,,
or on the hill-.side of Kingswood, to 10,000 rough miners
and watch the tears running down well-nigh as many
faces.

Why did the Anglican Church of that day shut its
doors against men like these, and turn them, in spite
of themselves, into "schismatics"? They were its own
children, baptized at its font, fed at its table, taught in its
universities. It evolved these men, educated them, or-
dained them, and then — cast them out!

Newman's pathetic cry when he finally broke with the
Anglican Church is still remembered. "Oh my Mother!
whence is this unto thee, that thou hast good things
poured upon thee and canst not keep thera, and bearest
children yet darest not own them? . . . How is it that

328 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

whatever is generous in purpose, and tender or deep in
devotion, thy flower and thy promise, falls from thy bosom
and finds no hope within thine arms?" With better title
than even Newman Wesley might have written those
words.

The story of the slow, reluctant, compelled steps by
which Wesley formally separated — or prepared his fol-
lowers for separation — from the Anglican Church will be
told later. But there is already visible, at this early stage
of its history, a fatal inability on the part of the Anglican
Church to understand the new movement; a hopeless
breach of sympathy with it; a mood of angry suspicion
about it, which swiftly hardened into dislike, and even
grew fierce with hate. **We cannot but regard you," wrote
one of the Anglican leaders of that day, "as our most
dangerous enemies." And yet the Church of that day
had many enemies — gigantic national vices, a triumphant
infidelity, a spiritual indiflfereuce that lay like an Ant-
arctic frost on a whole people.

The Fellows of Magdalen required candidates for uni-
versity prizes to sign a paper renouncing "the practice
and principles of the people called Methodists." Bishops
levelled their charges at the unfortunate Methodists. The
clergy not seldom inspired, and sometimes even publicly
led, the mobs against them. They were forbidden to
preach under Church roofs, and then treated as criminal,
because they preached under the open sky. "They thrust
us into the mud," says Wesley, "and then complained
because we were dirty."

Wesley and his comrades, on their part, had at first
an almost passionate eagerness of obedience. It was
only when ecclesiastical obedience meant disobedience to
some spiritual obligation — when the lower duty was in
conflict with the higher — that a breach occurred. There
is an amusing account of an interview betwixt Gibson,
Bishop of London, and the two Wesley s. Gibson, as we
have already said, was a fair type of the Hanoverian
divines of that day; a scholar, a politician — he was
familiarly known as the "Pope" of Walpole, the Prime
Minister — a man who cared much for secular peace and
little for spiritual ideals. Each of the brothers had his
special difficulty to submit to the Bishop. John Wesley,
the graver spirit of the two, his mind full of the new

THE ONFALL OF THE BISHOPS

329

spiritual movement beginning to stir, asked his bishop
whether, if he preached a sermon to one of his societies,
this turned it into a conventicle, and so made it illegal.
Charles Wesley, always the High Churchman, began to
argue for the rebaptizing of Dissenters. And his logic
was resistless! If the High Church theory is true — if
baptism carries with it such tremendous consequences,
and if issues so vast depend on the right set of fingers
being employed — ought not an unhappy Dissenter's salva-
tion to be put beyond doubt by the process of rebaptizing
him? "Sure and unsure," Charles Wesley told his bishop,
"were not the same."

Gibson looked at the two brothers with alarm, and
satisfied neither of them. An eighteenth-century bishop
was required, no doubt, like modern bishops, to walk on
a tight rope with much anxious balancing; but Gibson
was only the Lord Melbourne of a century later in lawn
sleeves and an apron. His ideal about everything is
expressed by Melbourne's famous question : "Can't you
let it alone?" These young men were enthusiasts; and
"enthusiasm" was the one deadly and unforgivable offence
of which the eighteenth-century divine could be guilty.
The mere hint or whisper of it affected all the Anglican
leaders of that day as a sudden rise in the thermometer
might affect a company of architects who had just suc-
ceeded in raising a palace of ice. It was a secret omen
of swift-coming and inevitable ruin!

The Church of England, moreover, is a bundle of the-
ological compromises. In the variety of their contents,
the Thirty-nine Articles resemble the sheet Peter saw
in vision let down from heaven. Now enthusiasm is
always fatal to compromise. So the Articles were, for
the clergy of that day, either attenuated into metaphors
or frozen into icicles. But Methodism offered them the
startling apparition of these same Articles suddenly be-
come alive, translated out of decorous abstractions into
living conduct; visiting the gaols, preaching in the fields,
talking the language of the common people. And the
leaders of the new movement, when bishops frowned on
them, church doors were shut against them, and the
symbols of Christ's death were refu.sed to them, instead
of betaking themselves out of the Church and turning
Dissenters, insisted on stopping inside it, and even on

330

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

trying to mend it ! "You," cried the exasperated divines
of that day, "are our most dangerous enemies."

The Anglican Church in the eighteenth century was,
in brief, a sort of theological Sargasso Sea. On its weedy
and tideless waters institutions and articles floated as
wrecks float in those tepid latitudes. The movement
originated by Wesley and his fellows resembled a Gulf
Stream set suddenly flowing through the stagnant depths,
a gale of bracing northern air suddenly blowing across
the moveless atmosphere, much to the disturbance of all
the weed-grown hulls floating peacefully there.

On the part of the Anglican Church there was no formal
act of expulsion registered. But there was a wordless,
a more than half unconscious, but a final rejection of
the new spiritual movement and all it meant; a rejection
which constitutes one of the most tragical chapters in the
history of that Church. And that rejection, it is clear,
was due to a fundamental discord of temper, the in-
evitable and eternal quarrel betwixt fire and ice.

Four bishops have won an evil fame for themselves by
their dealings with Whitefield and the Wesleys. Gibson,
Bishop of London, began by being politely tolerant of the
new movement, and ended by throwing his whole weight
into the scales against it. He published a notable tract
against the Methodists, in which he laments through
whole pages that the Methodists declined to emigrate
from the Established Church. The Act of Toleration of
1689, exempted from certain penal statutes persons who
dissented from the Church of England; and any person
who desired to acquire the most rudimentary liberty of
conscience and of act had to pay the price of declaring
himself a Dissenter. But the Methodists refused to
label themselves with that title. They crowded to the
services of the Church. They thronged to the Communion
table in such numbers that, as Gibson lamented almost
with tears, a clergyman had not time to dine before after-
noon service! The Wesleys, he added indignantly, "have
had the boldness to preach in the fields and other open
places, and by public advertisements to invite the rabble
to be their hearers"; and still, as this curious bishop
complained, they refused to emigrate from the Church
— a Church which certainly had no message for "the
rabble," and no desire to be charged with one.

THE ONFALL OF THE BISHOPS

331

Gibson was particularly affronted with the place given
in the working theology of these new religious teachers
to the Holy Spirit. He, like many of his clergy, held the
curious theory that the Divine Spirit acted everywhere
in general, but nowhere in particular ; while the deluded
Methodists actually taught the incredible doctrine that
the Holy Spirit worked in individual souls, and mani-
fested His influence at particular moments. Whitefield
answered the bishop very happily : —

"Does it not frequently happen, my Lord, that the comfort and
happiness of our whole lives depend on one particular action?
And where then is the absurdity of saying that the Holy Spirit
may, even in the minutest circumstances, direct and rule our
hearts? . . . Did I not, when ordained deacon, affirm 'that I was
inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon me that office
and ministration'? Did not my Lord of Gloucester, when he
ordained me priest, say unto me, 'Receive thou the Holy Ghost
now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands'? And
is not this, my Lord, a reasonable evidence that I act by a divine
commission? If this be not true, must not all those whom your
Lordship ordains act only by a human commission?"'

One of Gibson's clergy, Church, Prebend of St. Paul's,
had published a pamphlet in support of his diocesan,
declaring that the Methodists were "rooting out the re-
mains of piety and devotion in the weak and well-mean-
ing." Wesley, who was always sensitive to any attack
on the practical result of his work, fell upon the un-
fortunate prebend with the fury and impact of a thunder-
bolt. "The people," Church wrote, "went on in a quiet
and regular practice of their duty before you deluded
them." We.sley replies : —

"Let us bring this question into as narrow a compass as pos-
sible. Let us go no further as to time than seven years past, as
to place than London and the part adjoining, as to persons than
you and me, Thomas Church preaching one doctrine, John Wesley
the other. Now then, let us consider with meekness and fear
what have been the consequences of each doctrine. I beseech you
to consider in the secret of your heart how many sinners you
have converted to God. By their fruits we shall know them.
By this test let them be tried. How many outwardly and
habitually wicked men have you brought to uniform habits of
outward holiness? 'Tis an awful thought. Can you instance in a
hundred? In fifty? In twenty? In ten? It not, take heed unto
yourself and to your doctrine. It cannot be that both are right
before God. Consider now (I would not speak, but I dare not

'Wedgwood, p. 305.

332 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

refrain) what have been the consequences of even my preaching
the other doctrine? By the fruits shall we know those of whom
I speak, even the cloud of witnesses who at this hour experience
the doctrine I preach to be the power of God unto salvation.
The habitual drunkard that was, is now temperate in all things.
The whoremonger now flees fornication. He that stole steals no
more, but works with his hands. He that has cursed or swore,
perhaps at every sentence, has now learned to serve the Lord
with fear, and rejoice unto Him with reverence. These are
demonstrable facts. I can name the men, with their several
places of abode.'"

Wesley usually treated bishops with respect, but a
later charge of Bishop Gibson, written in 1747, roused his
indignation. He accused Wesley of teaching that favoured
a low type of morality, and charged his clergy to warn
mankind in general against the Methodists. Wesley re-
plied in words which vibrate with a grave and noble in-
dignation : —

"Here is an angel of the Church of Christ, one of the stars
in God's right hand, calling together all the subordinate pastors,
for whom he is to give an account to God, and directing them
in the name of the Great Shepherd of the sheep, the First Be-
gotten from the dead, the Prince of the kings of the earth, how
to make full proof of their ministry, that they may be free from
the blood of all men; how to feed the flock of God, which He hath
purchased with His own blood! To this end they are all assem-
gled together. And what is the substance of all his instructions?
'Reverend brethren, I charge you all, lift up your voice like a
trumpet, and warn, and arm, and fortify all mankind — against a
people called Methodists.'

"Is it possible? Could your lordship discern no other enemies
of the Gospel of Christ? Are there no Papists, no Deists in the
land? Have the Methodists (so-called) monopolised all the sins,
as well as errors, in the nation? Is Methodism the only spread-
ing sin to be found without the Bills of Morality?'"

Bishop Lavington added himself later to the choir of
bishops lifting up their voices in rebuke of Methodism,
and his contribution to the angry music was of a very
shrill kind. Bishop Lavington, says Miss Wedgwood with
feminine energy, "deserves to be coupled with the men
who flung dead cats and rotten eggs at the Methodists,
not with those who assailed their tenets with arguments,
or even serious rebuke." The particular missile Lavington
flung at Methodism was the charge that it was but Roman

•Wedgwood, p. 306.
*lbid., p. 310.

THE ONFALL OF THE BISHOPS

333

Catholicism thinly disguised. Methodism reproduced, he
asserted, every evil quality of Eomanism; its bigotry,
its fanaticism, its falsehood. Bishop Lavington made an
excursion into heathen realms in search of a parallel to
Methodism, and found it in the Eleusinian mysteries. In
the filthiest reading of those mysteries the Bishop dis-
covers what he thinks is a final explanation of Method-
ism; it is the work of some evil spirit, a sort of magical
operation of diabolical illusion.

Both Wesley and Whitefield replied to Bishop Laving-
I ton, Wesley in a tone of severity, Whitefield in a gentler
note; and for once Whitefield proved the more formi-
dable disputant. Gentleness is sometimes a more effective
weapon than anger. He showed, with fine and resistless
logic, that Bishop Lavington's attack on the enthusiasm
of the new movement was an assault rather upon Chris-
tianity than upon Methodism. The episcopal logic that
condemned Wesley and Whitefield would have smitten
with equal fury St. Peter and St. Paul.

Bishop Horne, of Norwich, showed a better temper
than his brother bishops, but his logic was as feeble and
I as strange as theirs, and his dislike of Methodism as
I acute. In a sermon preached before the University of
Oxford he charged "the new lights of the tabernacle and
the Foundry" with evil teaching as to faith and lax teach-
ing as to morality. "Have you ever read," Wesley re-
plied, "the writings of which you speak?" As a matter
of fact Horne had not thought it necessary to read
Wesley's writings before replying to them. For Horne,
as for many others disputants, the business of refuting
his opponent's opinions was made much easier by taking
the precaution of omitting to know what they were.
"Had you only taken the trouble of reading one tract
— the 'Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion,' " said
Wesley, "you would have seen that a great part of what
you affirm is what I never denied." And he proceeded
to show, what indeed was obvious, that all he taught
was found in the Articles and in the Bible.

Warburton, the great literary bully of his day, fell
upon the Methodists with a bludgeon. Warburton was
by original profession an attorney, a calling for which
nature plainly intended him, but ill-fortune, both for
himself and for the Church, made him a bishop; though

334 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

De Quincey suggests that Warburton's betaking himself
to long sleeves aud an apron saved the twelve judges of
that day from being driven mad by his amazing gifts
of angry controversy. Bentley dismissed Warburton's
scholarship by saying that he was "a man of monstrous
appetite but bad digestion" ; and a competent critic has
suflBciently described his controversial style by saying
that Warburton's stock argument is a threat to cudgel
any one who disputes his opinion.

Warburton's arrogance soared to strange altitudes. His
creed, says Leslie Stephen, might be summed up in the
words, "There is but one God, and Warburton is His
attorney-general I" He led for years "the life of a terrier
in a rat-pit worrying all sorts of theological vermin." It
was his agreeable habit to describe his opponents as
"wretches, the most contemptible for their facts, the most
infernal for their morals." And this terrier in long
sleeves and episcopal apron treated the Wesleys as so
much vermin to be worried, and with a sort of canine
relish.

How a divine of this temper assailed such men as
Whitefield and the Wesleys may be guessed. He de-
clared that the Holy Spirit had fulfilled his office when
the canon of Scripture was completed. It was mere
fanaticism to claim the enlightening grace of that Spirit
in modern days; as if, Warburton shouted, in indignant
tones, "it needed the further assistance of the Holy Spirit
to explain His own meaning." Then this "father in God"
fell upon John Wesley personally. He was cowardly, he
was false, he was vindictive; he challenged persecution
and then ran away from it ; he was a mere wily and
malignant hypocrite, &c., &c. And these were the kindest
words that a bishop of the Anglican Church could find
to expend on a son of that Church who was toiling with
an intensity of zeal, unparalleled since apostolic days,
to bring fallen men and women into Christ's kingdom !

Who reads these faded i>amphlets and letters in which
still smoulder the fire of far-off and long-dead contro-
versies finds himself irresistibly on Wesley's side; and
this is not merely because he writes better English, em-
ploys a more convincing logic, and bears himself with a
finer temper than his opponents. He dwells visibly on
a higher level than they. He represents a different reli-

THE ONFALL OF THE BISHOPS

335

gious climate. Here is a mati who sees the real end for
which all Church machinery exists; and he will not
sacrifice these great ends for some small, irrelevant — not
to say impertinent — question of machinery. For him, at
least, the end is more than the means, and nobler. Moor-
fields, where such vast open-air crowds hung on Wesley's
preaching, happened to be in the ecclesiastical parish of
a certain Dr. Buclsley, otherwise quite unknown to his-
tory; and the Bishop of London, who thought much of
his clergj^'s rights and little of the sad crowds outside all
the churches, wept rhetorical tears through a whole epis-
copal charge over the injuries Dr. Buckley suffered by
Wesley preaching in the open air within the bounds of his
parish. Here are a few sentences from Wesley's reply : —

"There are, in and near Moorfields, ten thousand poor souls,
for whom Christ died, rushing headlong into hell. Is Dr. Buckley,
the parochial minister, both willing and able to stop them? If
so, let it be done, and I have no place in these parts. I go, and
call other sinners to repentance. But if, after all that he has
done, and all that he can do, they are still in the broad way to
destruction, let me see if God will put a word even in my mouth."

Later will be discussed the whole subject of the rela-
tion betwixt the Church of England and Wesley, and
the events which compelled him to form what proved
to be a separate Church. But the general attitude of
the Church towards the revival is to be judged by the
utterances of its leaders, such as we have described.
And the example of the bishops provoked, as was natural,
rough imitation. Bishops wrote tx'eatises against the
Methodists ; the clergy preached sermons against them ;
the mob flung stones. Each class used its own weapons.
Lawn sleeves in episcopal palaces, when translated into
the vernacular, became mere mud and cudgels. The
clergy, it may be added, not seldom carried their hate
of the revival to the sacramental table itself. Thus
Charles Wesley records in his Journal : —

"Sunday, July 27. — I heard a miserable sermon at Temple
Church, recommending religion as the most likely way to raise
a fortune. After it proclamation was made that all should de-
part who were not of the parish. While the shepherd was driving
away the lambs, I stayed, suspecting nothing, till the clerk came
to me, and said, 'Mr. Beecher bids you go away; for he will not
give you the Sacrament.' I went to the vestry door, and mildly
desired Mr. Beecher to admit me. He asked, 'Are you of this

336 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

parish?' I answered, 'Sir, you see I am a clergyman.' Dropping
his first pretence, he charged me with rebellion in expounding
the Scripture without authority, and said, in express words, 'I
repel you from the Sacrament' I replied, 'I cite you to answer
this before Jesus Christ at the day of judgment.' This enraged
him above measure. He called out, 'Here! take away this man!'
The constables were ordered to attend; I suppose lest the furious
colliers should take the Sacrament by force. But I saved them
the trouble of taking away 'this man,' and quietly retired."

What profit is there recalling to human memory such
old, far-off, unhappy, and now forgotten, conflicts? But
this controversy, like that with the Moravians, and that
with Whitefield, heli)ed to shape history. And the his-
tory of which the Methodist Church to-day is the out-
come cannot be understood without the tale of this dis-
pute being told.

CHAPTER V

THE CONFERENCE

It was clear, almost at the first breath, that Wesley's
work was charged with strange forces and unguessed pos-
sibilities, and, as we have seen, it quickly took a great
scale. Within the brief period of five years (1739-44)
it was visibly stirring England. It found everywhere
htarers in multitudes; its converts were to be counted by
thousands. What was in progress was not so much a
revival as a religious revolution.

At this stage Wesley himself seems to become vaguely
conscious of the momentum of the forces stirring about
him. He sees new agencies springing to existence under
his hands. He catches a dim and broken vision of the
possibility of his work. And with the true instinct of a
great leader he sets himself to create a sort of regulating
centre for the movement. It was necessary to give clear-
ness to its theology, method to its zeal, order to its
energies, discii)line to its results. Wesley was by natural
genius intolerant of confusion. He must weave into one
close-knitted, methodical plan all the forces and agencies
of which he was the personal centre. So on June 25,
1744, he called his first Conference; a council in which,
with a few spirits most akin to his own, he may formulate
plans for the spiritual campaign now in progress.

It consisted of just ten men, the two Wesleys them-
selves and four other clergymen — Hodges, rector of
Wenvoe ; Piers, vicar of Bexley ; Taylor, vicar of Quintin,
and John Merriton. To these were added later four lay
preachers who had not the status of ministers — Thomas
Maxfield, John Downs, Thomas Richards, and John Ben-
net. This little company met in the Foundry. Its mem-
bers were, in one sense, an unpicturesque group, and no
one at the moment could have discovered in their meeting
any special significance. They met under the shadow of
great events. The country was at war with France. The
young Pretender was preparing to land in Scotland ; civil
337

338

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

war was on the point of breaking out. Tlie Habeas
Corpus Act was suspended. One Cabinet was tottering
to its fall, another about to be formed.

It was at the moment when great events of this scale
were in the air, and amid the clash and dust of stormiest
politics, that this tiny group, most of them utterly un-
known men, met day by day to discuss points of theology.
No gathering could well seem more insignificant. Yet,
judged by its historical consequences, that unpicturesque
gathering in the Foundry is the most important even
1744 witnessed. It was the first Methodist Conference!
It created unconsciously the most remarkable, and in
some senses the most powerful, ecclesiastical council
modern Christianity knows; a machinery which is to-
day the efi'ective instrument of government for a Church
of nearly 30,000,000 people.

Who looks with meditative eyes at that little cluster of
grave-faced men may see in it a curious reflex of Wesley's
work at the moment, and a prophecy of its coming de-
velopment.

Methodism at this stage was a movement within the
Anglican Church itself. It was a spiritual revival which
found its inspiration and its leadership in a group of
Anglican ministers. So of the ten persons who formed
the first Methodist Conference six were, fitly enough,
Anglican divines. But the movement was destined to
run far beyond the boundaries of the Anglican Church.
It was to give a new development to the Christian
ministry itself, and to confer on laymen a partnership
in church life and work hitherto unknown. And so, with
prophetic fitness, of the ten men four were lay preachers,
upon whose heads no ordaining hands had yet been laid.

The laymen, it is true, were in that first Conference only
by sufferance. The six clergymen met together first. The
earliest question asked was, "Shall any of our lay brethren
be i)resent at this Conference?" When contemplated
through ecclesiastical spectacles Wesley's helpers were
still only "lay brethren," although they were given up to
the work of preaching. The recorded and suflSciently
cautious answer to the question is, "We agree to invite
from time to time such as we think proper." Then came
the question, "Which of them shall we invite to-day?"
The answer is the four names given above. When the

THE CONFERENCE

339

second Conference was held in Bristol a year later, it
consisted again of ten men, and of these seven were
laymen, and one was not even a preacher, and never
became one. For a wide space of sad years in later time
laymen had no place in Methodist Conferences; but it
must never be forgotten that they formed part of their
original constitution.

The first Conference makes its appearance amid the
fervours of a great spiritual work, and, as might be ex-
pected, its temper was intensely earnest. Its earliest
recorded resolutions run : —

"That all things be considered as in the immediate presence of
God. That we meet with single eye, and as little children, who
have everything to learn. That every point which is proposed
may be examined to the foundation.'"

It was asked again : "How may the time of this Con-
ference be made more eminently a time of watching unto
prayer?" The answer is : "1. While we are conversing, let
us have an especial care to set God always before us. 2.
In the intermediate hours, let us visit none but the sick,
and spend all the time that remains in retirement. 3.
Let us therein give ourselves to prayer for one another,
and for a blessing upon this our labour."

This Conference was plainly no mere debating society.
It was to work as well as argue !

The first stage of the Conference — it lasted six days
— was spent in very keen and earnest discussion of the
question of "What to teach?" And who reads the "con-
versations" which follow, and which range over such
great subjects as justification, faith, sanctification, &c.,
might well conclude that this first of all Methodist Con-
ferences was setting out on a cruise in search of a creed.
Here was a group of divines painfully occupied in re-
discovering Christianity! But this is not so. These
serious-faced divines and laymen had no theology which
wandered outside the limits of the Thirty-nine Articles.
But what they were doing was very significant. They
were testing and re defining these doctrines in the light
of conscious spiritual experience. The definitions of
justification, repentance, faith, &c., which they record, are
curiously simple and direct. Here are examples : —

•Myles, p. 36,

340

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"Q. What is It to be justified? A. To be pardoned, and re-
ceived into God's favour, into such a state, that if we continue
therein, we shall be finally saved. Q. Is Faith the condition of
Justification? A. Yes; for every one who believes is justified.
. . . Q. What is Faith? A. Faith in general is a divine super-
natural Elencbos (demonstration) of things not seen; i. e. of
past, future, or spiritual things: it is a spiritual sight of God
and the things of God. Therefore, Repentance is a low species
of Faith — i. e. a supernatural sense of an offended God. Then,
a sinner is convinced by the Holy Ghost. 'Christ loved me and
gave Himself for me.' This is the faith by which he is justified
or pardoned the moment he receives it. Immediately the same
Spirit bears witness, 'Thou art pardoned. Thou hast redemption
in His blood.' And this is saving faith, whereby the love of
God is shed abroad in His heart.'"

Here is theology, uot in the form of metaphysics, but
of verified human experience. Every syllable of these
definitions has for this group of men been tested in the
alembic of consciousness.

It is still amusing to notice how that first Conference
tried to maintain its theological equipoise amid the shocks
of controversy. Thus it proceeds to painfully interrogate
itself, in the form of question and answer, as to the
correctness of its own views : —

"Q. Have we not, unawares, leaned too much towards Cal-
vinism? A. We are afraid we have. Q. Have we not also leaned
towards Antinomianism? A. We are afraid we have."

But the second Conference met when the horizon was
clearer and the heats of controversy had begun to cool.
It finds that the pendulum has swung too far in one
direction. The points of agreement rather than of dif-
ference have now to be emphasised. So we have a new
record : —

"Q. Does not the truth of the Gospel lie very near both to
Calvinism and Antinomianism? A. Indeed it does: as it were,
within a hair's-breadth. So that it is altogether foolish and
sinful, because we do not quite agree with one or the other, to
run from them as far as we can. Q. Wherein may we come to
the very edge of Calvinism? A. (1) In ascribing all good to
the free grace of God. (2) In denying all natural freewill, and
all power antecedent to grace; and (3) In excluding all merit
from man; even for what he does by the grace of God. Q. Where-
in may we come to the edge of Antinomianism? A. (1) In
exalting the merits and love of Christ. (2) In rejoicing evermore.
Q. Does faith supersede (set aside the necessity of) holiness or

'Myles, p. 27.

THE CONFERENCE

341

good works? A. In no wise. So far from it that it implies both,
as a cause does its effects."

Where else in history can we find a company of the-
ologians, just emerging from a controversy, so honestly
anxious to sober their own views in this wise fashion !
How intensely practical, and how closely personal, again,
was the test by which these early Methodist preachers
tried their theology, may be judged from a fragment of
one of the conversations in the Conference of 1745, at
Bristol :—

"Q. Do we empty men of their own righteousness, as we did
at first? ... A. This was at first one of our principal points.
And it ought to be so still. For, till all other foundations are
overturned, they cannot build upon Christ. Q. Did we not then
purposely throw them into convictions? Into strong sorrow and
fear? Nay, did we not strive to make them inconsolable? Re-
fusing to be comforted. A. We did, and so we should do still.
For the stronger the conviction, the speedier is the deliverance.
And none so soon receive the peace of God as those who steadily
refuse all other comfort. Q. Let us consider a particular case.
Were you, Jonathan Reeves, before you received the peace of
God, convinced that notwithstanding all you did, or could do,
you were in a state of damnation? J. R.: I was convinced of it
as fully as that I am now alive. Q. Are you sure that conviction
was from God? J. R.: I can have no doubt it was. Q. What do
you mean by a state of damnation? J. R.: A state wherein if a
man dies he perisheth for ever. Q. How did this conviction end?
J. R.: I had first a strong hope that God would deliver me, and
this brought a degree of peace. But I had not that solid peace of
God till Christ was revealed in me.'"

These, it is clear, are theologians of quite a new type.
They keep their feet on the solid earth. The articles in
their creed beat in perfect rhythm with the facts of their
consciousness. And yet they recognise quite frankly the
law of development in their beliefs. Thus the second
Conference asks : —

"Q. Wherein does our doctrine now differ from that we
preached when at Oxford? A. Chiefly in these two points: (1)
We then knew nothing of that righteousness of faith, in justifica-
tion; nor (2) of the nature of faith itself, as implying a con-
sciousness of pardon."

The first Conference discussed some questions which
belong to the realm of casuistry, such as : "How far the

'Myles, p. 47.

342 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Christian man may submit his judgment to others;"
"Whether it is lawful to bear arms;" "How far it is a
duty to obey a bishop," &c. It discussed at length "The
Society and its OflBcers," and prepared rules which are
practically the marching orders for the Methodist soldiery
for all time, the translation into spiritual terms of, say.
Lord Wolseley's "Soldier's Pocket-Book." But one sub-
ject debated was of what may be called prophetic impor-
tance— the relation of the new movement to the Anglican
Church, and the probable developments in those relations
which lay in the future. The debate went with admirable
directness to this, the most important of all problems : —

"Q. Do we separate from the Church? A. We conceive not:
we hold communion therewith, for conscience' sake, by constantly
attending both the Word preached, and the sacraments adminis-
tered therein. Q. What then do they mean who say, 'You
separate from the Church'? A. We certainly cannot tell. Per-
haps they have no determinate meaning, unless by the Church
they mean themselves — i e. that part of the clergy who accuse us
of preaching false doctrine. And it is sure we do herein separate
from them, by maintaining that which they deny. Q. Is it not
probable that your hearers after your death will be scattered
into all sets and parties? Or, that they will form themselves into
a distinct sect? A. 1. We are persuaded that the body of our
hearers will, even after our death, remain in the Church unless
they be thrust out 2. We believe, notwithstanding, either that
they will be thrust out, or that they will leaven the whole Church.
3. We do, and will do, all we can to prevent those consequences
which are supposed likely to happen after our death. 4. But we
cannot, with a good conscience, neglect the present opportunity
of saving souls while we live, for fear of consequences which may
possibly or probably happen after we are dead."'

It would be diflScult to surpass for cool-headed and prac-
tical wisdom the words of that closing resolution.

No one can read the minutes of that first Conference
without seeing that already — though quite unconsciously
as far as the persons most affected were concerned — a
Church, singularly practical and complete in organisa-
tion, was crystallising into shape. All the permanent
features of Methodist organisation are clearly visible
within five years of Wesley preaching his first open-air
sermon. That first Conference, for example, asked the
question : "What oflScers belong to this Society?" and the
answer shows how nearly complete, even at that stage,

'Myles, p. 4T.

THE CONFERENCE

S43

was the organisation of Methodism. As early as 1747
Wesley laid down "Rules for the Stewards of the Meth-
odist Societies," and these are an exquisite reflex not only
of his business sagacity, but of his consideration for the
poor. They might very happily govern the Church affairs
of Methodism to-day : —

"1. You are to be men full of the Holy Ghost, and of wisdom,
that you may do all things in a manner acceptable to Godt

2. You are weekly to transact the temporal affairs of the Society.

3. You are to begin and end every meeting with earnest prayer
to God for a blessing on all your undertakings. 4. You are to do
nothing without the consent of the minister, either actually had
or reasonably presumed. 5. You are to consider whenever you
meet, 'God is here.' Therefore be serious. Utter no railing word.
Speak as in His presence, and to the glory of His great Name.
6. When anything is debated, let one at once stand up and speak,
the rest giving attention. And let him speak just loud enough to
be heard, in love and in the spirit of meekness. 7. In all de-
bates, you are to watch over your spirits, avoiding, as fire, all
clamour and contention, being swift to hear, slow to speak; in
honour every man preferring another before himself. 8. If you
cannot relieve, do not grieve the poor. Give them soft words, if
nothing else. Abstain from either sour looks or harsh words.
Let them be glad to come, even though they should go empty
away. 9. Put yourselves in the place of every poor man, and
deal with him as you would God should deal with you.'"

Some of the early agencies of Methodism have not
survived the test of time. The band meetings, for ex-
ample, represent the swing of the spiritual pendulum in
a dangerous direction. They came perilously near the
confesssional, and had some of the mischiefs of the con-
fessional. They have disappeared. But the main features
of Methodism, as Wesley even at this early stage of his
work shaped them, have survived, and amongst these the
most conspicuous is the Conference, whose genesis is here
described. A whole sisterhood of such Conferences is in
energetic operation to-day; and each remains, in sub-
stance if not in detail, faithful to the original type.

The Conference, indeed, as a bit of ecclesiastical
machinery, is perhaps the most original contribution that
Methodism has made to church history. Methodism
itself to-day would be a mere jumble of unrelated frag-
ments but for this great court, which is at once the
symbol and the instrument of its unity. In the Methodist

'Myles, p. 36.

344 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

system the Conference is the thinking organ of the
Church; the instrument of government; the nerve-centre
that co-ordinates all the forces of the spiritual organism,
and puts them under the government of a single purpose.
No other council known to religious history has quite the
functions of the Methodist Conference. It is a parliament
clothed with all the functions of legislation; a cabinet
of administration; a court of discipline; the machinery
by which the great system of the itinerancy, which is
characteristic of the pastorate of the Methodist Churches,
is regulated. Hidden in the itinerancy, it may be added,
is a silent, unplanned, almost unrecognised but most
effective instrument of discipline; a force which secures
all the ends without the forms of disciplinary process,
and which goes far to explain the doctrinal purity of the
Methodist Church.

Methodist Churches exist to day under every sky, and
they are naturally affected in many details by their social
and geographical environment. In Great Britain, for ex-
ample, the parent Conference itself runs some risk of
suffering, in order and energy, by mere congestion of
numbers. A public meeting of nearly a thousand men,
all trained talkers, is the worst instrument for the dis-
charge of business the wit of man ever invented, or the
patience of man ever suffered. We must go to Poland
with its "liberum veto" for its analogue. In the British
Conference, by the mere necessity of its scale, the work
has to be done by committees; and the Conference it-
self, except on broad matters of policy, is practically a
mere registering instrument for its own committees. This
is not a wholesome state of things, for it represents a
certain divorce of power from responsibility; the com-
mittees have power without responsibility; the Conference
has responsibility without power. The system, in a word,
is apt to become Venetian, and to give power to a few
who meet and decide without the tonic of publicity.

In the United States the episcopal system modifies the
Conference; yet the bishops are the creation of the Con-
ference and remain its servants. In Canada and Aus-
tralia, the mere scale of geography has modified the struc-
tui'e and functions of the Conference. In Australia, for
example, the annual Conferences are purely administra-
tive bodies. The General Conference, which meets every

THE CONFERENCE

345

four years, is a representative body, acts as a court of
1 review, and is the sole depository of legislative power.
The separation of functions represents, scientifically, the
highest stages of any organism. And in actual practice
the separation of the administrative and legislative func-
tions in the Conference is attended with many happy
results. Administration is more effective than under the
old system ; while the fact that legislation is confined to
a body which meets only once in four years has some
I obvious advantages. The opportunity of making legis-
lative experiments comes only at long intervals.

But under all skies, and all geographical and social
conditions, the Methodist Conference still bears the stamp
of the providential impulse from which it sprang, and of
the masterful will, and the statesman-like intellect, of the
great leader who gave it form. It is not a mere debating
society. It is not a bit of unqualified democracy. Lay-
men, it is true, as far as the finances and business inter-
ests of the Church are concerned, have been taken into
frankest partnership; but, speaking generally, the pas-
toral office is strictly conserved, and all that relates to
the training and discipline of ministers, and their dis-
tribution over the pastoral charges of the Church, is in
the hands of the ministers.

And where in all ecclesiastical history is to be found so
effective an instrument of government? The great Coun-
cils of the Middle Ages, like so many modern ecclesiastical
assemblies, were in the main huge debating societies.
They emerge in the crisis of some heresy; they settle —
or fail to settle — some dispute about doctrine, ^ind they
' vanish. Under an episcopal form of Church government
the Church Council can hardly have any other than de-
bating functions. Churches, again, of the Congregational
I type, or Presbyterian Churches, with a fixed pastorate,
1 can have no governing court with a range, both of un-
/ challenged authority and of practical work, which belongs
I to the Methodist Conference. In its Conference the
Methodist system reaches its natural and highest expres-
sion. It is a body which does not merely reign; it gov-
erns. And it governs effectively and without challenge.

CHAPTER VI

A YEAR OP CRISIS

The year 1764 is, in many respects, a critical period in the
evolution of the Methodist Church. It marks the close of
one stage and the beginning of another. It was twenty-
five years since Wesley stood on the hillside at Kings-
wood and preached his first sermon in the open air. For
a quarter of a century the Revival had now flowed on
without pause or ebb, and it was visibly reshaping the
religious life of England. Wesley's societies were scat-
tered all over the United Kingdom, each society a little
germinating point of spiritual life. Wesley had gathered
round himself, and was training in his helpers, a new
order of Christian workers, in some respects curiously
like the preaching friars of the Middle Ages, or the "poor
preachers" whom Wyclitfe sent out; but with a better
creed, a gladder message, and a wiser organisation than
either. There is no other spiritual movement recorded
in history since apostolic days that shows from its very
birth such sustained energy, and such power of continual
advance, as did the movement of which Whitefleld and
the Wesleys were the leaders.

But twenty-five years in such a work make up a wide
space of time, and bring with them many changes. Wes-
ley's comrades, one by one, had dropped from his side.
W^hitefield was broken in health. His American orphan-
age tilled an almost absurdly wide space in his mental
horizon. He had never attempted to build up an endur-
ing spiritual structure. The crowd, swayed by his rushing
speech as a field of yellow, rustling corn is swayed by the
wind, was his ideal; it represented his one effective form
of work. To patiently weave over the surface of the three
kingdoms a great network of tiny societies was a task
quite alien to his genius. As he himself said, "I should
but weave a Penelope's web if I formed societies, and if
I should form them I have no proper assistants to take
care of them. I intend, therefore, to go about preach-
ing the Gospel to every creature." But as a matter of
346

A YEAR OF CRISIS

347

fact Whitefield no longer had physical energy enough for
his preaching services, and four years later he died.

Charles Wesley, too, was falling out of the work. His
health was shaken. He was married, and had now the
cares of a family. The poet in him had largely taken the
place of the preacher, and the evangelist gave place more
and more to the High Churchman. There were some
twenty-seven years of strenuous work yet before Wesley,
but it was to be lonely work. From 1764 he stands out
a solitary figure, sole leader and representative of the
Great Revival.

At this point, too, the relation of the work to the
Church of England becomes more definite. The work
began within the Church ; its originator and leaders were
Anglican clergymen ; and it was one of the happy pos-
sibilities of the Revival that it might have remained a
movement within the Church, transforming its whole
spirit and outlook. The onfall of the bishops had helped
to wreck this possibility, and at this stage in Wesley's
career it had become clear, even to the reluctant eyes of
Wesley himself, that the Anglican Church and the Re-
vival were to flow in different channels.

Wesley's own policy was definite, consistent, and per-
fectly intelligible. He would not by any act of his own
separate from the Church. He sat in his own person a
shining example of loyalty to its services. He held his
followers to them with all the energy of his masterful
will. He whipped them away from all thought of dissent
with constant rebuke. But he held separation from the
Church to be — not lawful — but only inexpedient. From
the first, indeed, he saw with clearest vision that sepa-
ration would probably come; nay, that under some cir-
cumstances it ought to come. He only hoped it would
not be till he was dead.

In his first Conference (in 1744), a Conference iu
which, out of ten persons, six were Anglican clergymen,
the whole case is stated, as we have seen, with luminous
clearness, and with almost prophetic foresight. In the
Conference of 1746 the questions of a National Church
and of the divine right of episcopacy were again dis-
cussed at length, and answered once more in a strongly
anti-sacerdotal sense.

But there were forces working both ways. In the Con-

348

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

fereuce of 1752 Charles Wesley drew up, aud persuaded
the leading members of the Conference to sign, a remark-
able pledge, the final clause of which was a promise
"never to leave the communion of the Church of Eng-
land without the consent of all those whose names were
subjoined." John Wesley, who was always less of a
Churchman than Charles, defiiied his position four years
later in the following terms : —

"I still believe the episcopal form of Church government to be
scriptural and apostolical. I mean well agreeing with the prac-
tice and writings of the Apostles. But that it is prescribed in
Scripture I do not believe. This opinion, which I once zealously
espoused, I have been heartily ashamed of ever since I read
Bishop Stillingfleet's 'Irenicon.' I think he has unanswerably
proved that neither Christ nor His Apostles prescribe any par-
ticular form of Church government; and that the plea of divine
right for diocesan episcopacy was never heard of in the primitive
Church.

"I would take some pains to recover any one from error, or to
reconcile him to our Church, I mean to the Church of England;
from which I do not separate yet, and probably never shall; but I
would take much more pains to recover any one from sin."'

In the Conference of the same year (1756) again it is
recorded : "We largely considered the necessity of keep-
ing the Church, and using the clergy with tenderness.
And there was no dissenting voice. God gave us all to
be of one mind and of one judgment."

Wesley himself adds : "My brother and I closed the
Conference by a solemn declaration of our purpose never
to separate from the Church. And all our brethren con-
curred therein. "2

In 1758 Wesley published "Twelve Reasons against
Separating from the Church of England." The sum of
the whole runs: "Whether it be lawful or not (which it-
self may be disputed, being not so clear a point as some
may imagine), it is by no means expedient for us to
.separate from the Established Church. "^ Charles Wes-
ley, always on this ])oiut more vehement than his brother,
appends to the "reasons" a statement which runs: —

"I subscribe to them with all my heart. Only with regard to
the first: I am quite clear, that it is neither expedient, nor lawful,

'Tyerman, vol. ii. p. 244.
'Myles, p. 80.
mid., p. 81.

A YEAR OF CRISIS

349

for me to separate, and I never had the least inclination or
temptation so to do. My affection for the Church is as strong as
ever; and I clearly see my calling, which is to live and die in
her communion. This, therefore, I am determined to do, the
Lord being my helper.'"

In a private letter written at the same time, he says:
"I should have broken off from the Methodists and my
brother, in 1752, but for the agreement. I think every
l)reacher should sign that agreement, or leave us."^

Nothing can be clearer in all this historj' than Wesley's
personal loyalty to the Church of England, and his deep,
and even passionate, desire to retain his converts within
the boundaries of that Church. But the resistless logic
of events made changes inevitable. Wesley was losing
one by one his spiritual allies in the Church itself. The
Bishops were, from the first, openly hostile, and no bond
of interest or sympathy linked the Church any longer to
the Revival. Wesley in 175G was urged by his Church
friends to disband his army of itinerating preachers, and
to hand over his societies to the care of the parish clergy.
He discussed the proposal with great calmness and
frankness : —

"First, who shall feed them with the milk of the Word? The
ministers of their parishes? Alas! they cannot; they themselves
neither know, nor live, nor teach the Gospel." As to his helpers.
Wesley adds, "Here is another difficulty still: what authority
have I to forbid their doing what I believe God has called them
to do? I apprehend, indeed, that there ought, if possible, to be
both an outward and inward call to this work; yet, if one of
the two be supposed wanting, I had rather want the outward than
the inward call. I rejoice that I am called to preach the Gospel
both by God and man. Yet, I acknowledge, I had rather have the
Divine without the human, than the human without the Divine
call.'"

He had at that time thirty-four societies in Cornwall
alone, and he asks : "Will they prosi)er as well when they
are left as sheep without a shepherd? The experiment
has been tried again and again, and always with the same
event."

In 1764 Wesley wrote his famous circular letter to all
the evangelical clergy who might be supposed to sym-

'Myles, p. 84.
'Tyerman, vol. ii. p. 245.
'Ibid., p. 250.

350 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

pathise with the Revival. The letter is a noble plea for
patience, toleration, union, and help. "Why," he asks, in
conclusion, "cannot we think well of and honour one an-
other? Wish all good, all grace, all gifts, all success,
yea, greater than our own, to each other? Expect God
will answer our wish, rejoice in every appearance thereof,
and praise Him for it? Readily believe good of each
other, as readily as we once believed evil?" That fine
appeal was addressed to betwixt fifty and sixty clergy-
men, all of whom, by character and religious experience,
were in sympathy with Wesley ; but only three vouchsafed
an answer; one of them being Perronet, Vicar of Shore-
ham, who was one of Wesley's closest friends. If Wesley's
friends stood aloof in this spirit, the mood of the Church
at large may be guessed !

Some twelve clergy were present at the Conference of
1764; but they were present merely to urge that Wesley
should withdraw the preachers from every parish where
there was a clergyman "of a religious spirit"! Charles
Wesley supported the proposal, and, in the words of John
Pawson, who was present, "honestly told us that if he was
a settled minister in any particular place, we should not
preach there." To whom Mr. Hampson replied, "I would
preach there and never ask your leave, and should have
as good a right to do so as you would have." The new
wine, it was clear, could not be permanently held in the
old bottles !

It may be added that a great wave of spiritual life,
which during this period was sweeping through the Meth-
odist societies, and lifting them up to a higher level of
energy and gladness, had the curious effect of widening
the breach between Wesley and his natural allies in the
Anglican Church. At the end of 1762, Wesley writes:
"Many years ago my brother frequently said, 'Your day
of Pentecost is not fully come. But I doubt not, it will.
And you will then hear of persons sanctified, as frequently
as you do now of persons justified. Any unprejudiced
person who has read the accounts in my Journals may
observe that it was now fully come.'

"The true day of Pentecost" had, indeed, come for Wes-
ley and his followers. Sanctification had been hitherto a

'fifyles, p. 87.

A YEAR OF CRISIS

351

doctrine debated by many, but an experience realised by
few. At this period, however, for thousands the doctrine
had become a true spiritiial experience. Wesley's journals
are full of records of the spiritual work in triumphant
progress.

Now the doctrine itself, as yet, lacked clear definition.
Wesley, in formal terms, never claimed sauctification as
his personal experience-; but he reached at last a defini-
tion of the doctrine wliich is marked by admirable sim-
plicity and clearness. He defined it i)artly by negatives : —

"Absolute and infallible perfection I never contended for; sin-
less perfection I do not contend for, seeing it is not Scriptural.
A perfection sucb as enables a person to fulfil the whole law, and
so need not the merits of Christ, I do not acknowledge. I do
now, and always did, protest against it."

Then, translating the doctrine into positive terms, he
says : —

"By Christian perfection I mean (as I have said again and
again) the so loving God and our neighbour as to 'rejoice ever-
more, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks.' He
that experiences this is Scripturally perfect."

But all good things have their characteristic risks, and
this doctrine of sauctification, or "perfection," ran, or was
apt to run — especially with the half-taught and ill-
balanced — into fanatical extremes. This happened in the
London societies, and some of Wesley's most trusted
helpers were carried away. George Bell, and ex-Life
Guardsman, was one of his most valued comrades. Long
afterwards Wesley records how for years he had found in
Bell a loyal sympathy and helpfulness no one else yielded
him. Maxfield was the earliest of his helpers, and one
held in special confidence. Both these were at this
moment swept away in a wave of fanaticism. Bell ran
to the wildest extremes. He fixed a day for the end of the
world; openly renounced Wesley, and drew off many of
the members. All this, of course, shocked the sober
Anglicans. Wesley appealed to his brother Charles to
come up to London to help him to keep the societies steady,
but the appeal was vain. He wrote again, in a key of
mingled sadness but of grim resolve: — "I perceive verba
fiunt mortuo; so I say no more about your coming to

352 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

London. Here stand I ; and I shall stand, with or without
human help, if God is with us."

Wesley, left to himself, dealt with the trouble with fine
courage and decision. He expelled Bell from the society,
and publicly denounced his follies ; but he could not arrest
the mischievous effect of this outburst of extravagance in
the societies. It widened fatally the breach betwixt him-
self and those who had been his closest friends.

Wesley felt keenly the desertion of his old comrades.
He writes on March 20, 1763, to Lady Huntingdon, in a
tone of bitterness rarely audible in his letters : —

"By the mercy of God, I am still alive, and following the work
to which He has called me, although without any help, even in
the most trying times, from those of whom I might have expected
it. Their voice seemed to be rather, 'Down with him, down with
him; even to the ground.' I mean (for I use no circumlocution)
Mr. Madan, Mr. Haweis, Mr. Berridge, and (I am sorry to say it)
Mr. Whitefield. Only Mr. Romaine has shown a truly sympathis-
ing spirit, and acted the part of a brother. As to the prophecies
of these poor wild men, George Bell and half-a-dozen more, I am
not a jot more accountable for them than Mr. Whitefield, having
never countenanced them in any degree, but opposed them from
the moment I heard them; neither have these extravagances any
foundation in any doctrine which I teach."

As a matter of fact, the one loyal friend whom Wesley
thought he still had, Romaine, had by this time forsaken
him too. Lady Huntingdon sent on to him the letter from
which the preceding extract is taken ; Romaine wrote in
reply :—

"Enclosed is poor Mr. John Wesley's letter. The contents of
it, as far as I am concerned, surprised me; for no one has spoken
more freely of what is now passing among the people than myself.
I pity Mr. John from my heart. His societies are in great con-
fusion; and the point, which brought them into the wilderness of
rant and madness, is still insisted on as much as ever. I fear the
end of this delusion."

It is clear from all this, that, at a moment of crisis,
when his societies were in peril of being broken asunder
by extravagances of life and doctrine, and when his most
trusted helpers were failing him, Wesley was abandoned
by his allies amongst the Anglican clergy, even his brother
for the moment failing him. Wesley bore the cruel burden
thus cast upon him with noble resolution, and the crisis
passed. But the incident had enduring results. It helped

A YEAR OF CRISIS

353

to decide the whole relation of MethodiKsm to the Church
of England. Wesley yet remained, in his own person and
sympathies, stubbornly loyal to the Church. The spiritual
movement of which he was now the sole head should not,
if he could help it, drift into dissent. But the last ties
that bound it to the Church were being cut — on the side
of the Church itself !

If any one wishes an illustration of the general temper
of the Anglican Church to this great spiritual movement
after it had been nearly thirty years in operation, and was
visibly transfiguring the moral life of England, let him
take the following incident : On March 9, 1768, six stu-
dents were expelled from the University of Oxford for
holding Methodistical tenets, and taking upon them to
pray, and to read and expound the Scriptures in a private
house. The head of the House to which the students
belonged defended their doctrine from the Thirty-nine
Articles, and spoke in the highest terms of the piety and
high character of the accused men, but in vain. The
principal of the College, after sentence had been pro-
nounced, said that as these six gentlemen were expelled
for having too much religion, it would be very proper to
inquire into the conduct of some who had too little.
What fact can be more significant than that so late as
1768 students of high character were expelled from the
University of Oxford for no other offence than that of
"holding Methodistical tenets!"

The difficulty created by the failure of his clerical allies
explains another much-debated step which Wesley took
at this time. The larger societies were accustomed to
receive the sacrament in their own chapels, but it was
physically impossible for Wesley himself to do this work.
No clergyman would any longer help him, and Wesley
had the High Churchman's invincible reluctance to allow
any unordained preacher to administer the sacraments.
His first helper, Maxfield, had been ordained by an Irish
bishop, and was accustomed to administer the sacrament
in London during Wesley's absence, but even Maxfield had
now forsaken him. At this moment a bishop of the Greek
Church named Erasmus was in London. Wesley took
pains to ascertain that his credentials were genuine, and
then consented to some of his helpers receiving ordination
from him.

354 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

But this was only a temporary expedient; it carried
with it some strange theological implications, and it
created new and instant tronbles. Charles Wesley was
filled with unappeasable anger; and this, in turn, kindled
amongst the little group of ordained helpers an answering
resentment. One of them, John Jones, whom Wesley
valued most, and on whom the Greek bishop had laid his
hands, left him, and accepted orders in the Anglican
Church. Another of the ordained men, Stanniforth, re-
cords in his Journal : —

"In the year 1764 I was sent for by Mr. W. to his house. The
messenger told me he wanted to speak with me, and I must come
Immediately. When I came, I found the Grecian bishop with
him, who ordained me and three more. But finding it would
offend my brethren, I have never availed myself of it to this
hour."

On the whole, the Greek ordinations were an ill-advised
attempt to meet a diflBculty which was to find a later,
happier, and more enduring solution.

CHAPTER VII

THE DEVELOPING CHURCH

It is very striking, meanwhile, to notice the clear purpose
with which, during all this troubled period, Wesley kept
loyal to his own ideals, and the insight and vigilance with
which he continued to shape the movement under his
care, making its discipline perfect and its machinery com-
plete. He saw, for example, with a flash of statesmanlike
insight, the need of giving to his work coherence and
unity. The societies had burst into the blossom of the
class-meeting, with infinite advantage in the way of
stimulus and oversight. But the societies as a whole
were unrelated fragments. Each class-meeting resembled
a tiny living cell ; a society was a congeries of such ceUs.
The problem was to knit these scattered cells, or congeries
of cells, into one vital organism.

In the Conference of 1763 the question was asked:
"Can there be any such thing as a general union of each
society throughout England?" A somewhat crude sug-
gestion was offered in reply : "May not all the societies
in England be considered as one body, united by one
Spirit? May not that in London, the mother church,
consult for the good of all the societies? May not the
stewards of that society answer letters from all parts, and
give advice, at least in temporals ?"i

But this was obviously no solution to the problem.
How could the state of all the societies be known to the
stewards of the London societies? Even if this spacious
knowledge were attained, and if the stewards were clothed
with some power of advice, or of government, this
would not knit the societies into a single organism. It
would only create a little spiritual oligarchy, which might
well become a despotism. Wesley had hardly yet realised
that in his new order of itinerating "helpers" he was
creating a force hitherto unknown in ecclesiastical his-
tory, a corporate pastorate; a pastorate which belonged

'Myles, p. 90.
355

356 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

to the whole Church, and not to individual charges in it.
When the pastorate became in this way a unit, the
churches under the care of such a pastorate must be a
unit too. And this corporate pastorate was to find in
the annual Conference exactly such an instrument for the
government of the Church as a whole as was needed.
But Wesley, we repeat, as yet hardly realised the range
and power of the very machinery he had created.

All through these troubled years the characteristic in-
stitutions of Methodism were swiftly taking shape. The
training of the helpers grows in method and thorough-
ness. The famous "rules of a helper" — rules which still
form the marching orders of every Methodist preacher in
the world, and are read year by year in every Methodist
Synod — belong to this period. Nothing can well be
stronger, finer, or loftier than the counsels — counsels
which have the accent and the urgency of commands —
by which Wesley at this time was moulding the habits
of his many agents, and creating traditions for unborn
generations. Whoever reads these admonitions finds
himself in contact with a very remarkable body of litera-
ture. In form they are severely condensed, yet absolutely
clear English, English that Swift or Cobbett might have
envied, but could not have surpassed. And the moral
quality of these admonitions is even more remarkable
than their literary energy. The swift, terse, abrupt sen-
tences have the rush and impact of bullets; they are
charged with a spiritual intensity which has the clearness
of flame without its heat. Wesley's counsels and rebukes
are as swift and urgent as messages from the unseen.
Here are examples : —

"Sleep not more than you need; talk not more than you need.
And never be idle, nor triflingly employed. But if you can do
but one — either follow your studies, or instruct the ignorant — let
your studies alone; I would throw by all the libraries in the
world rather than be guilty of the perdition of one soul.'"

Then follows a series of almost fierce self-question-
ings :—

"Why are we not more knowing? A. Because we are idle.
"We forget the very first rule, 'Be diligent. Never be unemployed
a moment. Never be triflingly employed.' . . .

'Myles, p. 115.

THE DEVELOPING CHURCH

357

"Which of you spends as many hours a day in God's work as
you did formerly in man's work? We talk, talk — or read his-
tory, or what comes next to hand. We must, absolutely must,
cure this evil, or give up the whole work.

"But how? 1. Read the most useful books, and that regularly
and constantly. Steadily spend all the morning in this employ,
or at least five hours in twenty-four.

" 'But I read only the Bible.' Then you ought to teach others
to read only the Bible; and, by parity of reason, to hear only the
Bible. But if so, you need preach no more. Just so said George
Bell. And what is the fruit? Why, now he neither reads the
Bible nor anything else. If you need no book but the Bible, you
are got above St. Paul. He wanted others, too. Bring the books,
says he, but especially the parchments; those written on parch-
ment.

" 'But I have no taste for reading.' Contract a taste for it by
use, or return to your trade.

" 'But different men have different tastes.' Therefore some
may read less than others; but none should read less than this.

"The sum is. Go into every house in course, and teach every
one therein, young and old, if they belong to us, to be Christians,
inwardly and outwardly. Make every particular plain to their
understanding. Fix it in their memory. Write it on their heart.
In order to this, there must be line upon line, precept upon pre-
cept. I remember to have heard my father asking my mother,
'How could you have the patience to tell that blockhead the same
thing twenty times over?' She answered, 'Why, if I had told
him but nineteen times, I should have lost all my labour.' What
patience, indeed, what love, what knowledge is requisite for this!

"Over and above: wherever there are ten children in a society,
spend at least an hour with them twice a week. And do this,
not in a dull, dry, formal manner, but in earnest, with your
might.

" 'But I have no gift for this.' Gift or no gift, you are to do it
else you are not called to be a Methodist preacher. Do it as you
can, till you can do it as you would.'"

Wesley's standard for his helpers in every realm was
of an heroic pitch. He required them to work with the
utmost energy of which they were capable; but they
must be students as well as workers ! No man ever hated
ignorance, and the fanaticism bred of ignorance, more
than he. Here are examples of the admonitions with
which he strove to enforce on his busy helpers the habits
and temper of students : —

"What general method of employing our time would you
advise us to? A. 1. As often as possible to rise at four. 2. From
four to five in the morning, and from five to six in the evening to
meditate, pray, and read, partly the Scriptures, with the Notes on

'Myles, p. 115.

358 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

the New Testament, partly Kempis and the Instructions for
Children, and partly the closely practical parts of the Christian
Library. 3. Prom six in the morning till twelve (allowing an
hour for breakfast), to read in order, with much prayer. Bishop
Pearson on the Creed, Mr. Boehm's and Nelson's sermons, the re-
maining parts of the Christian Library, our other tracts and
poems, 'Paradise Lost,' and Professor Frank's works.

"How may we be more useful in conversation? A. 1. Fix the
end of each conversation before you begin. 2. Watch and pray
during the time. 3. Spend two or three minutes every hour in
earnest prayer. 4. Rarely spend above an hour at a time in con-
versing with any one.'"

Amongst the quaint but intensely practical counsels he
gives are some as to the art of escaping popularity : —

"How shall we avoid popularity? We mean such esteem and
love from the people as is not for the glory of God. 1. Earnestly
pray for a piercing sense of the danger and the sinfulness of it.
2. Take care how you ingratiate yourself with any people by
slackness of discipline. 3. Or by any method which another
preacher cannot follow. 4. Warn the people among whom you
are most of esteeming or loving you too much 5. Converse
sparingly with those who are particularly fond of you.'"

Times and men are strangely changed since those words
were written. What preacher to-day has to study anx-
iously "how to avoid popularity," or finds any necessity
for warning the people amongst whom he labours against
"esteeming him or loving him too much" !

Wesley had quite a modern conception of the possibili-
ties of the press as a teaching instrument, and as early as
1747 he had organised a tract society. Two years later he
began to compile the "Christian Library," a series of fifty
volumes. A Methodist might be poor, but Wesley was
determined he should not be illiterate. Later he taught
his helpers that to put a good book into a home was to
plant in it a permanent civilising force ; and so they must
sell books as diligently as they preached sermons. He
says: "Let each of you do like William Pennington:
carry books with you through every round. Exert your-
selves in this. Be not ashamed. Be not weary. Leave
no stone unturned." To one of his preachers he writes :
"It is of unspeakable use to spread our practical tracts
in every society. Billy Pennington, in one year, sold
more of these in Cornwall than had been sold for seven

'Myles, p. 97.
'Ibid., p. 98.

THE DEVELOPING CHURCH

359

years before. So may you, if you take the same method.
Carry one sort of books with you the first time you go the
round; another sort the second time; and so on. Preach
on the subject at each place; and, after preaching, en-
courage the congregation to buy and read the tract."

Finance has always, and necessarily, filled a great space
in Methodist affairs, and the frugalitj' and business sense
which mark Wesley's financial methods are very striking.
At first Wesley's helpers were like the Seventy whom
Christ sent out as the earliest preachers of Christianity.
They took neither purse nor scrip with them. Their
pockets were almost as empty as those of mendicant
friars, though their heads were better furnished, and their
hearts carried a more radiant sunshine. But in due
course salaries had to be paid to the men and a provision
made for their wives.

The salaries, looked at with modern eyes, were, as we
have already shown, of an almost incredibly microscopic
scale. What an heroic and long since extinct order of
preachers' wives, too, must that first generation of Meth-
odist preachers have discovered, since they could live
and clothe themselves decently, and contrive to be cheer-
ful, on an allowance of four shillings a week, with an
addition of twenty shillings per quarter for each child!
Wesley made a provision for his worn-out preachers, but
it was in principle only a form of self-help. A regulation
passed in 1763 required each preacher, out of his scanty
salary, to contribute ten shillings yearly. This sum was
lodged in the hands of three stewards, and formed a fund
out of which allowances were paid for old or sickly
preachers, or for their widows. The fund was painfully
modest in scale, but it was the germ out of which have
grown the great pension funds of modern Methodism.

Wesley, it may be added, had a wholesome horror of
debt ; a hate of it which perhaps had its root in memories
of his debt-contracting and debt-oppressed father. And
he tried, but alas! with only imperfect success, to plant
his own conscience on this subject amongst his societies.
In 1756, when the work had been in progress for sixteen
years, the debts of the Connexion, mainly on chapels,
amounted to £4000. In 1771 they were not quite £7000,
an average debt of less than £100 upon each chapel.
These figures seem trivial when compared with the huge

360 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

financial burdens of modern Methodism. On the Meth-
odist churches of a single colony, with a population of
a little over 1,000,000, there is, to-day, carried with smil-
ing courage, nearly forty times the amount of the debt
on all the Methodist churches in Great Britain a little
over a century ago! Wesley's Church has, somehow,
acquired a temper of financial courage which would have
left Wesley himself, and the early Methodist Conferences,
almost paralysed with mingled amazement and alarm!

In 1767 Wesley started a fund for the extinction of the
debts on his chapels. He proposed to raise £12,600 in two
years, by subscriptions ranging from 5s. to two guineas.
Such a scheme seems strangely modest when it is re-
membered that in 1900 the Wesleyan Churches of Great
Britain raised £1,000,000 in a single effort, while the
Methodist Churches in the United States in a similar way
raised nearly £4,000,000. But the scheme of 1767 only
partially succeeded. Two years afterwards £5,000 still
remained unpaid ; yet Wesley's appeals to his people were
pathetic, eloquent, and urgent in what ought to have been
a resistless degree. "I think," he wrote to one trusted
adherent after another, "I think you love me, and the
cause wherein I am engaged. You wish to ease me of any
burden you can. You sincerely desire the salvation of
souls and the prosperity of the work of God. Will you
not then exert yourself on such an occasion as this?"

When in 1709 a second effort was made Wesley wrote : —

"Are the Methodists able to clear this in one year? Yes, as
able as they are to clear £50. But are they willing? That I
cannot tell. I am sure a few of them are, even of those who have
a large measure of worldly goods; yea, and those who are lately
increased in substance, who have twice, perhaps ten or twenty
times, as much as when they saw me first. Are you one of
them? Whether you are or not, whether your substance is less
or more, are you willing to give what assistance you can? to do
what you can without hurting your family? 'But if I do so, I
cannot lay out so much, in such and such things, as I intended.'
That is true; but will this hurt you? What, if instead of en-
larging, you should, for the present, contract your expenses?
spend less, that you may be able to give more. Would there be
any harm in this?'"

That letter is only a sample of similar communications
addressed to other members of his societies. It would be

'Tyerman, p. 613.

THE DEVELOPING CHURCH 361

diflScult to imagine a more moving appeal, and it was
weighted by the whole force of Wesley's life and example.
And yet the church debts of that period survived even
such an appeal from such a man.

If any one wishes to realise the enormous growth of the
Methodist Church in wealth, the new habits of generosity
which have been created, and the degree in which the
Christian conscience has grown instructed as to the use
of money, let him imagine what sort of response such an
appeal, from such lips, would evoke to-day.

Nothing is more striking in all Wesley's instructions
and appeals to his converts than the masterful note
which runs through them. The accent of authority is
always clear and high, and it is one more illustration
of the fact that Methodism was in no sense, and at no
stage of its history, a democracy. The crowd did not
evolve Wesley and confer power upon him. He was never
a demagogue, ruling the multitude by flattering it. From
the very first, by the compulsion of events, and perhaps
by natural temper and genius, Wesley was an autocrat.
There were, of course, mixed elements in his character.
He could be as docile as a child to any authority which
had moral force behind it. But command was natural
and easy for him. He was by necessity — and necessity in
such a realm is only another word for divine purpose —
the personal centre of the whole movement. And au-
thority was for him inevitable.

Southey, who profoundly misreads Wesley's character,
says that "the love of power was the ruling passion in his
mind." Against Southey, however, may be set the judg-
ment of a much keener mind than his, that of Miss Wedg-
wood. She expends pages to show that "supreme position
was never an object of ambition to Wesley." Wesley him-
self affirms this again and again, with a transparent
sincerity which is irresistible : —

'"The power I have,' he says, 'I never sought; it was the un-
desired, unexpected result of the work God was pleased to work
by me. I have a thousand times sought to devolve it on others;
but as yet I cannot; I therefore suffer it till I can find any to
ease me of my burden.' "'

Facts amply justify that bit of self -description. It

'Southey, vol. ii. p. 70.

362 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

needs only a glance, indeed, at Wesley's career to see that,
so far from thrusting himself into the foremost place on
every occasion, and assuming the accents of a leader, he
may often be accused, with reason, of hanging back too
long, and of failing in initiative. Charles Wesley, and not
his older and more masterful brother, formed the Holy
Club at Oxford, and first won the sneering title of "Meth-
odist." Morgan, in that society, and not Wesley, began
philanthropic work. Whitefield and not Wesley was the
first field-preacher. Wesley went to America because
Oglethorpe persuaded him. He left America because his
flock had revolted from him. He started the society
at James Hutton's house under Bohler's advice. He
always, in a word, needed some external impulse before
he moved.

That he had no ambition to be the founder of a new
Church is proved by the whole story of his work. He
strained the loyalty of his people to breaking point in the
effort to keep Methodism, as an organisation and a leaven,
within the Anglican Church. But power was thrust upon
him by the mere course of events ; and he had enough of
the temper of a born leader of men not to fling off the
burden of inevitable authority, when it was necessary to
the effectiveness of his work, and to the security of its
results. He describes, with a frankness so courageous
that it is nothing less than amusing, the origin of his
own authority. The people, he declares, sought him out,
not he them. And Wesley proceeds to trace this relation
of dependence on their side, and of authority on his, right
through the whole gamut of his workers.

This was the case with his societies : —

"The desire was on their part, not on mine; my desire was to
live and die in retirement; but I did not see that I could refuse
them my help and be guiltless before God. Here commenced my
power; namely, a power to appoint, when, where, and how they
should meet; and to remove those whose life showed that they
had no desire to flee from the wrath to come. And this power
remained the same, whether people meeting together number
twelve, twelve hundred, or twelve thousand."

This was repeated in the case of the stewards: "Let
it be remarked, it was I myself, not the people, who chose
the stewards, and appointed to each the distinct work
wherein he was to help me as long as I chose." The

THE DEVELOPING CHURCH

363

preachers, again, with their rauge of work and of gifts,
stood iu the same relation of dependence on Wesley : —

"Observe these likewise desired me, not I them. And here
commenced my power to appoint each of these, when, where, and
how to labour; that is, while he chose to continue with me; for
each had a power to go away when he pleased, as I had also to
go away from them, or any of them, if I saw sufficient cause.
The case continued the same when the number of preachers in-
creased. I had just the same power still to appoint when, where,
and how each should help me; and to tell any, if I saw cause, 'I
do not desire your help any longer.' On these terms, and no
other, we joined at first; on these we continue joined.'"

The Conference became iu due course the centre of
authority for Methodism. But Wesley proceeds to show
with the utmost plainness that he was absolute in the
Conference; it was his creation, the reflex of his will, the
servant of his plans: —

"Observe; I myself sent for these, of my own free choice; and
I sent for thenq to advise, not to govern me. Neither did I, at
any of those times, divest myself of any part of that power
which the providence of God had cast upon me, without any
design or choice of mine. What is that power? It is a power of
admitting into, and excluding from, the societies under my care;
of choosing and removing stewards; of receiving or not receiving
helpers; of appointing them when, where, and how to help me;
and of desiring them to meet me when I see good. And as it was
merely in obedience to the providence of God, and for the good
of the people, that I at first accepted this power, which I never
sought— nay, a hundred times laboured to throw off — so it is on
the same considerations, not for profit, honour, or pleasure, that
I use it at this day."

Wesley recites all this not in the least with the accents
of an autocrat, jealous of his right to rule, but of a witness
explaining facts.

His power, of course, was not like that of Ignatius
Loyola, the authority of a despot over a celibate Order,
an Order composed of men taught to think freedom a sin,
and bondage of piety. Wesley's as.sistants and helpers
came of the sturdy British stock. They were men nursed
in freedom, with all natural ties about them. And Wes-
ley's power was not that of a lord over serfs, but of a
father among his children. They were his spiritual off-
.spring. His training and intellect, his natural gifts and

'Southey, vol. ii. p. 71.

364 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

range of knowledge, strengthened all his spiritual claims
to authority. And it may be added that the course of
history steadily and curiously multiplied his power.

For thirty years before his death Wesley's stood as
lonely as an Alpine peak. He was not merely without
rivals, but almost without comrades ; and he had no
visible successor. Everything centred in him and de-
pended on him. His assistants were but his spiritual
children. It is diflBcult to find in history a parallel to the
exact type of authority which, during the later years of
his career at least, hung on Wesley's lips and was carried
on the tip of his pen. And the stamp of that masterful
will is on his church at a hundred points to-day.

CHAPTER VIII

A THREATENED SCHISM

Whitepibld died at Newburyport, in the United States,
on September 30, 1770, and his death had some dramatic
features which made it a fitting close to a great career.
He had just finished a week of open-air services, marked
by extraordinary power at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
On his way home he addressed a vast assembly in the
fields near Exeter. It was, though he knew it not, his last
service, to use his own grandiose words, with "the sky
for sounding-board"; and he was so carried away by a
passion of emotion that he preached with unexhausted
energy for two hours ! Thirty-one years before, at Kings-
wood, he had first broken through all ecclesiastical con-
ventions and preached in the open-air to the miners
there, and his last open-air sermon was as mighty as
his first.

On the evening of the same day, as the darkness fell,
the crowd gathered round the house where Whitefield
was staying. They pressed their way in and thronged
the hall, eager to catch some more words from lips so
eloquent. Whitefield was at supper; he was exhausted
with fatigue, and broken with what, though he knew it
not, was a mortal sickness, and he told a clergyman who
was with him to address the people. "I cannot say a
word," he explained, and taking a candle he hastened to
his room.

At the head of the stairs he stopped, and looked down
on the faces upturned to him in the hall beneath. The
appeal of those silent, eager countenances was irresistible,
and with the lifted candle in his right hand Whitefield
began to speak. The trembling, musical voice flowed on,
the rush of words and thoughts never ceased till the
candle held in the preacher's hand burned away and,
with a flash, expired. Whitefield, though nobody sus-
pected it, was a dying man ; the quenched flame of the
candle was a parable.

365

366 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Years before, looking forward with a gleam of prophet-
like vision to his own dying hour, Whitefield had said, "I
shall die silent. It has pleased God to enable me to bear
so many testimonies for Him during my life that He will
require none from me when I die." And this was literally
true. He slept that night till two o'clock, then awoke;
an attack of asthma had seized him. He knew his end
was come. Breath failed him. He fell on his knees, with
choking respiration tried to pray, and died in the effort.
His head was bowed, his hands stretched out in supplica-
tion, when the last breath fluttered over his lips.

The sober, practical British mind is apt to disparage
mere gifts of speech, and to deny the title of greatness
to any one who is nothing more than an orator. White-
field, it is true, built no Church, and, in a sense, left no
followers. He certainly added no new province to the
realm of human knowledge, and he shaped no new channel
in which the great forces of religion might permanently
flow. But his greatness cannot be denied. For over
thirty years he swayed vaster crowds by his preaching
than any other orator known to the history of religion;
and the mere estimate that he preached 18,000 sermons
— an average, say, of more than ten a week — for the whole
of his public ministry, gives a quite inadequate measure
of his work. The scale of his audiences, the passion and
length of his sermons — to say nothing of the crowded
tasks which filled up the brief intervals betwixt his dis-
courses— all have to be considered.

And Whitefield's natural gifts — the deep, melodious
voice, the rush of moving words, the dramatic gestures
which great actors envied, the power, which is the supreme
gift of oratory, of making vast audiences thrill with the
exact emotions of the speaker's own soul — all these in
him were but the servants and instruments of still
mightier forces, forces which stream out of the spiritual
realm and shape the human soul itself to a new pattern.

It is sometimes forgotten that Whitefield did in Amer-
ica an almost greater work than that he accomplished
in England. On the other side of the Atlantic he was,
in a sense, the spiritual heir of Jonathan Edwards. What
is known in the religious history of the United States as
"the Great Awakening" had almost passed away when
Whitefield stepped upon American soil ; but his preaching

A THREATENED SCHISM

36T

renewed on a new scale that memorable work. He gave it
a wider range and a nobler character than it had reached
under Jonathan Edwards. Whitefield, in America no
more than in England, built a Church which bears his
name; but the religious life of neither England nor
America would be quite the same to-day if George White-
field, the servitor of the inn at Gloucester, the "poor
scholar" of Pembroke College, the open-air preacher of
the eighteenth centurj^ had never lived.

Over Whitefield's ashes the fire of the great Calvinistic
controversy was re-kindled, and burned more fiercely than
even at first ; perhaps for the reason that this time there
was a woman in it! A womau, when she becomes a
theologian, takes her theology, if not more earnestly, yet
more vehemently, not to say shrewishly, than does a
theologian of the opposite sex. She follows her logic
more relentlessly to its uttermost conclusion ; she is
more fiercely jealous for the honour and the influence of
her creed. And at this stage a womau was doiug, in
the Calvinistic branch of the Methodist revival, what
Whitefield had refused to do, and knew, indeed, he could
not do. "I should weave a Penelope's web," he said, "if
I formed societies." He had no organising gift; and
without organisation there is no permanent work. But
Lady Huntingdon was doing that very work, and doing
it with signal energy and success.

She was a remarkable woman ; had she belonged to
the Church of Rome, as Macaulay says, she would have
been adorned with the nimbus of a saint. She was the
daughter of Earl Ferrers, the widow of the Earl of
Huntingdon, and her rank and wealth enabled her to do
for the Revival what no other person could have done.
She opened new worlds to it. She gave it social prestige.
She sheltered it from persecution. She invited White-
field to her house, appointed him one of her chaplains,
and gathered fashionable audiences under her own roof
to listen to him. Chesterfield and Bolingbroke came,
amongst others, to hear the famous preacher. Chester-
field listened with smiling courtesy, as unmoved as
though he were listening to the twittering of a bird;
but Bolingbroke — the rake, the wit, the friend of Voltaire,
the politician who served all parties and was loyal to
none — was strangely moved by Whitefield's preaching.

368 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

He invited Whitefleld to visit him, and sought religious
discourse with him. It may be suspected that he was
simply in search of the flavours of a new excitement.

Lady Huntingdon surrendered herself fully to the
ardours and ideals of the great religious movement in
progress. She built chapels that bore her name in various
parts of England, and by appointing the preachers as her
chaplains escaped the difficulty that so much perplexed
Wesley, who would not label himself and his preachers
^'dissenters," and so secure the shelter of the Toleration
Act, and yet found the doors of the Anglican churches
shut against both him and them. Lady Huntingdon set
up a great seminary for her chaplains at Trevecca, in
Wales. Benson, one of Wesley's helpers, was classical
tutor in the college; the saintly Fletcher, for a time Wes-
ley's designated successor, was its principal.

Lady Huntingdon herself was a Calvinist of more
resolute type than even Whitefleld. Buckle, in his "His-
tory of Civilisation," says that Calvinism is a creed which
has a democratic stamp, while Arminianism is aristo-
cratic in its genius; but that generalisation inverts the
truth. Calvinism, which creates a spiritual aristocracy
of the elect, and limits God's mercy to them, easily com-
mends itself to an aristocratic mind like that of Lady
Huntingdon. Southey is shrewd enough to see this,
"She was," he says, "predisposed unconsciously to favour
a doctrine which makes a privileged order of souls."
Wesley and Whitefleld, living under the empire of great
motives, and dealing with great affairs, were reluctant to
be entangled in controversy. In his societies Wesley, as
a settled policy, made no difference betwixt Calvinist and
Arminian. The two great comrades recorded in a formal
document their resolve, for the sake of peace, "to avoid
preaching on Calvinistic topics to the utmost extent pos-
sible." Charles Wesley — often shrewder than his brother
— afterwards wrote on the document the words "vain
agreement" ! Controversy, betwixt even such men, when
parted at one point by a theological gulf so profound,
was inevitable. Yet the controversy betwixt them, de-
scribed in a previous chapter, had run its course, and
practically died away when an unhappy incident revived
it.

Wesley laboured perpetually to keep the theology of

A THREATENED SCHISM

369

the Revival in a state of what may be called sane equi-
poise. It tended to run to extremes, and it is easy to
understand that tendency. Theology was no longer the
luxury of scholars ; it was the daily bread of the common
people. Or, to vary the figure, theology had stepped out
of the drowsy atmosphere of the Universities and of the
Churches, and was walking on common earth amongst
the crowds. That it sometimes lost its feet, or ran the
risk of falling into the ditch on one side or the other,
need excite no wonder. That is the perpetual danger of
a religious movement which powerfully affects great
multitudes.

What may be called the re-discovered doctrine of entire
sauctification or "perfection," for example, lent itself
easily to exaggeration. It not seldom came into quarrel
with rudimentary morality. It lapsed into Antinomian-
ism, and there were shocking examples of this peril
amongst Wesley's own helpers.

In the Conference of 1771 Wesley set himself to correct
this evil. He recited instances "in which," to use his
own words, "we have leaned too much towards Calvin-
ism," especially towards that aspect of Calvinism which
denies, or seems to deny, to man himself any part in the
business of his own salvation. That salvation could be by
"works" had been denied with an emphasis which, in some
eager ears, sounded like the assertion — the welcome asser-
tion— that salvation and works are in eternal quarrel with
each other! To rebuke this madness the Conference
passed certain resolutions: —

"We have received it as a maxim that 'a man is to do nothing
in order to justification.' Nothing can be more false. Whoever
desires to find favour with God should 'cease from evil, and learn
to do well.' Whoever repents should do 'works meet for repent-
ance.' And if this is not in order to find favour, what does he do
them for?

"Is not this 'salvation by works'? Not by the merit of works,
but by works as a condition.

"What have we been disputing about for these thirty years?
I am afraid about words.

"As to merit itself, of which we have been so dreadfully afraid,
we are rewarded 'according to our works,' yea 'because of our
works.' How does this differ from for the sake of our works?
And how differs this from secundum merita operum, as our works
deserve? Can you split this hair? I doubt I cannot'"

'Tyerman, iii. p. 73

370

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

These propositions, looked at with modern eyes, are
offenceless; but to Lady Huntingdon and the jealous
Calvinists about her, they seemed hardly less than blas-
phemous. They were the very negation of the Gospel!
Wesley and all associated with him became vehemently
suspect. They were betraying evangelical doctrine ! Lady
Huntingdon resolved to cleanse Trevecca, her training
college, I'rom the evil taint. Everybody in the college
who would not renounce the resolutions of the Conference
must be dismissed. The resolutions were employed as a
test; every student and master was required to write
his verdict upon them, and to disavow them on penalty
of expulsion. Benson, the classical master, was in this
way compelled to resign his post.

Fletcher was the head of the college, a man whose
saintliness, wedded to great intellectual gifts, moves even
Southey to almost rapturous admiration : "A man of rare
talents," he says, "and rarer virtue. No age or country
has ever produced a man of more fervent piety, or more
perfect charity; no Church has ever possessed a more
apostolic minister." But since Fletcher could only hold
his post at Trevecca at the price of disavowing Wesley,
he resigned his office there. "If every Arminian," he
said, "must quit the college, I am discharged for one, for
I cannot give up the possibility of salvation of all, any
more than I can give up the truth and love of God."

Wesley himself wrote to Lady Huntingdon disavowing
the evil meaning which had been read into the resolutions.
He concluded : —

"To be short. Such as I am, I love you well. You have one
of the first places in my esteem and affection, and you once had
some regard for me. But it cannot continue if it depends upon
my seeing with your eyes. My dear friend, you seem not to have
well learned yet the meaning of those words which I desire to
have continually written upon my heart, 'Whosoever doeth the
will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother,
and sister, and mother.'"

But when did soft words soothe ruffled theologians?
The angry Calvinists were not in the least satisfied ; and
not content with purging their own stronghold, they
determined to carry the war into the enemy's country.
They would attend the next Methodist Conference in a

'Tyerman, iij, p. 93.

A THREATENED SCHISM 371

body and correct Wesley's deplorable theology in the
presence of his own helpers ! A circular letter was issued,
signed by Shirley, one of Lady Huntingdon's chaplains,
and addressed to everybody of influence in connection
with the Revival known to hold Cavlinistic views. The
j Conference was to be held at Bristol, and the circular
j explained that "Lady Huntingdon and many other Chris-
tian friends, real Protestants," intended to hold a meeting
at Bristol at the same time : —

"It is further proposed that they go in a body to the said Con-
ference and insist upon a formal recantation of the said minutes,
and in case of a refusal that they sign and publish their protest
against them. It is submitted to you whether it would not be
right, in the opposition to be made to such dreadful heresy, to
recommend it to as many of your Christian friends, as well of the
Dissenters as of the Established Church, as you can prevail on
to be there, the cause being of so public a nature."^

Now, to insist upon Wesley, in the presence of his own
Conference, making a formal recantation of truths which,
only a year before, both he and the Conference had so
solemnly affirmed, was a very daring undertaking. It
illustrates, not so much the courage of Mr. Shirley and
the whole corps of Lady Huntingdon's chaplains, as their
temporary loss of sanity. Wesley went on his busy way
in his usual cool fashion, but he issued a brief exposition
of the resolutions passed by the Conference of 1770, and
wrote with his own hands, on the copy, "If the Calvinists
do not, or will not, understand me, 1 understand myself,
and I do not contradict anything I have written these
thirty years."

The recantation began, as a matter of fact, on Lady
Huntingdon's side. Time and reflection had cooled her
vehemence. She wrote to We.sley the night before the
Conference assembled, acknowledging that the circular
letter was too hastily drawn up. Shirley, whose courage,
too, had begun to evaporate, wrote, apologising for the
offensive phraseology to be found in it. Not twenty
persons answered to the call of the letter. The gentlemen
who came to correct his theology were received by Wesley
in the Conference with exquisite courtesy and good
temper. He hated controversy, and was willing to sacri-
fice everything, except truth,' to escape from it. Fifty-

'Tyerman, iii. p. 94.

372 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

three of his preachers signed a statement which Shirley
himself, at Wesley's half-ironical request, prepared : —

"We hereby solemnly declare, in the sight of God, that we
have no trust or confidence but in the alone merits of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ, for justification or salvation either in
life, death, or the daj^ of judgment; and though no one is a real
Christian believer (and consequently cannot be saved) who doth
not good works, where there is time and opportunity, yet our
works have no part in meriting or purchasing our salvation from
first to last, either in whole or in part."

Shirley, on his part, signed a public acknowledgment
that he had mistaken the meaning of the resolutions.
But, unhappily, the controversy was not ended. It was
only transferred into the realm of literature. Fletcher
had written a vindication of the assailed minutes, a very
noble bit of writing, and including in it a fine appeal for
brotherly loyalty to each other: —

"Of the two greatest and most useful ministers I ever knew
(he wrote) one is no more. The other, after amazing labours,
flies still, with unwearied diligence, through the three kingdoms,
calling sinners to repentance. Though oppressed with the weight
of nearly seventy years, and the cares of nearly thirty thousand
souls, he shames still, by his unabated zeal and immense labours,
all the young ministers in England, perhaps in Christendom. He
has generally blown the Gospel trumpet, and rode twenty miles,
before most of the professors, who despise his labours, have left
their downy pillows. As he begins the day, the week, the year,
so he concludes them, still intent upon extensive services for the
glory of the Redeemer and the good of souls. And shall we
lightly lift our pens, our tongues, our hands against him? No;
let them rather forget their cunning. If we will quarrel, can we
find nobody to fall out with but the minister upon whom God
puts the greatest honour?"

Shirley replied to Fletcher, who, on his part, published
five letters to Shirley, the first of his famous "Checks to
Antinomianism." Then followed the most lively and ex-
asperated tempest of theological controversy that ever
broke on English literature. The principal writers on the
Calvinistic side were Richard and Rowland Hill, Ber-
ridge, of Evertou, and Toplady, who has been made im-
mortal by his one matchless hymn, "Rock of Ages." Wes-
ley took little personal part in the controversy. One brief
and deadly contribution which he made, it is true, kindled
much anger. Toplady had published a "Treatise upon

A THREATENED SCHISM

373

Absolute Predestination." Wesley published a short
analysis of this treatise, with the following summary : —

"The sum of all this: One in twenty (suppose) of mankind are
elected; nineteen in twenty are reprobated. The elect shall be
saved, do what they will; the reprobate shall be damned, do what
they can. Reader, believe this, or be damned. Witness my
hand.— A. T."

To see his theology condensed into a space so narrow,
and transformed into concrete form so dreadful and
endorsed with his own initials, filled Toplady with an
auger almost too deep for words, and that anger explains
the shrill tones in which he scolded at large.

The fight was carried on from the Arminian side not
only by Fletcher of Madeley, but by Thomas Olivers, one
of Wesley's helpers, who had been a cobbler, and like
Toplady was a hymnist. His well-known verses, ''The
God of Abraham praise," strike a loftier and more sus-
tained— if less tender — note than even Toplady's death-
less hymn. Fletcher, alone amongst these angry divines,
wrote with the temper of a saint and the manners of a
gentleman ; while he knew how to use a keenness of logic
which recalls Pascal's "Provincial Letters." The other
controversialists pursued each other with injurious
epithets through countless reams of literature; and Top-
lady, sad to relate, had the most bitter tongue of all
these shrewish theologians. "An Old Fox Tarred and
Feathered," is the title of one of his pamphlets on Wesley.
Even for the gentle-spirited and saintly Fletcher Toplady
employed no other weapon than a cudgel : "In the very
few pages of Fletcher's letters which he had i)erused," he
said, "the serious passages were dulness double-condensed
and the lighter passages impudence double-distilled!"

The controversy is long dead ; but the temper in which
it was conducted is an euduring scandal to religion.
What can be more amazing than the spectacle of two
deeply religious men, one of whom had written "Rock of
Ages," a hymn which the Church of Christ will sing till
earthly hymns are no longer needed; and the other had
written one of the greatest of sacred lyrics — "The God of
Abraham praise" — abusing each other with the temper
and language of angry fishwives !

But it is pleasant to remember that this gust of theo-

374 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

logical passion quickly passed away. Fletcher, always
the saint and the gentleman, was practically a dying man.
He was about to leave England and try the effect of
breathing once more his native air in Switzerland; and
before he left he invited all the divines with whom he
had been in controversy to meet him, that, "all doctrinal
diflferences ajjart, he might testify his sincere regret for
having given them the least displeasure, and receive from
them some condescending assurance of reconciliation and
goodwill."

Nearly all the combatants in turn exhibited, in the
later stages of the controversy, a more Christian temper.
Rowland Hill suppressed one of his bitter pamphlets, in
order, as he said, "to prevent the evil that might arise
from my wrong touches upon the work of God." Berridge
received Fletcher at his parsonage, and as he crossed his
threshold rushed to him with open arms and tear-wet
cheeks. "How," he cried, "could we write so about each
other, when we each aimed at the same thing, the glory
of God and the good of souls?" Toplady, almost alone,
remained implacable.

Stevens, in his unwieldy but very able "History of
Methodism," says that the effect of this controversy was
"to give a permanent character to the theology of Meth-
odism; a resurrection to the faith which the Synod of
Dort had proscribed ; greater prominence to the doctrines
of Arminius and Grotius than all their continental cham-
pions had secured for them ; to spread evangelical Armini-
anism over England, over all the Protestant portion of
the New World, and more or less around the whole
world ; to modify the theological tone of evangelical Chris-
tendom, and probably of all coming time."

This is a wild over-statement. The Calvinistic dispute
of 1770 and the following years is but one of the outer
and remote vibrations of the earlier controversy betwixt
Wesley and Whitefield thirty years before. The whole
controversy was, no doubt, of importance as making
definite and articulate the doctrine of Methodism on one
particular and much-vexed point. But the earlier stage
of the controversy was the more important. It was a
conflict betwixt the two great leaders of the Revival. The
controversy betwixt them moved at a high level, and
occurring at a moment when the theology of Methodism

A THREATENED SCHISM

375

was yet in the plastic stage, it did, in fact, determine that
theology for all time. The controversy of 1770 and the
following years was a battle betwixt smaller men. Its
single permanent contribution to theological literature
is found in Fletcher's famous "Checks." And Fletcher
not only made the richest intellectual contribution to
the controversy, he kindled in its smoke and dust the
one clear flame of Christian spirit yet discoverable in it.

It may be added that, later, Lady Huntingdon herself
shared Wesley's fate. Her societies were driven from the
place in the Anglican Church in which she had so long
held them. The last thing she contemplated was turning
the places of worship she built into dissenting chapels.
She appointed the preachers her personal chaplains; this
was supposed to be legally within her right as a peeress
of the realm, and the device was understood to release
both chapels and ministers from the Toleration Act. But
in 1779 she purchased a great building called the Pan-
theon in the north of London, and made it the centre
of a mission. The clergyman within whose parish the
building stood claimed control over it, and as the result
of a costly lawsuit Lady Huntingdon's chaplains were
prohibited from officiating in the new chapel ; and the de-
cision was found to apply to all her chapels. Lady
Huntingdon found herself in cruel straits. She must
close her chapels or label them dissenting places of wor-
ship. "I am compelled," she wrote, "to turn the finest
congregation, not only in England, but in any part of the
world, into a dissenting meeting-house ! I am to be cast
out of the Chiirch now, only for what I have been doing
these forty years — speaking and living for Jesus Christ."

Her chaplains were shut up to the same cruel choice,
and, as a result, the Calvinistic branch shared the fate of
the Arminian division of the Revival. It was driven to
undertake a separate existence. And so "Lady Hunting-
don's Connexion" came into existence, and still survives,
and the Anglican Church once more justified its title of
"the Church of missed opportunities."

Lady Huntingdon had to follow Wesley's example at
another point. Her preachers could no longer obtain
ordination from the bishops. The sacraments, as a re-
sult, could not be administered; so her chaplains had
themselves to ordain their own successors, and ordina-

376

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

tion, to quote Lord Mansfield, once more proved to be
separation.

Lady Huntingdon herself died in 1791, the same year
as Wesley. She was eighty-four years of age. Her sick-
ness was of a peculiarly cruel and wasting character, but
her death was the fitting crown of a saintly life. A blood-
vessel broke just before she died, and, with her lips still
wet with the crimson stain, she whispered, "I am well!
All is well, well for ever. I see nothing but victory. The
coming of the Lord draweth nigh, the coming of the
Lord draweth nigh. Then, with the gesture of a tired
child, she lifted her hands and said, "I long to be at
home ; oh, I long to be at home."

A little before she died she said — repeating the words
over and over again — "I shall go to my Father this
night;" and shortly after, '^Can He forget to be gracious?
Is there any end of His loving kindness?" Almost her
last words were: "My work is done; I have nothing to do
but to go to my Father."

CHAPTER IX

THE DEED OF DECLARATION

The failure of the attempt in 1764 to secure the continued
help of at least the evangelical clergy in the Anglican
Church profoundly affected the future development of
Methodism. Wesley read a paper to the Conference in
1769 in which he tells the tale of his appeal to the clergj',
and of its failure. "Out of fifty or sixty," he said, "to
whom I wrote, only three vouchsafed me an answer, so I
gave this up. I can do no more. They are a rope of
sand, and such they will continue." The only response
Wesley received at that time was in the shape of a request
to put his societies in each parish under the control of the
local clergyman, and to refrain from sending his helpers
to any place "where there was a godly minister." This
was a proposal to commit spiritual suicide.

Wesley just at that moment was realising his loneli-
ness. His early comrades were no longer at his side.
Whitefield was simply a wandering evangelist, absorbed
in his American work. He had no ordered plans of his
own, and could take no part in the ordered plans of any
one else. Moreover, he was parted from Wesley by an en-
during and fatal divergence in doctriife. Wesley had to
count him out as a permanent force in the Revival.
Charles Wesley had practically ceased to be an itinerant,
and the brothers were diverging ecclesiastically. For
Charles Wesley the "Church" was more and more out-
bulking the Revival; while John Wesley, though still
refusing to take a single uncompelled step towards sepa-
ration, yet saw clearly that separation was inevitable.
The Church of England no longer supplied him with
helpers, and, it was clear, had no friendly intentions
towards his societies.

He was himself now approaching seventy years of age.
The end of his earthly labours was within measurable dis-
tance. He was not an imaginative man. He took short
views. He saw clearly the things immediately round him,
377

378

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

but had uo vision for the landscape. But there had come
to him at last a seuse of the greatness and continuity of
his work. It would outlive him. It had grown beyond his
dreams, and would still grow. And he had somehow to
ensure to it order^ discipline, leadership, purity of doc-
trine, and continuity of method, after his death. He must
crystallise into organic shape the tangled agencies and
forces which made up the Methodism of that day. An
individual dies, but an institution wisely planned is
deathless. It was for Methodism, at this stage, an im-
perative necessity to take some definite and enduring
legal form.

Wesley turned for the moment to his own Conference,
and to the great order of travelling preachers. They were
men of proved spiritual gifts, of heroic zeal. They were
faithful to the message they carried, and loyal to Wesley
himself. They were no rope of sand ! So he tells them :
"You are at present one body. You act in concert with
each other, and by united counsels. And now is the time
to consider what can be done in order to continue this
union."

While Wesley himself lived, he was a sufficient centre
of union. All loyalty centred in him. His brain planned,
his will decided, everything. His helpers were related to
each other because they were all related to him. But he
was not immortal. He must die soon, and might die at
any moment. What substitute could be found for his
personal influence? Where coiild a basis of union be
discovered which Sid not rest on a single frail and dying
life?

It was clear that the first condition of a union, which
time could not destroy, nor shock of circumstance wreck,
was loyalty to a common spiritual ideal, and this, no
doubt, existed. "I take it for granted," Wesley wrote,
"union cannot be preserved by any means between those
who have not a single eye. Those who aim at anything
but the glory of God, and the salvation of men; who
desire, or seek, any earthly thing, whether honour, profit,
or ease, will not, cannot continue in the Connexion ; it
will not answer their design. Some, perhaps, will pro-
cure preferment in the Church. Others will turn In-
dependents, and get separate congregations, like John
Edwards and Charles Skelton. Lay your account for this,

THE DEED OF DECLARATION 379

and be not surprised if some you do not suspect be of this
number."

But some practical means must be devised for giving
effect to the spiritual unity which existed; and some
policy must be agreed upon in advance, as a preparation
for Wesley's death. Wesley suggests a plan : —

"On notice of my death, let all the preachers in England and
Ireland repair to London within six weeks. Let them seek God
by solemn fasting and prayer. Let them draw up articles of
agreement, to be signed by those who choose to act in concert.
Let those be dismissed who do not choose it, in the most friendly
manner possible. Let the remainder choose, by votes, a com-
mittee of three, five, or seven, each of whom is to be Moderator in
his turn. Let the committee do what I do now: propose preachers
to be tried, admitted, or excluded. Fix the places of each preacher
for the ensuing year, and the time of the next Conference."'

This, of course, was government of what may be called
the Venetian type; government by a committee, certain
to become a clique. It could never have supplied the
basis of a great and free Church. The place of the
"committee of three, five, or seven" was taiien later by
the Legal Hundred : and even this device would have been
too fatally rigid but for the generous interpretation given
to it.

Wesley later called upon his helpers to sign a solemn
"Covenant of Agreement." It ran as follows: —

"We, whose names are underwritten, being thoroughly con-
vinced of the necessity of a close union between those whom God
is pleased to use as instruments in this glorious work, in order
to preserve this union between ourselves, are resolved, God being
our helper, (1) to devote ourselves entirely to God, denying our-
selves, taking up our cross daily; steadily aiming at one thing,
to save our own souls, and them that hear us; (2) to preach the
old Methodist doctrines, and no other, contained in the Minutes
of the Conference; (3) to obesrve and enforce the whole Meth-
odist discipline, laid down in the Minutes."'

Wesley was never in a hurry; and with the wise in-
.stinct of a great leader he was content to wait until the
slower minds of his followers came into perfect harmony
with his own. These articles of agreement were, accord-
ingly, brought before each of the three succeeding Confer-
ences, and all the preachers attending them, numbering

'Myles, p. 129.
'lUd., p. 130.

380

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

one hundred and one, signed it. Here, at last, then, was
formulated a policy and a bond which provided for the
organic survival of Methodism beyond its founder's death.
Fortunately this scheme was never put to the test of
actual practice.

Now Wesley's gbvernmeut was of necessity personal.
He was a spiritual autocrat, though without the despotic
temper or methods of an autocracy. And not content
with binding his helpers together by a formal agreement,
which was to run beyond his own life, he looked round
him for a personal successor. The wisdom of that search
may well be doubted. There could be no second Wesley.
Even if a leader were discovered equal to Wesley in in-
tellectual gifts, these would not give him Wesley's place,
or Wesley's authority. That authority was a product of
history. It was born, not of Wesley's personal endow-
ments, but of events, and of his personal relations to his
helpers. They were his spiritual children, and his power
over them was the untransferable authority of a father.

Wesley, however, in search of a helper, turned to
Fletcher. In a letter to him, dated June 1773, he tells
him, "I see more and more unless there be one leader, the
work can never be carried on. The body of the preachers
are not united, nor will any i)art of them submit to the
rest. Either there must be one to preside over all, or the
work will indeed come to an end." And this, it must be
noted, is after the "articles of agreement" had been drawn
up and signed ! There was much of unregenerate human
nature still surviving, even in this order of saintly men !

Wesley proceeds to describe, with almost amusing de-
tail, the sort of man his successor must be : —

"He must be a man of faith and love, and one that has a
single eye to the advancement of the kingdom of God. He must
have a clear understanding; a knowledge of men and things,
particularly of the Methodist doctrine and discipline; a ready
utterance; diligence and activity, with a tolerable share of health.
There must be added to these, favour with the people, with the
Methodists in general. For, unless God turn their eyes and their
hearts towards him, he will be quite incapable of the work. He
must likewise have some degree of learning; because there are
many adversaries, learned as well as unlearned, whose mouths
must be stopped. But this cannot be done unless he be able to
meet them on their own ground.'"

•Smith, p. 456.

THE DEED OF DECLARATION 381

Then, writing to Fletcher, Wesley goes on to ask, "Has
(iod provided one so qualified? Who is he? Thou aet
THE MAN I" he cries. He calls upon Fletcher, "without
conferring with flesh and blood," to "come and strengthen
the hands, comfort the heart, and share the labour of your
affectionate friend and brother."

Wesley held Fletcher in an esteem which at this dis-
tance of time seems extravagant. He compares him with
WTiitefield — to Whitefield's disadvantage : "He was full
as much called to sound an alarm through all the nation
as Mr. TMiitefield himself ; nay, he was far better qualified
for that important work. He had a far more striking
person ; equal good breeding ; an equally winning address ;
together with a richer flow of fancy ; a stronger under-
standing; a far greater treasure of learning, both in
language, philosophy, philology, and divinity; and above
all. a more deep and constant communion with the
Father, and with the Son Jesus Christ." ^

Fletcher's fragile body, of course, could not have sus-
tained for a single week the strain of labour under which
Whitefield lived for nearly forty years; nor coiild he
sway crowds in WTiitefield's overwhelming fashion. But
Fletcher's charm for Wesley is perfectly intelligible. He
had spiritual gifts which Wesley himself lacked — a glow
of rapture, and of adoration, a constantly burning fire of
spiritual emotion, to which Wesley could never pretend.
Wesley describes in more than one well-known passage
his own sober-coloured and permanent spiritual mood.
To a man of his temperament Fletcher's ardours had
the oflBce of a cheerful and ever-burning fire. He brought
with him the glow of a spiritual summer. Fletcher, too,
reinforced the .spiritual side of Wesley's character by that
strange atmosphere, as from other worlds, which attended
him. A description survives of a memorable visit Fletcher
paid to one of the Conferences, which illustrates, if it
does not explain, the strange spiritual influence which
seemed to radiate from him. Fletcher, emaciated, feeble
and ghostlike, entered the Conference leaning on the arm
of his host, Mr. Ireland.

"In an instant the whole assembly stood up, and Wesley ad-
vanced to meet bis almost seraphic friend. The apparently djring

'Tyerman, iii. p. 150.

382 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

man began to address the brave itinerants, and, before he had
uttered a dozen sentences, one and all were bathed in tears.
Wesley, fearing that Fletcher was speaking too much, abruptly
knelt at his side and began to pray. Down fell the whole of
Wesley's preachers, and joined in the devotion of their great
leader.'"

It is hardly to be wondered at that Wesley wanted the
permanent companionship of a soul like that of Fletcher,
and looked ou Fletcher as the fittest man to be his
successor. Fletcher's easily alarmed modesty, indeed,
might well have made him recoil from any pretence of
possessing that splendid catalogue of gifts and graces
which Wesley declared to be necessary for his successor.
But another set of virtues — his loyalty to any call of duty,
his habit of intellectual obedience to Wesley — made him
listen assentiugly to his great leader's call. His reply
ran : "Should Providence call you first, I shall do my
best, with the Lord's assistance, to help your brother
to cover up the wreck and keep together those who are
not absolutely bent to throw away the Methodist doctrine
and discipline."

But these words hardly meant all they seemed to ex-
press. Fletcher was willing to be a travelling assistant to
Wesley, but as he reflected on the task of becoming his
ecclesiastical heir, his modest nature took alarm. On
June 9, 1776, he writes to Wesley telling him that "Your
recommending me to the societies as one who might
succeed you is a step to which I can by no means consent.
It would make me take my horse and gallop away."

Fletcher was not to be Wesley's successor. He married
Miss Bosanquet on November 12, 1781, and marriage with
him, as with Charles Wesley, was fatal to any wide flight
of labours as an evangelist. The taint of consumption,
moreover was in his blood, and he died only four years
afterwards.

But just when Fletcher's failing health and invincible
shrinking from a task so great made it clear he could be
neither Wesley's assistant nor his successor, Providence
raised up a helper who, for the remainder of Wesley's
life, was to share with him the great task of administering
the discipline and shaping the policy of Methodism.

In 1776 Wesley, while conducting a series of meetings

^Tyerman, iii. p. 247.

THE DEED OF DECLARATION

383

in the West, met with Dr. Coke, who bad just beeu dis-
missed from bis curacy for employing in it mauy of
Wesley's own methods. Coke was of an ardent and gen-
erous temperament, with something more than a touch
of natural genius. He was a Welshman, short-necked,
short-bodied, big-brained ; a gentleman, a scholar, and a
man of means. He had a personal fortune of £1200 a
year. He was twice married, and each wife brought him
a fortune. At his ordination he was an arid High Church-
man, who would not allow a Dissenter to defile his thresh-
old by crossing it. But a brother clergyman lent him
Wesley's Sermons and Journals, and they deeply stirred
him. They were a revelation of possibilities in religion
hitherto not only unattained, but even unguessed. Coke,
in a state of spiritual disquiet, came to London. He fell
under Maxfleld's influence, and was sufficiently broken in
pride to learn of a godly layman the secret of faith in
Christ. He had all the fire and glow natural to the Welsh
genius, and religion for him became at once an ardent
spiritual flame — a rebuke to all colder spirits. He went
back to his Somersetshire parish, and toiled in it with an
impetuous zeal too great for his astonished parishioners.
They ended by drowning his voice in his own parish
church with the help of the church bells. He was pres-
ently dismissed from his curacy. Shortly after he met
Wesley. "I had much conversation with him," records
Wesley, "and a union then began w^hich I trust shall never
end."

Coke was admirably fitted to be Wesley's alter ego.
Like him, he was a University man, with the habits of a
scholar and the refinements of a gentleman. Like him,
too, he was a tireless evangelist, and was capable of a
sustained energy of labour which approached, if it did not
rival, that of Wesley himself. And there is something
almost dramatically opportune in the appearance of Coke.
He was not only the exact man wanted, but he appeared
at exactly the right moment. Many of the great problems
of Methodism w'ere already solved. It had found, and
formulated, its theology. After 1771 the Minutes of the
Conference record no excursion into doctrine of any sort.
Its ecclesiastical forms and policy, too, had already been
shaped by force of circumstances. It possessed an unsur-
passed hymuology. But the question had yet to be solved

384

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

whether Methodism should be provincial or imperial,
limited to a group of islands or a force touching all lands.
It was at the moment visibly in peril of becoming paro-
chial. Wesley was so absorbed in the three kingdoms that
had had practically no vision for what lay beyond them.

But Coke had the qualities which Wesley lacked. He
was Wesley's complement. He was not simply an ardent
evangelist, a great administrator, with a genius for
managing men ; he had what Wesley wanted — imagina- I
tion. He saw earlier than Wesley himself, and with |
larger and surer vision, to what Methodism would grow.
He saw more than the three kingdoms. He saw America,
India, the West Indies. So he became what has been
called "the foreign minister of Methodism." He founded
its missions, and for years shaped their policy.

Wesley entrusted him with great responsibilities. He
sent him, for example, in 1782, to Ireland to preside at the
Conference there, and for years not Wesley, but Coke,
presided in that Conference. Coke itinerated on an even
larger field than Wesley. Wesley could not, or would not,
visit America, but he sent Coke there again and again as
his spokesman and representative; and he crossed the
Atlantic, in those days of small ships and long voyages,
no less than eighteen times, and all at his own expense.
He was sent out to shape, with Asbury's companionship,
the outlines of a church destined to outbulk in scale
British Methodism itself. 1

But not even the great field of the United States was '
large enough for Coke's zeal. He planted missions in
the West Indies, and before his death they numbered
15,000 members. He outlived Wesley by more than
twenty years, and when an old man of sixty-five he
appeared in the Wesleyan Conference and pleaded to be
sent to India to found a mission there. There were no
funds to start such a mission, but Coke found £G000 of
his own for that purpose. He sailed with a small com-
pany of helpers, and died on the voyage. He was found
dead in his cabin one morning, with a placid smile on his
face. And fitly enough, the body of that tireless and
daring servant of Christ's Gospel found its resting-place
in that "vast and wandering grave" — the sea.

Methodism is the product of many forces. Whitefield
set it the example of an heroic aggressiveness, Fletcher

THE DEED OF DECLARATION

385

coloured its theology, Charles Wesley taught it to sing,
John Wesley was the central flame of its zeal, and the
shaping brain of its ecclesiastical form. But Coke gave
it geographical range. He forbade it to be insular.

In the meantime a great legal question, on which
turned the future of Methodism, had to be settled. By
1784 there were 359 Methodist chapels in the United
Kingdom. On what legal title was this great mass of
property held; and what was Wesley's legal relation
to their use? Wesley's plans seldom ran beyond the
immediate thing in hand. When, in 1739, the first preach-
ing-house at Bristol was erected, it was proposed to
draw up the deed of trust "on the Presbyterian plan,"
giving the trustees, that is, the right of determining who
should use the building. This, of course, involved the
whole question of the appointment of ministers to the
chapels; and Whitefield, more alert at this point than
even his great comrade, wrote to Wesley telling him : "If
the trustees are to name the preachers, they may even
exclude you from the house you have built. Pray let the
deed be immediately cancelled." This was done, and so a
great blunder was escaped.

But Wesley had to adopt some general rule with regard
to his chapels. A trust-deed was drawn up, providing
that the trustees should permit Wesley himself, or such
persons as he appointed, to have free use of these
premises. Charles Wesley and William Grimshaw were,
if they outlived Wesley, to have the same rights. After
their death the chapels were to be held in trust for the
sole use of such preachers as might be appointed by "the
yearly Conference of the people called Methodists."

This deed was supposed to be effective and final, but,
as a matter of fact, it contained one fatal flaw. The
"yearly Conference of the people called Methodists" had
no legal existence or definition. It was not an entity that
could sue or be sued. It was a fluctuating body, consist-
ing of such preachers as Wesley himself chose each year
to confer with him. "All this time," said Wesley, "it
depended on me alone, not only what persons should
constitute the Conference, but whether there should be
any Conference at all. This lay wholly in my own breast ;
neither the preachers nor the people having any part or
lot in the matter."

38G

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

But a body of this vague and unsettled character, it is
plain, was not a legal corporation. It was little better
than a yearly accident. How could a quite undefined
gathering of this kind exercise the tremendous power
of determining, year by year, who should exercise pastoral
authority, and discharge pastoral functions, in all the
chapels of Methodism? It was essential not only to the
peace but to the continued existence of Methodism that
the Conference, the centre of all power, the supreme
instrument of government, should be legally defined.

Many legal devices wei'e suggested : the creation of a
single board of trustees, in which all chapels might be
vested ; the collection of all trusts, deeds, in a single office,
&c. But such plans did not provide for the supreme
necessity of the case, the continuity and corporate ex-
istence of a living assembly. The Conference itself was
wiser than Wesley in this matter, and urged him to have
an instrument prepared, defining and erecting into a legal
entity "the Conference of the people called Methodists."
So far, it was little better than a phrase. An undying
corporation must take its place.

Accordingly, on February 28, 1784, Wesley executed
the legal document on which Methodism stands — the
"Model Deed" or "Deed of Declaration." A hundred
preachers, duly named, were declared to constitute the
Conference. In this bodj- was vested the iJower of the
appointment of all ministers to their spheres of work
which Wesley himself had hitherto exercised. The "Legal
Hundred," as it is called, has the power of filling its own
ranks year by year. It is thus a continuous entity, and
secures continuity of legal existence to the governing
body of the Church. All chapels are held in trust for this
corporation, and subject to its authority. Elsewhere than
in Great Britain the various Methodist Conferences are
constituted by Act of Parliament. But in Great Britain
Wesley's Legal Hundred is still the instrument by which
the Conference is kept in effective existence.

The Deed of Declaration settled for ever great legal
difficulties; but it created, at the moment, some bitter
personal disputes.

Wesley hesitated long, for example, as to the number of
preachers wlio should constitute the legal Conference.
The number was finally settled at a hundred. Then came

THE DEED OF DECLARATION 387

the question of who were to form the list. Wesley at last
wrote down a hundred names with his own hand. But
this arrangement left many preachers out, and the ex-
cluded men were indignant. One hundred men were
named in the Deed, and ninety-one left unnamed, and the
relation betwixt the two groups had a vagueness which
easily bred alarms. All had hitherto held an equal place
in the Conference, but the Deed seemed to rend the body
in two, and to leave every second man outside the legal
pale.

Some of the helpers, including the two Hampsons, took
au offence so deep that they left Wesley on this account.
Toke was suspected of having induced Wesley to include
Diily a hundred in the Deed, and as a result came into
much temporary unpopularity. The accusation reached
Wesley's ears, and he replied in emphatic Latin, "^on
tuU, non potuitr An attempt was made to organise the
discontent of the excluded men into open revolt. Circular
letters were sent out calling upon the preachers to "take
a stand" at the next Conference. But when the Con-
ference met Wesley rose, with his saintly face and white
hairs and frank speech, and made a calm and persuasive
explanation of his act and of the reasons for it. Then,
coming straight to the point, he bade all who were of his
mind to stand up. They rose to a man I

Human nature counts for much, even in good men ;
and there was some real peril that the hundred members
of the Conference, in whom was vested all legal power,
might claim pre-eminence over the other hundred, who
were left without legal foothold. So the very document
which was meant to bind the Conference into perpetual
unity might rend it asunder. Late in 1785 Wesley, who
saw this, wrote a letter which was to be read to the Con-
ference after his death. The letter would thus come with
the pathos and the authority of a message from the grave.
It ran : —

"I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that you never avail
yourselves of the Deed of Declaration to assume any superiority
over your brethren, but let all things go on, among those itiner-
ants who choose to remain together, exactly in the same manner
as when I was with you, so far as circumstances will permit.

"In particular, I beseech you, if you ever loved me, and if you
now love God and your brethren, to have no respect of persons
in stationing the preachers, in choosing children for Kingswood

388 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

School, in disposing of the yearly contribution and the Preachers'
Fund, or any other of the public money; but do all things with a
single eye, as I have done from the beginning."

That letter did uot reach the first Conference after
Wesley's death till it had been some hours in session, and
had already passed a resolution in almost Exactly the
same words. And, as a matter of fact, the spirit of
Wesley's message has ruled the administration of affairs
in the British Conference ever since. It has grown to
be a tradition that has the force of law. The Legal
Hundred claims no separate place from the rest of the
Conference. It exercises no independent power. It is
practically a mere registering machine, the instrument
by which the decisions of the Conference as a whole are
translated into legal terms.

CHAPTER X

WESLEY'S THEORY OF THE CHURCH

Few things in ecclesiastical history are stranger than the
circumstance that a century after Wesley's death, and
when one of the greatest Protestant Churches in the
world bears his name and is the direct fruit of his work,
it should still be a matter of perplexed debate whether he
ever intended the creation of a Church. Was it — or was
it not — his purpose that Methodism should remain an
order within the Anglican Church?

It is easy to dismiss the question with the obvious
generalisation that he who plants the acorn must be held
to intend the oak. But the puzzled reader wants to
understand Wesley; and the task, looked at in some
lights, is not easy. Wesley, it is true, was the frankest
of men. He had absolutely no reserves. His correspond-
ence in bulk equals that of Horace Walpole, and is in-
finitely more open and honest. Wesley, moreover, in his
Journal, has photographed not merely his own character
and work, but the changes of almost every day in his own
moods. Betwixt his conversion in 1738 and his death in
1791 is a long stretch of fifty-three years, and through
that whole period Wesley lived in a blaze of publicity.
Every act he did i>s registered, almost every word is
audible, well-nigh every letter is preserved. And yet,
after reading everything Wesley has written, and study-
ing everything that he did, doubt is possible to many
anxious souls whether Methodism in becoming a Church
has wrecked its founder's ideals or fulfilled them. If
John Wesley came back in the flesh again, would he
recognise his own work ; and if he did, would he embrace
it or renounce it?

It is easy to quote many sayings of Wesley which can
be flung as reproaches and arguments against Wesley's
Church by disputants who are eager to prove it has no
right to exist. And these inconvenient missiles are to be
found not only in the utterances of his earlier years, when
388

890

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

hot blood ran in his veins and High Church prejudices
coloured his whole vision. They can be discovered in the
later years of his life, when reason was cool, and when his
work as an evangelist had reached its climax.

It was in 1787, within four years of his death, that
Wesley wrote the oft-quoted sentence which at least
proves that he had not the vision of a prophet: "When
the Methodists leave the Church of England, God will
leave them." A year later he declares : "The glory of the
Methodists is not to be a separate body;" and that, "the
more he reflected the more he was convinced that the
Methodists ought not to leave the Church." Still a year
later (in 1789) he declared that "none who regarded his
judgment or advice would separate from the Church of
England." What could be more emphatic than these
statements? If the quotations could stop here the case
would be closed.

It is true that at the stage of these sayings the Church
of England had forgotten, in large measure at least, its
early scorn of the Methodist revival. It had begun to
dimly realise Wesley's greatness and the splendour of
his services to religion. The church doors so long shut
against him were now on every side thrown open. Wesley
himself, his head white with the snows of over eighty
years, and crowned with the spiritual honours of a career
so memorable, was welcomed with veneration everywhere.
"I have come somehow, I know not how," said the puzzled
Wesley himself, "to be an honoured man." Bishops no
longer attacked him. Clergymen no longer headed mobs
to break up his services. Never again would a dninken
divine thrust hira from the sacramental table, as had
once happened at Epworth. And this new mood on the
part of the Anglican clergy might quite naturally have in-
creased Wesley's always strong desire to keep his fol-
lowers within the Church.

But this is by no means a sufficient explanation of the
emphatic words about separation from the Church we
have quoted. Those sentences are perhaps the only say-
ings of Wesley that a good many High Churchmen know
by heart, and they derive infinite comfort from them,
while they probably cause not a little disquiet to some
good Methodists when they happen to hear them quoted.

But then it is just as easy to quote a chain of sayings of

WESLEY'S THEORY OF THE CHURCH 391

an exactly opposite character from Wesley's lips and pen.
"The uninterrupted succession," he declares, "I know to
be a fable which no man ever did or could prove." "That
it" — the episcopal form of Church government — "is pre-
scribed by Scripture, I do not believe. This opinion,
which I once zealously espoused, I have been heartily
ashamed of since I read Bishop Stillingfleet's 'Irenicon.' "
"Church or no Church," he says again, "we must attend
to the work of saving souls."

Sometimes the satire of mere dates is very cruel. Thus
on December 27, 1745, Wesley's brother-in-law. Hall, wrote
a long letter, urging him to renounce the Church of
England. Wesley, in reply, writes a letter in which the
High Churchman is in the ascendant. He declares: "We
believe it would not be right for us to administer either
baptism or the Lord's Supper unless we had a commission
so to do from those bishops whom we apprehend to be
in succession of the Apostles. We believe that the three-
fold order of ministers is not only authorised by its
apostolic institution, but also by the written Word. Yet,"
he adds, with characteristic frankness, "we are willing to
hear and weigh whatever reasons you believe to the con-
trary." Less than four weeks after, however (January
20, 1746), he writes: "I set out for Bristol. On the road
I read over Lord King's 'Account of the Primitive Church.'
In spite of the vehement prejudice of my education I was
compelled to believe that this was a fair and impartial
draught (draft) ; hnt if so, it would follow that bishops
and presbyters are (essentially) of one order, and that
originally every Christian congregation was a Church
in(lei)eudent of all others!"'

The irony of dates in this fashion is often discover-
able in Wesley's acts and utterances. In April 1790,
for example, he wrote the famous passage which has been
quoted against the Methodist Church by angry sacer-
dotalists ever since : —

" 'I never had any design of separating from the Church. I
have no such design now. I do not believe the Methodists in
general design it when I am no more seen. I do, and will do, all
that is in my power to prevent such an event. Nevertheless, in
spite of all that I can do, many of them will separate from it
(although I am apt to think not one-half, perhaps not one-third

'Journal, p. 216.

392

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

of them). These will be so bold and injudicious as to form a,
separate party. In flat opposition to these, I declare once more
that I live and die a member of the Church of England, and that
none who regards my judgment or advice will ever separate
from it.' "

But only two months afterwards — in June of the same
year — he writes to the Bishop of London : —

"I must speak plain, having nothing to hope or fear in this
world, which I am on the point of leaving. The Methodists in
general, my lord, are members of the Church of England. They
hold all her doctrines, attend her services and partake of her
sacraments. They do not willingly do harm to any one, but do
what good they can to all. To encourage each other herein, they
frequently spend an hour together in prayer and mutual exhorta-
tion. Permit me, then, to ask, 'Cui bono? for what reasonable
end would your lordship drive these people out of the Church?'
Your lordship does, and that in the most cruel manner; yes, and
the most disingenuous manner. They desire a licence to worship
God after their own conscience. Your lordship refuses it, and
then punishes them for not having a licence! So your lordshi))
leaves them only this alternative, 'Lea^e the Church or starve.'
And is it a Christian — yea, a Protestant bishop — that so perse-
cutes his own flock? I say persecutes, for it is persecution, to
all intents and purposes. You do not burn them, indeed, but you
starve them, and how small is the difference! And your lord-
ship does this under colour of a vile, execrable law, not a whit
better than that 'de heretico comiurendo.' "

Here, by Wesley's own testimony, a bishop of the
Church of England is ''driving" the unfortunate Meth-
odists out of the Church, and is doing this "in the most
cruel manner." How could Wesley himself hope they
would stay in the Church?

But the best comment on Wesley's strong words about
not separating from the Church of England is found in
his own acts at the very time these words were written
or spoken. Concurrently with these very words he took
steps, and took them under the irresistible compulsion of
events, which tended to separation, which i)ractically were
acts of separation. In 1784, as we have seen, he consti-
tuted Methodism a legal entity, with assured continuity
of existence. He made it, that is, a Church. In the same
year he ordained Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey for America,
and this with full knowledge of Lord Mansfield's dictum
that "ordination is separation." In 1785 he ordained
some of his helpers for Scotland, justifying the act by the
plain necessities of his societies there, and by the circum-

WESLEY'S THEORY OF THE CHURCH 393

stance that the Anglican episcopate did not cross the
Border. In 1787 he licensed many of his buildings under
the Toleration Act as Dissenting chapels. In 1789 he
ordained some of his helpers for England.

All these were acts of separation. They constituted
Methodism a Church. And yet, while Wesley was per-
forming these very acts he was speaking, or writing, words
which forbade separation, at least during his own life!
The puzzle, on the face of it, is very great. Is it to be
solved by charging Wesley with inconsistency or insin-
cerity? But that explanation, at least, is utterly incred-
ible. It is contradicted by Wesley's whole character and
career.

The explanation is to be found in that theory of the
Church which Wesley, since his conversion at least, had
always held, but which had not always been clear to his
own consciousness, or allowed to colour his speech and
determine his policy. We have shown how, almost up to
the day of his conversion, Wesley was a High Churchman
and a Ritualist of the severest type. His sacerdotalism
had running through it a strain of the ascetic ; it glowed
with the ardour of a fanatic. He refused the Lord's
Supper to all who had not been baptized by a minister
with due orders. He rebaptized the children of Dis-
senters ; he held the theory of the Apostolic Succession in
its extremest form.

^ But his conversion changed the whole perspective, not
only of Wesley's life, but of his theology, and of his
ecclesiastical views. All his High Church theories were
jettisoned. Religion, for him, was no longer mechanical
but spiritual. Ecclesiastical formulae and methods were
but as husks and chaff when weighed against spiritual
realities.

Christ, as Wesley now saw, was present in His own
Church, and governed it. His grace did not trickle exclu-
sively through some poor little, uncertain, and solitary
human pipe; it did not depend on the touch of a particular
set of ordaining human hands on certain human heads. It
was Christ's direct gift to the personal soul. The Holy
Ghost, in Wesley's new theology, was no longer relegated
to some far-off day in early Church history; the mind of
that Spirit was not exclusively expressed in certain ancient
Church usages. The Divine Spirit, the Lord and Giver of

394

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Light, was as surely present in the Church of the eigh-
teenth century as in the Apostolic Church. The Day of
Pentecost, on this reading of history, is not a particular
set of twenty-four hours in Jerusalem many centuries ago.
It is to-day! Men live in it. The winds of Pentecost no
longer blow, its cloven tongues of flame are no longer
visible; but though the signs given to the sense of man
on that far-off day in Jerusalem have vanished, the pres-
ence of the Holy Ghost in the Church is continued. So,
for Wesley, the mechanical High Church theory was no
longer credible.

But this new view of Wesley about the Church did not
at once find full expression. It was not clear always to
his own consciousness. He continued, at intervals, to
talk High Church language long after he had renounced
the whole High Church theory. His mind on this subject
was a sort of palimpsest. The evangelical theory as to
the Church was written large and indelibly upon it, to be
read of all men. But hidden beneath, and visible to those
who searched, were fragments, in dim and broken sylla-
bles, of the old and renounced High Church doctrine.

The key to Wesley's apparently contradictory acts and
words in relation to the Church of England may be found
in his famous "Twelve Reasons against Separation," pub-
lished in 1758. The opening sentence in that document
defines Wesley's position : "Whether it be lawful or not,
which itself may be disputed, being not so clear a point
as some may imagine, it is by no means expedient to
separate from the Established Church." Wesley, that is,
made expediency — the question of more or less practical
efficiency — the supreme test of ecclesiastical forms; and
that position is fatal to the whole High Church theory.
The Twelve Reasons which follow all belong to the cate-
gory of expediences and inexpedieuces. No. 8, for ex-
ample, runs : "Because to form the plan of a new Church
would require infinite time and care (which might be far
more profitably bestowed) with much more wisdom and
greater depth and extensiveness of thought than any of
us are masters of." No. 10 runs, "Because the experiment
has been so frequently tried already, and the success
never answered the expectation."

Charles Wesley added a note saying his brother's "rea-
sons against our ever separating from the Church of

WESLEY'S THEORY OF THE CHURCH 395

England are mine also. I subscribe to them with all my
heart. Only, with regard to the first, 1 am quite clear
that it is neither expedient nor lawful for me to sepa-
rate.'"

The date of these "Twelve Reasons" is significant, as it
shows that at this early stage of their work the two
brothers were parted from each other by fundamental dif-
ferences in Church theory. John Wesley held separation
to be expedient ; whether it was lawful or not he declined
to say. Charles Wesley is quite clear that separation is
"neither expedient nor lawful," and that sentence marks
the water-shed which divides two irreconcilable ecclesi-
astical systems. For Charles Wesley separation was a
sin !

His own conduct, of course, was hardly consistent with
that heroic doctrine. He was guilty, in fact, of a thousand
acts in conflict with it. He was tiie first of the brothers
to administer the Lord's Supper in an unconsecrated
building. He preached and administered the sacraments
for years in City Road Chapel, yet he held the biiilding
to be such an ecclesiastical offence that he gave directions
he was not to be buried in it.

John Wesley, for his part, refuses to pronounce whether
separation is unlawful, "a point," he says drily, "not so
clear as some may imagine." He would not discuss that
abstract question at the moment; for this would have
been the signal for a controversy which might have rent
the goodly companionship of his comrades asunder. But
the theory as to the Church Wesley expressed at this
early date is essentially and profoundly anti-sacerdotal.

It is possible to quote from AVesley's writings a chain
of utterances, calm, reasoned, and positive, and running
through the whole stretch of his public work, in illustra-
tion of his views on Church order.

■ Does the New Testament, for example, supply a single
authoritative pattern of Church government which is
binding on the universal Christian conscience, and out-
side which are to be found only the uncovenanted mercies
of the Divine Grace? Says Wesley: —

"As to my own judgment, I still believe 'the Episcopal form of
Church government' to be Scriptural and apostolical. I mean,
well agreeing with the practice and writings of the Apostles.

'Smith, p. 275.

396 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

But that it is piescrlbed in Scripture T do not believe. Bishop
Stilllngfleet has unanswerably proved that 'neither Christ nor
His Apostles prescribe any particular form of Church govern-
ment, and that the plea of divine right for Diocesan Episcopacy
was never heard of in the Primitive Church.' "'

The doctrine of "the succession is, on the sacerdotal
reading of Church order, necessary to the validity of the
Christian ministry'; but that doctrine Wesley absolutely
rejects, and he sees with characteristic keenness where
the theory breaks down : —

"I deny that the Romish bishops came down by uninterrupted
succession from the Apostles. I never could see it proved; and, I
am persuaded, I never shall. But, farther, it is a doctrine of
your Church that the intention of the administrator is essential
to the validity of the sacraments which are administered by him.
If you pass for a priest, are you assured of the intention of the
bishop that ordained you? If not, you may happen to be no
priest, and so all your ministry is nothing worth; nay, by the
same rule, he may happen to be no bishop. And who can tell how
often this has been the case? But if there has been only one
such instance in a thousand years, what becomes of your unin-
terrupted succession ?"=

Through the writings of Wesley for fifty years, to sum
up, there runs a chain of emphatic utterances which prove
that the High Church theory was an offence alike to his
reason and his conscience. A thousand prepossessions
and prejudices, of course, bound him to the Church of his
birth and training. The whole character of his genius
made him averse to unnecessary changes. He clung to
historic forms even when he was making them the
vehicle of new forces, and to venerable words when they
were charged with new meanings. But he never ad-
mitted that separation stood in the category of a sin.
It was a question of practical advantage or disadvantage,
to be determined by the circumstances of the moment.
That which to-day was so inexpedient as to represent a
disaster, might to-morrow be so expedient as to become an
obligation.

His people, he declares, "will, even after my death, re-
main in the Church unless they be thrust out!" And
that dreadful and cruel contingency became a fact. They
were thrust out ! They were being thrust out even while

•Works, vol. xiii. p. 211.
V6ti., vol. iii. p. 44.

WESLEY'S THEORY OF THE CHUKCH 397

Wesley lived. And yet Wesley himself was held by a
hundred forces which had no relation to conscience, and
sometimes not even to reason, from open breach with
the Church. He foresaw the possibility of separation
from the very beginning of his work. The possibility,
step by step, became a probability. It grew into a cer-
tainty. But always it was for Wesley himself a thing
undesired; to be approached only by the slowest stages,
and only as compelled by the logic of facts.

It is almost amusing, indeed, to note, as we have shown,
for how long Wesley talked the language of the High
Churchman, after he had utterly cast High Church the-
ology overboard. His ecclesiastical prejudices gave an
accent to his speech and governed his tastes for years
after they had been renounced by his reason and con-
science. But his conversion, we repeat, shifted the whole
centre of his theology. From that moment he saw that
Church forms were questions of expediency. Expediencies
and inexpediencies had to be weighed together; some-
times the scale might incline one way, sometimes an-
other. That it finally turned in the direction of separa-
tion history proves. And while Wesley himself never
formally left the Church of England, he gave to Method-
ism a form and powers which meant separation.

Wesley, it cannot be doubted, lies open to the charge of
verbal inconsistency. All that can be said is that old
mental habits clung to him, old verbal formulte crept to
his lips and to the tip of his pen long after they had been
drained of their meaning. The influence of his brother
Charles was a force pulling him always in the High
Church direction. So it happened that at intervals he
still talked like a High Churchman when he was doing
things — things to him urgent, inevitable, sacred — which
were fatal to the whole High Church theory.

The relations of Wesley with the Anglican Church, it
will thus be seen, are the story of an education. We have
the picture of an eager, logical, and intensely earnest
character breaking, thread by thread, the bonds woven of
early training, early beliefs, and passionate ecclesiastical
prejudices, and giving effect, though slowly and reluc-
tantly, to his deeper convictions. The practical note in
Wesley's genius, his habit of taking short views, and of
dealing with difficulties only when they became concrete

398 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

and urgent, makes the process slow; while his frankness
and directness of speech at each stage of the process sup-
ply a chain of utterances which often seem in conflict with
each other. Each utterance, indeed, has to be interpreted
by its date, and read in the light of the particular set of
circumstances with" which it dealt. His very honesty to
the mood and circumstance of the moment is sometimes,
indeed, the real explanation of some saying which con-
tradicts another utterance dealing with another set of
conditions. And Wesley, it cannot be denied, retained,
in fragments at least, the vocabulary of sacerdotalism
longer after he had cast the whole sacerdotal theory
resolutely overboard.

Who studies, in a word, this, the most keenly criticised
aspect of Wesley's work, finds in it the picture of a man
with an obstinate High Church bias drawing him in one
direction, a bias due to birth and training and tempera-
ment; whilst, step by step, led by Providence and com-
pelled by facts, he moves on a path which leads to quite
another goal, a goal undesired but not wholly unseen.

CHAPTER XI

THE FINAL STEPS

The question whether Wesley intended his followers to
remain a society or to become a Church is, as we have
said, one of purely academic, or even antiquarian, inter-
est. The relation of Methodism to the Anglican Church
was decided iu the end by forces outside Wesley's will.
Some of these forces are to be found in the character of
the clergy of that day and the policy they adopted. The
drunken curate who at Epworth denied Wesley the Sacra-
ment in his father's church ; the clergy who inspired mobs
to attack the Methodists, and sometimes led them in the
attack, were no doubt evil exceptions to their class. But
the utterly unspiritual character of the clergy made it
impossible to leave the converts won by the Revival iu
their careless hands. To have done this would have been
a crime against human souls. Moreover, the great mass
of the clergy, from the Bishops downwards, were reso-
lutely bent on driving the early Methodists out of the
Church. "You are our greatest enemies," Prebend Chiirch
wrote to Wesley in 1744; and that dreadful sentence
makes audible what, for many sad years, was the general
mind of the clergy towards the Revival.

"It was not in the power of the Bishops to crush the
new order," says Miss Wedgwood, "but the strange ano-
malies of English law left it in their ijower to force it
to become a sect." No religious meetings outside the
ordinary services of the Church could be held without
a licence under the Toleration Act ; and those taking
part in such meetings, in order to secure the right to
hold them, had to register themselves as Dissenters. This
law extended to America, and so the first Methodist
Church in the United States was adorned with that very
unecclesiastical bit of architecture — a chimney. When a
Methodist church was built it had to disguise itself as
a house in order to secure the right to exist.

It can easily be seen what a formidable weapon such
399

400

WESLEY AND HIS CEKTURY

a law was in the bauds of the clergy, and it was used
against the Methodists with relentless severity. The last
important letter Wesley wrote, says Miss Wedgwood,
"was a remonstrance addressed to a Bishop who, by giv-
ing information against all Methodists meeting in un-
licensed houses, and getting them fined, forced them to
apply for a licence as Dissenters."

The state of the law, and the temper of the clergy in
the use of that law, thus compelled Wesley, in even the
earliest stages of his work, to take steps which were in
effect acts of separation from the Church of England.
He could only secure for his helpers the most rudimentary
liberties of speech by labelling them Dissenters; and so,
in 1748, the new room at Bristol was licensed, and Meth-
odists using it were described in the licence as "Protes-
tant subjects dissenting from the Church of England."

City Road Chapel, from 1778, became Wesley's head-
quarters, and it was in itself a visible symbol of the
relation the Methodist movement has assumed towards
the Church. It was an unconsecrated building; but
services were held in it in church hours, and the sacra-
ments were systematically administered there. The very
building was thus a bit of concrete dissent, a symbol of
the new Church which had already come into existence,
but had hardly attained self-consciousness. In 1784, Wes-
ley writes in his Journal, "a kind of separation has al-
ready taken place, and will inevitably spread, though by
slow degrees." "Their enemies," he says again, "provoke
them to it, the clergy in particular, most of whom, far
from thanking them for continuing in the Church, use all
the means in their power, fair and unfair, to drive them
out of it."

The question of the sacraments, however, proved the
turning point in the relations betwixt Methodism and the
Church. The Salvation Army, to-day, treats the Sacra-
ment of the Lord's Supper as, at best, a luxury, and
makes no arrangement to gather its converts round the
table of the Lord ; and this is a fatal defect in its organi-
sation. But Wesley held that the administration of the
sacraments was binding on the Christian conscience, and
he required his converts to observe them as a matter of
duty and value them as a means of grace. But they
must resort to the parish church in order to attend the

THE FINAL STEPS

401

Lord's Supper; and here, too, often, was found a clergy-
man whose character was an offence to morals, or an
intolerant fanatic who drove them from Christ's table
as mere intruders. The Wesleys themselves repeatedly
suffered that indignity in their own persons. At Bristol,
as early as 1740, Wesley's converts were repelled by the
clergy, on an agreed plan, and with unrelenting severity,
from the Lord's table, and this explains why the new room
there was licensed so early as a dissenting place of wor-
ship.

But Wesley's instinct for order made it intolerable to
him that the Sacrament should be administered by any
one save an ordained minister. At Bristol and London he
was able, with the help of a few clergy who stood by him,
to maintain the regular administration of the sacraments.
But to do this over the area of the three liingdoms was
practically imi)ossible ; and in America geography and
history alike made the situation incomparably more diffi-
cult. Here were a few almost accidental clergy scattered
at distant points over the area of a continent. Political
passiou burned like a flame through the whole community,
and in nine cases out of ten these clergj' were in open
political quarrel with their own flocks. The attempt to
keep the fast-growing Methodist Societies dependent for
the sacraments on a handful of Anglican clergymen under
such conditions, both of geography and politics, was idle.
Then came the War of Independence, and like some fierce
whirlwind it drove the Anglican clergy from the field
completely.

Wesley, as we have seen, appealed to the English
Bishops to ordain at least one of his helpers for the
purpose of administering the sacraments in America, but
the appeal was rejected. The Bishops were careless of
even their own flocks in the revolting colonies. They
were politicians rather than pastors, and were not dis-
posed to exhibit any very tender anxiety for the spiritual
interests of mere rebels. On the High Church theory the
sacraments are essential to salvation ; they can only be
administered by persons duly ordained, and in the
Apostolic Succession. To refuse, or to delay, the presence
of properly ordained clergymen to a whole community
is, on the sacerdotal logic, to imperil the eternal welfare
of human souls. Yet, when a delegate from the United

402

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

States came to Englaud to i)rocure episcopal ordination,
for the purpose of taking back to the dying souls of a con-
tinent the mystic grace of which ordination is supposed
to be the exclusive channel, he was kept knocking at the
doors of episcojjal palaces for two years. Benjamin
Franklin wrote in characteristic accents of common-sense
on the situation : "A hundred years hence, when people
are more enlightened, 'twill be wondered at that men
in America, qualified by their learning and piety to pray
for and instruct their neighbours, should not be permitted
to do it till they have made a voyage of 6000 miles to
ask leave of a cross old gentleman at Canterbury."

Wesley found that he must provide for his own flock
in America. The sacraments must be maintained, and
they must be administered by duly ordained men. But
Wesley held that he himself was as much as episcopos,
and as fully entitled to ordain, as any Bishop in the land.
"Lord King's account of the primitive Church," he says,
"convinced me, many years ago, that Bishops and pres-
byters are the same order, and consequently have the
same right to ordain." He had held his hand too long,
to the sore injury of his Societies in America, and at the
risk of rending Methodism in that country to fragments.
Accordingly, on September 2, 1784, he ordained Coke as
Superintendent or Bishop, and Whatcoat and Vasey as
presbyters, for America.

This act plainly brought to open rupture the whole
relations of Methodism and the Church of England.
Charles Wesley was thrown into a mood of frantic re-i
monstrance : —

"I can scarce believe it (he wrote) that in his eighty-second
year, my brother, my old, intimate friend and companion, should
have assumed the episcopal character, ordained elders, conse-
crated a Bishop, and sent him to ordain our lay-preachers in
America. How was he surprised into so rash an action? Lord
Mansfield told me last year that ordination was separation.
This my brother does not, and will not, see; or that he has re-
nounced the principles and practice of his whole life; that he has!
acted contrary to all his declarations, protestations, and writ-
ings; robbed his friends of their boastings; realised the Nag's
Head ordination; and left an indelible blot on his name, as long
as it shall be remembered. Thus our partnership here is dis-
solved, but not our friendship. I have taken him for better, for
worse, till death do us part; or, rather, reunites us in love in-
eeparable."

THE FINAL STEPS

403

He wrote in distressed and pathetic terms to John
Wesley himself: "Before you have quite broken down
the bridge, stop and consider. Go to your grave in peace,
or at least suffer me to go before this ruin. So much
I think you owe to my father, my brother, and to me,
as to stay till I am taken from this evil. I am on the
brink of the grave. Do not push me in, or embitter my
last moments. . . . This letter is a debt to our parents,
and to our brother, as well as to you."

John Wesley's reply is calm, but unyielding : —

"I will tell you my thoughts in all simplicity (he writes to him
on August 19, 1785). If you agree with me, well. If not, we
can, as Mr. Whitefield used to say 'agree to disagree.' For these
forty years I have been in doubt concerning that question, What
obedience is due to 'heathenish priests and mitred infidels'?
[A line of his brother's.] I have from time to time proposed my
doubts to the most pious and sensible clergymen I know. But
they gave me no satisfaction. Rather, they seemed to be puzzled
as well as me. Obedience I have always paid to the Bishops,
' in obedience to the laws of the land. But I cannot see that
I am under any obligation to obey them farther than those laws
require.

"It is in obedience to these laws that I have never exercised
in England the power which I believe God has given me. I

( firmly believe I am a Scriptural episcopos, as much as any man
in England, or in Europe. For the uninterrupted succession I
know to be a fable, which no man ever did or can prove. But
this does in no way interfere with my remaining in the Church
of England, from which I have no more desire to separate than
I had fifty years ago. ... I no more separate from it now than
I did in the year 1758. I submit still (though sometimes with
a doubting conscience) to 'mitred infidels.' I walk still by the
same rule I have done for between forty and fifty years. I do

} nothing rashly. It is not likely I should. The heyday of my

(blood is over. If you will go on hand in hand with me, do. But
do not hinder me, if you will not help me."

Charles Wesley wrote again, declaring he was filled
i with alarm at "an approaching schism as causeless and
• unprovoked as the American Revolution, and at your
own eternal disgrace. I," he said, "creep on in the old
way in which we set out together, and trust to continue

I in it until I finish my course." Then the brother in him

I I breaks out. "We have taken each other for better, for
worse, till death do us — part? — no, till we meet eternally.
Therein, in the love which never faileth, I am your

' affectionate friend and brother."

' John Wesley brought the correspondence to a close

404 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

by saying, "I see no use of you and me disputing together,
for neither of us is likely to convince the other." Charles
Wesley had disavowed his own juvenile line about
"heathenish priests and mitred infidels," but John Wesley
goes on to say, "Your verse is a sad truth. I see fifty
times more of England than you do, and I find few
exceptions to it." Then he adds: "If you will not or
cannot help me yourself, do not hinder those that can
and will. I must, and will, save as many souls as I can
while I live, without being careful about what may pos-
sibly be when I die."

Wesley, meanwhile, had published a statement explain-
ing and justifying the American ordinations. It runs : —

Bristol, September 10, 1784. — To Dr. Coke, Mr. Asbury, and
our other brethren in North America. By a very uncommon
train of providences, many of the provinces of North America are
totally disjoined from their mother country, and erected into
independent States. The English Government has no authority
over them, either civil or ecclesiastical, any more than over the
States of Holland. A civil authority is exercised over them partly
by the Congress, partly by the Provincial Assemblies. But no
one either exercises or claims any ecclesiastical authority at all.
In this particular situation some thousands of the inhabitants of
these States desire my advice; and, in compliance with their
desire, I have drawn up a little sketch.

"... The case is widely different between England and
North America. Here there are Bishops who have a legal juris-
diction. In America there are none. Neither any parish min-
isters. So that, for hundreds of miles together, there is none
either to baptize or to administer the Lord's Supper. Here, there-
fore, my scruples are at an end; and I conceive myself at full
liberty, as I violate no order, and invade no man's right, by ap-
pointing and sending labourers into the harvest.

"I have, accordingly, appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis
Asbury to be joint Superintendents over our brethren in North
America; as also Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey to act as
elders among them, by baptizing and administering the Lord's
Supper. . . .

"If any one will point out a more rational and Scriptural way
of feeding and guiding these poor sheep in the wilderness, I will
gladly embrace it. At present, I cannot see any better method
than I have taken."'

It is to be noted, Wesley ordained Coke as "Superin-
tendent," not as Bishop. He knew the power of words,
and desired to avoid the use of a term sure to provoke
controversy. With the stubborn conversatism of his type,

•Smith, p. 512.

THE FINAL STEPS

405

too, he was anxious to preserve old verbal forms, eveu
wheu they became charged with new meanings. But Coke
and Asbury in America discovered no necessity for put-
ting any verbal disguise on recognised facts, and they
adopted the term Bishop. It is still amusing to read
Wesley's alarmed comments on this circumstance. He
writes to Asbury : —

"In one point, my dear brother, I am a little afraid, both the
doctor and you differ from me. I study to be little; you study
to be great. I creep; you strut along. I found a school; you a
college! Nay, call it after your own names! Oh, beware, do not
seek to be something! Let me be nothing, and 'Christ be all in
all!'

"One instance of this, of your greatness, has given me great
concern. How can you, how dare you, suffer yourself to be
called 'Bishop'? I shudder, I start at the very thought! Men
may call me a knave or a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, and I am
content; but they shall never, by my consent, call me 'Bishop'!
For my sake, for God's sake, for Christ's sake, put a full end to
this! Let the Presbyterians do what they please; but let the
Methodists know their calling better."

That letter shows how complete, on certain subjects,
was Wesley's slavery to words, even at this late period of
his life. He could do bold things, revolutionary things.
But in characteristic English fashion he wanted to label
them with tame and conventional phrases.

Having adopted, on clear and reasoned principles, the
policy of ordaining his own helpers, Wesley steadily pro- .
ceeded to give it larger application. He ordained other
helpers, but always on the logic of necessity, and only in
the order of necessity. He would do what the plain facts
of each case required ; but still with as little disturbance
of existing order, and as little shock to the prejudices of
others, as possible. In 1785, "having," he writes, "with a
few other friends weighed the matter thoroughly, I yielded
to their judgment, and set apart three of our well-tried
preachers, John Pawsou, Thomas Hanby, Joseph Taylor,
to minister in Scotland." He further recommended to
the Scotch Methodists the use of the abridged Common
Prayer, a circumstance which showed that John Wesley
did not even yet understand the Scottish character.

Wesley recites the reasons which moved him to ordain
these three helpers for Scotland. There could be no
conflict of jurisdiction, as no Anglican Bishop had any

406

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

spiritual charge beyond the Border. Wesley's further
reasons are: (1) The desire of doing more good; (2) the
absolute necessity of the case, as the Scotch ministers had
repeatedly refused to give the Methodists the Sacrament
unless they would leave the Societies.

In 1786 he ordained helpers for Ireland and the West
Indies. On November 3, 1787, in his very last Journal
occurs a very notable record : "I had a long conversation
with Mr. Clulow (as Attorney) on that execrable Act
called the Conventicle Act. After consulting the Act of
Toleration, with that of the fourteenth [tenth, Author]
of Queen Anne, we were both clearly convinced that it
was the safest way to license all our chapels and all our
travelling preachers; and that no justice, or bench of
justices, has any authority to refuse licensing either the
house or the preachers."

On February 27, 1789, Wesley ordained Alexander
Mather as Superintendent or Bishop, and Thomas Rankin
and Henry Moore as presbyters, for England. He clothed
them with power to feed the flock of Christ, and to ad-
minister the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper
according to the usages of the Church of England, and
within the boundaries of England. And he set apart
Mather as Superintendent or Bishop that he might ordain
other helpers, and so a regular ministry in the Methodist
Church be maintained even after Wesley's death.i

And he did all this knowing, in Lord Mansfield's words,
that "ordination is separation." In these plain and great
facts, not in casual phrases picked from his letters and
Journal, is to be found Wesley's purpose as to the future
of Methodism.

Wesley's ordinations are explained by Knox, in a letter
which Southey published as an appendix to his biography,
as due to an old man's failure in reasoning faculties. But
this explanation proves, for the High Church critics who
quote it, quite too much. Wesley ordained Coke, Vasey,
and Whatcoat in 1784, and. on Knox's theory, his memory
and intellect were then suffering from senile decay. But
the famous Korah sermon, which is a mine of delightful
quotations for the sacerdotal critics of Methodism, was
preached in 1789, or five years later, and must, on Alex-

'Jackson's "Life of Charles Wesley," p. 431.

THE PINAL STEPS

407

ander Knox's logic, represent, still more completely than
even the much-challenged ordinations, the decay of Wes-
ley's reasoning faculty !

The Korah sermon — a sermon on the ministerial oflSce
— is, of course, perfectly consistent with Wesley's whole
policy. It was preached at Coi'k on May 4, 1789, and
intended as a rebuke to some Irish helpers who had taken
upon themselves to administer the Sacrament without
Wesley's authority. "Where did I appoint you to do
this?" he asks. "Nowhere at all. In doing it you re-
nounce the first principle of Methodism, which is wholly
and solely to preach the Gospel." Wesley would ordain
his helpers to administer the Sacraments when he found
this to be necessary, but he would not tolerate his helpers
ordaining themselves. And it must be remembered that,
not quite three months before he preached the Korah
sermon, he ordained Mather as a Superintendent or
Bishop, and Rankin and Moore as presbyters, for Eng-
land.

It is often said, in spite of the facts which are here
recited, that Wesley never intended Methodism to be
anything more than a society within the Church. He
planned it as a society, he left it a society ; he forbade it
to be a Church. The answer, of course, is obvious that,
whatever Wesley intended, history has proved Methodism
to be a Church in the largest sense ; and its founder, like
the men who laid the foundation of the great American
republic, builded better than he knew.

But was Wesley deceived by a phrase? Did he look
upon the great spiritual system taking shape about him,
with its perfect and flexible organisation, as a mere
"society," an accidental, or at least temporary, cluster
of unrelated atoms? In his famous sermon on Schism
Wesley discusses at length the question. What is a
Church? "A more ambiguous word than this — the
Church" — he says, "is scarcely to be found in the English
language." But with his keen logic, and his terse, nervous
English, Wesley struck out all ambiguity from the word.
"The Catholic or Universal Chiirch," he says, "is all the
persons in the universe whom God had called out of the
world. A national Church is that part of the great body
of the Universal Church which inhabits any one kingdom
or nation." The Church of England was a national

408 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Church in that sense. But what, reduced to its simplest
and imperishable elements, is a Church? "Two or three
Christian believers united together," Wesley replies, "are
a Church. A particular Church may consist of any num-
ber of persons, whether two or three or two or three mil-
lions."

Wesley, in a word, drew deep and clear the distinction
betwixt the national Establishment and a Church. They
were not equivalent terms. Methodism was not a national
Church ; but tried by the tests of the spiritual order to
which it belonged, it was a true Church. As a matter of
fact, Wesley often uses the terms "Society" and "Church"
as interchangeable. His obstinate and, on the whole,
wise mental habit of using old terms, even when they are
charged with new meanings, disguises this fact from many
critics. But the fact is beyond doubt. As early as 1749
he is discussing in the Conference of that year a scheme
for linking the Societies together. "May not that in
London, the mother Church," he asks, "consult with the
others for the sake of all the Churches ?"i

The Societies, already, in Wesley's eyes, were true
Churches in the exact sense of that definition of a Church
which we have already quoted.

For Methodists themselves the question whether Meth-
odism is a true Church is not to be determined by the
labours of antiquarians, or settled by quotations and
dates from Wesley's Journal. The question belongs to
auother and a loftier realm, and is determined by graver
tests. Let the essential character of the Methodist revival
be remembered. It was a re-birth of the spiritual elements
of Christianity ; a new manifestation of its spiritual
force ; a return to its simpler forms. It raised, and raises,
no question as to the mere externalities of religion. It
broke out of the spiritual realm ; it worked by spiritual
forces, and for only spiritual ends. And a true and pro-
found philosophy, in harmony with this, underlay the
whole movement and determined the ecclesiastical forms
in which the new spiritual life was to express itself.

In what may be called the grammar of Methodism the
emphasis lay, not on creeds, or symbols, or questions of
Church polity and order. It rested on spiritual quali-

'Minutes of Conference, 1749, p. 44.

THE FINAL STEPS

409

ties; on the relation of the personal soul to the personal
Saviour.

Its theology stands in direct relation to spiritual life.
Its Church polity is a wedlock of vital doctrines and of
practical experiences. The Church, according to its defi-
nition, is spiritual life — the spiritual life of individual
souls — organised, knitted together in organic forms for
ends of worship and service. All forms, symbols, methods,
creeds are secondary to this, and are of value only as
they ensure this.

Let it be asked, why does a great writer like Isaac
Taylor, an historian who is also a philosopher, and who,
in a sense, is a severe critic of Methodism, yet declare that
"Methodism is the starting-point of our modern religious
history," and that "the events whence the religious epoch
now current dates its commencement is the field-preach-
ing of Whitefield and Wesley in 1739." It is because
Methodism set in true and spiritual perspective all that
relates to the Church and to religion. In the Church of
that sad day second things had become first. The ex-
ternal was more than the spiritual. Rites and symbols
and creeds were not merely means to an end greater than
themselves — the creation of a spiritual life — they were
ends in themselves.

Methodism was preceded by the German Reformation
of Luther, and the English Reformation of Cranmer. But
both these were incomplete. Luther's Reformation was
marred by the Papal strain left in it. There is a sacra-
mentarian taint in its theology. "It began in ideas,"
says one keen critic, "and ended in force." It certainly
was a reformation arrested in mid-career. The English
Reformation of the sixteenth century was in the main
political. It left State and Church linked together, to
the injury of both. How imperfect a divorce from the
Papacy it effected is proved by the frequent relapses into
Papal doctrine of which its history is full. Edward VI.
was followed by "Bloody" Mary, Elizabeth by Charles I.,
Cromwell by James II. and Charles II., of whom one died
a Papist, and the other inverted the policy of Henri
Quatre, and sold a kingdom for a Mass.

Anglicanism, in a word, with its sacramentarian the-
ology and its prelatical rule, and the Puritanism of the
Commonwealth, with its fierce temper and political leaven,

410 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

represent the swing of the pendulum to opposite extremes.
Methodism, on the other hand, with all its limitations,
aims at a purely spiritual reading of Christianity. Forms
to it are secondary matters. It can do with Bishops or
without them. The Presbyterian or the Episcopal theory
of Church government may be equally, or unequally, efifec-
tive; but neither is mandatory. The fiercest doctrinal
controversy in Wesley's life was that concerning Calvin-
ism. But when he abridged the "articles of religion" for
his Societies in America, he phrased them so as to leave
that great controversy wholly untouched, and make it
possible for Calvinist and Arminian alike to sing the same
hymns and worship under the same church roof. Wesley
himself said once to his preachers, "I have no more right
to object to a man for holding a different opinion from my
own than I have to differ with a man because he wears a
wig and I wear my own hair, though I have a right to
object if he shakes the powder about my eyes."

Wesley thus was a great religious leader to whom
spiritual fact was everything and ecclesiastical form
nothing. It was inevitable that he shoiild be careless
as to the exact ecclesiastical definition of his own move-
ment. Was Methodism a Church, or to become a Church?
If so, what label must it bear? By what form should it
be governed? These were questions which Wesley was
not anxious either to ask or to answer. He postponed
them in order to escape controversy; he left them to be
settled by history. The critics of after generations wage
interminable debate on these points. To Wesley himself
any importance the debate had was due to the persistence
and tyranny of old mental habits. To his Church the
debate has neither reality nor significance. It represents
a quarrel of ecclesiastical antiquarians. It is a question
which history has settled — or rather God, who works
through history, and shapes it.

CHAPTER XII

THE EFFECTIVE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM

What we have called the doctrinal secret of the Revival
has already been discussed; but here we are describing
the enduring historical result of the great movement, the
Church into which it crystallised; and it may be asked
what are the permanent characteristics in teaching and
discipline, in belief and structure, of that Church? "My
doctrines," said Wesley himself, "are simply the common
fundamental principles of Christianity." Or, to use an-
other of his phrases, "they are the plain old religion of the
Church of England" ; and that is perfectly true.

Wesley added no new province to theology. He in-
vented no new doctrine, he slew no ancient heresy. What-
ever may be Wesley's title to fame, it is not that of a
leader of men into new and unguessed realms of theo-
logical speculation. It is sometimes said that he set old
doctrines in a new perspective. He changed the theo-
logical emphasis of the Thirty -nine Articles; and he did
it in an enduring fashion, which makes it, so to speak,
his signature on the theology of his Church to-day. As
far as this is true, it applies to those doctrines which
touch the central things of salvation — a divine redemp-
tion, a realised pardon, a present and conscious salvation
from sin. At these points Wesley certainly drew into life
and consciousness many forgotten truths in "the plain old
religion of the Church of England."

There is a real — though not always recognised — phi-
losophy underlying the doctrinal teachings of Wesley.
They constitute an interpretation of Christianity which
may be judged of as a whole. To describe that teaching
fully would be to write an entire system of theology, and
cannot, of course, be attempted here. But it is worth
while to offer in barest outline a statement of what may
be called Wesley's working creed.

W^esley sums this up himself in one familiar state-
ment : —

411

412 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"Our maia doctrines, which include all the rest, are repent-
ance, faith, and holiness. The first of these we account, as it
were, the porch of religion; the next, the door; the third, religion
itself."'

But a whole theology cannot be condensed into a single
metaphor in this fashion. Behind the metaphor stands a
symmetrical and spacious creed.

Wesley began by a noble conception of the universe as
built on a moral plan and existing for moral ends. Its
ideal and law are found in the will of God, its Creator;
but that will is not an arbitrary force. Goodness is not
goodness because God chose to enact it. It is the reflex
of an eternal necessity, a necessity lying in the very
nature of God Himself. The moral law Wesley traced, in
Southey's words, "beyond the foundation of the world to
that period, unknown indeed to men, but doubtless en-
rolled in the annals of eternity, when the morning stars
sang together." As Wesley himself put it: "The law of
God is supreme, unchangeable reason ; it is unalterable
rectitude; it is the everlasting fitness of all things that
are or ever were created."

Man was created under this law, created that in him it
might find its fulfilment. But obedience to that law must
be the voluntary service of a free spirit. So Wesley
believed profoundly in the doctrine of the freedom of the
human will. It is this which constitutes man a moral
agent. The denial of it makes goodness impossible. Set
in man's nature is an august faculty which carries with it
measureless possibilities. It is the power to say "No,"
even to God, and through the gate of that awful power sin
comes into the world. But it is also the power to say
"Yes" to God, and so to render Him a service impossible
to suns and planets; a worship unknown to the whole
material universe beside. Man, in Wesley's words, was
"not a clod of earth, a lump of clay .without sense or
understanding, but a spirit like his Creator; a spirit
endowed with a free will, the power of choosing good or
evil, of directing his own affections and actions."

And in his first choice man fell. He sinned; and he
incurred the one inevitable penalty of sin — death. Death
is a term which includes many meanings. It is not ex-

•Stevens, p. 327.

EFFECTIVE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM 413

hausted by the divorce that rends the body and the un-
dying spirit asunder. In the moment of sin man suffered
that most dreadful of all deaths — separation from God.
So he became liable to death eternal. And as he was the
head of the human race, and the seeds and souls of all
mankind were contained in him. the moral standing of
the whole human race was affected by his act.
''Wesley did not, of course, believe in any transfer of
personal guilt. If any man perishes it will be because he
himself has broken God's law, not because some one else —
Adam, or any other — has broken it. The guilt of wrong-
doing lies eternally and solely on the wrongdoer. The
doctrine that the sin of Adam constitutes in any literal
sense the guilt of any of his children was to Wesley,
as it must be to the healthy reason of all men, abhorrent^
"Whatsoever," says Wesley, "it hath pleased God to do
of His sovereign pleasure as Creator, He will judge the
world in righteousness, and every man therein according
to the strictest justice. He will punish no man for doing
anything which he could not possibly avoid, neither for
omitting anything he could not possibly do." Yet many
of the consequences of wrongdoing visibly and necessarily
extend to others than the one actually guilty of it. The
child of the drunkard is not burdened with the guilt of
drunkenness; but it has a partnership in the evil conse-
quences that vice creates. Drunkenness in a father means
hunger, rags, and misery for the child.

Now Wesley believed profoundly in the doctrine of the
Fall. It is the clear teaching, he held, of Scripture. It
is verified in the personal consciousness of each man. It
is the one fact which explains the moral disorder and
misery of the world. The evidence that the human race
is implicated in what Newman calls "some terrible ab-
original calamity" is writ large not only on every page of
history, but on every issue of the daily newspaper. But
Wesley never separated the doctrine of man's fall from
the great twin doctrine of man's redemption. When
Adam sinned the terms of moral probation were changed
for him and for the whole human race ; and the new terms
are those of redemption in Christ Jesus. Here is a sacri-
fice for sin, given in promise from the very moment of
the Fall, which opens the gate to forgiveness. Here is
a gift of divine grace through the Holy Spirit which

414 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

makes a restored character and a holy life possible. And
looking at the doctrine of the Fall through the lens of
redemption, Wesley found in it that perpetual miracle of
the divine love which turns moral failure itself into a new
possibility of moral victory.

Man's fall, in this sense, was not a defeat for God's
plans. It was the occasion of a new and more glorious
evolution of them ; and through Christ's redemption man
is enriched by the Fall. Southey summarises Wesley's
teaching on this point very happily : —

"If man had not fallen there must have been a blank in our
faith and in our love. There could have been no such thing as
faith in God 'so loving the world that He gave His only Son for
us men and for our salvation'; no faith in the Son of God, as
loving us, and giving Himself for us; no faith in the Spirit of
God, as renewing the image of God in our hearts, or raising us
from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness. And the
same blank must likewise have been in our love. We could not
have loved the Father under the nearest and dearest relation, as
delivering up His Son for us; we could not have loved the Son,
as bearing our sins in His own body on the tree; we could not
have loved the Holy Ghost, as revealing to us the Father and
the Son, as opening the eyes of our understandings, bringing us
out of darkness into His marvellous light, renewing the image
of God in our soul, and sealing us unto the day of redemption.'"

On the atoning work of Jesus Christ, with its mysteries
deep beyond all sounding and high above all vision,
Wesley dwelt with constant emphasis, but always in the
language of scripture. "Christ died for our offences and
rose again for our justification." "We have redemption in
His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." And the condi-
tion upon which all the measureless grace of that atone-
ment becomes effective in human experience is simply
faith. But faith, as Wesley understood it, is not some
mood of intellectual assent; it is not a mere set of
opinions. "A string of opinions," he said, "is no more
Christian faith than a string of beads is Christian holi-
ness." His description of faith has in it a certain glow of
imagination not common in his writings.

"Faith is a power wrought by the Almighty in an immortal
spirit inhabiting a house of clay, to see through that veil into
the world of spirits, into things invisible and eternal. ... It is
the eye of the new-born soul, whereby every true believer 'seeth

'Southey, ii. p. 53

/

EFFECTIVE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM 415

Him who is invisible.' It is the ear of the soul, whereby the
sinner 'hears the voice of the Son of God and lives'; the palate of
the soul (if the expression may be allowed) whereby a believer
'tastes the good Word of God and the powers of the world to
come'; the feeling of the soul whereby 'through the power of the
Highest overshadowing him' he perceives the Presence of Him
in whom he lives and moves and has his being, and feels the love
of God shed abroad in his heart. It is the internal evidence of
Christianity, a perpetual revelation, equally strong, equally new,
through all the centuries which have elapsed since the Incarna-
tion, and passing now, even as it has done from the beginning,
directly from God into the believing soul. 'It is nigh thee, in
thy mouth, and in thy heart, if thou believest in the Lord Jesua
Christ.'

This definition of faith pleased an intellect at once so
philosophical and so critical as that of Coleridge. "I ven-
ture," he said, "to avow it as my conviction that either
Christian faith is what Wesley here describes, or there is
no meaning in the word."

But this faith itself, Wesley held, is wrought by grace,
and so is the gift of God.

"Can you give yourself this faith (asks Wesley). Is It In
your power to see, or hear, or taste, or feel God; to raise In
yourself any perception of God, or of an invisible world; to open
an intercourse between yourself and the world of spirits; to
discern either them or Him that created them; to burst the
veil that is on your heart, and let in the light of eternity? You
know it is not. You not only do not, but cannot (by your own
strength), thus believe. The more you labour so to do the more
you will be convinced it is the gift of God. His pardoning
mercy supposes nothing in us but a sense of mere sin and misery;
and to all who see and feel and own their wants, and their
utter inability to remove them, God freely gives faith, for the
sake of Him 'in whom He is always well pleased.' "

The fruits of faith Wesley held to be two great concur-
rent changes. One is a change of nature in the believing
soul itself — the great spiritual miracle of regeneration;
the other is a change of relation to the divine law, known
as justification, justification being the new standing in
the moral universe the act of forgiveness creates. Attend-
ing these great changes, their witness and seal, is the
grace of the Holy Spirit attesting their existence to the
soul itself, and registering it in the consciousness by an
endowment of divine peace.

'Stevens, p. 331.

416

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

The doctrine of "assurance" through the witness of the
Spirit is an integral part of religion. Scripture teaches
it; reason demands it; the creeds of all the Christian
Churches assert it. It is incredible that when God's love
in Christ has established its empire in the believing heart,
and sin is forgiven, and all the ties of the spiritual order
are restored, that this stupendous change should be un-
realised. It is incredible that God should conceal His
grace; that it can be His will that His pardoned child
should live under the shadow of a lie.

But this gracious truth was, in Wesley's day, one of the
lost doctrines of Christianity. It was in the Thirty-nine
Articles, but it had fadded out of human memory. It was
no longer realised, nor even expected, in human experi-
ence. It had become a mere incredibility. Its rediscovery
and reassertion are part of the great service Methodism
has rendered to the general Christian faith. This is what
Wesley says of it : —

"I observed, many years ago, that it is hard to find words in
the language of men to explain the deep things of God. Indeed,
there are none that will adequately express what the Spirit of
God works in His children. But perhaps one might say (desir-
ing any who are taught of God to correct, soften, or strengthen
the expression), by the 'testimony of the Spirit' I mean an in-
ward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God imme-
diately and directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of
God; that 'Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given Himself for
me,' that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled
to God. After twenty years' further consideration, I see no
cause to retract any part of this. Neither do I conceive how
any of these expressions may be altered so as to make them more
intelligible. Meantime, let it be observed, I do not mean hereby
that the Spirit of God testifies this by any outward voice; no,
nor always by an inward voice, although He may do this some-
times. Neither do I suppose that He always applies to the heart
(though He often may) one or more texts of Scripture. But He
so works upon the soul by His immediate influence, and by a
strong, though inexplicable operation, that the stormy wind and
troubled waves subside, and there is a sweet calm; the heart
resting as in the arms of Jesus, and the sinner being clearly
satisfied that all his 'iniquities are forgiven, and his sins
covered.' "

Another characteristic doctrine of Methodism is that
which bears the highly controversial title of "perfection."
Wesley did not like that word, and seldom uses it, but in
the doctrine for which it stands he believed profoundly.

EFFECTIVE DOCTRINES OP METHODISM 417

Its proclamation, he held, was part of the mission of
Methodism, and constitutes the secret of its success.
Wherever its witness to the doctrine failed, there followed
an instant arrest of all growth. But Wesley's statement
of the doctrine is marked by a wise sobriety. He believed
in no angelic perfection ; in no "perfection," indeed, of any
sort which lifted its possessor out of the reach of the
limitations and infirmities which are the inevitable con-
ditions under which men live. He was accustomed to
define the doctrine in the language of Scripture : it is
simply "loving God with all the heart nnd soul and mind
and strength." NVesley believed in this doctrine because
the denial of it meant the assertion that God's ideals for
human character must for ever remain unattained, and
Christ's redemption itself must suffer defeat, even iu
those who accept it. But Wesley always linked the doc-
trine to conduct, and insisted that it should be tried by
its effect on the conduct, and he sobered with tireless
diligence and quenchless good sense the extravagant
statements of some of his followers.

Perfect Christians "are not," he says, "free from ignorance,
no, nor from mistake. We are no more to expect any man to be
infallible than to be omniscient. From infirmities none are per-
fectly freed till their spirits return to God; neither can we ex-
pect, till then, to be wholly freed from temptation; for 'the serv-
ant is not above his Master.' But neither in this sense is there
any absolute perfection on earth. There is no perfection of
degrees, none which does not admit of a continual increase."

Sanctification, he thus taught, was the growth of the
regenerated character into maturity and completeness;
and the measure of that growth is determined by the
faith and expectancy of its subject. So, while in ordinary
cases it is a gradual process, in a sense, and under certain
conditions, it might be in.-ta'itaiicons, though no stage
can ever be reached which forbids further increase. And
Wesley was never mightier as a preacher than when urg-
ing the instant acceptance of his doctrine. Here is an
example of the appeals he was accustomed to make : —

"Thou, therefore, look for it every moment. Why not this
hour? this moment? Certainly you may look for it now, if you
believe it is by faith. And by this token you may surely know
whether you seek it by faith or works. If by works, you want
something to be done first, before you are sanctified. You think
I must first be, or do, thus or thus. Then, you are seeking it by

418 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

works unto this day. If you seek it by faith, expect it as you are,
and expect it now. To deny one of them is to deny them all;
to allow one is to allow them all. Do you believe we are sanctified
by faith? Be true, then, to your principle, and look for this
blessing just as you are, neither better nor worse; as a poor
sinner that has nothing to pay, nothing to plead, but 'Christ
died.' And if you look for it as you are, then expect it now.
Stay for nothing! Why should you? Christ is ready, and He
is all you want. He is waiting for you! He is at the door."

There is uo need to dwell further on Wesley's theology.
It is to be seen, to-day, under every sky, crystallised
into a great Church system — one of the most energetic
and influential forms of Protestant Christianity the world
knows. And no one who studies with a dispassionate
mind We.sley's theology can fail to see that it is a system
which puts in true and striking perspective all the great
doctrines of evangelical Christianity. It is a creed of
hope for defeated and fallen men; a statement of truth
which exactly suits the missionary and the evangelist.
And yet in its symmetry, its reasonableness, its agreement
with Scripture, and the verification it finds in human
consciousness, it is a creed to satisfy the philosopher.
And the explanation of it lies in the fact that it is in-
tensely and supremely evangelical. It presents religion
not as a scheme of ethics merely, but as a divine deliver-
ance. And the ethics do not precede the deliverance and
earn it ; they follow it and are created by it.

It may be added that the secret of that curious doc-
trinal peace which marks the history of Methodism lies
exactly at this point. The enduring controversies which
have torn asunder the Christian Church lie in what may
be called the realm of metaphysical theology. The mere
recital of the great historic heresies will show this. And
the working theology of Methodism, since it is supremely
occupied with a great cluster of evangelical doctrines, has
escaped these controversies.

But if Methodism is always supremely evangelical in
its teaching, it is also intensely practical, and wisely
sober. Its note is a certain equipoise and sanity ; an ab-
horrence of exaggeration. Its theology keeps its feet on
the solid earth. Its creed is always related to conduct ; is
valued as it produces conduct ; is tried by its effect on con-
duct.

Through the whole of Wesley's theology runs this

EFFECTIVE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM 419

characteristic note of equipoise betwixt ill-balanced ex-
tremes. The one great doctrinal controversy of Wesley's
life, for example, related to Calvinism. It is undeniable
that in salvation there are two factors, the Divine will
and man's will. Religion con.sists in their harmony;
heaven must be found in their eternal union. When the
human will keeps time, time, time in a golden eternal
music, with the Divine will, so that the soul loves what
God loves, and hates what God hates, then all God's
ideals about man are realised. Now, Calvinism, as
Whitefield at least held it, lost sight of that strange,
perilous, yet most sublime thing in man — the root of all
morality, and without which moral choice is impossible —
a free, self-determining will. It put so much emphasis on
the Divine will, that the human will disappeared. But
Wesley saw both factors. He taught his Church to see
and affirm both. And his Arminianism, while it affirms
the dignity and freedom of man's will, gives its just place
to God's will in all the processes of salvation.

Or take again that doctrine of "perfection" which has
often been the reproach of Methodism, and is certainly its
characteristic. The question here is. What is the ulti-
mate ideal of religion ; the ideal capable of being realised
in human experience? There are two opposite schools
of thought — the moralist on one side, who conceives
religion as the perfection of outward condiict; and the
mystic on the other side, who separates religion from
conduct, or resolves it into a sort of Hindoo ecstasy.
Wesley held a mid course betwixt these two extremes.
As against the moralist, he held that religion is some-
thing more than a scheme of mechanical ethics. It is
something more than even "morality touched with emo-
tion." It is a Divine deliverance! It is the entrance of
supernatural forces into human character; a miracle of
grace that lifts the human soul again to that place in
the spiritual order from which sin has cast it.

But Wesley shunned the opposite extreme. He had a
wise and profound dread of quietism. He defined perfec-
tion always, and with restrained sobriety, in the actual
words of Scripture. It is simply "loving God with all
the heart and soul and mind and strength." And he
rigorously tested the doctrine in those who claimed to
have realised it by its effect on the conduct.

420 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

In things ceremonial, again, Wesley, in exactly the
same way, shunned the falsehood of extremes. His teach-
ing as to baptism may be taken as an example of this
wise sobriety. There are three known modes of adminis-
tering the rite of baptism, and over-emphasis on any one
of them is the water-mark of the ritualist. And evan-
gelicalism, it may be added, has its ritualists, as rigid
in form, and not seldom as acrid in temper, as sacer-
dotalism itself. Wesley made no choice betwixt these
rival modes. He held, and taught his Church to hold,
the wise doctrine that all three modes are legitimate, and
no one of them is imperative.

Methodism has produced two great theologians, Richard
Watson and William Burt Pope. In many respects they
are utterly unlike each other. Watson is inferior to
Pope in scholarship and literary gifts. He knew little,
for example, of the relation of human creeds to each
other. The science of comparative theology was not yet
born when Watson wrote. Yet, what sensible Methodist
would not be willing to have the creed of his Church
judged by Watson's fine and luminous definitions?

Pope, on the other hand, had the garnered knowledge
of a great scholar, with a strain of philosophical genius
added, rare amongst theologians; and he keeps always
in clear vision what may be called the inter-relations
of human belief. But both writers have the character-
istic note of Methodism; its wise sobriety; its intense
evangelicalism, which yet shuns the characteristic perils
of evangelicalism. It is a theology which links doctrine
to conduct. It abhors fanaticism. It has the salt of
reality. Here are doctrines realised in human experi-
ence and tested by that experience.

Methodism, as we have seen, puts a mood of the con-
science, and not any doctrinal belief, as a condition of
membership. But every Church must have a doctrinal
test for its teachers, and the doctrinal tests of the Meth-
odist ministry are characteristic. They consist of: (1)
Wesley's Notes on the New Testament; (2) his Fifty-
three Sermons. No other Church has doctrinal tests of
this type; yet they unconsciously, but most happily, re-
flect the peculiar genius of Methodism. Its theology
is rooted directly in Scripture. The Bible, as a standard
of doctrine, is assessed in very unlike terms by different

EFFECTIVE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM 421

Churches. Romanism puts the Church above the Bible.
The Church, it claims, is older than the Bible and greater.
She is its guardian and interpreter. What the Bible
means is only made articulate to human ears, and au-
thoritative for the human conscience, by the voice of the
Church. It is a dead book : she is a living entity. The
sacerdotalist puts tradition beside the Bible as of equal
authority.

Now Methodism is committed to no special theory
as to the inspiration of Scripture; but it accepts the
Bible as the one source of divine knowledge and the
supreme test of all theology. Wesley, in a memorable
passage, explains why he is homo unius lihri, and the
passage expresses the whole attitude of his Church
towards the Bible : —

"I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow
through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to
Grod. Just hovering over the great gulf till, a few moments
hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity!
I want to know one thing — the way to heaven; how to land safe
on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach
the way; for this very end He came from heaven. He hath
written it down in a Book. Oh give me that Book! At any
price, give me the Book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge
enough for me. Let me be homo unius liiri. Here, then, I am,
far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone. Only God is
here. In His presence I open, I read His Book; for this end, to
find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the meaning
of what I read? Does anything appear dark and intricate? I
lift up my heart to the Father of Lights: 'Lord, is it not Thy
word, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God"? Thou
'givest liberally, and upbraidest not.' Thou hast said, 'If any
be willing to do Thy will, he shall know.' I am willing to do;
let me know Thy will.' I, then, search after and consider parallel
passages of Scripture, 'comparing spiritual things with spiritual.'
Immediate thereon with all the attention and earnestness of which
my mind is capable. If any doubt still remains, I consult those
who are experienced in the things of God; and then the writings
whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn,
that I teach."

Wesley's "Notes on the New Testament" is not, per-
haps, a book for scholars; it is more fitted for hours
of devotion than for study. It does not shine with in-
genious subtleties of exposition, and it has no pretence
to original research. It was written before the Higher
Criticism was born, and written at high pressure, during
a brief interval, when Wesley was resting on account of

422 WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

sickness. But it has a certain flavour of masculiue sense
and healthy-minded reality which makes it a very nourish-
ing bit of expository literature. Its spirit reflects the
reverence, the simj)licity of faith, the solemn and almost
passionate earnestness of the fine sentences about the
Bible we have quoted. And that this book is one of the
two doctrinal tests by which Methodism under all skies
judges its ministry, shows what is its attitude towards
the Word of God.

The second of the doctrinal tests of Methodism, the
Fifty-three Sermons, is also happily characteristic. Here
we have truth, not drawn out into metaphysical defini-
tions and addressed to the intellect, but translated into
practical terms. It is truth as it appeals to the con-
science and affects conduct; truth clothed in forms in-
tended to instantly influence conduct.

CHAPTER XIII

METHODISM AS A POLITY

Underlying the polity as well as the theology of Meth-
odism is a real but sometimes forgotten philosophy.
Looked at as a history, Methodism is an evolution, in
which each step is an inevitable stage in a vital process.
Regarded as a system, it is a living organism, in which
each part is the necessary complement of every other
part.

Wesley himself explains what may be called the phi-
losophy of Methodist history by saying that "everything
arose just as the occasion required." In those quiet
syllables is expressed what, as we look back upon it,
is seen to be one of the clearest processes of scientific
evolution known to ecclesiastical history. Who studies
that evolution will see that, always, the facts not only
create the machinery, they make it inevitable. And any
failure to meet the new facts as they arose with adequate
organisation would have arrested, and perhaps have de-
feated, the whole movement. The story of Methodism
is a drama in which no human being, not even Wesley
himself, is consciously shaping events. The shaping force
is greater than any human will, and wiser than any
human sagacity. And not merely does the scale of the
events outrun the vision of the chief actors in them, the
order of those events seems to be independent of their
purpose.

Let Wesley's life, after his conversion, be set in his-
toric perspective. He had a new message for England.
He taught, it is true, the "plain old doctrines of the
Church of England," but he proclaimed them with a
change of emphasis, and with a note of reality and of
urgency, which startled the drowsy clergy of that day.
He talked what sounded in their ears an unknown and
disquieting language. He becomes for them a challenge
and a test. As a result the church doors are shut against
him. He must be silent, or find a new arena and new
audiences. So came field-preaching, and Wesley and his
423

424 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

comrades proclaimed their message to vast crowds under
the arched skies and in the free air. With that fact a
new ecclesiastical world comes into existence.

The fast multiplying converts soon make imperative
an organisation for their oversight and nurture. Wesley
takes a bit of machinery already in existence, and groups
his converts into societies. The societies must have
meeting-places. These at first are rooms ; the rooms grow
into chapels. All this means the raising and expending
of much money. Then, as now, Methodism found the
strength of its finances, not in the splendid gifts of the
rich, but in the ungrudged if scanty gifts of the poor;
and there must be some organisation for collecting their
pence.

The story is classic how, out of this financial necessity,
rose the greatest institution in Methodism — the class-
meeting, and its most valued order of workers — the class-
leaders. Wesley, quick-eyed to see the possibilities of
things, writes in his Journal, "This was the very thing we
wanted." He put his converts in groups under leaders,
who at first visited the members in their charge at their
own houses. Later, and for greater convenience, the
groups gathered in little meetings. So arose the Meth-
odist class-meeting; and with it came into existence what
the class-meeting represents — the lay pastorate of Meth-
odism— its "leaders."

Already, too, the great twin feature of Methodism, an
order of lay preachers, had been created by the necessities
of the work. Wesley and his comrades must have helpers,
who sometimes shared their travels, but more frequently
remained behind to take charge of the converts while the
leaders moved on to new fields. These "helpers" at first
were allowed only to expound the Scripture ; but it passes
human wit to tell where "exposition" ceases and "preach-
ing" begins. The "helpers" inevitably became preachers ;
and, like their great, leader, they were itinerants. And
the itinerancy profoundly colours the whole Methodist
ministry. Its ministers are more than an order. They
are a brotherhood — a brotherhood with something of a
pilgrim and militant note in it. How deeply the law of
celibacy affects the Romanish priesthood every one knows ;
and the law of the itinerancy affects the ministry of the
Methodist Church almost as powerfully. And the other

METHODISM AS A POLITY 425

two great characteristics of the Methodist Church, the
lay ministry and the lay pastorate, are the correlatives of
the itinerancy. Without an itinerant ministry they would
not be needed ; without them an itinerant ministry would
not be possible.

The societies were presently grouped for purpose of
oversight and government into clusters called circuits.
Each branch of Methodism had already evolved its special
oflBcers. The classes required leaders, and the leaders
naturally crystallised into the leaders' meeting, the
spiritual court which watches over the discipline of the
membership. The chapels were vested in trustees; so
came the Trustee meetings — the business machinery deal-
ing with church property. The societies needed stewards
to take charge of their finances. A combination of all
the stewards, leaders, &c., in the bounds of any circuit
formed the Quarterly meeting, perhaps the most effective
instrument for the transaction of the business affairs of
a group of churches yet discovered.

The multiplying circuits scattered over the area of the
three kingdoms needed some central organisation, and
this was found in the Conference. Wesley's first Con-
ference in 1744 consisted merely, as we have seen, of six
clergymen, who invited four lay helpers to join them ; and
these consulted together as to the teaching and policy of
the new movement. For forty years the Conference was
an indeterminate, fluctuating body, dependent on Wesley's
will, and meeting only on his summons. But, as was
inevitable, it grew in scale and influence; it became
definite in structure. It formed in the end the centre
of authority for the whole movement of which Wesley
was the head. It defined the theology of Methodism,
shaped its organisation, directed its policy, enforced its
discipline.

Such a court, it was soon realised, must not depend on
the accident of Wesley's life, and expire with his death.
It must be assured of continued legal existence. So in
due course came the famous Deed of Declaration, and
Methodism became what, in the eyes of the law, is a
perpetual corporation; but what is, in historic fact, an
undying Church.

Meanwhile, and still as in all other details of its history
— by the mere compulsion of events — another great ques-

42G

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

tiou, the administration of the sacraments, had to be
settled. That question marks the parting of the ways.
It compelled Weslej^ to take, though late and reluctantly,
the steps which completed the equipment of Methodism.
He broke through the church order which so long fettered
his hands. He first permitted the celebration of the
sacrament in uhconsecrated buildings. And it was
Charles Wesley, the most obstinate of High Churchmen,
who led the way in administering the Lord's Supper in
unconsecrated places; and with a flash of what was in
him unusual, common-sense, he declared he would ad-
minister the ordinance, not only in an unconsecrated
house, but in the midst of a wood, rather than leave the
new converts without the means of obeying Christ's
command. Later, Wesley himself ordained some of his
helpers for the purpose of administering the sacraments;
but he did this only when the failure of his helpers
amongst the Anglican clergy made this necessary; and
he did it in each field, in turn, as the necessity became
urgent — first in America, then in Scotland, then in Ire-
land and the West Indies, last of all in England.

Who can look back on this whole process without
seeing that it is an evolution, orderly, inevitable, scien-
tific; the growth of a living organism with all its parts
in vital and necessary relation to each other? For life
has no superfluities.

If the ecclesiastical form of Methodism, as it actually
exists full grown, be considered, one great and charac-
teristic feature at once becomes visible. It represents a
curiously complete and wise equipoise of forces. The
constant peril of all church systems lies at the opposite
extremes of clerical despotism, and of an unregulated lay
democracy. The Church of Rome, with its priestly rule,
its exaggeration of ministerial authority, represents one
extreme. Plymouth Brethrenism, which practically
denies the existence of any ministerial office at all, repre-
sents the other extreme.

Now, Methodism might easily have become a despotism.
Its history, indeed, seemed to almost make that inevitable.
Wesley might have played the part of another Ignatius
Loyola to his societies, and have set up in them, and over
them, an autocracy as absolute as that which is crystal-
lised into tyranny in the Order of Jesus. If Wesley had

METHODISM AS A POLITY

427

been as Southey, couteniplating him through a distorted
medium, imagined him to be, consumed with a love of
power, he might have made himself a despot with ampler
justification for his des])otisn» than most other historical
characters possess. History, indeed — to say nothing of
human nature — was on the side of that probability. But
the grace of God saved Wesley from the blunder, and
Wesley's Church from the disaster, of a despotism. Meth-
odism'is neither a despotism nor a democracy. It does
not exaggerate the claims of the ministerial office; but it
does not forget that such an office exists. Its system, we
repeat, though it is not always and sufficiently recognised,
is that of a wise balance of forces.

Wesley has been described as the discoverer of the
possibilities of the layman in the modern Church, and it
is certain that no other Church draws its laymen into
franker partnership in all its affairs than does the Church
Wesley founded. It shares its pastoral office with the
leaders, its preaching office with the local preachers. In
all its church courts, from the Quarterly meeting to the
Conference, where the business affairs of the Church are
dealt with, laymen sit with ministers in equal numbers,
and with equal, if not identical, powers. Yet Methodism
is no more a lay democracy than it is a clerical despotism.
Through all its courts, and in all its work, there is an
almost unconscious balance maintained betwixt these two
extremes.

The minister alone, for example, has the right to admit
members into the Church ; but the leaders' meeting, a
lay court, has the right of veto on that admission. All
the lay officers in the Church are elective; but the min-
ister nominates candidates for election. He nominates
a leader, but the Leaders' meeting elects. He nominates
a steward, but the Quarterly meeting must elect. He
nominates a candidate for the ministry; but his nomina-
tion is only a proposal ; it must be sustained by the votes
of the Quarterly meeting. And so a lay court keeps the
key of the pulpit. Speaking generally, no officer can be
appointed without the consent of the Church court; but
the Church court does not elect without the nomination
of the minister.

It is not a question of "orders," but of order. The
minister's nomination is a prima facie guarantee of fitness

428 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

in the candidate ; it is a guard against the rise of parties,
the rush of untit, if not self-proposed, candidates, the arts
and the passions of contested elections. There is no
direct and independent election to any office by, say, the
general body of church members ; for this would turn the
Church into a democracy, with the characteristic risks of
democracy. But there is no independent appointment to
any office by a minister; for this would set up in the
Church a clerical autocracy. And Methodism is equally
remote from both these extremes. Office in its system
is not a reflex of the wish of mere numbers; that would
justify direct election by the whole body of members.
This is the method of democracy, and Methodism is not
a democracy. Office in the Methodist Church represents
duties to be discharged — the duty of a leader, of a local
preacher, of a steward; and the nomination of the min-
ister is simply a declaration on the part of the responsi-
ble pastor of the church that the person named is fitted to
discharge that duty. But the minister cannot of his own
act appoint.

An attempt is not seldom made to graft on Methodism
some supposed "reform" which is alien to its genius; and
the attempt, if it succeeds, never fails to bring disaster.
Who studies the history of the divisions which, since
Wesley's time, have broken Methodism a.sunder, or of the
strifes which have arrested its progress, will see that they
have arisen, never on any question of doctrine, but always
over questions of polity. And in every case the cause of
the trouble has been the loss of that equipoise which is
the characteristic feature of Methodism, as a polity, and
the secret of its peace and its vigour. The forces which
make for democratic methods, or for the unchecked rule of
the ministers, have for the moment obtained the ascen-
dency, and the balance of forces has been lost. For
Methodism, it must always be remembered, is as far re-
moved from the priestly sway of Romanism as it is from
the structureless disorder of Plymouth Brethrenism. It
holds to the pastoral office, but does not exaggerate its
claims. It gives laymen the frankest partnership in both
the spiritual work and the financial management of the
Church ; but it does not sacrifice order, and ignore facts,
by obliterating all diversities of function betwixt the
layman and the minister.

BOOK V
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

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CHAPTER I

WESLEY'S PERSONALITY

"A CLEAB, smooth forehead, an aquiline nose, an eye the brightest
and the most piercing that can be conceived, and a freshness of
complexion, scarcely ever to be found at his years, and expressive
of the most perfect health. In his countenance and demeanour,
there was a cheerfulness mingled with gravity; a sprightliness,
which was the natural result of an unusual flow of spirits. His
aspect, particularly in profile, had a strong character of acuteness
and penetration. ... A narrow, plated stock, a coat with small
upright collar, no buckles at his knees, no silk or velvet in any
part of his apparel, and a head as white as snow, gave an idea of
something primitive and apostolical; while an air of neatness
and cleanliness diffused over his whole person."

This is the figure of Wesley as seen by the eyes of his
contemporaries, and it was the best known figure in the
three kingdoms during the last half of the eighteenth
century. Yet in this little, alert, compact figure, with its
air of old-maidish neatness, dwelt — as the story we have
told proves — a calm intensity of energy which has been
rarely paralleled in any generation. In range, speed,
intensity, and effectiveness Wesley must always remain
one of the greatest workers known to mankind. He
seemed to live many lives in one, and each life was of
amazing fulness. He preached more sermons, travelled
more miles, published more books, wrote more letters,
built more churches, waged more controversies, and in-
fluenced more lives than any other man in English his-
tory. And through it all, as he himself, in a humorous
paradox, puts it, "he had no time lo be in a hurry!"

Lord Rosebery describes Cromwell as "a practical
mystic, the most formidable and terrible of all combina-
tions." And Wesley was exactly that "most formidable
and terrible of all combinations," a practical mystic.
His life thrilled with forces which streamed upon him
from spiritual realms; and yet he kei)t his feet on the
solid earth and had the keenest vision for the facts of
earth. He knew how to bring to the service of far-off
and invisible ideals the practical sense, the knowledge of
431

432 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

lueu, the faculty of adjusting means to ends, of choosing
fit instruments and shaping effective methods, which are
the characteristics of a great soldier, or of a successful
captain of industry. And it is in this combination of
the spiritual with the practical, of ends which belong to
the moral order with methods which are effective in the
earthly realm ; this wedlock of unlike qualities — of ice
and of fire, of calmness and of intensity, of serene com-
posure and of demonic energy — that the secret of Wes-
ley's power lies.

No man ever moved more quickly, and none was ever
less in a hurry than he. There was something of the
inexorable and unhurrying swiftness of a planet about
him; and something, too, of its shattering impact. And
yet a strange air of repose — of the quiet which is born
of problems solved, and of victory attained — lay upon
him. There are certain qualities of character which draw
other men to their possessor as the moon draws the tides,
and sway them, as the winds sway the forest. Who pos-
sesses these qualities is inevitably, and by gift of nature,
a leader of men. And Wesley had precisely these quali-
ties. But he had them not so much by any endowment
of nature as by spiritual creation. He carried with him
everywhere — after his conversion — a certain serenity of
courage, in the presence of which fear grew ashamed of
itself ; a certain swiftness of will, a strength of immov-
able resolution when once conscience had spoken and duty
had become clear, which made crowds, with the instinct
of crowds for a tnie leader, follow him without question.

Wesley had ideals beyond the reach of other men's
vision, but absolutely clear to himself. He trod with an
assured step ; he spoke as one who knew. He was abso-
lutely emptied of selfishness. So he became for those
about him, in a sense", an embodied conscience. Here
was one human spirit, at least, utterly given up to divine
things; one human soul in which religion had fulfilled
all its offices. And with all his radiant cheerfulness
there was something of the unconscious loftiness of Al-
pine peaks about him ; a remoteness — as though caught
from some purer air — from the pursuits and desires of
ordinary men. His very face was a rebuke to all mean
things. When he came to a town the crowds gathered
about him in the street; the little, compact, erect figure

WESLEY'S PERSONALITY 433

standing perhaps on a table brought from some cottage at
hand. His look, his speech, the atmosphere he brought
with him, his accent botli of certainty and authority, the
ideals by which he tried himself and others, the per-
spective in which he saw things, and made other men
see them — it was for a moment as if a messenger who
belonged to another spiritual order stood amongst men I
Then he went on his swift way, and men felt as if some
spiritual presence had left them. Contact with him was
a spiritual education.

And yet there was nothing of chilly remoteness, of
monkish austerity, about Wesley. After his conversion,
at least, no human being less like a monk could well be
imagined. A sort of perpetual radiance shone in him,
and streamed from him. Alexander Knox, who knew
Wesley well and judged him coolly, dwells in astonished
admiration on his unclouded cheerfulness. "My ac-
quaintance with him," he says, "has done more to teach
me what a heaven upon earth is implied in the maturity
of Christian piety than I have elsewhere seen or heard
or read." His countenance and conversation expressed
an habitual gaiety of heart. Wesley himself declared
that "he had not felt lowness of spirits one quarter of
an hour in his life. Ten thoiisand cares were no more
weight to his mind than ten thousand hairs to his head."

Perhaps in writing those words — words which may well
fill ordinary men with despairing envy — Wesley's memory
was coloured by the gladness of the moment. He did
know moods of depression, and these are reflected again
and again in his Journal. But these records only give a
more human aspect to Wesley, for they prove that he,
too, had a touch of human infirmity. And it is charac-
teristic of him that in each case he cures his own de-
spondency by the medicine of hard work.

Wesley was, to quote Hampsou — like Knox, not too
friendly a critic — "of exquisite companionable talents."
Walsh, that Irish saint amongst Wesley's helpers — a
combination of mystic and genius — discovered even too
much humour in Wesley's conversation, and complained
to him that, amongst the three or four persons that
tempted him to levity, "You, sir, are one, by your witty
proverbs." Walsh, however, discovered humour in Wes-
ley probably because he had none of his own. But that

434 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Wesley had in the higliest degree the gift of clear, keeu,
wise conversation cannot be doubted. He could have
discussed criticism with Pope, politics with Swift, litera-
ture with Dr. Johnson, or philosophy with Berkeley, on
equal terms — but for one circumstance. He had better
things to do! Df. Johnson, himself a glutton in talk,
complained to Patty Wesley of her brother: "I hate to
meet John Wesley," he said. "The dog enchants you
with his conversation, and then breaks away to go and
visit some old woman."

But for Wesley, the "old woman" represented duty.
She was an immortal spirit, as precious in the sight of
God as Dr. Johnson himself. If Christ valued her enough
to die for her, then, as Wesley's conscience told him, he
might well value her enough to sacrifice ease that he
might go and comfort her. "I find time to visit the sick
and the poor," Wesley was accustomed to say, "and I
must do it if I believe the Bible. These are the marks by
which the great Shepherd will know His sheep."

Once, when tempted to linger in a lovely landscape,
Wesley cried, "I believe there is an eternity, I mxist arise
and go hence;" and those words express the temper of
his life. He lived in the spirit of Andrew Marvel's strong
lines : —

"Ever at my back I hear
Time's winged chariots hurrying near."

And this, Johnson complained, "is very disagreeable to a
man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as
I do."

For all this, it may be repeated, there was no touch of
the ascetic in Wesley. He did not understand children,
as his Kingswood experiment proves, but he loved them
and had the art of winning their love. And he stamped
these qualities on his helpers. "Spend an hour a week
with the children in every large town" — was his rule for
them — "whether you like it or not. Talk with them
every time you see any at home. Pray in earnest for
them." Wesley did not, again, imderstand women, as his
love affairs abundantly show. But no other man in the
England of that day had so many friendships with saintly
and noble women as he.

Wesley's limitations were bred of his very virtues. His

WESLEY'S PERSONALITY 435

life was governed by a relentless method. This, applied
to his body, made it the toughest bit of human flesh and
blood that walked English soil in those days. Applied to
his work, it enabled him to accomplish a volume of busi-
ness which yet makes him the rebuke and despair of all
other woi'kers. There is something almost amusing in the
unsparing discipline he applied to his own body, until his
appetites became the most docile servants that ever obeyed
a human will. He made, as his brother Samuel com-
plained, almost a sin of abstinence. The method he took
to ascertain with how little sleep his body could be kept
in effective working order is amusing. He tells the tale
thus : —

"If any one desires to know exactly what quantity of sleep his
own constitution requires, he may very easily make the experi-
ment which I made about fifty years ago. I then waked every
night about twelve or one, and lay awake for some time. I
readily concluded that this arose from being in bed longer
than nature required. To be satisfied, I procured an alarm,
which waked me the next morning at seven (near an hour earlier
than I rose the day before), yet I lay awake again at night. The
second morning I rose at six; but notwithstanding this, I lay
awake the second night. The third morning I rose at five; but,
nevertheless, I lay awake the third night. The fourth morning
I ros6» at four, as, by the grace of God, I have done ever since.
AnSn lay awake no more. And I do not now lie awake, taking
the year round, a quarter of an hour together in a month. By
the same experiment, rising earlier and earlier every morning,
may any one find how much sleep he really wants."

No human soul, in a word, ever got more out of the
body it inhabited than Wesley did out of his. His
economy of time and sleep and food extended to every-
thing else. He wasted, says one of his biographers, not
even so much as a sheet of paper. His moments were
mea.sured out as an anxious chemist weighs out his drugs,
and assigned — as if in scruples and drachms — to various
duties. He had a fixed hour for every purpose, and no
company, no conversation, no pleasure was permitted to
vary, by a hair's-breadth, the inflexible order of bis life.
He wrote, he travelled, he visited the sick, he did every-
thing in certain hours ; and those hours were inviolable.

But the iron resolution with which Wesley mapped out
the use of every faculty, the discharge of every duty, the
employment of every moment of time, had its disadvan-
tages. It made him, from some aspects, a machine. It

436

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

gave him no time for friendships. Domestic life under
such unyielding conditions became impossible. His wife
had a genius for making herself and those about her
miserable, and under any environment would have suc-
ceeded in being unhappy. But Wesley, as a husband,
might have sorely tried the patience of any wife. She
must have found herself dismissed to one tiny compart-
ment of his many-celled life. And even a woman of
generous and self-sacrificing temper might well have
found the experience too heroic.

It is a mistake, of course, to think that Wesley was in
a semi-miraculous way exempt from ill health of every
sort. He suffered from hereditary gout, the disease of
which his mother died. He underwent a serious surgical
operation in 1764; in 1789 he had an attack of diabetes.
The strain of his work was interrupted again and again
by illness. He had, as a matter of fact, sufficient hints of
physical weakness to have justified a man of less heroic
spirit nursing himself into a state of soft-fibred indolence.

Beside his Journal, Wesley kept a diarj', a little book
which he carried continiially with him, and in which he
noted in shorthand his hour of rising, what he read or
wrote till breakfast, and the exact use to which every
moment of the day was turned. On the first page of each
of these little books he always wrote the following sen-
tences: "I resolve, Deo juvante, (1) To devote an hour
morning and evening to private prayer, no pretence or
excuse whatsoever; (2) To converse Kara Qeov, no light-
ness, no evTpaneUa." How Wesley, with so tremendous
a volume of work poured into his waking moments, could
devote an hour morning and evening to private prayer
is almost unintelligible. But he did it, and all the other
hours of the day took calmness, serenity, strength from
those two sacred hours which marked their boundaries.
But that phrase, "no pretence, no excuse whatsoever," is
characteristic of Wesley. All his purposes had that note
of supreme resolution. Other things must yield to them.
His own plans were for him a categorical imperative.

Few men, again, have ever been more systematically
generous than Wesley. He lived with the utmost economy
himself, and gave away the whole surplus of his income.
As he tells the story : "When he had thirty pounds a year,
he lived on twenty-eight, and gave away two. The next

WESLF.Y'S PERSONALITY

437

year, receiving sixty pounds, he still lived on twenty-
eight, and gave away two-and-thirty. The third year he
received ninety pounds, and gave away sixty-two. The
fourth year he received a hundred and twenty pounds.
Still he lived on twenty-eight, and gave to the poor ninety-
two." But Hampson says, with a certain degree of
truth, ''his charities seem to have been rather the result
of a sense of duty than of any tenderness of nature."

Wesley's preaching, no doubt, suffered from his over
crowded habit of life. He was accustomed to say he could
preach three or four times a day without any trouble, and
he acted on that theory — with the result that he often
preached with insufficient preparation, and with less
effect than he might have done. Hampson says that when
he gave himself suflBcient time for study he succeeded, and
when he did not he frequently failed. "He was some-
times flat and insipid. He often appeared in the pulpit
thoroughly exhausted with labour and want of rest, but
wherever he was he made it a point to preach if he could
stand upon his legs." Hampson adds the curious remark
that whenever Wesley "fell into anecdote and story-
telling" his sermon was a failure. What is a resource
to ordinary men was to Wesley fatal ! "We have scarcely
ever," he says, "heard from him a tolerable sermon in
which a story was introduced."

Wesley's literary work, again, suffered in the same
way from haste and inadequate opportunity. He was a
tireless and omnivorous reader, and he read under con-
ditions which to other men would have made reading
impossible. He was a poor rider, almost as poor as
Napoleon; though, unlike Napoleon, he did not require
wooden steps by which to mount his horse. Wesley on
horseback was the best-known figure on all the roads of
the three kingdoms of that day. It was the figure of a
man in haste; great duties behind him just discharged,
and great duties still beckoning him in front. And be-
twixt duty finished and duty beckoning, he went, book
in hand, and read as he went. With the reins lying loose
on his horse's neck, and his hands grasping a volume held
up to his eyes, he would ride fifty or sixty miles a day.
In this fashion he rode on an average 4500 miles every
year, and did it for over fifty years. During those fifty
years he preached more than forty thousand times, to

4B8

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

all .sorts of audiences, uuder all sorts of coDditions. No
other man in history, except perhaps Whitefield, was so
familiar with the faces of a crowd, spent so much time
amongst crowds, or understood so completely their moods.
But who beside Wesley ever turned the saddle, and the
open road, and the changing English skies, into a perma-
nent study!

But his reading had, as was inevitable, the vice of
haste. It bred swift and hurried judgments, born of half
knowledge. When We.sley dismounted, at the close of
the day, or at night, when the last lingering hearers had
left him, he would record in his Journal, in his curious
shorthand, all the hasty recollections and judgments of
the day. So his .Toiirnals are packed with the queerest
obiter dicta; judgments on men, events, and books; sen-
tences which represent, not large knowledge and reflec-
tion, but only the momentary impul.se of his feeling, or
of his prejudices, born of the swift and broken glance at
the pages of a book as he jolted over some rough country
road.

Much of Wesley's literary work, done under such con-
ditions, shows marks of inadequate care. He was never
a writer at leisure. He scorned attempts at style. To
say what he wanted in the shortest words, and in the
shortest sentences, was his ideal. And there is very much
to be said for his ideal. In literature, as in mathematics,
a straight line is the shortest distance betwixt two point.s.
Wesley, at least, never thought in curves, and never wrote
in spirals. But much of his writing is marred by visible
hurry.

It must be remembered, too, that his books, when they
were not controversial accidents, were written for the
constituency of his own followers — a great, docile, un-
taught multitude, who had towards Wesley a dumb and
filial reverence, and for whom Wesley had the protecting
concern of a father. He would put all literature within
their reach ; and to do it he must translate it into their
language. So he was for ever condensing, abridging, and
publishing books for his people. But his methods were
hurried. To quote Hampson, "he just looked over his
author and drew his pen across the passages he disap-
proved, and this with so little accuracy that he frequently
left sentences directly contrary to his own principles."

WESLEY'S PERSONALITY 439

Wesley read and wrote, indeed, with such an heroic
economy of time that he sometimes not only forgot what
he had read and what he had written, but what he had
recommended! The one serious literary scandal which
befell him, his reproduction of Dr. Johnson's pamphlet on
the American Revolution, was due to this.

Wesley had an almost rash frankness. He could not
always keep the secrets of other people, and he could
never keep his own. To one who complained of his
brother's want of reticence, Charles Wesley replied, "You
expect he will keep his own secrets? Let me whisper it
in your ears : he never could do it since he was born ! It
is a gift that God has not given him." "My brother,"
said Charles on another occasion, in disgusted accents,
"was, I believe, born for the benefit of knaves." He was
of the sweetest possible temper; he forgave easily, gen-
erously, completely — and perhaps too often! When
aroused, he was a man of keenest penetration, with a gift
for speech which bit like the stroke of a whip, or cut like
the edge of a sword-blade. And yet there was in his
character a vein of simplest generosity, which made him
almost gullible ! His sweetness of temper sometimes per-
mitted ignoble men to have a place about him they did not
deserve. Hampson says that he "had no attachments
that partook of the genius of friendship" ; but that is cer-
tainly untrue. He clung, not seldom with an over-
patient fidelity, to his friends. And it was inevitable that
round a figure so strong, so sweet, a -character of such
charm and power, strange crowds gathered. The earnest
wanted a leader. The weak came to lean on him, the timid
to catch the infection of his courage, the selfish to profit
by his influence. And Wesley had not the critical eyes
of his brother Charles. He chose his greater comrades
nobly — Fletcher, Coke, and many another; but he tol-
erated spirits about him less lofty than these, and his
shrewder brother Charles looked on these with unfriendly
eyes. "Are you one of my brother's favourites?" he in-
quired once of a certain person, and on receiving the reply
that he was not, Charles said bluntly, "I do not like you
the worse for that." "It signifies nothing," Charles com-
plained to his brother once, "to tell you anything; for
whom you love once you will love on through thick and
thin,"

440 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

But this fine generosity on the part of Wesley, we
repeat, had its risks. There gathered round him in his
latter days a group of followers almost too docile. They
reflected all his habits. They copied his gestures, his
dress, his accents, his prejudices. "If he left off tea, which
he did in 1742," says Hampson, "they did the same. If he
lay upon boards, or lived on vegetables, they did so too;
and because he was fond of morning preaching, they
observed the practice, at five in the morning, winter and
summer, though, very often, they could scarcely collect
half-a-dozen hearers. Some imitated his handwriting,
and so exactly copied his style and manner of speaking,
that the difference was almost imperceptible."

All this inevitably strengthened the masterful note in
Wesley's character. He became, in his latter days, less
patient of argument, less tolerant of any judgment which
clashed with his own. He was reluctant to hear reasons
intended to change a purpose on which he had set his
mind. "When anything was proposed," says Hampson,
"which he disapproved, or any attempt to go into a de-
bate of his favourite doctrines, it was common with him
to tell a story or give out a hymn to put an end to
the conversation." Men of strong will and independent
judgment came to resent this; and thus in his later years
Wesley drew close to himself those who opposed the least
resistance to his own opinions and plans.

Coleridge denies to .Wesley the philosophic mind; Isaac
Taylor says he had no touch of intuitional genius ; he had
only the logical intellect, &c. It is not qiiite clear what
this tangle of phrases means. Wesley's work was not to
spin out philosophical reflections, or to write volumes of
abstract dissertations. He lived in a real world ; he dealt
with men and women, with human passions and sorrows,
with the tragedies of human life, and the problems of
the human soul. He did the work of a preacher, of an
administrator, of a statesman. All his energies were in
close and constant relation to the everyday facts of human
life. And the fruits of his life are not to be sought in
a library, or measured by printed pages. They are to be
found in history. Their imperishable record is in human
lives.

That he had some touch of creative genius is proved by
the great and living Churches which to-day bear his

WESLEY'S PERSONALITY 441

name. The re-birth of the Christian religion in English
history is directly traceable to John Wesley. And what
monument built to statesman or soldier, to poet or in-
ventor or discoverer, can compare with a memorial like
this!

CHAPTER II

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

All Wesley's love affairs were disasters, but his marriage
was a tragedy — a tragedy made only the more complete
by a certain ignoble aspect it wears. Yet both for the
light it sheds on his character, and as a factor in his life,
the story of that marriage has to be told.

On the subject of marriage generally both the Wesleys
held at least semi-monastic views. Wesley published in
1743 a tract, ''Thoughts on Marriage and a Single Life,"
which might almost liave been written by a convinced and
ascetic Roman Catholic. The celibate state, he taught,
might not be of imperative and universal obligation,
it was certainly a loftier state than that of marriage.
Marriage was a conces.sion to human weakness, and ought
to be postponed as long as possible in all cases, and for-
gone absolutely where there was sufficient grace to enable
this to be done. When they returned from Georgia, the
brothers made a compact, each pledging himself not to
marry without the consent of the other.

But nature is stronger than even the most austere
sacerdotal theories. It made itself first felt in Charles
Wesley. In 1748, when he was over forty years of age,
he propounds to his brother as a sort of conundrum,
"How know I if it is best for me to marry? Certainly
better now than later; and if not now, what security that
I shall then? It should be now or not at all." He pro-
ceeded in the characteristic Wesley fashion to collect the
opinions of all his friends on this subject. His brother's
tractate stood in the way. He could hardly flout it pub-
licly. This difficulty, however, was removed by the Con-
ference of 1748 taking the "Thoughts on Marriage"
in hand, and convincing its author "that he might be
wrong"; that, at least, there was something to be said
on the other side of the question. Wesley records: "In
June 1748 we had a Conference in London. Several of
our brethren then objected to the 'Thoughts on Marriage,'
442

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

443

and, in full and friendly debate, convinced me that u
believer might marry without suffering loss in his soul."

This was not a very encouraging decision, but Charles
Wesley was willing to take the risk. He fixed his choice
on Miss Snlly Owynne. She was a girl of twenty-three,
the daughter of a good family, and herself of very fine
and attractive qualities. The story of the courtship sheds
a curious light on the social habits of the day. Charles
Wesley first approached his brother to secure his ap-
proval, and discovered to his delight that John was al-
ready contemplating matrimony for him. He had, indeed,
mentally selected three young ladies, from whom Charles
miglit take his choice, and Miss Gwynne was one of the
three. Mrs. Gwynne, the mother of Sally, was then ap-
proached. She was the business mind of her household ;
and while approving of Charles, she discussed the whole
matter from a strictly business standpoint.

The details are amusing. It was solemnly conceded,
for example, that the bridegroom should be at liberty to
"keep up a vegetable diet," and to travel as an evangelist,
but not to go to Ireland — a condition which, later, was
withdrawn. Charles Wesley, on his part, had to show
an income of £100 a year. After some diflSculty, John
Wesley agreed to give his brother security for £100 a year
on his profits of his books ; but Mrs. Gwynne rejected this
as not being a sufficiently solid asset. She had a prac-
tical woman's doubts as to the market value of literature.

Negotiations came to a standstill, till one of Charles
Wesley's friends, Perronet, broke in on the proceedings
by a letter to the mother of the bride. "If you and
worthy Mr. Gwynne are of opinion," he wrote, "that the
match proposed by the Rev. Charles Wesley be of God,
neither of you will suffer an objection drawn from the
world to break it off!" This remonstrance proved effec-
tive; Charles Wesley was allowed a brief interval of
courtship, interspersed with preaching, and during which
he wrote no less than seventeen hymns — principally ad-
dressed to the earthly object of his affections; and on
April 8, 1749, the marriage took place.

Some unkind critic wrote that it resembled a funeral
rather than a wedding; but gravity of behaviour was the
note of a good Methodist in those days. The marriage, as
a matter of fact, proved one of singular felicity. His

444 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

wife, to a very tender and loving spirit, united an almost
masculine strength and sanity of judgment. She became
the mother of eight children, filled her husband's life with
serenest happiness, and outlived him many years, dying
at the advanced age of ninety-six. The marriage of at
least one of the Wesley household thus proved to be a very
happy experiment. As one of its results, however, it
changed the character of Charles Wesley's work. He was
anchored now in a happy home, his children came fast
about him. He could no longer take any wide flight
as an itinerating evangelist, and his preaching tours
were practically limited henceforth to the roads betwixt
London and Bristol.

John Wesley, however, was far less fortunate in his
excursions into the realm of sentiment. All his love
affairs were blunders, and he ended by selecting what was
probably the most absolutely unfit woman in the three
kingdoms to be his wife. Such figures as those of Betty
Kirkham, of Mrs. Pendarvis — the "Aspasia" of a literary
correspondence — and Miss Sophia Hopkey, of Georgia,
flit briefly across the landscape of Wesley's life. But the
story of a more serious entanglement has to be told.

In August 1748, Wesley, while at Newcastle, suffered
one of his rare attacks of illness. It lasted only a few
days, and it did not wholly interrupt his preaching; but
during its brief continuance he was nursed by Grace
Murray, one of the staff of the Orphan House at New-
castle. Now sickness was for Wesley always a period of
what may be called matrimonial peril. In health he was
too busy, too preoccupied, too eagerly intent on his work,
to find time to think of marriage. And it may be added,
he seldom stopped long enough in one place to make any
acquaintance which could lead to marriage. But when he
was sick, he felt the need of a woman\s gentle ministra-
lioii. He had a simple-minded but quixotic faith in the
goodness of all women, and seemed always ready to pro-
pose to the particular face that at the moment bent over
him in his sickness. He was thrice sick : at Georgia, in
1737, where Miss Hopkey nursed him ; at Newcastle, in
1748, where Grace Murray nursed him; and in London,
in 1751, where Mrs. Vazeille nursed him. And as a matter
of fact, Wesley wanted to marry each of his nurses in
turn!

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

445

Grace Murray was a widow of twenty-eight. She was
of Scottish blood ; political troubles had brought poverty
on her family; and she herself had been at one time a
domestic. But many facts make it clear that she was a
woman of curious and dangerous charm. Wesley himself
gives with prosaic minuteness a catalogue of her quali-
ties : —

"She was remarkably neat; nicely frugal, yet not sordid;
gifted with a large amount of common-sense; indefatigably
patient, and inexpressibly tender; quick, cleanly, skilful; of an
engaging behaviour, and of a mild, sprightly, cheerful and yet
serious temper; while, lastly, her gifts for usefulness were such
as he (Wesley) had not seen equalled."

The gift of being "inexpressibly tender" had for Wes-
ley's tired mind and body, as he lay sick, a perilous
charm; and when Grace Murray's duties as nurse drew
to an end he proposed to marry her. She seemed amazed,
and said, "This is too great a blessing to me ; I cannot tell
how to believe it. This is all I could have wished for
under heaven !" To marry Wesley would, no doubt, have
been for her a great promotion ; but, as a matter of fact —
though she did not inform Wesley of the circumstance —
she was at that moment practically engaged to one of his
helpers, John Bennet, whom she had nursed a year before.

The story that follows, if told in a novel as a picture of
masculine simplicity, and of feminine caprice, would seem
extravagant. It is related with courageous frankness in
Tyerman's "Wesley," and there can be no doubt as to the
main facts. The story is taken from authentic docu-
ments, one of which at least was revised by Wesley him-
self. It is a curious drama, with an absorbed evangelist
as lover ; a highly impressionable woman, whom her own
sex at least would sharply sum up as an incurable flirt,
as the object of his affections ; a patient and determined
rival, and an interfering brother, as the other actors.
Grace Murray proceeded to "luu," with equally "inex-
pressible tenderness," her two lovers ; and the mere dates
of the story show with what easy facility she transferred
her emotions from one to the other in turn.

A week after proposing marriage, Wesley had to start
on a preaching tour; before doing so, he told Grace
Murray he was convinced God intended her to be his
wife. She thereupon protested that to be left behind was

446 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"more than she could bear"; and Wesley took her with
him as a helper in his services. When he reached
Bennet's circuit, he left Grace Murray behind, quite un-
conscious of the relations betwixt the pair. Within a
week Bennet wrote to Wesley askiug his consent to marry
Grace Murray, and with his letter came one from the
lady herself saying she believed it was the will of God
she should marry — not Wesley but — Bennet!

Wesley replied in astonished terms; but he was now
absorbed afresh in his work, and he accepted the situation
with a magnanimity few men could have shown, and most
women would not have admired. The too impressionable
Grace Murray, indeed, was not willing that her romance
should end so abruptly and so soon. For six months she
maintained a correspondence with both men, and per-
suaded each in turn that she loved him only. She seemed,
indeed, to really believe that she belonged to the one
whose letter she had last read.

It must be remembered that she was one of the
"helpers" employed in Wesley's work, and in February
1749, Wesley, then about to visit Ireland, proposed to
take her with him to assist in his services there. She
sent Bennet the intelligence, and told him that "if he
loved her" he must come to her at once.

Bennet could not come ; and Grace Murray told Wesley,
with the only flash of frankness she showed in the whole
history, how matters stood betwixt her and Bennet.
After much discussion, it was agreed that the contract
with Bennet was not binding; slie belonged to Wesley.
Accordingly she accompanied Wesley and took part in
his services throughout Ireland.

In August, Bennet and Wesley met at Epworth ; and
Bennet told Wesley that Grace Murray had sent him all
his (Wesley's) letters to her. The feminine conscience,
where matters of express and clear duty are concerned,
is usually more sensitive than even that of a man ; but
that vague, indefinable thing, "a sense of honour," is, for
some women, not only a thing unpossessed, but a thing
uncomprehended. To give the letters which had been
written by one lover, in all the confidence of affection,
to a rival was an act of feminine treachery which few
men could forgive. To Wesley's stubborn sense of hon-
our, the act must have seemed nothing less than base. It

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

447

visibly chilled the ardour of his affection for its perpetra-
tor, and perhaps helps to explain his willingness to
postpone his marriage with Grace Murray when that lady
was eager for it. After this stage the lady is plainly more
"willing" — in alternating patches, indeed, after her char-
acteristic fashion — than the gentleman.

But the act, if it proved how odd a sense of honour
Grace Murray possessed, at least proved one thing — she
loved Bennet! And Wesley decided the pair ought to
marry at once, and wrote a brief note to Grace Murray
telling her so.

When she received it she ran to Wesley in an agony
of tears and begged him "not to talk so unless he designed
to kill her." Wesley hesitated ; tears on a face he loved
were almost irresistible. But he kept to his decision to
give her up. She was ill, and sent for him. "How can
you think I love any one better than I love you?" she
cried. "I love you a thousand times better than I ever
loved John Bennet in my life." That same evening,
when Bennet in turn came, she promised to be his wife!
Was there ever before so active a transfer of affections
from one suitor to another !

On September 6 Wesley asked her bluntly, "Which
will you choose?" She replied: "I am determined by
conscience as well as by inclination to live and die with
you." Both Wesley and the lady wrote to Bennet in
these terms. Here, at last, the matter was surely settled.
Grace Murray urged Wesley to marry her immediately.
She understood herself too well not to know the risk of
delay! But Wesley, always the most leisurely of lovers,
now wished to satisfy John Bennet; to procure his
brother's consent; to explain his reasons for marrying
to all his preachers and societies, and to desire their
prayers; and this process, he calculated, would take
"about a year."

Here was a catalogue of delays and uncertainties ! The
lady agreed to wait, but protested she would wait no
longer than a year, and plainly so tedious and circuitous
an approach to marriage unsettled her easily transferred
affections once more.

The business of satisfying John Bennet proved lengthy,
and during its progress Charles Wesley appeared on the
scene. It shocked his pride of family that his brother

448

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

should marry a woman who, it was said, had been a
domestic servant; and if Grace Murray had the art of
fascinating all men, this was attended, as is usually the
case, with the faculty of offending most of her own sex.
Her inexpressible tenderness was wasted on them! They
looked on her with .icily critical eyes ; and Charles Wesley
had poured into his ears many tales from eager feminine
lips injurious to his brother's intended bride. He told
his brother bluntly that all their preachers would leave
them, and all their societies disperse, if he married Grace
Murray.

Wesley argued the case out with his brother with a
philosophy which was more creditable to his self-control
as a man than to his ardour as a lover. He was a logician
even when in love; his affections ran in syllogisms; and
after retailing to his brother, with scientific detail, the
merits of the object of his affections, he summed up
his conclusions under two heads: "(1) I have Scriptural
reasons to marry; (2) I know no person so proper as
this."

Charles departed, having first kissed the intended
bride, and saying, "Grace Murray, you have broken my
heart." But it turned out that Grace Murray had oc-
casion at that moment to go to Newcastle, and she rode
behind Charles to that place. John Bennet was there
awaiting their arrival. The impressionable Grace Murray
fell at the feet of lover No. 2, acknowledged she had used
him ill, begged his forgiveness, and within seven days the
pair were married !

A lady, we repeat, very expeditious in her affections.
The dates condemn her. On September 6 she was urg-
ing Wesley to marry her immediately, and vowing she
loved him only. On September 28 she was at John Ben-
net's feet, enti-eating his forgiveness, and declaring he
was the sole object of her too agile regards.

A few days after Charles Wesley, with the newly-
married pair, came to John, and a curious scene followed.
Whitefleld, who had arrived the day previously, and had
wept and prayed over Wesley, was present. According
to Tyerraan, "Charles, with characteristic impetuosity,
accosted his brother, saying, 'I renounce all intercourse
with you, but what I would have with a heathen man or
a publican.' Whitefleld and John Nelson burst into

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

449

tears; prayed, cried, and entreated, till the storm passed
over. The brothers, unable to speak, tell on each other's
neck. John Benuet was introduced ; but instead of up-
braiding hiiu, Wesley kissed hiiu. Wesley and his brother
had a private interview, and, on hearing explanations,
Charles was utterly amazed, exonerated him from blame,
and declared that all the culpability was hers."^

Wesley was, no doubt, very ill-used in this whole trans-
action ; ill-used by his brother, by Beunet his helper,
and by this lady of such very changeable moods. But it
is easier to forgive those who have wronged us than those
whom we have wronged ; and Benuet, within nine months
(it the marriage, separated from Wesley and carried off
with him as many members of the society as he could
influence.

Four days after the marriage, Wesley wrote to a friend
(luoting afresh the verse he quoted some twelve years
before, when Miss Hopkey was taken from him — "Son of
man, behold, I take from thee the desire of thine eyes at a
stroke; yet shalt thou not lament, neither shall thy tears
run down." "Yesterday," he adds, "I saw my friend that
was, and him to whom she is sacrificed. . . . But why
should a living man complain, a man for the punishment
of his sins?"

But Wesley was not a man to nourish resentment; and
he had no time to expend in regrets. He forgave the
I woman who had trifled with him, and the friend who had
! outwitted him, and the day after the interview described
he started on a preaching tour. It was nearly forty years
before Grace Murray and John Wesley met again. He
was preaching in Moorfields, and she sent him a message,
I askiug him to visit her. He went, spent a few brief
moments with her, and was never afterwards heard to
mention her name.

Human nature is compounded of many elements: and
the story we have told gives only one side of Grace
Murray's character. A brief life, with extracts from her
diarj^ published by her son after her death, shows her to
have been a woman capable of deep religious feeling, and
with an unusual power of literary expression. There is
evidence, too, that she kept a place in the regard of both

'Tyerman, ii. p. 53.

450 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

the Wesleys after her marriage with Beimet, and the
curious history which preceded it. Two months after
the marriage, in a letter to Bennet, signed "your aflfec-
tionate brother," dated London, December 7, 1749, and
never before published, Wesley says : —

"I wrote my last out of the fulness of my heart, not then per-
ceiving that I should write to you any more. I do not care to
write anything fresh on that subject. Perhaps I may some time
show you the letter I designed for you in times past. I do not
see things in the same light as you do; hut I complain not. For
I am a sinner: therefore it is just that I go warily all my days.
Nay, and I believe it is best for me." He adds a significant post-
script:— "Poor Grace! You have formerly been a means of many
blessings to me. May God prepare you to receive all His bless-
ings in time and in eternity."

Many months later, in a letter to Bennet, dated August
10, 1750, Charles Wesley says : "My heart is with you and
yours;" and then he too sends a message to the wife:
"Dear Grace! Fear not! In six troubles the Lord has
saved you. My partner," he adds, "salutes you in the love
that never faileth."

Perhaps the best defence of Grace Murray is supplied
by John Wesley himself in "A Narrative of a Remark-
able Transaction in the Early Life of John Wesley, from
an Original Manuscript in his own Handwriting," pub-
lished in 1802. Though the evidence for the genuineness
of the narrative is not absolute, yet it is strong, and the
story as thus told brings out vividly that deep and eager
"tenderness" of Grace Murray which was at once her
charm and her weakness. Wesley's analysis of her char-
acter and of her work as his helijer, is written in an
exalted key. He declares he "never met or heard of a
woman so owned of God. ..." His love for Grace
Murray, as shown in this narrative, is a slowly kindling
fire, but it becomes intense, though always Wesley re-
mained something of the pedant, even when in love. The
key to Charles Wesley's fiery opposition to the match is
given in a letter headed "My dear Sister and Friend,"
which Charles Wesley wrote to Grace after the interview
in which he said, "Grace Murray, you have broken my
heart." In this letter he writes : "The case thus appears
to me : you promised J. B. to marry him ; since which you
engage yourself to another. How is this possible, and

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

451

who is this other? One of such importance, that his
doing so dishonest an action would destroy himself and
me, and the whole work of God. . . . What a scandal
had you brought on the Gospel! You would have lived
to hear your name cursed by God's people."

John "Wesley, according to this view, was taking from
one of his preachers a woman who was his pledged wife.
This was a scandal that explains Charles Wesley's abrupt
words to his brother, "I renounce all communication
with you, but what I would have with a heathen man
or publican." "I felt little emotion," says John W^esley,
telling the story, "it was only adding a drop of water to
a drowning man, while I calmly accepted his renunciation
and acquiesced therein."

To Grace Murray marriage with Wesley was thus
described as a crime, which would destroy his work, and
she was told that Wesley himself had realised this when
she left him. Then the harassed and distressed soul
declared, "I will have J. Bennet, if he will have me."

Wesley himself, of course, believed that his engagement
to Grace Murray was of an older date and better au-
thority than that she had contracted with Bennet. For
this strange tangle of dates and engagements Grace
Murray, with her too eager and ready "tenderness," was
no doubt responsible ; but, as Wesley "himself says, "those
who know human nature will pity her at least as much
as they will blame her."

Wesley's narrative adds one odd incident. After
Charles Wesley had carried Grace Murray off and per-
suaded her that marriage with his brother would be a
crime, thei*e yet remained the task of getting Bennet to
marry her, for the message came that "he would now
have nothing to do with her." Charles Wesley hereupon
left poor Grace with some friends, two miles from New-
castle, and rode forward to interview Bennet. The way
he soothed his anger, says John Wesley, "was by laying
all the blame upon me, as having Tised all my art and
authority to seduce another man's wife. ... It was
then that Grace Murray was brought to him; she fell at
his feet and begged he would forgive her. To satisfy her
entirely as to any scruple that might remain, one was
brought in to assure that I had given her up and would
have nothing to say to her." Wesley tells the story of the

452 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

interview with Benuet and his newly wedded wife on
October 6th. "Oh ! what an interview," he writes. "We
sat weeping at each other. I asked, 'What did you say to
my brother to make him accost me thus?' She fell at my
feet, and said she could not speak against me, in many
other words to the same effect, in the midst of profound
sighs and tears. Before she arose he too (Bennet) fell
on his knees for what he had spoken of me. Between them
both I knew not what to say or do. I can forgive, but
who can redress the wrong?" Wesley ends the narrative
with the words, "Hardly has such a case been from the
beginning of the world."

Within eighteen months of this period John Wesley
met his evil fate, and married. Charles Wesley first met
the lady, Mrs. Vazeille, at his friend Perronet's, and de-
scribes her as "a woman of sorrowful spirit"; a quality
which, later, her unfortunate husband was to discover,
merely meant a genius for making herself and everybody
about her miserable. She was a widow, some years
younger than Wesley, with three children, and a decent
income settled upon them. She was, in her own un-
comfortable fashion — at this stage, at least — a religious
woman, with some capacity for making herself agreeable
when she chose. But she was ignorant, of self-indulgent
habits, with a semi-lunatic capacity for jealousy.

John Wesley had a child-like simplicity in all matters
relating to women. He never allowed for sex. He looked
on every woman with undiscerning eyes, and took her
at face value. Any one of his sisters might have taught
him better. They would have seen at a glance that Miss
Sophie's simple dress, and pious doubts, and zeal as a
nurse in Georgia, were but the arts of her sex, intended
to capture this young and earnest Fellow of Lincoln,
thrown by a strange chance on the shores of Georgia.
Grace Murray's "inexpressible tenderness" and Mrs.
Vazeille's "sorrowful spirit," in like manner, would have
been analysed, discounted, assessed.

To John Wesley, however, every woman was a replica
of his mother. It is easy to smile at his simplicity, but it
had a generous and noble root.

Wesley was presently introduced by his brother to Mrs.
Vazeille. Events moved fast. It was a case of a widow
and a middle-aged man who thought he ought to marry,

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

453

but was too busy to look for a wife. On February 2,
Charles Wesley writes: "My brother told me he was
resolved to marry." That John should follow his own
example seemed to Charles nothing less than a disaster.
"I was thunderstruck," he says.

"Trusty Ned Perronet followed, and told me, the person was
Mrs. Vazeille! One of whom I had never had the least suspicion.
I refused his company to the chapel, and retired to mourn with
my faithful Sally. I groaned all the day, and several following
ones, under my own and the people's burdens. I could eat no
pleasant food, nor preach, nor rest, either by nigbt or by day.'"

Wesley, this time, was not in the least anxious to
consult his friends, or take the opinion of his societies
and ask their prayers. Least of all was he disposed to
consult his brother Charles. His interference had spoilt
one marriage; John would give him no chance of spoil-
ing a second. But a curious incident followed. He
records : —

"Met the single men of the London society, and showed them
on how many accounts it was good for those who had received
that gift from God, to remain 'single for the kingdom of heaven's
sake,' unless where a particular case might be an exception to
the general rule."

This spectacle of John Wesley some ten days before his
own marriage explaining the superiority of the unmarried
condition to one of his societies, is really very puzzling.
Through the loophole of this phrase — "a particular case"
— Wesley himself was at that moment about to escape
from the celibacy he recommended to others !

Wesley had been as near to marriage before without
reaching that goal, and it is by no means certain that
Mrs. Vazielle would have become Mrs. John Wesley but
for one trifling accident. Wesley was about to set out on
his northern tour, in which it is probable he would have
quite forgotten Mrs. Vazeille; but at this point an ac-
cident precipitated matters. It was a bitter frost, and
Wesley, crossing London Bridge, slipped on the ice and
injured his ankle severely. He tried with invincible
courage to preach, but could not, and was taken to
Threadneedle Street, where Mrs. Vazeille resided, and was
nursed by that lady. This was fatal! Seven days were

'Tyerman, ii. p. 104.

454

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

speul, partly in the task of writing a Hebrew grammar,
and composing a set of lessons for children, and partlj'
in "conversation with Mrs. Vazeille," and the business of
being nursed by her.

The accident occurred on February 10. On February 17
he was carried to the Foundry, and preached kneeling,
not being able to stand. The next day, while he was still
a cripple, he married Mrs. Vazeille. He preached again —
indomitable man ! — still in kneeling attitude, on Tuesday
evening, and on Wednesday morning; and a fortnight
after his marriage, being able to climb into his saddle, he
rode off on a preaching tour.

Wesley's wife lived till 1781, and for those thirty years
she was for her unfortunate husband an embodied and
ceaseless torment. She accompanied him at first in his
preaching tours, but her genius for being discontented,
and for quarrelling with ever3'body about her, brought
this to an end. Within a month of the marriage the
favourite topic for this remarkable wife was her great
husband's faults. Within a year the breach was open,
confessed, incurable.

Wesley was, no doubt, a somewhat trying husband. His
character and habits were settled; he was incessantly
travelling; his life had in it absolutely no privacy. The
wife who married Wesley might well have felt as though
she were fastened to the tail of a comet. Yet Wesley was
a man of invincible patience, of kindness without limit;
and he had in him depths of feeling which a true woman
might easily have evoked. But his wife was nothing
better than a human gad-fly. Her business in existence
was to sting.

Charles Wesley, with a touch of unconscious humour,
gives us a hint of this termagant's capacity for quarrel-
ling. "I called," he says, "two minutes before preaching,
on Mrs. Wesley at the Foundry, and in all that time we
had not one quarrel." Charles, indeed, took his brother's
wife, with her furies, half humorously. He was accus-
tomed to call her "My Best Friend," because she told him
his faults with greater diligence and emphasis than any
other human being. Charles was once, however, for a
moment pricked out of his philosophy. This scold was
accustomed to accuse him of idleness; but in a more
malignant fit of temper than usual, she declared that

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

455

for years his dearest Sally had been his brother's mis-
tress! Charles fairly danced with rage at this slander
on his wife, who, on her part, with her serene and in-
vincible good sense, simply smiled and said, "Who will
believe my sister now?"

Jealousy is, perhaps, the most malignant and torment-
ing of all human passions. When inflamed, it is simply a
mood of lunacy. And Mrs. Wesley was furiously jealous
of her husband. His work set him in the relation of
friend and counsellor to many women ; amongst his
helpers, too, and in the institutions that were springing
up under his care, women were employed ; and each one
was, for his hal fin sane wife, an object of deadly sus-
picion. Wesley, on his side, was apt to be tolerant, in a
masculine, large-minded way, of facts in relation to such
women which other women — even the best — would hardly
forgive. Samh Hyan. for example, the housekeeper at one
of his Orphanages, was a woman with "a past." She was
at this time only thirty -three; but she had three husbands
living, and was sei)arated from them all ! Wesley was in
constant correspondence with her. a fact which kindled
his wife to fury. She stole Wesley's correspondence to
satisfy her doubts; she would travel a hundred miles to
see who were his companions at a particular stage of his
preaching tour. Her fury threw her sometimes into
paroxysms of mad violence, and sometimes into acts of
almost incredible treachery. She not only stole her hus-
band's letters; she tampered with them, so as to give them
an evil sense, and put them into the hands of his enemies
to be published.

Wesley did not show much tact in dealing with his wife.
He solemnly, and at infinite length, argued with her; as
though a woman, who, like Tennyson's "life," was "a fury
slinging flames," was likely to be cured by sj'llogisms!
Queen Victoria once complained that Mr. Gladstone used
to address her as though she were a public meeting. Now
John Wesley sometimes wrote to his wife as though she
had been a crowd at Moorflelds or Kingswood. Here is
an example : —

"At length, know me, and know yourself. Your enemy I can-
not be; but let me be your friend. Suspect me no more, asperse
me no more, provoke me no more. Do not any longer contend for
mastery, for power, money, or praise. Be content to be a pri-

456 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

vate, insignificant person, known and loved by God and me.
Attempt no more to abridge me of my liberty, which I claim by
the laws of God and man. Leave me to be governed by God
and my own conscience. Then shall I govern you with gentle
sway, and show that I do indeed love you even as Christ the
Church."

Here is another of Wesley's remonstrances as a hus-
band :

"It might be an unspeakable blessing, that you have a husband
who knows your temper and can bear with it; who, after you
have tried him numberless ways, laid to his charge things that
he knew not, robbed him, betrayed his confidence, revealed his
secrets, given him a thousand treacherous wounds, purposely
aspersed and murdered his character, and made it your business
so to do, under the poor pretence of vindicating your own char-
acter— who, I say, after all these provocations, is still willing to
forgive you all, to overlook what is past, as if it had not been,
and to receive you with open arms; only not while you have a
sword in your hand."

On January 23, 1771, there appears the famous entry
in Wesley's Journal : "For what cause I know not, my
wife set out for Newcastle, purposing, 'never to return.'
Non earn reliqui: non dimisi: non revocaho."

It is generally supposed that this non revocal)o was
final, and that from this date Wesley's relations with his
wife ceased ; but this is by no means the case. The next
year his wife, for a brief space of time at least, was with
itiim again, but once more disappeared beyond the horizon
in a whirlwind of passion. Wesley did not call her back,
she came back uninvited. In a letter dated May 31, 1774,
a letter which is one long scold, she signs herself "your
affectionate wife." They were finally parted, however,
during the later years of her life. One of the last words
Wesley wrote to his wife was in 1778 : "If you were to live
a thousand years, you could not undo the mischief you
have done ; and until you have done all you can towards
it, I bid you farewell." Wesley records in his Journal
on October 12, 1781: "I came to London, and was in-
formed that my wife died on Monday."

Wesley's strange marriage experiment is the tragedy of
his life. The woman he chose, to quote Southey, "deserves
to be classed in a triad with Xantippe and the wife of Job
as one of the three typical bad wives of the world." How
did so wise and great a man come to make so unhappy a

WESLEY'S LOVE AFFAIRS

457

choice? But if any proof is needed of the heroic fibre of
Wesley's character, it is found in the circumstance that,
while afflicted with a mere human plague in petticoats
like this, it never deflected by a hair's-breadth the work of
his life. It did not even cloud his cheerfulness ! The hus-
band of this virago was yet able to declare that "he had
never suffered from lowness of spirits for a quarter of an
hour." Any ordinary man, under such an affliction,
would have known little else than lowness of spirits. Per-
haps the unconquerable serenity of Wesley's temper was
an unacknowledged irritation to his wife. It was a chal-
lenge to her gift for making everybody about her miser-
able.

But it is almost amusing to note how the alchemy of his
cheerful faith in the end turned even Wesley's scolding
wife into a force for good. He told Moore, one of his
assistants, afterwards, "if Mrs. Wesley had been a better
wife, he might have been unfaithful in the great work to
which God had called him, and might have too much
sought to please her according to her own views." This
same view is put with humorous directness by John
Hampson : "Marriage has sadly crippled Charles Wesley,"
he wrote to Berridge of Everton, "and would have done
the same by John and George (Whitefield) if God had
not sent them a brace of ferrets !"

Whitefield, it is to be noted, had a martial experience
not much happier than that of his great comrade, and he
deserved, his fate. In the letter to the parents of the
lady he wished to make his wife, conveying his proposal
of marriage, he explains that he wants a mistress for his
orphanage, and adds, "You need not be afraid to send me
a refusal, for I bless God, if I know anything of my own
heart, I am free from that foolish passion the world calls
love." A suitor so frigid deserved a shrew for his bride.

CHAPTER III

WESLEY IN LITERATURE

It might have seemed, in advance, impossible that Wesley
could have filled any serious place in literature. What
time had a man, whose study was the saddle, who tra-
velled 4500 miles, and preached 500 sermons every year,
for reading books; still less for writing or publishing
them?

It may be admitted that Wesley approached literature
with less of what may be called the literary spirit than
perhaps any other man who ever published so many
books. Literature, for him, was not an end in itself; it
was not a recreation ; it was not a means of winning
either money or fame. It was a weapon, caught up for a
moment in the heat of a fight, and used like a weapon —
so long as the fight lasted. It was a tool, seized for the
purpose of doing a bit of urgent work, and to be cast down
like a tool, when the work was done. He was a man in
haste, and the note of haste — or, at least, of urgency —
runs through the whole of his literary work. He writes
always like a man who has other, and better, work to do.
But some controversy has arisen. It is, for Wesley, an
interruption, perhaps even an exasperation ; but it has
to be dealt with, lest truth should suffer, and souls be
wronged. He deals with it in the fewest words, and
the shortest possible way, and then hastens on his road.
Every sentence he writes is, in a sense, compelled; and
the compulsion is always moral.

Wesley's writings may be divided into four classes.
Sometimes they are, like his sermons, appeals addressed
to the human conscience, and intended to turn men from
sin to righteousness. Wesley was the first discoverer of
that much criticised form of literature, the "tract," and
he anticipated the famous Religious Tract Society by
many years. That society was organised in 1799; but,
more than fifty years earlier — in 1742 — Wesley was busy
printing and circulating thousands of brief, pungent
458

WESLEY IN LITERATURE

459

appeals to various classes of wrongdoers: to drunkards,
to swearers, to Sabbath-breakers, &c. By means of his
helpers, Wesley scattered these earliest of tracts like seed
over the soil of the three kingdoms.

Next come his controversial writings. Round Wesley's
person, his teaching, his societies, his helpers, gathered
a whirling and perpetual simoom of controversy. He
troubled too many consciences, violated too many con-
ventions, and stung with rebuke too many prejudices, to
be left in peace. Now, Wesley was, both by gift of nature
and by force of training, one of the most formidable
controversialists that ever lived. He did not, like Dr.
Johnson, wield a cudgel or a quarter-staff. His logic had
the point, the shining gleam, the deadly swiftness of a
rapier. But he hated controversy. He was accustomed
to quote an ancient saying, "God made practical divinity
necessary, the devil controversial." And yet when truth
is assailed, those who love truth must defend it. And
when Wesley saw the great and essential doctrines of
Christianity', the doctrines by which men must be saved,
attacked — and attacked too often by those who ought to
have been their defenders — he felt like a soldier who
sees the flag of his regiment surrounded by enemies. He
must fight!

"Oh, that I might dispute with no man!" he writes.
"But if I must dispute," he adds, "let it be with men of
sense." But, alas! Wesley's opponents were not often
men of sense. One of the most formidable of them, and
one whom Wesley smote hardest, was Dr. Lavington,
Bishop of Exeter; and of him even a critic so tolerant,
and so detached, as Miss Wedgwood, declares in words
already quoted : "He deserves to be coupled with the men
who flung dead cats and rotten eggs at the Methodists,
not with those who assailed their tenets with arguments."

Another section of Wesley's works represents his con-
cern for the instruction of his own people. Himself a
scholar, nurtured from his very childhood in an intel-
lectual atmosphere, the Fellow of an historic University,
hate of ignorance was, for him, an instinct and a passion.
Knowledge and faith, he held, had the closest kinship.
No member of his societies must be allowed to remain
untaught. And Wesley deliberately set himself to bring
within the reach of his people the best literature the world

460 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

at that day possessed. He anticipated by more than a
century, that is, the age of cheap books and of popular
literature. His "Christian Library" represents his most
ambitious attempt in this field. He abridged some fifty
famous books for this purjjose, and the library is a monu-
ment to his breadth of spirit. Ancient fathers of the
early Church, the greatest Anglican divines, the most
famous English Noncomformists, as well as foreign
writers like Pascal and Bengel, are found side by side
in the list.

The Christian Library was not a financial success; it
involved Wesley, indeed, in serious loss ; a loss, however,
which he made up by the gains on his cheap books.
"Two and forty years ago," he writes, "having a desire to
furnish poor people with cheaper, shorter, and plainer
books than any I had seen, I wrote many small tracts,
generally a penny a piece. Some of these had such a
sale as I never thought of, and by this means I unawares
became rich." Wesley, in a word, made the discovery —
which explains some vast modern fortunes — that litera-
ture, when it becomes democratic, and takes root amongst
the masses, is better than a gold-mine. Wesley's "riches,"
however, were on a modest scale. His receipts from his
books seldom rose to £1000 a year, and every penny was
made the servant of some unselfish object. "If I die
leaving, after my debts are paid, more than £10," he once
wrote, "you may call me a thief."

His anxiety to provide an adequate literature for his
own people explains Wesley's printed S ninons, and his
Notes (in the New Testament. He found, at an early
stage of his work, that for the use of his helpers some
clear, simple, and definite statement of what may be
called the theology of the Revival was needed; and to
meet this want he published the first series of his sermons
— fifty-three discourses, that still remain the doctrinal
standard of his Church. These sermons are not the
discourses actually preached, but only their doctrinal
framework — a condensed statement of their theology.
Wesley says his purpose in writing these sermons was
"to furnish plain truth for plain people." In writing
them, he had beside him only two books, the Hebrew
Bible and the Greek Testament; and he explains in the
preface, "My design is in some sense to forget all that

WESLEY IN LITERATUEE 461

1 have ever read in my life." His aim, that is. was to
state the great doctrines of evangelical Christianity in
the freshest, the most direct, and untechnical language
possible.

Wesley published, in all, five series of sermons, and
they had an immense sale. But no one need turn to
these sermons to-day to find in them the secret of Wes-
ley's own power in the pulpit, or any echoes of the thrill-
ing speech which day after day held vast open-air crowds
breathless with interest and emotion. They resemble
the spoken sermons only as fossils resemble their living
originals.

Wesley's Notes on the New Testament were meant, like
his sermons, to be a manual of divinity for his people.
The notes were written at tremendous speed, and while
Wesley was temporarily forbidden to preach, on account
of sickness. The new translation of the text which
accompanies the Notes has in it many curious anticipa-
tions of the readings adopted by the revisers of 1870.

A record of the various incidents of his career forms
another section of Wesley's works. The famous Journal
belongs to this class, as does the Arminian Magazine
started in 1778. Wesley gave to human experience — to
spiritual phenomena of every kind — an evidential vahie
which science, only late, and reluctantly, has begun to
recognise; and his Journal and Magazine are the most
complete, detailed, and scientific records of such pheno-
mena in literature.

Wesley's publications number 371, including oO works
prepared in conjunction with his brother Charles; and as
he only began to publish in 1733, this represents an
average of more than seven volumes for each year of his
busy life. A German historian, in solemn, heavy-handed
fashion, groups Wesley's works in five divisions — Poetical,
Philological, Philosophical, Historical, and Theological.
And they certainly cover an enormous range of subjects,
ranging from school-books for Kingswood, hymn-books
for his societies, abridgments of countless authors for his
people generally, and theological standards for his helpers,
down to a whole battery of controversial pamphlets and
treatises.

But do Wesley's works belong to literature in its best
sense? Does he possess that great anti-septic, style?

462

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Wesley himself would reply, with emphasis, "No." He
was no hunter after pretty phrases. He secretes no
epigrams. He betrays no sense of the music and grace
of words. A white light, hard and clear, beats on every
page; but there are none of the subtle colour-efifects of
the imagination. , Wesley's literary ideal consisted of
short words, short sentences, and clear thinking. Of his
own literary style he writes, in 1788, with honest direct-
ness: "I dare no more write in a fine style than wear
a fine coat. A man with one foot in the grave must
waste no time on ornament. But were it otherwise, had
I time to spare, I should still write just as I do. I should
purposely decline what many admire — a highly orna-
mented style. I cannot admire French oratory ; I despise
it from my heart."

He was an old man when he wrote that self-descrip-
tion. But a quarter of a century earlier (in 1764) he had
written : —

"As for me, I never think of my style at all; but just set down
the words that come first. Only, when I transcribe anything for
the press, then I think it my duty to see every phrase be clear,
pure, and proper. Conciseness (which is now, as it were, natural
to me) brings quantum sufficit of strength. If, after all, I ob-
serve any stiff expression, I throw it out, neck and shoulders.
Clearness, in particular, is necessary for you and me; because we
are to instruct people of the lowest understanding."

Leslie Stephen's criticism of Wesley's writings is inter-
esting, if only as an illustration of Stephen's own limita-
tions as a critic. He cannot judge Wesley fairly because
he is parted from him by so wide a theological interval.
When he is fresh from reading Wesley he says : —

"He shows remarkable literary power. His writings are means
to a direct practical end. ... It would be difficult to find any
letters more direct, forcible, and pithy in expression. He goes
straight to the mark without one superfluous flourish. He writes
as a man confined within the narrowest limits of time and space,
whose thoughts are so well in hand that he can say everything
needful within those limits. The compression gives emphasis
and never causes confusion."

These, surely, are literary qualities of great value for
their own sake, as well as reflecting a very fine moral
temper. But presently Leslie Stephen forgets what he
has written ; he remembers only his dislike of Wesley's

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WESLEY IN LITERATURE

463

theology, and be says, "Wesley's thoughts rim so fre-
quently in the grooves of obsolete theological specula-
tion, that be has succeeded in producing no single book
satisfactory in a literary sense." How can writings be
at once "means to a direct and practical end" and yet
run almost exclusively in "the grooves of obsolete theo-
logical speculation" ?

The truth is, Wesley has sufiFered, as far as his litei-ary
fame is concerned, much injustice at the hands alike of
his critics and of his admirers. He has been both under-
estimated and over-praised ; or rather, he has been praised
at the wrong point. His second best work, the famous
Journal, has somehow shut out of sight work of much
finer literary quality. Leslie Stephen, as we have seen,
says that Wesley "never produced a single book satis-
factory in a literary sense," and even Mr. Augustine
Birrell, who has written one of the most charming of
essays on Wesley's Journal, says that as a writer Wesley
"has not achieved distinction."

But a hundred critics may be arrayed on the other side.
Mr. FitzGerald, of "Omar Khayyam" fame, for example,
who has a poet's sense of distinction and charm in style,
dwells with delight on the "pure, unaffected, undying
English" of Wesley's Journal. Leslie Stephen himself
has to admit that Wesley's English is "allied to that of
Swift or Arbuthnot," and that his Journal "only wants
a little humour to be one of the most entertaining volumes
ever written."

Now the charm of the famous Journal is, no doubt, very
great. The original records exist in the shape of twenty-
one neat, closely written volumes, from which extracts
only have been printed. The first entry in the Journal is
dated October 18, 1732, and consists of a letter of stupen-
dous length which Wesley wrote defending the little
society of Methodists at Oxford from the charge of hav-
ing helped to kill one of their own number by their
excessive austerity of life. The last entry is dated Octo-
ber 24, 1790. The Journal, therefore, covers a period of
fifty-eight years. And betwixt those two Octobers, to
quote Mr. Augustine Birrell, lies "the most amazing
record of human exertion ever penned or endured."

No one will deny the value of the Journal ; yet probably
nobody could read it through continuously. Mr. Birrell

464

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

says "an atmosphere of tremeudous activity fills it";
but this is hardly true. The notes are too cold and brief.
No wind blows through the Journal; no sense of space
stirs in it. Only by an effort of deliberate recollection
does the reader succeed in realising that beneath the cool
and quiet syllables .there burns a flame of sustained effort
almost without parallel.

In his Journal Wesley records in the briefest fashion
the general course of his work and life. He preaches
at such a place; the text is given, the result of the service
is condensed into a sentence, there is a pious aspiration
for a blessing upon it. Then Wesley hurries on his way
to another service. There is no perspective in the Jour-
nal; no clear background. It gives no seTise of the life,
so crowded and vivid and strenuous, of which it is a
partial record. No echo of the great events in politics,
literature, and social life taking place concurrently with
the events it records runs through it. This, indeed — its
almost complete detachment from the general life of its
own times — is the great literary defect of the Journal.
The eighteenth century, it must be remembered, resounds
with tumult; it is crowded with great events. It begins
with the thunders of Blenheim and ends with those of the
Nile. Wesley himself was contemporary with four great
wars — the war of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748),
the Seven Years' War (175G-1763), the war of American
Independence (1775-1783), and the first half of the Great
War with France (1793-1803). England was at war for
thirty years out of the last sixty years of the century.
In addition, there was the Jacobite rising of 1715, and
the still more famous rising of 1745, with its chain of
bloody fights ranging from Prestonpans to Culloden.

Wesley, too, saw Clive win India for England, and
Wolfe win Canada. He saw Captain Cooke open for her,
not any "perilous seas forlorn," such as Keats describes,
but the majestic, many-isled world of the great Pacific;
and he saw George Washington take from her the thirteen
colonies. Wesley was the contemporary of the two Pitts,
of Wilkes, of Junius. The efifervescence of the South
Sea Bubble was round his youth, and the tumult of
the Lord George Gordon riots about his old age. When
Voltaire visited England in 1726-1729 Wesley was at
Oxford. He saw across the narrow seas the opening of

WESLEY IN LITERATURE

465

iLe mighty drama of the Revolution in France. The
VVhiteboys were filling Ireland with terror in the very
years Wesley was traversing Ireland as an evangelist.

And while such great events as these were filling the
world with their tumult, Wesley, it must be remembered,
was beyond all his contemporaries in contact with people
of every class; he knew the common mind intimately,
with all its ebb and flow of terror, rage, excitement. It
is surely very remarkable, and argues a curious detach-
ment of mind, or an intense preoccupation with greater
interests, that his Journal contains such scanty refer-
ences to these events. No vibration of the agitations
or passion of the moment runs through its swift, but
ordered, syllables. No one else of that generation, it is
certain, could have lived so constantly amongst the
crowds, and so completely escaped the contagion of their
emotions. No one else could have written a journal of
daily events so minute and full, yet so completely divorced
from the tumult of battles, the passion of party strife, the
dust of contemporary events.

Yet the interest of the book, in spite of all this, is vivid
and great. It abounds in curious incidents, in pungent
literary judgments, in sudden pictures of odd characters,
in records of odd events. It gives us gleams of curious
light into the dark places of human life and character.
For Wesley was dealing with men and women in high
moods of feeling, and saw aspects of human character
usually hidden from sight, and sometimes even from
consciousness. Wesley believed in Providence as a force
in human affairs, and delights to give instances of its
working. Human experience was for him a phenomenon
to be treated with respect, and recorded with diligence.

It is sometimes said that the Journal supplies many
proofs of the credulousness of Wesley, but that is not
quite just. He notes all the strange phenomena that
come under his observation, but his temper about them
is almost scientific, not to say modern. He does not
dismiss a strange story because it is strange. "I tell the
story as it happened," he says again and again, "let those
explain it who can." These are genuine phenomena, and
Wesley has a scientific respect for facts.

The true literary quality of the Journal can only be
realised when it is put side by side with the other two

466

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

famous works of the same general type, belonging to the
same i)erio(l — Horace Walpole's "Letters," and Boswell's
"Johnson." What other generation of Englishmen yields
such a trinity of self-drawn portraits as these three pic-
turesque and strangely contrasted figures!

Walpole and W^esley were contemporaries, and the
contrast of their diaries is nothing short of dramatic.
Walpole is an idler, a human butterfly. He has no serious
business in life; but his lightness, both of touch and of
spirit, has a curious charm with it. And still, in the
dainty and scented amber of his gossip, lie embalmed
for human curiosity the lords and ladies, the rakes and
flirts, the fools and spendthrifts of that generation. The
very element in which Walpole lives is an atmosphere
of malicious gossip. To hear, to tell, to write, all the
scandalous stories of his day was his chief occupation ;
and the sense of the value of his gossip is shown by the
care in which he kept copies of his own letters.

Johnson, too, was Wesley's contemporary, and with his
courage, his cudgel-like logic, his robust common-sense,
his respect for realities, is a more manly figure than
Walpole, and has an infinitely better title to human
respect. But if Walpole looked on men and women
simply for the entertainment they afl'orded him, and with
a remoteness too careless to be scientific; Johnson, on the
other hand, valued literature more than men and women,
and perhaps he valued politics even more than literature.
All men for him were capable of being divided into two
classes, to be cudgelled, or to be praised, according as
they were Whigs or Tories.

Wesley's standpoint is parted by whole horizons from
that of either Walpole or Johnson. He sees men and
women as they stand related to eternity. His temper
towards them is not that of a peeping curiosity like
Walpole's, nor of vehement resentments and preferences
like those of Johnson. It is that of a passionate and
divine pity, an untiring concern for their happiness. He
has an overpowering sense of the value of men apart from
all question of their social standing, their politics, their
knowledge or ignorance, their poverty or wealth. He sees
them, in a word — as far as such a vision is possible to
human eyes — as God sees them !

Wesley'.^ bpst literary work is not his Journal. It is

WESLEY IN LITERATURE 467

his famous "Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion." Who
wants to know what the English language, at its highest
point of clearness and power, is, may well turn to these
famous "Appeals." They are unmatched in fire and
power; unrivalled in their translucent clearness. The
present writer, at least, knows nothing else in the English
language to excel them, alike for directness, simplicity,
and strength. The clear, terse, hurrying syllables burn
with a white flame of conviction. Here is Wesley's style
at its best. Swift's fierce syllables burn with a more evil
fire; and there is smoke — smoke sometimes as of the pit!
— as well as flame in them. Burke has, of course, a more
glowing colour, and a wider imaginative range than
Wesley. His sentences resemble disintegrated light. But
what they gain in colour they lose in simplicity and
clearness. Wesley's short, packed, monosyllabic sentences
are a perfect medium for the swiftest logic the human
brain can shape, and they reflect some of the loftiest
emotions the human soul can know.

The "Appeal" shows that Wesley has in him a fine
capacity for anger; but his anger only serves to give a
new edge to his logic. He is a tremendous disputant.
His swift and pitiless logic, because of its very swiftness
— its accent of haste — has not seldom the effect of scorn.
It cuts like a whip. His reply to Bishop Lavington in the
second Appeal is a case in point. Bishop Lavington was
a typical Hanoverian divine — fat, drowsy, contented, and
as destitute of spiritual sense as a block of wood. He
resents, with an anger that has in it a certain note of
terror, the "enthusiasm" of the Revival. What is there
in religion to be "enthusiastic" about? He called upon
all his clergy to make common cause against the Meth-
odists. He felt about them as a French secularist to-day
feels about the clergy. They were the common enemy.
They must be suppressed at any cost, and by any methods.
Wesley replies to Bishop Lavington's charges in detail,
and with infinite patience, and in his closing words he
strikes a lofty note. A bishop dealing publicly with a
question of religion has great influence. Thousands will
accept his utterances. No doubt, Bishop Lavington suc-
ceeded in his purpose of "preserving" multitudes from
being touched by the forces of the Revival. Wesley ac-
knowledges this, and goes on : —

468 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"My lord, it cannot be long before we shall both drop this
house of earth, and stand naked before God. No, nor before we
shall see the great white Throne coming down from heaven, and
Him that sitteth thereon. On His left hand shall be those who
are shortly to dwell in everlasting fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels. In that number will be all who died in their sins.
And, among the rest, those whom you 'preserved' from repent-
ance. Will you then rejoice in your success? The Lord God
grant it may not be said in that hour, 'These have perished in
their iniquity. But their blood I require at thy hands.' "

Wesley, in literature, was, it must be coufessed, a fiddle
with one string. He has only one note. In each book,
in turn, he sets out from a given point, and for a given
end ; and he never loiters ; he never digresses. The land-
scape has no interest for him. His only concern is to
reach his goal, and to do the precise bit of business in
hand. This habit of using literature only as a tool, or as
a weapon, of course, gives Wesley a certain narrowness;
but it is the virtue of a sword-edge to be narrow! And,
behind Wesley's logic, there is always the impact of some-
thing stronger than logic, the force of a tremendous
personality, of a life occupied in great things, and the
channel of great energies. Wesley unconsciously writes
and argues like a man who has come down for a moment
from some loftier realm, and from the preoccupation of
some divine task. And the utter unconsciousness of the
mood robs it of all arrogance, and makes the descent both
credible and impressive.

^..A^'DO -p^^^^^^/Si-, At^^j^^^ ^^^^^

•c7

A.

CHAPTER IV

WESLEY'S ODD OPINIONS

Weslky's mind, with its positive and logical turn, easily
crystallised into definite opinions; while its qualities of
courage and independence gave to many of these an
original turn. He was a man of relentless method, and
he had a tireless industry in recording everything he saw
or experienced. His opinions, as a result, on all sorts
of subjects — profane and secular, historical and literary —
are scattered with great abundance through his Journal
and correspondence. Not seldom they represent hasty
judgments, or are built on half knowledge of things;
but they are usually marked with great shrewdness, and
always by great confidence; and their very positiveness
and originality give them very often a look of humour.

On historical characters, for example, Wesley's judg-
ments are marked by great pungency and frankness, and,
if generally accepted, would bring to wreck not a few
great reputations. He was a good Tory, but he had too
much resolute common-sense to cheri.sh any illusion about
that "royal martyr" Charles I. "The chief sin which
brought the king to the block," Wesley says, "was his
persecuting the real Christians." Wesley tells the story
of the death of "that monster of cruelty, Graham of
Claverhouse, afterwards, as a reward for his execrable
villainies, created Lord Dundee." "The tradition current
in Scotland," says Wesley, "is: At the battle of Killie-
crankie, being armed in steel from head to foot, he was
brandishing his sword over his head, and swearing a broad
oath, that before the sun went down, he would not leave
an Englishman alive. Just then a musket-ball struck
him under the arm, at the joints of his armour. Is it
enthusiasm to say 'Thus the hand of God rewarded him
according to his works'?"

As for Charles II., after reading an account of the
sufferings of the Presbyterians in Scotland, during his
reign, Wesley writes: "Oh, what a blessed governor was
469

470

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

that good-natured man, so-called King Charles II.!
Bloody Queen Mary was a lamb, a mere dove, in com-
parison." "Many of the Protestant Bishops of King
Charles," he says again, "had neither more religion or
humanity than the Popish Bishops of Queen Mary."

Wesley is ironically sceptical as to St. Patrick and his
performances, and the perusal of the life of that saint
leaves him under the melancholy conviction that it is
a myth, or at least the story "smells strong of romance."

" 'I never heard before,' says Wesley, 'of an apostle sleeping
thirty-five years, and beginning to preach at threescore. But his
success staggers me the most of all. No blood of the martyrs is
here; no reproach; no scandal of the Cross; no persecution to
those that will live godly. Nothing is to be heard of, from the
beginning to the end, but kings, nobles, warriors, bowing down
before him. Thousands are converted, without any opposition at
all; twelve thousand at one sermon. If these things were so,
either there was then no devil in the world, or St. Patrick did
not preach the Gospel of Christ' "

As to the monkish traditions that in the seventh or
eighth century Ireland was sown thick with colleges, and
the whole island a centre whence piety and learning
streamed on wondering mankind ; "this," says Wesley
bluntly, "ranks with the history of Bel and the Dragon."

Walpole's "Historic Doubts" convinced Wesley that
Richard III. was neither a hunchback nor a savage, and
he explains the univer.sal tradition to the contrary by
saying that, "for fifty years no one could contradict that
account but at the peril of his head." Wesley finds time
and curiosity enough to visit the Waxworks in Spring
Gardens, and reports that most of these royalties show
their characters in the countenance, and very unamiable
characters, apparently, they exhibit. "Sense and majesty
appear in the King of Spain ; dulness and sottishness in
the King of France ; infernal subtlety in the late King of
Prussia (as well as in the skeleton Voltaire) ; calmness
and humanity in the Emperor, and King of Portugal;
exquisite stupidity in the Prince of Orange; and amazing
coarseness, with everything that is unamiable, in the
Czarina." Wesley's views of "that poor injured woman,
Mary Queen of Scots," will delight most Scotchmen. He
records that Dr. Stuart, in his "History of Scotland,"
"proves, beyond all possibility of doubt, that the charges

WESLEY'S ODD OPINIONS 471

against Queen Mary were totally groundless; that she
was betrayed basely by her own servants, from the begin-
ning to the end ; and that she was not only one of the best
princesses then in Europe, but one of the most blameless,
yea, and the most pious women!" Of James I., Wesley
cherishes the darkest views ; "a covetous and bloodthirsty
tyrant" is his summary. Of George II., Wesley asks,
"Will England ever have a better prince?"

Having strayed by some odd eddy of circumstance into
the House of Lords, when the King was present, Wesley
draws a picturesque little vignette of him.

"I was in the robe-chamber, adjoining the House of Lords,
when the King put on his robes. His brow was much furrowed
with age, and quite clouded with care. And is this all the world
can give even to a king, all the grandeur it can afford? A blanket
of ermine round his shoulders, so heavy and cumbersome he can
scarce move under it. An huge heap of borrowed hair, with a
few plates of gold and glittering stones upon his head! Alas,
what a bauble is human greatness!"

Wesley, on another occasion, spends two or three hours
in the House of Lords, and says, "I had frequently heard
that this was the most venerable assembly in Europe,
but how was I disappointed !"

Wesley's literary judgments are equally positive and
unconventional. He has no superstitious regard for great
reputations; he thumps them, indeed, with a courage
which is always amusing, and sometimes very refreshing.
Rousseau he describes as "a shallow yet supercilious
infidel, two degrees below Voltaire." "Sure," he cries, "a
more consummate coxcomb never saw the sun."

"He is a mere misanthrope; a cynic all over. So, indeed, is
his brother-infidel, Voltaire; and well-nigh as great a coxcomb.
As to his book, the advices which are good are trite and common,
only disguised under new expressions. And those which are new,
which are really his own, are lighter than vanity itself. Such
discoveries I always expect from those who are too wise to be-
lieve their Bibles."

Voltaire's name is made the text of a very amusing
discussion on languages. Wesley has read the "Hen-
riade," and as a result he says —

I was more than ever convinced, that the French is the
poorest, meanest language in Europe; that it is no more com-
parable to the German or Spanish, than a bagpipe is to an organ;

472

WESLF.Y AND HIS CENTURY

and that, with regard to poetry in particular, considering the in-
corrigible uncouthness of their measure, and their always writing
in rhyme (to say nothing of their vile double rhymes, nay, and
frequent false rhymes), it is as impossible to write a fine poem
in French, as to make fine music upon a Jew's harp!"

Sterne fares badly at John Wesley's hands, as might be
expected. Two men more absolutely opposed in temper
and genius can hardly be imagined. "The word 'senti-
mental,' " Wesley says, "is not sense ; he might as well
have used the word 'continental,' " and the "Sentimental
Journey" he sums up in the phrase, "One fool makes
many." Where questions of morality are concerned,
Wesley's judgment is inexorable. He made a careful
study of Macchiavelli's famous and wicked book.

"I weighed the sentiments that were less common; transcribed
the passages wherein they were contained; compared one passage
with another, and endeavoured to form a cool, impartial judg-
ment. And my cool judgment is, that if all the other doctrines
of devils which have been committed to writing since letters
were in the world were collected together in one volume, it would
fall short of this; and that should a prince form himself by this
book, so calmly recommending hypocrisy, treachery, lying, rob-
bery, oppression, adultery, whoredom, and murder of all kinds,
Domitian or Nero would be an angel of light compared to that
man."

Of an English writer, equally evil in his teaching, Wes-
ley writes — perhaps because he was an Englishman — in
yet severer terms. He had read Mandeville's "Fable of
the Bees," and finds it more atrocious than Macchiavelli's
"Prince."

"The Italian recommends only a few vices, as useful to some
particular men, and on some particular occasions; but the Eng-
lishman loves and cordially recommends vice of every kind, not
only as useful now and then, but as absolutely necessary at all
times for all communities!"

But if Wesley is stern against immoral teaching, he is
quick to see, and generous to praise, any good even in
those most unlike himself. He read "that surprising
book the 'Life of Ignatius Loyola,' " and says "he was
surely one of the greatest men that ever was engaged in
the support of so bad a cause."

The belief that God's mercy was co-extensive with His

WESLEY'S ODD OPINIONS

473

universe; that sound faith might be hidden beneath the
appearance of heresy, and that many will be saved by
Christ who never heard the name of Christ, was held by
Wesley strongly. Thus he says: "I read to-day part of
the meditations of Marcus Antoninus. What a strange
emperor ! And what a strange heathen ! . . . I make no
doubt but this is one of those 'many who shall come from
the East and the West, and sit down with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, while the children of the kingdom,
nominal Christians, are shut out.' " On the other hand,
he thinks it open to grave doubt "whether Judas claims
so hot a place in hell as Alexander the Great!" He
plainly holds the greatest soldier of all history was little
better than a murderer on a great scale, as "he slew
thousands, both in battle, and in and after taking cities,
for no other crime than defending their wives and chil-
dren."

Wesley's judgments of ecclesiastical persons and events
are marked by robust good sense. He reads the history
of the Puritans, and is able to see both the cruelty of their
oppressors and the wroug-headedness of the Puritans
themselves. "I stand in amaze, first, at the execrable
spirit of persecution which drove these venerable men out
of the Church, and with which Queen Elizabeth's clergy
were as deeply tinctured as ever Queen Mary's were;
secondly, at the weakness of those holy confessors, many
of whom spent so much of their time and strength in
disputing about surplices and hoods, or kneeling at the
Lord's Supper." He reads Baxter's "History of the
Councils," and is filled with righteous anger at the story
of what Christ's earthly Church has suffered from those
who imagined they were serving it.

"What a company of execrable wretches have they been (one
cannot justly give them a milder title), who have almost in every
age since St. Cyprian taken upon them to govern the Church!
How has one Council been perpetually cursing another, and de-
livering all over to Satan, whether predecessors or contempo-
raries, who did not implicitly receive their determinations,
though generally trifling, sometimes false, and frequently unin-
telligible or self-contradictory! Surely Mahometanism was let
loose to reform the Christians!"

On some subjects Wesley cherished peculiar views. He
believed, for example, that a future life for animals was

474 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

possible, or even probable. The creatures have suffered
in that reign of pain and death which the sin of man
has called into existence; why should they not share in
the results of man's redemption? The whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together ; and, says Wes-
ley, "whether men attend or not, their groans are not
dispersed in idle" air, but enter into the ears of Him
Who made them." And this groaning creation "waits for
the redemption." "The promise, 'Neither shall there be
any more pain,' will take place," says Wesley, "not in man
alone, but in every creature according to his capacity;
the whole brute creation will be restored to all that they
have lost. And what," he asks, "if it should please the
all-wise and all-gracious Creator to raise them higher in
the scale of beings? What if it should please Him, when
He makes us equal to angels, to make them what we are
now — creatures capable of God?"

Coleridge adds a somewhat cruel footnote to these
sentences. "There is no meaning," he says, "in the word
'them' as applied to flies, fish, worms, &c. If I suffer a
door to fall in pieces and put a dog in the passage instead,
can I be said to have raised the door into a dog?"

Wesley believed in witches; not in any particular
witch, that is, but in the reality, in some cases, of witch-
craft. He had persuaded himself, indeed, that to sur-
render belief in witchcraft would be to quarrel with the
authority of the Bible; a circumstance which proves that
his logic was not always sufficiently qualified by in-
telligence.

While in so many respects in advance of his century,
Wesley, in brief, in some matters shared its prejudices.
It must be remembered that in the eighteenth century
his Majesty's judges "believed in witches," and the laws
of the realm treated witchcraft as a real and deadly fact,
to be dealt with adequately only by the stake or the
gallows. Two witches were executed at Northampton in
1705, and five more in 1712. A woman was executed in
Scotland for witchcraft in 1722. When the law took
witchcraft seriously enough to hang or burn women sup-
posed to practise the black art, Wesley may be forgiven
for believing gen\iine cases of witchcraft to exist.

Wesley's political opinions were sometimes of an odd
complexion. In his famous letter to Lord North on the

WESLEY'S ODD OPINIONS

475

American troubles he sets out by saying, "I am a High
Churchman, the sou of a High Churchman, bred up from
my childhood in the highest uotions of passive obedience
and non-resistance," and those words exi)ress with perfect
accuracy the general bent of Wesley's politics. But his
conscience, or his reason, when any adequate occasion
arose, broke away completely from the intolerant and
stupid Toryism by which Great Britain, through wide
spaces of tlie eighteenth century, was hag-ridden.

On the American trouble, Wesley's publications, it must
be admitted, are of a very tangled and contradictory sort,
due to the conflict betwixt the original Tory bias inherited
from his father, and his own larger and wiser mind. In
1T(»8, in his 'Tree Thoughts on the Present State of
Public Affairs," he declared he was not able to defend the
measures which had been taken in regard to America.
"F doubt," he added, "whether any man can defend them,
either on the foot of law, equity, or prudence." But in
1775 he published his "Calm Address to our American
Colonies." That address was only Dr. Johnson's pam-
phlet, "Taxation no Tyranny," slightly abridged, and it
reflected Johnson's stubborn Tory prejudices. The discon-
tented Americans, the pamphlet argued, were the de-
.scendants of men who either had no votes, or had resigned
them by emigration. They had a right to the shelter of
the laws, but had no right to any voice in their making.
Their only business in the matter of taxes was to pay
them. Wesley's pamphlet was for the British Cabinet an
immense gain, but for the public generally it was an im-
mense i>erplexity. Wesley seemed to be guilty of a double
offence. He had turned his back on himself; he had stolen
Dr. Johnson's thunder.

A Baptist minister named Caleb Evans, a man of in-
telligence and character, produced a new charge against
Wesley. He had recommended a certain i^amphlet, "An
Argument in Defence of the Exclusive Right of the
Colonists to Tax Themselves," and now he had himself
written a pamphlet in an exactly opposite sense. Wesley
denied that he had seen the book, but abimdant evidence
was produced to show that this was not the case. He had
certainly recommended the book to some of his friends.
Wesley's own explanation came later, and was sufficiently
dear. Writing to a correspondent, he says : —

476

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"I will simply tell you the thing as it is. As I was returning
from the Leeds Conference, one gave me the tract which you
refer to, part of which I read on my journey. The spirit of it I
observed to be admirably good, and I then thought the arguments
conclusive. In consequence of which, I suppose (though I do not
remember it), I recommended it both to you and others; but I
had so entirely forgotten it that, even when it was brought to
me the other day, I -could not recollect that I had seen it."

This cleared Wesley from one charge, but there re-
mained the undeniable fact that he had published two
sets of completely opposite ojiinions on the American
trouble. Wesley explains the matter in a letter so charac-
teristic, alike in its brevity and its frankness, that it
deserves to be reproduced : —

"Rev. Sir,— You affirm (1) that I once 'doubted whether the
measures taken with respect to America could be defended, either
on the foot of law, equity, or prudence.' I did doubt of these
five years, nay, indeed, five months ago. You affirm (2) that I
'declared' (last year) 'the Americans were an oppressed, injured
people.' I do not remember that I did; but very possibly I might.
You affirm (3) that I then 'strongly recommended an argument
for the exclusive right of the colonies to tax themselves.' I be-
lieve I did; but I am now of another mind."

The Tory in Wesley, in a word, responding to the
strident accents of that yet more robust Tory, Dr. John-
son, was now triumphant! And yet, even on the Amer-
ican question, Wesley somehow read the situation, and
was able to forecast its issue, better than nearly all the
statesmen of his time. There is something of a prophetic
strain in his letter to Lord North : —

"Is it common-sense to use force towards the Americans?
Whatever has been affirmed, these men will not be frightened,
and they will not be conquered easily. Some of our valiant
officers say that 'two thousand men will clear America of these
rebels.' No, nor twenty thousand, be they rebels or not, not
perhaps treble that number. They are strong; they are valiant;
they are one and all enthusiasts, enthusiasts for liberty, calm,
deliberate enthusiasts. In a short time they will understand
discipline as well as their assailants. But you are informed
'they are divided among themselves.' So was poor Rehoboam in-
formed concerning the ten tribes; so was Philip informed con-
cerning the people of the Netherlands. No; they are terribly
united; they think they are contending for their wives, children,
and liberty. Their supplies are at hand, ours are three thou-
sand miles off. Are we able to conquer the Americans, suppose
they are left to themselves? We are not sure of this, nor are we
sure that all our neighbours will stand stock-still."

WESLEY'S ODD OPINIONS

477

In Wesley's Journal are to be found many curious self-
judgments. He watches himself, the play of his own
mind, the changes of his own feelings, the effect external
things have upon him ; and generally contemplates him-
self with a sort of detached and scientific interest which
is amusing. Thus, in his Journal, under date August 8,
1756, he writes, "I find it of great use to be in suspense.
It is an excellent means of breaking our will." Wesley
knew that — if only as the result of the rush of crowding
duties, all clamouring for instant settlement — he ran the
risk of hasty decisions. The practice of settling a matter
offhand, and too often on half knowledge, grew into a
tyrannical habit. So he found a healthful discipline in
what to most people is the secret of weakness — the habit
of suspense.

Wesley notes, too, the ebb and flow of his own tastes.
Here is an entry in his Journal which shows how this
busiest of living men, absorbed in the affairs of other
people, yet found time to study himself : —

"Tuesday, July 3, 1764. — I was reflecting on an odd circum-
stance which I cannot account for. I never relish a tune at first
hearing, not till I have almost learned to sing it; and as I learn it
more perfectly, I gradually lose my relish for it. I observe some-
thing similar in poetry; yea, in all the objects of imagination. I
seldom relish verses at first hearing. Till I have heard them
over and over, they give me no pleasure; and they give me next
to none when I have heard them a few time more, so as to be
quite familiar. Just so a face or a picture which does not strike
me at first, becomes more pleasing as I grow more acquainted
with it; but only to a certain point. For when I am too much
acquainted, it is no longer pleasing. Oh, how imperfectly do we
understand even the machine which we carry about us!"

It is amusing to notice how Wesley finds his very vir-
tues are apt to become his snares. He was the most for-
giving of men, but charity itself may become an enerva-
tion ; and Wesley began to question whether he did not
forgive too easily. "Others," he says, "are most assaulted
in the weak side of their soul; but with me it is quite
otherwise. If I have any strength at all (and I have
none but what I have received), it is in forgiving in-
juries. And on this very side T am assaulted, more fre-
quently than on any other. Yet leave me not here one
hour to myself, or 1 shall betray myself and Thee!"

Wesley's habit of exaggerating the importance of the

I

478 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

particular evil he was trying to mend finds an amusing
illustration in the onslaught he made on that very harm-
less fluid — tea. He persuaded himself that he had only
escaped from an attack of paralysis by giving up tea ; and
he believed that half the poverty of the nation might be
abolished at a stroke, if people would abandon the use of
this dangerous fluid. His argument against the use of
tea is, in fact, a sort of unconscious burlesque of the logic
to-day employed against the use of alcoholic liquors. He
represents one obstinate objector saying, "Tea does me no
harm; why, then, should I leave it off?" Wesley's reply
is that everybody is responsible for his example. A person
of cast-iron stomach, capable of resisting the deadly cor-
rosions of tea, might by his example tempt some weak
brother to still swallow that poisonous fluid, to his ruin.
"You have need," Wesley cries to all his followers, "to
abhor it as deadly poison, and to renounce it from this
very hour!" Wesley himself gave up the use of tea, and
substituted sugar and hot water for twelve years, until
Dr. Fothergill, his medical attendant, ordered him to
resume its use. And the author of the tract on tea for the
rest of his life was a tea-drinker !

Perhaps the most striking exami)le of Wesley's odd
opinions is to be found in the history of Kingswood school.
The inspiration to which the school owed its origin was
noble. It was meant to be a provision for the children
of his helpers. "Was it fit," asked Wesley, "that the
children of those who leave home, wife, and all that is
dear to save souls from death should want what is needful
either for soul or body?" Lady Maxwell supplied the
funds for starting Kingswood, and Wesley seized the
opportunity for creating what he fondly believed would
be an ideal institution — a Christian school, a fountain of
Christianised knowledge. No child was to be received
over twelve years of age. and only the children of such
parents as desired that they should be, "not almost, but
altogether. Christians." There was to be a Spartan strain
in the school. The children of "tender" parents, Wesley
said, had no business there; and evei"y parent was re-
quired to give a pledge that he would not take his child
from school, "no, not for a day, till he took him for good
and all." But Wesley, much as he loved children, did not
in the least understand child nature, and he drew up a

WESLEY'S ODD OPINIONS

479

time-table for the little boys of Kingswood which was
admirably calculated to make them either lunatics or
hypocrites.

They were to rise at four, winter and summer; each
little boy was to spend the hour from four to five in
prayer, singing, and self-examiuation. The humane
imagination is distressed as it dwells on the spectacle of
twenty-eight little boys, their senses drowsed with sleep,
getting up at four o'clock on a bitter winter morning,
and spending a whole hour in the process of examining
the souls within their shivering little bodies. Then com-
menced the round of hard work, sustained by plain fare,
and unlit by any cheerfulness of play. Wesley, says
Southey, had learned a sour German proverb, "He that
plays when he is a child will play when he is a man,"
and he had forgotten the wholesome English saying,
the reflex of cheerful common-sense, that "All work and
no play makes Jack a dull boy." No holidays, no games,
no boy to be for an instant out of the company of a
master — these were not the conditions to produce a
healthy and happy boyhood.

As a matter of fact, Kingswood comes next to his own
wife in the vexation it caused Wesley. Human nature
was in quarrel with his dreadful time-table. He could
not get masters to enforce it, or children to survive it.
The school began with twenty-eight pupils; and the
second year the number had shrunk to eighteen. Out of
the eighteen, Wesley records that "four or five of them
were very uncommonly wicked"; two had to be dismissed
as incorrigible: and five more fled — wise youths! "I
spent more money, time, and care on this than almost any
design I ever had," says Wesley. "I wonder how I am
withheld from dropping the whole design, so many diflS-
culties continually attend it." But it was not in his
nature to abandon a plan easily. In 1766 he writes: "I
told my whole mind to the masters and servants, and
spoke to the children in a far stronger manner than I
ever did before. I will kill or cure. I will have one or
the other; a Christian school or none at all."

A jury of mothers, empowered to sit in judgment on
Wesley's ideas of a Christian school, might have brought
in a verdict which would have surprised him. The ac-
count of Kingswood given by Adam Clarke, a quite impar;

480

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

tial witness, resembles nothing so miuh as a chapter from
the records of "Dotheboys Hall" in "Nicholas Nickleby."
But Wesley was reluctant to give up an experinient <lear
to him. So late as 1783, when the school had been thirty-
five years in existence, a resolution of the Conference
declares that "either the school should cease, or the rules
of it be particularly observed ; particularly that the chil-
dren should never play, and that a master should be
always present with them."

The school, no doubt, produced some good scholars, and
had a certain fame ; and Wesley's indomitable will, at the
cost of much youthful suffering, prevailed. Wesley's last
reference to Kingswood, indeed, has in it a note of exulta-
tion. On September 11, 1789, he writes, "I went over to
Kingswood. Sweet recess, where everything now is just
as I wish! I spent some time with the children, all of
whom behaved well." But if we had a faithful transcript
of the letters the poor little boys at Kingswood wrote to
their mothers, we might discover that Wesley's "sweet
recess" wore, to the unhappy boys who dwelt in it, a very
different aspect. Kingswood School achieved one result
its founder never contemplated. It proves that he could,
on occasion, blunder as badly as ordinary men. No
mother can read the story of the school and quite forgive
Wesley. A later and wiser Methodism, it is pleasant to
record, has completely transfigured the institution. To-
day it reaches Wesley's ends without using his methods.

CHAPTER V

THE CLOSING DAY

Wesley had the gift — it might also be described as the
art — of clean-blooded health in au unsurpassed degree.
Probably nobody was ever better served by his own nerves
and senses — by hand and foot, by eye and ear and voice —
than he. His voice, it is true, had no organ-like notes, no
volume of ear-shattering sound. It was a clear and flexi-
ble tenor of flute-like sweetness and carrying power, and
with a curious suggestion of authority in it. Wesley
tells how once he measured the range his voice could
cover. It was clearly audible for a distance of 140 yards.
And all Wesley's physical faculties had the same charac-
teristics of elasticity and strength. "A human game-
cock," Leslie Stephen calls him. He was short of stature,
light of weight, erect and slender. He tells in his Journal
how, in the year 1769, "I weighed 122 pounds, and in the
year 1783 I weighed not a pound more or a pound less.'*
A man who weighed not quite nine stone had certainly
nothing of the impressiveness which belongs to mere
bulk; but every fibre of Wesley's slender, erect, little
body had a toughness as of tempered steel. Work was
for him a tonic. All his faculties grew tougher by dint of
intense and ince.ssant use.

And time seemed to have lost its arresting oflBce for
this unhasting, unresting 'figure. His comrades died.
One group of helpers after another passed away. A second
generation of workers, the children of his original com-
rades, were about him. Still Wesley moved on his planet-
like cour.se, preaching incessantly, writing, reading, ad-
ministering, travelling through all weathers and on all
roads, "Leisure and I," he once said, at the beginning of
his career, "have shaken hands." And Time and Wesley
had apparently shaken hands too! The flying years
whitened his hair, and so gave him a yet more saintlike
look; but they did not quench the sunshine in his eyes,
or hush the music in his voice, or chill the fire of
his zeal,

481

482 WESLP.Y AND HTS CENTURY

Wesley was accustomed, with almost amusing fidelity,
to interrogate all his faculties and to record in his
Journal — usually on his birthday — the condition in which
he found his mind and body — almost as if they belonged
to some one else. And so, through the last teu or fifteen
years of his life, when he had passed the age at which
most men fall into decay, we have successive records of
his amazing vitality, and of the changes — or of the absence
of change — to be noted in it.

Thus, in 1765, Wesley writes: "I breakfasted with Mr.
Whitefield, who seemed to be an old, old man, being fairly
worn out in his Master's service, though he has hardly
seen fifty years. Yet it pleases God that I, who am now
in my sixty-third year, find no disorder, no weakness, no
decay, no difference from what I was at flve-and-twenty,
only that I have fewer teeth, and more grey hairs." Two
years afterwards he records how in a single day he tra-
velled 110 miles, and on the road read the "History of
Palmyra," and Norden's "Travels in Egypt and Abys-
sinia."

On June 28, 1774, he inserts in his Journal a character-
istic study of his own condition, and the causes which
explain a state of health so remarkable : —

"This being my birthday, the first day of my seventy-second
year, I was considering, How is this, that I find just the same
strength as I did thirty years ago? That my sight is considerably
better now, and my nerves firmer than they were then? That I
have none of the infirmities of old age, and have lost several I
had in my youth? The grand cause is, the good pleasure of God,
Who doeth whatsoever pleases Him. The chief means are — 1. My
constantly rising at four for about fifty years. 2. My generally
preaching at five in the morning; one of the most healthy exer-
cises in the world. 3. My never travelling less, by sea and land,
than four thousand five hundred miles in a year."

Two years later he writes : —

"I am seventy-three years old, and far abler to preach than
I was at twenty-three. What natural means has God used to pro-
duce so wonderful an effect? First, continual exercise and change
of air; second, rising at four every morning; third, the ability to
sleep at will; fourth, the never losing a night's sleep in my life;
fifth, two violent fevers and two deep consumptions (these were
rough medicines, but they caused my flesh to come again as the
flesh of a little child); lastly, evenness of temper. I feel and
grieve, but, by the grace of God, I fret at nothing."

THE CLOSING DAY

483

When he was seventy-five years of age, he records how
he outwalked the stage coach for five miles on the deep
Kentish roads. His record in 1781 is : —

"This day I enter into my seventy-ninth year, and by the grace
of God feel no more of the infirmities of age than I did at twenty-
nine. I have now preached thrice a day for seven days following,
but it is just the same as if it had been but once."

From what strange fountains of strength had this
amazing old man drunk I

In 1784 Wesley was in Scotland, in wild weather, and
beaten upon by the bitter moor winds. He records that
he walked twelve miles without a sense of fatigue — and he
was eighty-one years of age ! In 1785 he writes : —

"It is now eleven years since I have felt any such thing as
weariness. Many times I speak till my voice fails, and I can
speak no longer. Frequently I walk till my strength fails, and
I can walk no farther. Yet even then I feel no sensation of
weariness, but am perfectly easy from head to foot."

In June 1786, when he was eighty-three years old, Wes-
ley travelled seventy-six miles in one day, and preached
three times; and he declares that at the end of the day
"I was no more tired than when I rose in the morning."

These remarkable entries need perhaps to be slightly
discounted. Wesley's memory sometimes failed him. He
describes, for example, as one of the causes of his marvel-
lous health, "the never losing a night's sleep in my life.''
On July 5, 1773, he writes : "This is the first night I
ever lay awake in my life, though I had ease in body and
mind." "In seventy years," he says, "he had never lost
one night's sleep." But his Journal contradicts these
statements. Thus on September 10, 1759, he records:
"Feverish at night, could not sleep a quarter of an hour,
till between two and three in the morning." On July 27,
1767, the entry is, "My cough is so violent at night I
could not sleep a quarter of an hour together."

Wesley wisely dwells on one feature of his life com-
monly overlooked, yet contributing greatly to his general
health. There were wide spaces of solitude in all his
days. No man ever spent more time amongst crowds
than Wesley, yet few lives had wider intervals of health-
ful and meditative quiet. He writes to a friend : —

484 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"You do not understand my manner of life. ... It is true, I
travel four or five thousand miles in a year. But I generally
travel alone in my carriage, and consequently am as retired ten
hours in a day as if I was in a wilderness. On other days I never
spend less than three hours (frequently ten or twelve) in the day
alone. So there are few persons in the kingdom who spend so
many hours secluded from all company."

When he was eighty-five Wesley first begins to note
signs of decaying strength in himself. His step was not
so light, his sight so keen, his memory so sure, as it had
been. But, adds the indomitable old man, "I do not feel
such a thing as weariness, either in travelling or preach-
ing, and I am not conscious of any decay in writing ser-
mons, which I do as readily and, I believe, as correctly as
ever."

But an old man is not always conscious of the changes
in himself. Others are better able than he to realise the
slower braiu, the less assured step, the failing voice. Wes-
ley, as Hampson records, wherever he was, made it a point
to preach if he could stand up on his legs; and this was
true in his old age. The son of the poet Crabbe, in his
father's biography, describes one of Wesley's sermons at
this period of his life. He was, he said, "exceedingly old
and infirm, and was attended, almost supported, in the
pulpit by a young minister on each side. Wesley, in his
sermon, drew on his classical recollections. He quoted
some lines from Anacreon : —

"Oft am I by women told.
Poor Anacreon! thou grow'st old J
See, thine hairs are falling all,
Poor Anacreon! how they fall!
Whether I grow old or no.
By these signs I do not know;
By this I need not to be told,
'Tis time to live, if I grow old."

Young Crabbe relates that Wesley recited these lines with
a mingled fire and pathos that produced the greatest
effect.

In his eighty-sixth year (1789) Wesley makes at last,
and records, the discovery of quick-coming age. ''I now
find," he says, "I grow old." If he looked through the
coming days of failing strength with forecasting eyes, he
might, perhaps, be discouraged. The dulness of a peevish

THE CLOSING DAY

485

old age — did that await him? But he records, "Thou
shalt answer for uie, O Lord my God." Then he passes ou
to his work. A Sunday, which caine shortly afterwards,
he describes as "a day of rest," because he had to preach
only twice! Towards the end of the year he records,
"My sight is so decayed that 1 cannot well read by candle
light," but he adds with unconquerable cheerfulness, "I
can write as well as ever."

On the first day of 1790, Wesley writes, "I am now an
old man, decayed from head to foot. My eyes are dim, my
right hand shakes much. I have a lingering fever almost
every day; my motion is weak and slow;" but, with
characteristic courage, he adds, "I can preach and write
still." And he goes on preaching and writing, if with
slower step and hand, yet with a spirit as brave, and a
face as bright, as in his prime. He wrote to Adam Clarke,
who at that moment was ill, to follow his doctor's in-
structions in everything else except the leaving off preach-
ing. "I think," he adds, "if I had taken this advice many
years since, I should not now be a living man."

Nothing is finer in Wesley than the cheerfulness of his
spirit, while the tired body and brain were thus yielding
to the arresting touch of time. The passage of years
whitened his head and dimmed his sight; it made his
feet stumble, his hand tremble, and his memory hesitate.
But all that was noblest in Wesley — his calm faith, his
serene courage, his flame-like zeal, his masterful will —
were exactly as in the days of his prime. When he had
to be helped by friendly hands along the street or into
the pulpit he would repeat with a smile : —

" 'Tis time to live, if I grow old."

While time was thus breaking down even Wesley's long-
enduring strength his younger brother, Charles, had died,
on March 29, 1788. He was much the more emotional of
the two great brothers, and death, as is not uncommon
with persons of his temperament, was lit up by no fire of
ecstatic gladness. As if by some subtle law of compensa-
tion, great joy in the dying hour is sometimes granted to
those whose lives have been set in a sombre key, and
denied to those who have known frequent ecstasies of joy
in the days of healthy life. But Charles Wesley's last

486

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

moments, if they brought no raptures, were marked by a
very sweet and quiet peace; and nothing could well be
more perfect as an expression of Christian faith than
the last lines the great singer of Methodism wrote : —

"In age and feebleness extreme,
Who shall a sinful worm redeem?
Jesus, my only hope Thou art,
Strength of my failing flesh and heart.
Oh, could I catch a smile from Thee,
And drop into eternity!"

A picture, half amusing and half pathetic, is given of
Charles Wesley in his old age by his biographer, Jackson.
A little tigure with white hair and bent shoulders, clad
against winter chills even in the heat of summer, and
mounted on a little horse grey with age, taking his daily
ride. As he ambled along he would suddenly pluck a
card and a pencil from his pocket and begin to write in
trembling shorthand the stanzas which were incessantly
setting themselves to music in the chambers of his brain.
"Not un frequently," says Jackson, "he has come to the
house in City Road, and, having left the i»ony in the
garden in front, he would enter crying out. Ten and ink,
pen and ink.' These being supplied, he wrote the hymn
he had been composing. When this was down he would
look round on those present, saluting them with much
kindness, give out a hymn, and put all in mind of eternity.
He was fond of that stanza upon these occasions: —

" 'There all the ship's company meet

Who sail with the Saviour beneath,
With shouting each other they greet.

And triumph o'er sorrow and death.
The voyage of life's at an end.

The mortal afiBiction is past,
The age that in Heaven they spend,

For ever and ever shall last.' "

Charles Wesley is perhaps the greatest hymn-writer of
the English-speaking race. A poet by force of natural
genius, had he never come under the sway of the great
forces of religion he would still have left his mark on
English literature. Everything with him ran to the
music of rhyme almost involuntarily; but his poetry be-
came the servant and instrument of religion, and found

THE CLOSING DAY

487

its inspiration in the realm of spiritual emotions. And
what other poet would not cheerfully sell his fame to
make his verse the channel of such enduring power as
vibrates in Charles Wesley's hymns! No one who is
ignorant of the inner life of Methodism can judge of the
value of these hymns. They are the marching songs of
a great spiritual host, the channel through which flows,
Sunday after Sunday, the worship of ten thousand con-
gregations. They are sung to dying ears and whispered
by dying lips. But more than even this can be said of
them. They are the creed of Methodism translated into
terms of emotion, and set to music. So they help to
explain that fine identity of doctrine which binds all the
fragments of Methodism, under every sky, and in spite of
all diversities of organisation, into spiritual unity.

Charles Wesley, in his hymns, thus rendered to Meth-
odism a priceless service: he crystallised into music the
creed for which it stands.

Some creeds, of course, could not be wedded to song or
translated into "concord of sweet sounds." Who can so
much as imagine an Agnostic hymn-book! Thomson, in
his "City of Dreadful Night,"' has, it is true, set Atheism
to music; but the music is a dirge. What Keble did for
a single school in the Anglican Church Charles Wesley
did for Methodism as a whole. Nay, he drew out into
the music of worship and of aspiration the common
spiritual consciousness.

Charles Wesley, like all the sous of Susannah Wesley,
was a scholar. He had his mother's gift of talking and
writing in clearest and tersest English ; and, if he had not
his brother's close-knitted intellect, he did a work nearly
as lofty and quite as enduring. The epitaph on his
grave, written by his own hand, happily expresses his
character : —

"With poverty of spirit blest,
Rest, happy saint, in Jesus' rest;
A sinner saved, through grace forgiven.
Redeemed from earth to reign in heaven!
Thy labours of unwearied love.
By thee forgot, are crown'd above;
Crown'd through the mercy of thy Lord
With a free, full, immense reward!"

After Mr, Gladstone's death Lord Salisbury said of

488 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

him, "He was a great Christian but in his use of that
phrase he was only quoting unconsciously the words
spoken of Charles Wesley by one who knew him best. "He
was a great scholar, without ostentation; a great Chris-
tian without singularity, and a great divine without the
least contempt for the meanest of his brethren."

CHAPTER VI

WESLEY'S DEATH

Wesley always insisted on judging religion by the most
severely practical tests. Life was one test, and he mis-
trusted profoundly a religion which did not fill life for
its possessor with gladness and strength. But he knew
that death, with its mystery and loneliness, was the last
and sorest test of religion. Did the religion he preached
make that last darkness luminous? Did it put songs on
dying lips and gladness in dying hearts? "The world,"
wrote Wesley, "may not like our Methodists, but the
world cannot deny that they die well," and the religion
which teaches men to die well may surely find in that
fact its best credentials. Lecky writes with a touch of
genuine human feeling when he recognises this deep and
sacred result of the great revival. "Every religion," he
says, "which is worthy of the name must provide some
method of consoling men in the first agonies of bereave-
ment, some support in the extremes of pain and sickness,
above all, some stay in the hour of death. It must oper-
ate, not merely, or mainly, upon the strong and healthy
reason, but also in the twilight of the understanding, in
the half-lucid intervals that precede death, when the
imagination is enfeebled and dislocated, when all the
buoyancy and hopefulness of nature is crushed."

Lecky's testimony to the value of evangelical doctrine
in that last supreme moment, when the soul stands on
the borders of eternity, with the sounds of the busy earth
growing faint behind, is not, perhaps, marked by very
clear insight, but at least it is emphatic.

"The doctrine of justification by faith," he says, "which diverts
the wandering mind from all painful and perplexing retrospect,
concentrates the imagination on one Sacred Figure, and persuades
the sinner that the sins of a life have, in a moment, been effaced,
has enabled thousands to encounter death with perfect calm, or
even with vivid joy, and has consoled innumerable mourners at
489

490 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

a time when all the commonplaces of philosophy would appear
the idlest of sounds."

The Wesleys themselves, it is quite certain, had the art
of dyiug well. The little, irascible, impatient rector of
Epworth himself^ never wore such an aspect of heoric
gladness as in his dying moments. Something of pro-
phetic speech crept to his dyiug lips. It was as with a
ray of sudden vision breaking upon him from the skies
of the spiritual world, that he said to John Wesley : "The
inward witness, son I the inward witness! — this is the
proof, the strongest proof of Christianity." No prophet
of the Old Testament, and no apostle and saint of the
New Testament, ever uttered more pregnant words. A
strange light of joy burned in the last moments of that
troubled life. He was asked, "Are the consolations of
God small with you?" "No, no, no," he whispered, "God
chastens me with pain, yea, all my bones with strong
pain, but I thank Him for all, I bless Him for all, I love
Him for all !" Then as his voice gathered strength he
called upon his children who stood round him by name.
"Think of heaven ! Talk of heaven ! All the time is lost
when we are not thinking of heaven."

What could be more characteristic of the serene calm
of her spirit than Susannah Wesley's last words to the
children who stood beside her dying bed. John Wesley
tells the story: —

"Her look was calm and serene, and her eyes were fixed up-
ward, as the requiem to her departing soul was being sung by
her children. It was just four o'clock. She opened her eyes wide,
and fixed them upwards for a moment. Then the lids dropped,
and the soul was set at liberty, without one struggle, or groan,
or sigh. We stood round the bed, and fulfilled her last request,
uttered a little before she lost her speech, 'Children, as soon as I
am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.' "

There were many tragedies, as we have seen, in the
lives of Wesley's sisters, but with nearly all of them a
strange peace lay on their dying beds. As an example,
John Wesley's account of the last moments of Patty,
perhaps not the cleverest, but certainly the gayest, and
perhaps the most ill-fated of the Epworth girls, told in an
earlier page, may be recalled. She died with a trium-

WESLEY'S DEATH

491

phant whisper on her lips : "I have the assurance I have
so long wanted. Shout !"

Wesley, himself, lived in such a fierce light of publicity
— he was the central object of love and of admiring
watchfulness to such multitudes — that across more than
a centurj' we can watch, as though we were actual spec-
tators, the closing scene in his life. The last sentence he
recorded in his Cash-book is still preserved: "For up-
wards of eighty-six years I have kept my accounts ex-
actly: I will not attempt it any longer, being satisfied
with the continual conviction that I save all I can and
give all I can ; that is, all I have."

That very record — so noble in Spirit — gives pathetic
evidence of decaying faculties. The characters are faint,
broken, and scarcely legible. His memory, as well as his
hand, was failing, for there is a mistake in the number of
years given. Time for him had plainly lost its perspec-
tive. But the record itself is a true reflex of the spirit
in which Wesley lived.

His signature of the minutes of the last Conference at
which he was present still remains, and yields evidence
yet more striking, that the pen was held by strengthless
fingers. The letters run irregularly, and Wesley begins
the "W" of his surname on the "n" in John. And yet a
fortnight after that broken and trembling signature was
written, he conducted in Bristol a service three hours
long, and afterwards preached in the open air ! He went
on, indeed, travelling, preaching, toiling, although he was
now an image of utter feebleness.

Henry Crabb Robinson relates in his diary how, in
October 1790, four months before Wesley's death, he
heard him preach in the great round meeting-house at
Colchester : —

"He stood in a wide pulpit, and on each side of him stood a
minister, and the two held him up, having their hands under his
armpits. His feeble voice was barely audible, but his reverend
countenance, especially his long white locks, formed a picture
never to be forgotten. There was a vast crowd of lovers and
admirers. It was for the most part a pantomime, but the panto-
mime went to the heart. Of the kind, I never saw anything
comparable to it in after-life."

Wesley preached his last sermon in the open air at
Winchelsea, on October 7, 1790, from the text "The King-

492

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

(lorn of Heaven is at hand ; rei»ent and believe the Gos-
pel." He stood under a great tree, with a listening and
reverent crowd about him ; and when his trembling lips
had uttered the benediction, almost the last syllables
of the greatest Christian ministry the English race has
seen were spoken. And at least a touch of the strange
yet familiar power of Wesley's preaching was in that
last open-air sermon. "The tears of the people," says one
who was present, "flowed in torrents."

The brave, eager spirit within the tired body was, how-
ever, still planning new toils. On February 6, Wesley
wrote a letter, saying, "On Wednesday, March 17, I
purpose, if God permit, to come from Gloucester to
Worcester, and on Thursday, 18th, to Stourport." The let-
ter, by accident, was not sent. Wesley discovered it
amongst his papers, three weeks afterwards, and, with
a touch of his characteristic method, he endorsed it :
"February 28. This morning I found this in my bureau."
These are the last words that Wesley's pen ever wrote.
Two days after he was dead.

Through all these weeks he was conscious that he stood
on the threshold of eternity. He closed each service he
held with that fine verse of one of his brother's hymns : —

"0 that without a lingering groan
I may the welcome word receive,
My body with my charge lay down,
And cease at once to work and live."

He had one brief, golden, pathetic counsel with which
he ended every interview, and every meeting with his
societies. It was the Apostle John's great message, "Lit-
tle children, love one another."

On February 1, 1791, he wrote his last letter to Amer-
ica. His dying message ran : "Declare to all men that the
Methodists are one people in all the world, and that it is
their full determination so to continue —

" 'Though mountains rise and oceans roll
To sever us in vain.' "

On February 22 he preached his last discourse in City
Road Chapel. His very last sermon was preached in a
magistrate's room at Leatherhead, on February 23. The

WESLEY'S DEATH

493

last letter he ever penned was the immortal letter to
Wilberforce against slavery.

The best — practically, indeed, the only — account of
Wesley's dying moments is that given by Bessie Ritchie,
a much-loved and trusted member of his household, who
had been his close companion and attendant for some
months. A woman's vigilant sense, and quick and tender
sympathy, unite in her narrative to give us a story of
unmatched simplicity and pathos. That story is a record
of one of the most perfect triumphs over death, with its
mystery and whispering terrors, a human spirit ever
achieved.

"Patience and an easy death" was what Charles Wesley
prayed for again and again as the last moments drew on ;
and these he had. But in his dying moments the clear,
exultant note of triumph is not very audible. Through his
greater brother's dying accents, however, there runs, clear
and deep and loud, the music of triumph. The scene is
rich with golden sayings; words which are sometimes a
reaffirmation of the great truths he preached in his life,
as though the preacher were studying them afresh when
set against the great horizons of death. Sometimes they
represent sudden gleams of strange vision, such vision as
breaks on the dying eyes of God's saints from unseen
worlds. Sometimes these sayings are exultant utterances
of pure and simple gladness.

On Friday, February 18, he spent the day in reading
and writing, and preached at Chelsea at night from the
words, "The king's business requireth haste" ; but he had
to pause again and again during his sermon, till his fail-
ing voice gathered strength. It was clear on Saturday
that fever was kindling in his wasted veins, but still he
wrote and read and worked. On Sunday, the 20th, he was
unable to preach, and slept for many hours. On Monday
he dined at Twickenham. On Tuesday the indomitable
old man preached at City Road, and on Wednesday at
Leatherhead. "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found,"
ran his text. It was the great preacher's last message.

He visited a trusted friend, Mr. Woolf, at Balham, on
Thursday, but on returning to his house at City Road, on
Friday, the look on his face, the manner in which he
crept with stumbling feet into the house, showed he was
stricken. He struggled with difficulty upstairs into his

494 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

room, and sat down in his chair. Eager Bessie Ritchie
would run for refreshments; but Wesley sent every one
out of the room, saying he was not to be interrupted for
any one, for half-an-hour, "not even if Joseph Bradford
came."

That half -hour of loneliness has a strange pathos about
it. Wesley knew' that earth was ending, that death was
near; and the solitary spirit, standing on the edge of
eternity, would brook, for the moment, no earthly com-
panionship. He would talk with God alone, as much I
alone — and yet as little alone — as Moses on the hilltop |
in Moab.

Dr. Whitehead, Wesley's trusted friend and physician,
was sent for. "Doctor," said the dying man, with a
pleasant smile, as the physician entered the room, "they
are more afraid than hurt." The next day, however,
Joseph Bradford sent a hurried note to each preacher
in London. "Mr. Wesley is very ill," it ran, "pray, pray,
pray." All Saturday Wesley slept, but on Sunday morn-
ing he rose, sat in his chair with a cheerful face, drank a
cup of tea, and repeated to those about him, with smiling
lips, his brother's verse : —

"Till glad I lay this body down,

Thy servant, Lord, attend;
And, oh, my life of mercy crown
With a triumphant end."

Speech presently failed him. "Speak to me," he whis-
pered to those about him. "I cannot speak." In a little
while he gathered strength again. Eight years before,
at Bristol, he was ill, and believed himself to be dying,
and he then said to his attendant, Joseph Bradford : —

"I have been reflecting on my past life: I have been wandering
up and down between fifty and sixty years, endeavouring, in my
poor way, to do a little good to my fellow-creatures; and, now It
is probable that here are but a few steps between me and death,
and what have I to trust to for salvation? I can see nothing
which I have done or suffered, that will bear looking at. I have
no other plea than this: —

"I the chief of sinners am.
But Jesus died for me."

And as he sat in his chair, in the house in City Road,
his memory went back to that scene. "There is no

WESLEY'S DEATH

495

need," he whispered, "for more than what I said at
Bristol. I said then : —

"I the chief of sinners am.
But Jesus died for me."

Later in the day, after lying silent for some time, as if
meditating, he repeated: "How necessary it is for every
one to be on the right foundation," and once more he
recited the lines, his watchword in the dark valley : —

"I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me."

He slept for a while, and then awakened, and those in
the room heard him say, in a low, distinct voice, "There
is no way into the holiest but by the blood of Jesus." It
was as though, consciously drawing near to that "holiest,"
he paused for a moment to recall the great and divine
act of redemption which constituted his right to enter.
All through Wesley's dying moments, indeed, we can see
what is the faith, stripped of all merely secondary truths,
which stands the supreme test of the last hour.

On Tuesday, March 1, Wesley was asked if he suffered
pain. "No," he replied, and then broke into singing: —

"All glory to God in the sky,
And peace upon earth be restored."

He sang two verses of that fine hymn, till his breath
failed and his voice was gone. "I want to write," he
whispered. A pen was put into his hand, but the fingers
could not hold it. "Let me write for you," said Bessie
Ritchie, "tell me what you wish to say." "Nothing,"
was the reply, "but that God is with us."

He insisted on getting up, and while they were arrang-
ing his clothes his voice came back to him, and he broke
out singing with a strength and fulness which astonished
those in the room. He could preach no longer, write no
longer, think and pray no longer. But he could still
sing. His failing voice ran into music as if by some
eager and resistless impulse. It was the last verse he
had given out in City Road Chapel, the exultant stanza:

496

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath.
And when my voice is lost in death

Praise shall employ my nobler powers.
My days of praise shall ne'er be past
While life and thought and being last,

Or immortality endures."

It was Wesley's ^wan-song. Presently, as he sat in the
chair, he tried to sing again: —

"To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Who sweetly all agree "

and then the trembling voice failed. Panting for breath,
he said, "Now we have done, let us go." He went back
to bed, and, lying there, bade those about him pray and
praise. He gave composed directions for his funeral, and
after lying silent a little, he whispered, with kindling
face, "The best of all is, God is with us." Then, lifting his
hand as though to wave it, he cried once more, like a
soldier exulting in the moment of victory, "THE BEST
OF ALL IS, GOD IS WITH US." One of the most
saintly women of that first generation of Methodists,
Hester Ann Rogers, came into the room with her hus-
band. "Who are these?" asked Wesley. "Sir," said
Rogers, "we are come to rejoice with you ; you are going
to receive your crown." "It is the Lord's doing," an-
swered the dying man, "and marvellous in our eyes."

All through the night broken accents of praise and
adoratio;i fell from his Tips. "The clouds drop fatness,"
he said. "The Lord is with us, the God of Jacob is our
refuge," "I'll praise — I'll praise "

On Wednesday morning, at ten o'clock, while a group
of faithful and weeping companions stood round his bed,
and Joseph Bradford was in the act of praying, Wesley
whispered, "Farewell," and his spirit passed away.
Joseph Bradford, at that moment, was repeating the
words, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; and be ye lift up,
ye everlasting doors." Then those in the room broke into
singing: —

"Waiting to receive thy spirit,
Lo, the Saviour stands above.
Shows the purchase of His merit.
Reaches out the crown of love."

Death is the common, inevitable experience, an ex-

WESLEY'S DEATH

497

perience clouded in mystery, and for the natural spirit
dark with vague alarms. It is easy, in some moods, to
ignore death; to forget its existence; to face it with
recklessness. It is possible to drift into that unknown sea
with failing senses and no sign of terror. But to die
clear-eyed and glad, as Wesley did ; to die with trembling
lips breaking into praise, and the undying spirit exultant
with triumph ; to put to that last and uttermost test of
death all the beliefs of life, and find that they are true —
who does not envy an experience like this?

The keen, swift, unfaltering logic which Wesley used
to defend the teaching and beliefs of his life, is not more
triumphant and final than the logic hidden in the peace
of his death.

CHAPTER VII

WESLEY'S CRITICS

It is interesting — it may serve, indeed, to correct the
over-estimate of uncritical admirers — to note the aspect
Wesley wears when contemplated through unfriendly
spectacles. Of the purely domestic biographies of Wesley
— lives written by his own followers — no word need be
said here ; but Wesley has been unfortunate in what may
be called his outside biographers. To translate such a
career as his into purely literary terms is a difficult task;
and an adequate literary representation of the man and
his work is not easily discoverable.

Southey's "Life," it is true, is a bit of careful workman-
ship, showing both skill and industry. But there is a
fatal breach of spiritual sympathy betwixt Southey and
his subject. He misreads Wesley's character completely,
and discovers in a vulgar love of power the explanation
of Wesley's amazing toils! Miss Wedgwood's "John
Wesley" has incomparably more spiritual insight than
Southey's "Life." If Miss Wedgwood has not philo-
sophic penetration, quick, womanly intuition is a very
adequate substitute for it. But her work deals inade-
quately with the facts of Wesley's career; it does not
pretend to be either a history or a biography. Isaac
Taylor's "Methodism" has still less of either history or
biography than Miss Wedgwood's work; it is a mere
tangle of misty generalisations. Canon Overton's "Wes-
ley" has about it a pleasant honesty and directness; but
it is an attempt to button up John Wesley and his whole
*work in an Anglican cassock. Snell's "Wesley" is a very
inadequate monograph. It has neither facts enough for a
biography, nor insight enough for a philosoi)hy.

Leslie Stephen, in his "History of English Thought in
the Eighteenth Century," gives much space to Wesley
and the Revival, and he is, in some respects, the most
formidable critic both of the man and the movement.
He has a wide knowledge of the period, though his knowl-
edge has both the merits and the defects which mark a
498

WESLEY'S CRITICS

499

barrister's knowledge of his brief. It is fluent, but
external. And Stephen makes no attempt to see the land-
scape, and to set Wesley and his work in true historical
perspective; yet his authority as a critic makes his
estimate impressive for the average reader.

On some serious grounds, of course, Sir Leslie Stephen
may be challenged in advance, as a competent judge of
Wesley and his work. He is disqualified for that oflBce
by his own deep-seated prepossessions. He sets out, for
example, by dismissing the validity of spiritual phenom-
ena from the realm of intellectual respect. This is as
though somebody undertook a criticism of Newton's
"Principia," and set out by a quarrel with mathematics.
Stephen, too, judges the Revival of the eighteenth century
by purely literary tests, and as a contribution to what he
calls philosophy. This, again, is as though one judged a
specific for the plague by the colour of the label on the
bottle which holds it.

In spite of himself, however, Leslie Stephen is betrayed
again and again into spacious compliments to Wesley
and his work. "Wesleyanism" he calls "the most im-
portant phenomenon of the century." Of Wesley him-
self, he says that "no such leader of men appeared in
the eighteenth century"; and yet it is the century of
Marlborough ; of the two Pitts ; of Clive, and of Warren
Hastings; of Voltaire; of Frederick the Great, and of
George Washington! Gtephen is obviously moved to a
degree he is reluctant to confess by admiration of Law —
with his profound spirituality, his clear vision of eternal
things; but he thinks Wesley the more commanding
figure. "Law," he says, "retired from the world; Wesley
sought to subdue the world."

Yet Leslie Stephen's compliments are spoiled by
blunders nothing less than wonderful in a man so able —
blunders which argue a sort of iutellectnal, as well as
spiritual blindness. Thus he says that Wesley's "amaz-
ing soundness of health" explains the radiant character
of his religion ! It would be difficult to discover a more
complete example of the inversion of cause and effect
than this. It is like saying that the deei^-rooted strength
of the oak is due to the acorns which hang from its
branches. Wesley's theology, again, he traces to non-
theological roots — a performance which shows that

500 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

Stephen missed the essential keynote of Wesley's charac-
ter. He says, for example, that he is an Arminian, not
on any grounds of reason, but simply "from the instinct
of a born ruler of men," His belief at this point is not
built on the authority of Scripture, or on the processess
of philosophy, but^ only on "a keen sense of practical
efficiency." "He is an Arminian that he may preach
repentance."

Such a travesty of Wesley's sermon on "Free Grace"
seems to prove that Stephen had never read it. Leslie
Stephen indeed betrays an uneasy consciousness that he
is wading in waters too deep for his sounding, and deal-
ing with matters beyond the categories of his logic. He
confesses, for example, that when criticising Law's writ-
ings, he is conscious that he somewhat resembles Mephis-
topheles in the cathedral !

The summary of the teaching of Wesley and his helpers
offered by Leslie Stephen certainly represents a curious
completeness of misconception. He undertakes to put
himself at the standpoint of the preachers of the Re-
vival : —

"What, they seemed to have tacitly inquired, is the argument
which will induce an ignorant miner or a small tradesman in a
country town to give up drinking and cock-fighting? The obvious
answer was: Tell him that he is going straight to hell-fire to be
tortured for all eternity. Preach that consoling truth to him
long enough, and vigorously enough, and in a large enough crowd
of his fellows, and he may be thrown into a fit of excitement that
may form a crisis in his life. Represent God to him by the
image most familiar to his imagination as a severe creditor Who
won't excuse a farthing of the debt, and Christ as the Benefactor
Who has freely offered to clear the score. The doctrine may not
be very refined or philosophical; but it is suflBciently congenial to
the vague beliefs implanted in his mind by tradition, to give a
leverage for your appeals.'"

Now, almost every sentence in Wesley's "Appeal to
Men of Reason and Religion" refutes that burlesque of
the teaching of the great Revival. We have only to put
beside Stephen's travesty Wesley's own statement of the
theology he and his helpers taught to see this.

"We see on every side (wrote Wesley), either men of no re-
ligion at all, or men of a lifeless, formal religion. We are grieved

^"Pjstory of European Thought," vol. ii. p. 421.

WESLEY'S CRITICS

501

at the sight, and should greatly rejoice, if by any means we
might convince some, that there is a better religion to be attained,
a religion worthy of God that gave it. And this we conceive to
be no other than love; the love of Grod and of all mankind, the
loving God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, as having
first loved us, as the Fountain of all the good we have received,
and of all we ever hope to enjoy; and the loving every soul
which God hath made, every man on earth, as our own soul.

"This love we believe to be the medicine of life, the never-
failing remedy, for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the
miseries and vices of men. Wherever this is, there are virtue
and happiness, going hand in hand. There is humbleness of
mind, gentleness, long-suffering, the whole image of God, and,
at the same time, a peace that passeth all understanding, and joy
unspeakable and full of glory.

"'Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind;
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned:
Desires composed, affections ever even.
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heaven.'

"This religion we long to see established in the world, a re-
ligion of love, and joy, and peace, having its seat in the heart, in
the inmost soul, but ever showing itself, by its fruits, continually
springing forth not only in all innocence (for love worketh no ill
to his neighbour), but likewise in every kind of beneficence,
spreading virtue and happiness all around it.

"We declare it to all mankind: for we desire not that others
should wander out of the way, as we have done before them; but
rather that they may profit by our loss, that they may go
(though we did not, having then no man to guide us) the straight
"way to the religion of love, even by faith."*

These sentences are sufficient to prove that looking at
the teaching of the Revival through Leslie Stephen's
account of it, is like contemplating a landscape through a
bit of smoked glass.

This, again, is how Leslie Stephen, on philosophical
grounds, undertakes to explain Methodism, and to predict
its failure : —

"The true explanation is to be found in the growth of a great
population outside the rusty ecclesiastical machinery. The refuse
thus cast aside took fire by spontaneous combustion. The great
masses of the untaught and uncared for inherited a tradition of
the old theology. As they multiplied and developed, the need of
some mode of satisfying the religious instincts became more
pressing; and, as the pure sceptics had nothing to say, and the
oflScial clergy could only say something in which they did not
believe, Wesley's resuscitation of the old creed gave just the

^"Appeal," pp. 1, 2.

502

WESLF.Y AND HTS CENTURY

necessary impulse. Its want of any direct connection with that
speculative movement could not stifle it, but it condemned it to
barrenness. Wesleyanism in the eighteenth century represents
heat without light — a blind protest of the masses, and a vague
feeling after some satisfaction to the instinct which ends only in
a recrudescence of obsolete ideas.'"

Now, as a scientific interpretation of a great historical
phenomenon, this explanation is nothing less than child-
ish. The spiritual movement which, to borrow the words
of one of the best of English historians, "reformed our
prisons, abolished the slave-trade, taught clemency to our
penal laws, gave the first impulse to our popular educa-
tion," is, when translated into the terms of Leslie
Stephen's philosophy, nothing more than a certain acci-
dental "accumulation of human refuse" taking fire by
"spontaneous combustion." This is like oflfering the burn-
ing of a dungheap as an explanation of the rise in the
Eastern skies of some great planet.

Such a misreading of plain English, on the part of a
critic so able, and in purpose so honest, is nothing less
than a literary curiosity. But how can a man, himself
without spiritual faith, either understand or interxjret a
movement so intensely spiritual as that of which Wesley
is the symbol? Leslie Stephen's sceptical assumptions
seem to bring with them a sort of paralysis of the critical
faculties.

Stephen, for example, undertakes to describe and assess
Wesley's great treatise on "Original Sin." Wesley here
is not dealing with a theological abstraction — a puzzle in
logic, a problem in philosophy. He is discussing the
great central fact in human history — the existence of
moral evil; a fact whose witness lies deep in human
consciousness itself, and whose record is written on every
page of the world's story. Leslie Stephen discovers in
the treatise nothing but "a wearisome wrangle over texts
with little reference to the deeper philosophical grounds
of the problem."

Now, the Bible, on any reading of its character, is the
great spiritual text-book of the human race. No other
book pierces so deeply into the very heart of the great
mystery of human life — the existence of evil. But Leslie

•"History of European Thought," vol. ii. p. 424.

WESLEY'S CRITICS

503

Stephen assumes in advance that the Bible on this subject
is out of court. Any reference to it may be dismissed as
"a wearisome wrangle over texts." The problem is purely
philosophical, and is capable of being dealt with only by
philosophers; and by philosophers whose chief qualifica-
tion lies in the fact that they reject the Bible! Theo-
logians do not deserve so much as a hearing in such a
cause. Now, this is as if one contended that any refer-
ence to the Nautical Almanac in the business of naviga-
tion must be an impertinence!

The vice of all such criticism of Wesley and the Revival
is to be found in the silent assumption that the intellect,
in the only form deserving of respect, must be always on
the side of scepticism. Stephen describes, for example,
the attitude towards Christianity which the general
human mind took in the eighteenth century. "The in-
tellectual," he says, "became sceptical with Hume; the
imaginative turned mystics with Law; while those in
whom the moral sense and a keen eye for the facts of
life were most strongly developed, sympathised with Wes-
ley." But the two later groups are silently dismissed
from the "intellectual" realm, and the authority of "in-
tellect" is left with the sceptics! And underlying all
Leslie Stephen's criticisms of the Revival, and vitiating
them, is the assumption, marked by an arrogance so
complete that it is unconscious of itself, that literature
is more than religion, and nobler; that the intellect is
higher than the conscience; that to write a book is a
better title to human fame than to reform a nation ; that
what cannot be expressed in literary terms, and measured
by literary tests, has no title to enduring remembrance.

Fletcher of Madeley, and men of his type, are to be
"pitied," because, "while discussing matters which seem
to them of importance" — such matters as sin and its
remedy; the soul and its relation to God; life and death
and judgment to come — "they are really without any
adequate system of philosophy." They are unconscious,
indeed, that "a philosophy" is necessary; so they are
dismissed as belonging to the mere "side-currents of the
world's thought"; while Rousseau, Voltaire, Gibbon, and
Hume "belong to the main stream of European thought."
Wesley's system, we are assured, is pre-doomed to barren-
ness, because it "has no philosophic basis."

504

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

And yet Stephen admits Wesley "founded a body which,
eighty years after his death, could boast of 12,000,000
adherents, and whose reaction upon other bodies is fully
as important as its direct influence." And what philoso-
pher, it may be asked, has ever performed such a miracle !
Now, if Wesley ha^ only spent his life, and employed his
intense industry, in spinning some shining web of "philos-
ophy," he might have found a place beside Hume or Gib-
bon or Voltaire! Instead of wandering in such high
realms, Wesley kept to the common earth. His aim, as
Leslie Stephen puts it, was "to stamp out vice, to suppress
drinking and debauchery, to show men the plain path
to heaven, and force them into it by intelligible threats
and promises." "He differs," Stephen goes on to explain,
"from the ordinary moralists in the strong conviction that
a mere collection of good precepts will never change
men's lives without an appeal to their feelings and their
imagination."

Wesley himself might have accepted the statement that
his aim was "to stamp out vice," and "to show men the
plain path to heaven"; but he would have protested
vehemently that he did not find the energy which was
to cleanse human life in any appeal to the mere feeling
and imagination of his hearers. He found that healing
force in quite another realm; in the spiritual energies
which stream from the cross of Jesus Christ, and in the
saving oflSces of the Holy Spirit. And working with these
sublime forces he did "stamp out vice" in vast multi-
tudes. He did this for more than fifty years; did it on
a scale without precedent in English history, and did it
in a fashion so enduring, that to-day great Churches iu
every land where the English tongue is spoken bear his
name. Suppose Hume or Gibbon had been set this task!

This whole criticism of Wesley and his work, like nearly
every other literary explanation of the man and his move-
ment yet attempted, is utterly vitiated by the false scale
of values on which it proceeds. The greatest forces in
human life, however, are not philosophical theories, but
moral impulses. And the final standard for men and
theories is not intellectual, but ethical.

Which was the nobler figure — the figure which repre-
sents the central stream of European thought — Robert
Raikes, the Gloucestershire banker, who invented Sun-

WESLEY'S CRITICS

505

day-schools; or Rousseau, stealiug through the darkuess
of a street iu Paris to drop his tifth illegitimate child iuto
the receiving-box of a foundling hospital, aud theu hast-
ening back to add a uew paragraph to his Contrat Social?

It is possible to put side by side, as opposing types,
men who were contemporaries in the eighteenth century:
Hume, weaving metaphysical arguments to prove mir-
acles impossible, aud Silas Told, the prisoner's friend,
actually working spiritual miracles in the cells of New-
gate; Gibbon, writing those famous chapters iu his great
history for the destruction of Christian faith, and Law,
Gibbon's tutor, making Christianity credible, on Gibbon's
own testimony, by his life ; Rousseau, writing sentimental
discourses, while abandoning his own children, and
Howard, spending his life in visiting the prisons of
Europe, and giving humanity a new authority over the
conscience of the race by his example. These are figures
in picturesque opposition to each other; and literature
reserves its highest honours for one set — for Hume and
Gibbon, for Voltaire and Rousseau I Leslie Stephen de-
clares that they, and they only, "belong to the main
stream of European thought."

But these judgments proceed, it must be repeated, on
a false scale of values. Life is more than speculation;
morality is greater than literature. To save a drunkard
from his vice, to make a harlot chaste, a wife-beater
gentle, a thief honest; to cleanse a city slum, to dry a
widow's tears, to shelter a child's helplessness, this is not
merely a better contribution to the world's life than to
write the most ingenious philosophical treatise, or to
teach words to march iu rhyme through the stanzas of
a great poem. It represents a loftier order of forces.

Human judgment, to be absolutely true, must reflect
the divine judgment. To think as God thinks, to love
what He loves, to hate what He hates, to assess all things
as by His judgment — this is the last and highest effort
of human wisdom. And tried by that great test, who
stands higher ; Hume or Wesley, Gibbon or Law, Rousseau
or Fletcher? Leslie Stephen, and men of his school, vote
with the philosophei's ; but the human conscience stands
arrayed on the side of the saints I And the best human
intelligence, as soon as it has come to terms with con-
science, will be on their side too!

506 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

It is interesting to speculate how Wesley would have
borne himself had he lived in the hurry and press of the
twentieth century. Would his theory of life and religion
have stood the challenge of modern problems? How
would he have been affected by the criticism which re-
solves the Bible into a jumble of undated and authorless
myths? With what eyes would Wesley have looked, that
is to say, on a Rainbow Bible? How would he have dealt
with all the new, fermenting unbeliefs, bred of science, or
of half-science? Would his faith have been shaken by the
biology which links man to the ape; the astronomy that
dwarfs the solar system itself to a mere point in the
measureless depths of the universe, and sees the earth as
an insignificant speck in those awful spaces? How would
he have dealt with the secular temper of the present age ;
the temper which cares very much for this world and
leaves the next out of its arithmetic?

It is idle to say that these things do not count. Wesley
in the twentieth century would have been a different man
from Wesley in the eighteenth century. Leslie Stephen is
moved to a sort of angry wonder at Wesley's indifference
to what he regards as the victorious attack of Hume and
Gibbon on the Christian faith. Although these men were
his contemporaries, yet Wesley, he complains, is "as in-
different to the doubts expressed by Hume as if the two
men had lived in different hemispheres or centuries."
The explanation, of course, lies in the fact that Wesley
lived in a realm where these doubts did not run ! He,
no doubt, would have agreed with De Quincey's trium-
phant answer to Hume; but he had a better answer than
even that. The logic designed to prove miracles could
not happen — or, at least, could not be proved, if they did
happen — was idle breath to a man who saw miracles
of the highest order — spiritual miracles, that is — happen-
ing daily.

And it may be confidently said Wesley would have
been unshaken by even the strenuous and many-voiced
unbelief of to-day. The larger knowledge of the twen-
tieth century might have altered the accent of his teach-
ing, but not its substance. It might have varied the
form of its work; it would not have changed its aim,
nor have lessened its energy. He would have fallen back
on the triumphant certainties of his own experience.

WESLEY'S CRFTICS

507

He would have held firm to his belief in the validity of
spiritual phenomena, the veracity of the spiritual con-
sciousness. The triumphant logic of the verified results
of Christianity would have been for Wesley in the twen-
tieth century — as it Avas to him in the eighteenth cen-
tury— the rock on which he stood. God, he would have
said, is not a problem to be solved; He is a person to
be known; and he would have borrowed Tennyson's fine
line —

"Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."

He would have claimed that Spirit answers to spirit in
us; the living Spirit of God to the believing human
spirit.

And Wesley, even amid the tumult and dust of modern
life, would have kept in clear vision the eternal per-
spective of life and diity, which was his characteristic.
Duty is more urgent than speculation. We shall not
be judged by what we know, but by what we do. Eeligion
has a thousand problems challenging solution ; they will
challenge solution still, perhaps ten thousand years hence,
and in other worlds. But duty is the one luminous point
in human life. There are things which are near, urgent,
sacred ; things as to which no debate is possible — the
plain law of obedience ; of surrender to God ; of faith in
Christ; of service to our fellow-men. Christianity, he
would have said, is a realised and supernatural deliver-
ance, to be received by faith; and as to the reality of
which our own deepest consciousness can judge. The
Bible is not an old almanac, about which the chief thing
is the correctness of its dates. The critics, to his clear
and earnest eye, would have seemed like men so occu-
pied in discussing the shape of the vessel which carries
the living water of truth, and the clay of which it is
composed, that they forget the precious draught itself
for lack of which the world is perishing.

The Bible, he would have said, on any theory, is a
divine revelation ; a law of conduct, a chart by which we
are to sail. It is not a puzzle to be solved, but a system of
precepts to be obeyed. And Wesley would have called on
listening crowds to-day in accents as urgent and convinced
as he did over a hundred years ago, to accept the message

508

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

of the divine boolc, ami to shape life by its laws. The
l)riiK'iples, in a word, on which Wesley believed and lived
and worked in the eighteenth centnry would, for hiui,
have been just as effective if they had been suddenly
transferred to the twentieth century.

EPILOGUE

THE CONTINUITY OF SPIRITUAL IMPULSE

It is possible to-day, as it never was before, to set Meth-
odism in the perspective of history; to analyse and assess
it; to discover the essential and imperishable charac-
teristics in which lie the secret of its growth. And in
(he actual illumination of events an answer can be found
to the question, what Divine purpose there was, and is,
in the Church which Wesley founded?

There is a temptation to define Methodism by negatives.
It was not, like the great movement which bears the
name of Luther, a theological reformation, a re-discovery
of doctrine. It was not, like the English Reformation in
the time of Henry VIII., a political movement. It was
not, like the Scottish Reformation, a quarrel about ecclesi-
astical theories. But there is no adequate definition in
a series of negatives, drawn out to no nuitter what length.

It is common, again, to fix upon some one special
characteristic of Methodism, and offer the part as an
explanation of the whole. That Methodism stands for
the evangelical, as against the sacerdotal, version of
Christianity has become a platitude. That it stands for
the concrete, as against tlie metaphysical reading of
theology, is a sister platitude. A creed drawn out in
metaphysical propositions is one thing; a creed trans-
lated into terms of conduct, verified in the conscious-
ness, a force shaping speech and temper and life, is quite
another thing. "Experience" fills a large space in the
terminology and literature of Methodism ; and "experi-
ence" in the Methodist sense means doctrine translated
into human and living terms.

Methodism, it is usual to say, stands for spiritual fact
as against external form in ecclesiastical afifairs; and this
is perfectly true.' Varieties of Church order — Episcopal
or Presbyterian — belong to the category of secondary
values. Methodism, as a matter of fact, flourishes equally
well with bishops or without them. The notion that
the infinite and all-tender grace of Christ can trickle
S09

510 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

through an ecclesiastical pipe of only one pattern is,
to Methodism, abhorrent. If any one invited the world
to believe that the sun shines on flowers of only one tint,
the answer would be not merely that such a theory is in
quarrel with the whole science of botany. Every cottage
garden is its refutation ! Every patch of flower-sprinkled
grass disproves it.' And the theory that God's grace is
confined to only one variety of ecclesiastical form is not
only in quarrel with the essential genius of Christianity ;
it is contradicted by the visible facts of the world.

Methodism, again, stands for the imperial as against
the parochial temper in Church work. "The world is my
parish" was Wesley's immortal phrase; inverting the
common rule in which the "parish" becomes the world.
The tradition Whitefield and Wesley created when they
stepped from the pulpit to the hillside and the street,
and began open-air preaching, is its inheritance. It
stands, that is, for the aggressive as against the purely
apologetic and defensive spirit in Christian service. And
it is built on the present, as against the merely historic,
theory of the office and power of the Holy Spirit. It be-
lieves, as we have already said, that Pentecost was not one
particular cluster of hours, in an Eastern city, two thou-
sand years distant. Pentecost lies about us! We are
living in it; its airs blow upon us. The fiery tongues are
gone, but the spiritual energies of which they were the
symbol are the possession of the Church of to-day.

The unconfessed — perhaps the unconscious — but cer-
tainly the practical belief of a considerable portion of
Christendom, is that the Holy Spirit fell upon the Church
once, and shaped its history ; but at a given date the
Divine Spirit emigrated; and the Church of to-day is
left without direct Divine guidance. It can only ascer-
tain what is the will of that great Agent in human re-
demption by painfully searching amid the dusty records
of far-off centuries !

Methodism, it may be added, is pledged to the family
theory of Church relatioushij). Its membership is built
on community of speech and experience ; on a living and
declared partnership in all the great forces of the spirit-
ual life.

But all such definitions are partial. They express
particular aspects of Methodism; they do not reach its

CONTINUITY OF SPIRITUAL IMPULSE 511

central and unifying characteristic. Methodism, first and
last, is the re-aflBrmation of the spiritual element in
Christianity. It is the re-emergence in history, and in
human consciousness, of the great spiritual forces which
are the vital and essential characteristics of Christianity.
The name, the machinery, the characteristic beliefs, the
household bonds, the practical ideals of Methodism may
exist; but they are not in themselves Methodism. They
are simply tlie channels through which, if they are to
have any value, must run that vivifying and supernatural
impulse, the wave of spiritual energy, which was the
essential characteristic of Wesley's work.

And the most impressive feature of that work — that
which differentiates it from so many other historic re-
vivals, and is in a special sense the very signature of
God upon it — is the unbroken continuity of spiritual
impulse which runs through its history. Luther once
said that no revival could last more than thirty years.
Isaac Taylor extends the term to fifty years. And it has
to be frankly admitted that time is a remor.seless critic of
even religious movements. Its arresting force is visible
in the spiritual realm. A great revival is usually linked
to a single commanding figure, as, for example, with that
of Jonathan Edwards, or of Thomas Finney in America,
of the Erskines or McCheyne in Scotland, of Whitefield
in England, of Dwight L. Moody in later times, &c. And
the revival ends with the individual life; sometimes,
indeed, before it. It is a wave that spends itself within
some little definite area of time. Rarely does it outrun
the span of a generation. A great revivalist, like a great
statesman, easily becomes a spent force.

But the feature which separates Wesley's work from
other historic revivals is the sustained energy of spiritual
force which marks it. This continuity of spiritual im-
pulse ran through the whole term of Wesley's life. His
message kept to the very last its power to attract and
sway crowds. The stream of conversions under his
preaching never ceased to flow. And the movement which
began with Wesley did not die with him. It survived his
death. What is much more wonderful, it survived all the
ecclesiastical quarrels which broke out amongst his fol-
lowers after his death. A hundred temporary blunders
in policy have not destroyed it. It has persisted in spite

512

WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

of half-a-dozen disruptions. It has run through a whole
century since without rest or failure. It burns on with
unquenched flame under all skies.

Methodism, it may be claimed, when set in the light of
history, satisfies Newman's famous seven tests of the
reality of a Church — preservation of type, continuity of
principle, power of 'assimilation, logical sequence, antici-
pation of the future, conservative action on the past, and
— most triumphant of all — undying vitality.

No one can realise the wonder of this sustained energy
of life who does not remember how broken, how acrid
with ecclesiastical quarrels, has been — through wide
spaces, at least — the history of Methodism since its
founder died. On all the analogies of history Methodism,
when Wesley died, might have been expected to break up
into quarrelling fragments, and to have expired in a
tangle of schisms. The quarrels came fast and thick.
There was one division within seven years of Wesley's
death ; three in the first twenty-five years after his death ;
and a fourth a little later, the most tragical of all. The
quarrels of 1847-50 cost the parent Church, in four sad
years, more members than Wesley gained in forty years.
And the divisions of Methodism, speaking generally, have
had less justification in reason than any other to be found
in the history of Christ's Church. Not one of them repre-
sents a protest against doctrinal error, or a struggle for
spiritual freedom.

The best way of realising how unnecessary were the
divisions of Methodism, how microscopic the questions
which gave birth to them, is to consider the aspect they
wear to outsiders. Any respectable encyclopaedia which
tries to express in plain English what is the exact differ-
ence betwixt a Wesleyan Methodist, a Primitive Meth-
odist, a Bible Christian, or a United Free Methodist, &c.,
finds itself simply bankrupt. One of the best English
encyclopaedias, for example, after an anxious study of the
history and characteristics of the Bible Christian Church,
says that the "principal difl'erence" betwixt it and its
sister forms of Methodism "seems to be that the Bible
Christians take a sitting posture at the Lord's Supper,"
To resolve the difference betwixt one variety of Meth-
odism and another into the interval betwixt a chair and
a hassock is surely very cruel !

CONTINUITY OP SPIRITUAL IMI'ULSE 513

A not unfriendly historian, J. R. Green, is puzzled by
this evil fertility in divisions which marks one stage of
Methodist history, and offers as an explanation the state-
ment that "of all Protestant Churches, Methodism is the
most rigid in its organisation, the most despotic in its
government." But that statement, if it ever was true, is
true no longer!

Some divisions were, no doubt, inevitable in Methodist
history ; for when Wesley died, no true equipoise betwixt
the forces and tendencies within its bounds had been
reached. An institution which had felt from its very
birth, and for so many years, the pressure of a single
masterful hand could hardly develop in a moment the
virtues both of flexibility and of self-poised stability.
Methodism, too, was affected in its earlier years by the
temper of secular politics outside it. The French Revo-
lution, when Wesley lay dying, was beginning to shake,
as with the thrust of an earthquake, and almost into
ruin, all forms of human society, secular or religious.
The influence of that great movement predisposed men
for nearly a generation, both to vehemently demand
changes, and to vehemently refuse them.

But whatever may be the explanation of the great and
quick-following disruptions which rent Wesley's Church
asunder, and made it for a time resemble an exploded
planet flying in fragments through the ecclesiastical
heavens, it might have been predicted with the utmost
confidence that these divisions would arrest all spiritual
growth. The remarkable circumstance is that this was
not the case! The spiritual impulse of Methodism has
survived all its schisms. It has characterised in some
degree or other each separate fragment. Sea transit has
not killed it; new social and geographical environments
have not arrested it. Methodism has crossed all the
seas of the planet, and taken root on every soil. It has
varied its name, its forms, its methods; but under all
its forms, it has kept steadfastly loyal to its original
ideal. And everywhere it is marked by that same strange
continuity of spiritual impulse.

We have only to set side by side the statistics of
Methodism in 1791, when Wesley died, with those of 1891
a century later, to realise this. But the present writer
may be forgiven for offering another and a nearer proof

514 WESLEY AND HIS CENTURY

of the inextinguishable vitality of Methodism. He be-
longs to the Australasian branch of Wesley's Church, a
branch which had not even begun to exist when Wesley
died. It is parted from Wesley himself by more than a
century of time, and from the parent Church by twelve
thousand miles of sea space. The total population of
Australasia is less than the population of London. It is
only a handful of people sprinkled over a continent.

And yet in this one branch of contemporary Method-
ism, separated both in time and space so widely from its
founder, and from the parent Church, there is, in some
respects, a more spacious Methodism than the whole
world knew when Wesley died. The members in Aus-
tralasian class-meetings to-day exceed by 30 per cent, the
total membership in Great Britain and Ireland in 1791.
There were only 287 Methodist preachers in Great Britain
when Wesley died, only 511 in the whole world. There
are over 700 Methodist ministers in Australasia alone
to-day !

Similar figures might be quoted from Canada and the
United States, and they certainly prove the unexhausted
life of Methodism. The pulses of that life beat in new
lands, in a new century, and amongst new nations. In
spite of a thousand human imperfections and mistakes
and quarrels, Methodist history since Wesley died is but
the translation into historic and visible fact of his dying
and triumphant whisper, "The best of all is, God is with
us!"

INDEX

AcoTJRT, Mr., 316

Act of Toleration (1689), 330, 368,

375, 393, 399, 406
Addison, 17
Albany, 257

Aldersgate Street (room), 10, 123-

128, 132, 135, 150, 214, 276
Alexander the Great, 473
Anacreon, quoted, 484
Annealey, Dr., 23, 60
Mr., 34

Susannah, 24 {see also under

Wesley, Mrs.)
Antonius, Emperor Marcus, 473
Arminian Magazine, 44, 69, 461
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 9, 51
Asburj', Francis, 259-263, 267,

268, 384, 404, 405
Athlone, 249
Aurelius, Marcus, 270

Balham, 493
Ball, Roger, 312
Ballingarrene, village, 256
Bannockbum, battle of, 287
Bamai-d Castle, 223
Barry, Dr., 283
Bawtry, 189

Baxter's "History of the Coun-
cils." 473
Beard, John, 248

Thomas, 192

Beecher, Mr., 335
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 12
Bell, George, 351, 352, 357
Bengel, 460

Bennet, John, 337, 445-^52

Mrs., 449, 450 (see also under

Murray, Grace)
Benson, Rev. — , 368, 370
Benson's "Wesley," quoted, 78
Bentley, 334

Berkeley, Bishop, 147, 434
Bermondsey, 157
Berridge, Mr., 352, 372, 374, 457
Bexley, 162, 337
"Biblemoths," 76
Birmingham, 192, 312, 313

Birrell, Augustine, quoted, 10, 29,

463, 464
Birstal, 191, 202, 205
Bismarck, Prince, 278
Blair, Rev. — , 145
Blandford, 21
Boardman, Richard, 259
Boehm, Mr., 358

Bohler, Peter, 107, 117, 118, 122,
125, 131-134, 149, 166, 172, 216,
282, 309, 362

Bolingbroke, Lord, 144, 367

Bond, Mark, 223-230, 233

Boroughbridge, 189

Bosanquet, Miss (afterwards Mrs.
Fletcher), 382

Boswell's "Johnson," 466

Bowers, 200

Bradford, Joseph, 494-^96
Bray, Mr., 120

Bristol, 158, 161, 187, 1%, 198,
201, 216, 257, 298, 299, 306, 321,
322, 3.39, 341, 371, 385, 391, 400,
401, 404, 444, 491, 494, 495

Broughton, Rev. — , 94

Brownfield, Mr., 258

Brussels, 220

Buckingham, Duke of, 48

Buckle's "History of Civilisation,"
10, 14, 368

Buckley, Dr., 335

Bunyan, John, 14, 15, 203, 204,
230 25.3

Burke, Edmund, 17, 467

Bums, Robert, 17

Burton, Dr., 94

Butler, Bishop, 12, 14, 146, 147
Butler's "Wesley and Whitefield,"

236. 238, 242
Butler, ballad singer, 249, 250
Byrom, John, 95
Byron, Lord, 17

CjEsar, Julius, 15
Calvin, 323
Cambuslang, 238
Canning, Lord, 17
Canterbury. 228

515

516

Canterbury, Archbishop of, 162
Carlyle, Thomas, qvoled, 11
CaustoD, Mr., 108, 110, 111
Cavour, 278
Cennick, John, 319, 320
Charles I., 469

II., 469, 470

Charleston, 112

Charterhouse School, 44, 48, 49,

50, 63, 64
Chelsea, 493

Chesterfield, Earl of, 367
Christian Endeavour Societies, 284
"Christian Library," 358, 460
Church, Prebend Thomas, 331,
399

City Road Chapel, 174, 175, 278,
395, 400, 486, 492, 493, 495

Clarke, Adam, 479, 485

Bishop, 144

Clements, W., 221

Clerkenwell, 152

Clive, Lord, 17, 464, 499

Clulow, Mr., 406

Cobbett, William, 253

Coke, Dr., 262, 267, 268, 383-387,
392, 402-406, 439

Colchester, 491

Coleridge, S. T., 14, 17, 46, 67, 118,
120, 124-126, 154, 157, 215, 310,
322, 415, 440, 474

CoUey, Richard {see under Morn-
ington. Baron)

Contemporary Review, 47

Conventicle Act, 406

Cook, Captain, 464

Cork, 241, 249, 407

Courtmatrix, village, 256

Cowper, William, 111, 144, 210

Crabbe, 484

Cranmer, Archbishop, 409
Creighton, Rev. — , 267
Cromwell, Oliver, 431
Crowther, Jonathan, 241
Cumberland, Duke of, 220, 228
Cupar, 189

Dale, Dr., 133
Dante, 16
Darlaston, 191
Darwin, Charles, 16
Davies, Sir John, 247
Dawson, George, 15

De Quincey, 66, 334, 506
Deal, 98, 117

"Deed of Declaration," 386-387,
425

Defoe, Daniel, 21

Delamotte, Rev. Charles, 99, 100,

104, 108, 114
Dettingen, battle of, 220
Dionysius, 307
Doddridge, 147
Downs, John, 337
Dublin. 247-250, 312
Dumfries, 242
Dundee, Lord, 469
Dunfermline, 235
Durham, 192

Edinburgh, 237, 238, 240
Edwards, Jonathan, 183, 235, 366,
367, 511

John, 378

Emburv, Philip, 256-258
Epictetus, 270

Epworth, 12, 22, 23, 25, 29-34, 38-
44, 46-.50, 53, 60, 62, 68, 69, 70,
74, 90, 91, 94, 97, 102, 107, 189,
211, 390, 399, 446, 490

Erasmus, Bishop, 353

Erskine, RaJph, 183, 235, 236, 239,
511

Evans, Caleb, 475

John, 221, 231

Everton, 372, 457
Exeter (U. S.), 365

Falmouth, 192

Ferrers, Earl, 367

Fetter Lane (room), 216, 305, 306,

308

Finney, Thomas, 511
Fitzgerald, 463
Fleet Prison, 103

Fletcher, Rev. — , 259-261, 368-

374, 380-382, 384, 439, 503, 505;

"Checks to Antinomianism,"

313, 372, 375 ,
Florence, 237, 238
Fontenoy, battle of, 220, 221, 227,

232

Fothergill, Dr., 478
"Foundry, The," 337, 338, 454
Fox, Mr., 151

Foy, Captain, 216
Frank, Professor, 358
Franklin, Benjamin, 255, 402
Frederics, 110 ti., 112, 165
Frederick the Great, 499
Froude, J. A., 282
Fry, Mrs. 326

Gallatin. Captain, 238
Gambold, Rev. — , 94
Gason, William, 163
Gateshead Fell, 190
George II., 140, 141, 471

III., 141, 287

IV., 288

Georgia, 70, 74, 82, 85, 92-1 17\
127, 161, 163, 165, 171, 186, 321,
442, 444, 452

Ghent, 226, 231

Gibbon, 17, 52, 71, 72, 503-506

Gibson, Bishop, 155-156, 328-332

Gillies, Dr., 240

Gladstone. W. E., 195, 196, 278,

455, 487
Glasgow, 240-242
Gloucester, 163, 367, 492

Bishop of, 331

Godlv Club, 76 {see also under

Ho"ly Club)
Goldsmith, 17
Gordon Riots, 152, 464
Goston'.s-green, 192
Goter, Mr., 163

Granville, Mary, 88 (see also under

Pendarvis, Mrs., "Aspasia")
Gravesend, 196

Green, J. R., quoted, 13, 243, 513
Greenock. 241
Grimshaw, William, 385
Grotius, 374
Guyon, Madame, 62
Gwennap Pit, 196, 293, 327
Gwj'nne, Mr., 443
Mrs., 443

Miss, 443 (see also under Wes-
ley, Mrs. Charles)

ITabeas Corpus Act, 338
Haime, John, 203, 221-224, 227-
233

Kail, We.stley, 37, 38, 99, 154, 391

Mrs. Weslev, 434 (see also

under Wesley, Slartha)

517

Hampson, John, 350, 387, 433,

437-440, 457, 484
Hampton Common, 170
Hanby, Thomas, 405
Harvey, James, 77
Hastings, Warren, 499
Haweis, Mr., 352
Havden, John, 181
Heck, Barbara, 256, 258
Heights of Abraham, 257
Herbert, Sidney, 43
Hervey, 239

Lord, 145

"Hetty Weslev," 31, 32
Hill, Richard,'372

Rowland, 372, 374

Hodges, Rev. — , 337
Hogarth, 12

Holv Club, S3, 84, 94, 96, 98, 99,

129, 153, 167, 282, 362 (see also

under Godly Club)
Hopkey, Miss Sophia, 108-110,

444, 449, 452 (see also under

Williamson, Mrs.)
Home, Bishop, 333
Howard, 288, 505
Howe, Lord, 11
Hume, 503-506
Huntingdon, Earl of, 367
Ladv, 206, 326, 352, 367-371,

375, 376
Huss, John, 125
Hutchins, 154
Hutchinson, Lord, 243
Hutton, James, 362

Mrs., 148

Huxley, Professor, 153

Ingham, Rev. Benjamin, 94, 99,

100, 107, 114, 154
Ireland, Mr., 381
Irving, Edward, 169
Islington, 153

Jacksox, Thomas, 174, 486
James I., 471
Jane, John, 211

Johnson, Dr., 17, 38, 71, 80, 99,
434, 459, 466, 475, 476; "Taxa-
tion no Tyranny," 264, 439, 475

Jones, John, 354

518 IN]

Kant, 283
Keats, quoted, 464
Keble, 282, 487

Kempis, Thomas a, 66-68, 121,

122. 278, 358
Kennmgton Common, 163, 190,233
Kinchin, Charles, 77, 154
King, Lord, 267, 391, 402
Kingswood, 60, 146, 159, 163-165,

182, 187, 278, 296, 319, 320, 321,

327, 346, 365, 455
Kingswood School, 387, 434, 461,

478-480

Kirkham, Betty ("Varanese"), 54,

88-89, 444

Robert, 53-54, 77

Knox, Alexander, 80-81, 406-407,

433

John, 301

Lady Huntingdon's Connexion,
375

Lang, Andrew, 47
Lansdowne, Lord, 88
Laud, Archbishop, 67, 282
Lavington, Bishop, 332-333, 459,
467

Law, William, 66, 71-73, 82, 95,
121-122, 147, 278, 279, 281, 499,
500, 503-505

Leatherhead, 275, 492, 493

Lecky, W. E. H., 10, 29, 126, 143,
244, 245, 279, 280, 284-286, 489

Leeds, 476

"Legal Hundred," 379, 386-388

Lely, 24

Lexington, 262

Limerick, 243, 251

Lincoln, 34

Lincoln Castle, 26, 54

Littlemore, 279

Liverpool, Lord, 317

Locke, John, 15

Lonsdale, Lord, 287

Louisburg, siege of, 257

Lowth, Bishop, 266

Loyola, Ignatius, 296, 326, 327,

363, 426; "Life of," 472
Luther, Martin, 13, 125, 326, 409,

509, 511

Macaulat, Lord, 9, 326, 367
Macchiavelli's "Prince," 472

Madan, Mr., 352
Madeley, 373, 503
Maestricht, 228

Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees,"
472

Manners, Nicholas, 258
Mansfield, Lord, 376, 392, 402, 406
Marlborough, Duke of, 16, 499

Duchess of, 139

Marshalsoa Prison, 103
Marvel, Andrew, 434
Mary, Queen of Scots, 470, 471
Mather, Alexander, 206, 406, 407
Maurice, 285

Maxfield, Thomas, 181, 201, 202,
297, 298, 337, 351, 353, 383

Maxwell, Lady, 240, 478

McCheyne, 527

McCuIloch, Rev. — , 238

Melbourne, Lord, 329

Merriton, John, 337

Middleton, Rev. — , 145

Milman, Dean, 66

Milton, John, 15, 66, 271, 358

"Model Deed," 386

Molther, Philip Henry, 305-311

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley,
145

Montesquieu, 12
Moody, Dwight L., 511
Moore's "Wesley," 109
Moore, Henry, 406, 407
Moorfields, 162, 163, 165, 178, 190,

293, 308, 335, 449, 455
More, Hannah, 107
Morgan, William, 77, 83, 84, 94,

362

Morley, John, 196

Mornington, Baron, 50

Murray, Grace, 444-452 (see also

under Bennet, Mrs.)
Musselburgh, 238
Myles, 211

Napoleon, Emperor, 15, 437
Nelson, Lord, 17

John, 178, 192, 202-206, 215,

253, 293, 358, 448
New York, 256, 258
Newburyport, 365
Newcastle-on-Tyne, 187, 190, 192,

299, 444, 448, 451, 456
Newgate Prison, 150, 287, 505

INDEX

519

Newman, Cardinal, 14, 17, 278-
i 284, 327, 328, 413. 512

Newton, Sir Isaac, 17, 281, 499
Nitschinan, Moravian elder, 108
Norden's "Travels in Egypt and
' Abyssinia," 482
Norfolk, Duke of, 287
North, Lord, 11, 264, 474, 476
Northampton, 474
Norwich, 211, 333

Oglethorpe, General, 94, 99, 102-

107, 362
"Old Jeffrey," ghost, 44-47, 281
Olivers, Thomas, 206, 207, 373
Orange, Prince of, 470
Overton, Canon, 85, 127, 498
Oxford, 22, 27, 37, 50-54, 63, 68,
74-77, 86, 91-98, 103, 105, 108,
118, 127, 131, 153, 167, 200,
210-214, 246, 281, 282, 284, 327,
333, 341, 353, 362, 463, 464
Movement, 280

Palet, 217
Pabner, 285
"Pantheon," 375
Paris, 285, 505

Pascal, 460; "Provincial Letters,"
373

Pawson, Rev. John, 258, 350, 405

Pearson, Bishop, 358

Pendarvis, Mrs. ("Aspasia"), 89,

444 (see also under Granville,

Mary)

Pennington, William, 358
Perronet, Rev. Charles, 248, 350,
443, 452

Ned, 453

Peter I., 278
Philadelphia, 255
Piers, Rev. — , 162, 337
Pilmoor, Joseph, 259
Pitt, William, 11, 12, 17, 278, 464,
499

(the younger), 17, 464,

499

Pope, Alexander, 17, 23, 434

William Burt, 420

Porteus, Bishop, 140
Portsmouth (U. S.), 365
Potter, Archbishop, 163

Priestley, 47

"Proposal for a National Reforma-
tion of Manners," 139
Pusey, 282

QUILLER-COUCH, A. T., 31

Quintin, 337

Raikes, Robert, 504
Rankin, Thomas, 261-263, 406,
407

Reeves, Jonathan, 341
Religious Tract Society, 458
Richard III., 470
Richards, Thomas, 201, 337
Richter, Jean Paul, 67
Ritchie, Bessie, 493-495
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 491
Rodney, Lord, 11
Rogers, Mr., 496

Mrs. Hester Ann, 496

Samuel, 152

Romaine, Mr., 352
Rome, 282, 326
Romney, George, 287
Rosebery, Lord, 431
Rousseau, 59, 471, 503-505
Rupert^ Prince, 235
Ryan, Sarah, 455

"Sacramentarians," 76
St. Antholin's Church, 174
St. Clement's, Strand, 152
St. Giles's, 152
St. Ives, 299

St. Margaret's, Westminster, IS?

St. Patrick, 470
Salisbury, Lord, 487
Salmon, Dr., 47, 99
Salvation Army, 284, 400
Sandhutton, 189

Savannah, 105-112, 116, 117, 130,

165, 213, 214, 276
Scott, Thomas, 281
Seeley, quoted, 9
Shadford, George, 261
Shaftesbury, Lord, 289
Shakespeare, William, 10, 16
Sherlock, Bishop, 144
Shirley, Rev. — , 371, 372
Shoreham, 350

520

Skelton, Charles, 378

Smollett, 12

Snell's "Wesley," 498

South Leigh, 69

Southcott, Joanna, 326

Southey, Robert, 9, 14, 25, 71, 79,
105, 124^126, 154, 156, 171, 183,
200-204, 209, 215, 245, 250-253,
258, 265-267, 293, 300, 309-311,
315-322, 361, 368, 370, 406, 412,
414, 427, 456, 479, 498

Spangenberg, August, 101, 309

Spencer, Herbert, 302

Stag, Pitman, 231

Stanniforth, 222-229, 233, 354

Stephen, Sir James, 169-171

Sir Leslie, 9, 142, 145, 279,

334, 462, 463, 481, 498-506

Sterne, 472

Stevens's "History of Method-
ism," 374
Stillingfleet, Bishop, 348, 391, 396
Stourport, 492
Stuart, Dr., 470

Swift, Jonathan, 17, 144, 434, 467

Taylor, Isaac, 47, 183, 440;
"Methodism," 498, 511

Jeremy, 66-68, 121, 127

John, 190

Rev. Joseph, 337, 405

Temple Church, 335
Tennyson, Lord, 455, 507
Test Act, 289

Thackeray, W. M., 140, 141
Thomson's "City of Dreadful

Night," 487
Told, Silas, 505

Toleration Act (see under Act of

Toleration)
Toplady, 372-374
Treaty of Utrecht, 288
Trevecca Training College, 368,

370
Trewint, 189
Twickenham, 493
Tyburn, 152

Tyerman's "Wesley," 264, 445,
448, 449

Vaset, Thomas, 267, 392, 402,
404, 406

1

INDEX

Vazeille, Mrs. (afterwards Mrs.

John Wesley), 444, 452-454
Vermuyden, Cornehus, 33
Victoria, Queen, 455
Virginia, 255

Voltaire, Arouet de, 285, 367, 464,
470-471, 499, 503-505

Walpole, Horace, 12, 139, 328,

389; "Letters," 466, 470

Sir Robert, 92

Walsall, 191, 193

Walsh, Thomas, 250-253, 433

Warburton, Bishop, 23, 142, 145,

333, 334

Washington, George, 17, 464, 499

Watson, Richard, 420

Watts, Dr., 147

Webb, Captain, 257, 258

Wedgwood, Miss, 144, 148, 166,

172, 184, 214, 219, 323, 332, 361,

399, 400, 459, 498
Wednesbury, 191
Wellington, Duke of, 16, 17, 50, 51
Wenvoe, 337

Wesley, Bartholomew (great-
grandfather), 21

Charles (brother), 50, 52, 64,

73, 76, 80, 93, 94, 99, 100, 105-
107, 114, 117-121, 124-126, 152-
156, 162-163, 172-175, 183, 184,
186, 193, 200, 248, 265, 269, 296, 1
301, 306, 310, 319-321, 327-330,
335, 346-354, 362, 368, 377, 385,
394, 395, 397, 402, 403, 404, 426,
439-443, 447-457, 461, 485-487,
492, 493

Mrs. Charles, 444, 453, 455

{see also under Gwynne, Miss)

Emilia (sister), 26, 33, 34

Garrett, 50

Hetty (sister), 34, 35, 47, 60

(see also under Wright, Mrs.);
"Hetty Wesley," 31, 32

Jedidah (sister), 29

John (grandfather), 21

Wesley, John —
Works:

"The Charity due to Wicked
Persons" (sermon), 35

"The Circumcision of the
Heart" (sermon), 86

"Book of Prayers,'' 87

INDEX

521

Wesley, John —

Works {continued):

"The Trouble and Rest of

Good Men" (sermon), 87
"Journals," 99 seq.; 463

seq.

"Georgian Journal," 109 seq.
"A Calm Address to our

American Colonies," 263,

264, 439, 475
"Appeal to Men of Reason

and Religion," 283, 294,

295, 333, 467, 500, 501
"Sermon on Free Grace," 317,

500

"Rules for the Stewards of
the Methodist Societies,"
343

"Twelve Reasons against sep-
arating from t he Church of
England," 348, 394, 395.

"Circular Letter to Evangeli-
cal Clergy," 349

"Rules of a Helper," 356-
358

"Christian Library," 358, 460
"Korah Sermon," 406, 407
"Sermon on Schism," 407
"Notes on the New Testa-
ment," 420, 421, 460, 461
"Fiftv-three Sermons," 420,

422, 460
"Thoughts on Marriage and

a Single Life," 442
"A Narrative of a Remark-
able Transaction in the
Early Life of John Wesley,"
450

"Free Thoughts on the Pres-
ent State of Public Affairs,"
475

"Treatise on Original Sin,"
502

Wesley, Mrs. John, 453-457 (see
oho under Vazeille, Mrs.)

Keziah (sister), 37

Martha ("Patty"— sister),

37, 38, 490 (see also under Hall,
Mrs.)

Mehetabel (sister), 29

Molly (sister), 32

Nancy (sister), 46

Samuel (father), 21-54, 59,

64r-70, 74, 77, 90-94, 490

Wesley, Samuel (brother), 32, 46,
47, 50, 53, 54, 61, 81-84, 91-95,
148, 149, 161, 309, 435

Sukey (sister), 34

Susanna (sister), 38

Mrs. Susannah (mother), 12,

22-34, 39-^9, 53, 59-63, 65, 67-
70, 77, 84, 85, 95, 487, 490
West, Mr., 162
Westall, Thomas, 201
Westminster Bridge, 287

School, 50, 61

Weymouth, 21

Whatcoat, Richard, 267, 392, 402,

404, 406
WTieatley, 312

Whitefield, George, 73, 77, 94, 116,
117, 146, 153, 154, 157-173,
177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184,
186, 194, 200, 204, 205, 220,
235-240, 255, 259, 269, 273,
281, 285, 296, 297, 301, 303,
304, 314-336, 346 seq., 384, 385,
403, 409, 419, 438, 448, 457,
482, 510, 511

Mrs. George, 457

Whitehead, Dr., 494

Wilberforce, Samuel, 17, 493

Wilkes, 464

William of Orange, 33

Williams, Thomas, 247

Williamson, W'illiam, 109

Mrs., 110, 111 (see also under

Hopkey, Miss Sophia)

Winchelsea, 186, 491

Witney, 69

Wolfe, Sir John, 17, 257,464
Wolseley, Lord, 342
Woodward, 214
Woolf, Mr., 493
Worcester, 492
Wordswort h, William, 17, 60
Wright, Mr., 35

Mrs. Hettv, 35-37

Richard, 259

Wroot, 22, 74, 76, 105, 115, 276
WycUffe, John, 13, 15, 125, 346

York, 205, 211

Archbishop of, 26

ZiNZENDORP, Count, 117, 149,
309-311, 313

Date Due