importance in Wesley's eyes. In 1788, the trustees of this chapel endeavoured to introduce pew-rents and to abolish the separation of the sexes, "thus overthrowing," says Wesley, "at one blow, the discipline which I have been establishing for fifty years!" But the old man of eightyfive was still masterful. We had another meeting of the committee; who, after a calm and loving consultation, judged it best (1) that the men and women should sit separate still; and (2) that none should claim any pew as his own, either in the new chapel, or in West Street.* peo Towards Dissenters, Wesley never ceased to feel a sort of High Church repugnance. Of Baptists and Quakers, in particular, he generally speaks in a tone that might be called intolerant. An incidental observation, made by him at the age of seventy-four, is curiously significant of his habitual estimation of the Dissent of his time. He is speaking of the ple of the Isle of Man: "A more loving, simple-hearted people than this I never saw; and no wonder; for they have but six Papists, and no Dissenters, in the island." Once more, a letter of his to his brother Charles, written in his seventieth year, contains an expression of general feeling upon which it would no doubt be mistake to insist as if it were a deliberate judgment, but which is a conclusive proof of the continuity of Wesley's religious life: a I often cry out, Vita me redde priori! Let me be again an Oxford Methodist! I am often in doubt whether it would not be best for me to resume all my Oxford rules, great and small. I did then walk closely with God, and redeem the time. But what have I been doing these thirty years? 2. Methodism, then, may be said to be of High Church extraction. But if the High Church religion of the age and country was its mother, Moravianism has a right to be called its father. And as soon as we begin to consider the relations of Methodism to contemporaneous religious life, we are impressed by the fact that Wesley's movement was very far from comprehending the whole of the religious earnestness of the last century. It is a common belief that, at the time when Methodism began, England was all but dead as to religion, and in a scandalous condition as to morality; and that Wesley and his disciple Whitefield, by preach Tyerman's Life of Wesley, iii. 222. LIVING AGE. VOL. XIII. 652 ing the cross of Christ with evangelical faithfulness, were the joint authors of a revival of religion of which we are even now reaping the fruits. But this impression needs to be considerably modified. The older Dissenting bodies, it seems to be acknowledged, were at that time in a somewhat torpid condition. Wesley was accustomed to speak of them, and not unjustly, as having little life in them. But they had at least two men whom all who appreciate the Evangelical revival would agree to honour, and whose works have done more to feed the spiritual life of subsequent generations than anything written by John Wesley. Isaac Watts was sixty-four at the time of Wesley's conversion, and lived for ten years longer. Doddridge, the author of "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," was born a year before Wesley, and died in 1751. The people whose spiritual emotions were described by Doddridge, and expressed by Watts, could not have been altogether destitute of religious fervour. In the Church of England, many of the clergy were no doubt negligent and worldly and ignorant, some disgracefully unworthy of their calling. But, on the other hand, who would not feel checked in speaking disparagingly of the religious condition of a communion in which William Law was living and writing, and of honoured prelates? These are three men which Bishops Butler and Wilson were who might well be reckoned amongst saints and fathers of the Universal Church; types-differing as much as possible from each other, but all remarkable types-of unworldliness and devotion. Law was a master to whom Wesley for some time looked up with veneration; that Wesley ceased to appreciate him is a fact which lessens our esteem for Wesley, not for Law. The author of the "Analogy" was made a bishop in 1738, the year of Wesley's conversion, and lived till 1752. The good bishop of Sodor and Man died in 1756. I do not mean to say that even men like these made such a work as Wesley set himself to do superfluous. But if any Christian of our day were to look back for conspicuous examples of Christianity of the higher kind in the middle of the eighteenth century, these are names which would certainly redeem the period from the imputation of barrenness; and to many devout persons they would have a higher interest than even the names of Wesley and Whitefield. Besides the lives of eminent Christians, | 1698 and in 1701, the Societies for the Prothere were other signs of religious earnestness in the Church, more cognate to the special work of these evangelists. At the close of the seventeenth century men had begun, as they always do when any spiritual quickening occurs, to form themselves into societies. The immorality and irreligion of the time were so audacious as to cause great anxiety in thoughtful minds. Moved by the preaching of Dr. Beveridge and others, some young men of the middle classes, in 1678, formed an association like the Young Men's Christian Association of our own days. motion of Christian Knowledge and for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The former of these took for its chief objects the circulation of Bibles, prayer-books, and religious tracts, and the promotion of charity-schools; but it began in 1710 to support missions to the heathen in India, and in 1732 it raised a fund for the relief of the persecuted Protestants in Salzburg, and sent out to Georgia as colonists more than two hundred of them. The spread of the "charity-schools" was very rapid; and in 1744 there were 136 of them in London and Westminster, and 1,703 in other parts of the kingdom. Besides being a conclusive evidence of EvanThey were to meet every week for religious gelical zeal in its supporters, the varied and conference, to sing psalms, offer prayers, and liberal work of this society must have discourse upon some point of practical religion. At every meeting they contributed for greatly aided Wesley's preaching. The the relief of the poor, and two stewards were Bibles, which it distributed in vast numappointed to manage their contributions.bers at a cheap rate, must have made They procured a daily evening service at the Church of St. Clement Danes, which was always well attended, and they were present at the administration of the Holy Communion weekly and on all the festivals. The association rapidly produced many kindred societies. Forty-two were soon in existence in London and Westminster, and many others were formed in imitation of them in all parts of England and Ireland. The proposed objects of all of them were to hold meetings for prayer and mutual exhortation, to send children to school, to support weekly lectures and daily prayers in churches; and it was particularly recommended to the members of them, that they should live in charity with all men, that they should pray if possible seven times a day, that they should keep close to the Church of England, be very devout in their attendance on its services, and obey their superiors both spiritual and temporal.* Another set of societies was formed to carry out the laws for the suppression of vice. These included persons in high social position, and served as opportunities for the union of Churchmen and Dissent ers. Bible-reading much more general, and were opportune for a movement which appealed to the Bible as Methodism did. Wesley's visit to Georgia was closely connected with the operations of these societies. One of them had sent settlers, who formed a considerable part of the small population of the colony; the other paid the small stipend which he received there. The colonizing of Georgia was altogether a pleasing proof that Christian benevolence could be warmed to enthusiasm at that time in England. Oglethorpe, well known as a chivalrous old man to the readers of Boswell's Johnson, had carried through Parliament a bill which had the effect of releasing many ruined debtors from prison. It occurred to Oglethorpe and his friends to ask for a certain small district in America, as a place of settlement for these destitute persons. A charter was quickly obtained from George II., dated January 9, 1732, constituting this district the province of Georgia, and appointing Oglethorpe and twenty other gen"The members of the associations tlemen trustees, to hold it for twenty-one assembled quarterly for a religious service years, "in trust for the poor." Funds and a sermon; the Churchmen at St. Mary- were most liberally supplied; and within le-Bow, and the Dissenters at Salters' five months of the signing of the charter, Hall." The religious societies and the soci- Oglethorpe had set sail with a hundred and eties for the reformation of manners were twenty emigrants, and a clergyman apnot long-lived; but the same movement gave pointed as their minister. These were the birth, as the seventeenth century was pass-first builders of the town of Savannah. ing into the eighteenth, to two societies The next emigrants were the Salzburg which are at this moment more flourishing Protestants, sent by the Society for Prothan ever. Some of the best men in the moting Christian Knowledge. Then folChurch, clergymen like Dr. Bray and lay-lowed a party of Scotch Highlanders, then men like Robert Nelson, established, in some Moravians, and after these the company, including more Moravians, with whom Wesley sailed. It is a common • Perry's History of the Church of England, iii. 89. ins, was unanimously elected rector of notion, to which I am surprised to see that | drawn together by elective affinities. SevMr. Green has given the sanction of his eral of the Methodists were fellows and authority, that this enterprise of Wesley's tutors of colleges; one of them, Hutchwas a piece of quixotism. To think so is to overlook the character of a work which is a real honour to the generation which undertook it, and to misunderstand Wesley. The Georgia trustees, and especially one of the most zealous of them, Dr. Burton, were anxious to find a man who would be a truly apostolic chaplain and missionary; and Dr. Burton, who had an Oxford acquaintance with Wesley, urged him to accept the appointment. Wesley found various reasons for declining; amongst others, that he could not leave his recently widowed mother. But she, like a true wife and mother of Wesleys, said that she would give up twenty sons to such a work, even if she should never see them again. Then Wesley consulted his most trusted friends, William Law, John Clayton, and others. They all advised him to go. At last he consented, his "chief motive" being "the hope of saving his own soul." Having come to this conclusion, he threw himself into his duties with characteristic ardour and thoroughness, and in the extremely ascetic spirit which seemed to him the way of Christian perfection. But he went as an official member of the expedition, which was headed by Oglethorpe in person, and with the object of carrying out the plans of Oglethorpe, whom he regarded with well-deserved respect and admiration. He was, it is true, thus challenged by an unbeliever: " -"What is this, sir; are you one of the knights-errant? How, I pray, got quixotism into your head?" And he replied with his habitual argument, " Sir, if the Bible be not true, I am as very a fool and madman as you can conceive; but if it be of God, I am soberminded." He never ceased to make it his aim to be "a rational and Scriptural Christian." The knights-errant in chief were Oglethorpe and Dr. Burton and their colleagues, and they were backed with large gifts of money by the governors of the Bank of England and the House of Com 66 mons. The leaven of earnest religious feeling, of the Anglican type, which in some considerable degree pervaded the population, shows itself in many contemporaneous symptoms. To Wesley himself it was well known, and he often did it justice. Oxford Methodism represented the religious aspirations of young men bred in country parsonages and other English homes, • In his "Short History of the English People." He gave me [he writes] an account of himself, and the reason of his coming. He had he was their only son), because they would left his parents, he said, who were rich (though not let him serve God as he had a mind. He used to spend a good part of the night in prayer, not having opportunity to do it by day. When he left home he did not know where he should go, having no clothes with him; but he did not seek for money or worldly enjoyments, he desired only to save his soul. When he was travelling, he prayed that he might go to some place where he would have Sacrament. the advantage of public prayers and the Holy ters with whom he could freely converse about He was glad to meet with minisspiritual things. Such elements were mixed in the English life from which Wesley sprang, and on which his preaching acted. The Moravians, and their relations to religion in England at this time, form a subject on which it would be interesting to dwell more at length than my limits will allow. One of the unamiable features in Wesley's character was his readiness to turn against those from whom he had derived spiritual benefit. Having become a "Christian," as he permanently believed, under the teaching of Peter Böhler, the Moravian, he afterwards showed bitter enmity towards the Moravians and their head, Count Zinzendorf; and the reader of his life finds it difficult to sympathize to the full both with Wesley the devout disciple, and with Wesley the hostile accuser. For a time it seemed as if Wesley were becoming absolutely a Moravian, or a member of the Unitas Fratrum, as some of the best of his best Methodist friends did become, and remained to the end of their lives. But his Anglicanism resumed whilst Zinzendorf decreased. power over his mind, and the piety of the dists were henceforth separated from each Moravians began to run to seed in some other. But the Moravians had the extraordinary developments of doctrine stronger attraction for the amiable and and practice, which justly repelled Wes- enthusiastic, but not strong-minded, Ingley, and from which the community in ham, and also for another Oxford Methtime recovered themselves. It is a great odist, one of the most truly spiritual of distinction for Moravianism to have start- the band, the gentle and philosophical ed Wesley as an evangelist and founder; Gambold. Ingham went to his home in but, apart from him, the success of the Yorkshire, and preached far and wide, and Moravians in this country was not incon- formed numerous societies, which he carsiderable. ried over from the Church of England to There has always been something very the Moravian communion. For some winning in the Christian life of the Mora- time the Moravians in England were a vian brotherhood. It has exhibited a sim- | larger and more important body than the plicity of faith and practice, a fellowship Methodists. Outsiders were apt to conwith Christ, a happy contentment, a broth- found the two bodies, as both preaching erly love, an unconscious fearlessness, instantaneous conversion through receivwhich have seemed to reproduce what ing the assurance of pardon; and the Christianity was in its earliest days. more, as Wesley's organization was at first Wesley was much struck by what he saw copied from that of the Moravians; but of this life amongst the Moravians who they in the mean time were repudiating and went with him to Georgia, and afterwards denouncing each other, and flinging bitter in the colony. When he returned to En- taunts from either side against the two gland he fell in with some more members autocrats, Count Zinzendorf and John of the community, and with a young man | Wesley. This controversy was before named Peter Böhler, a teacher among long succeeded by one yet more virulent, them. He sat at Böhler's feet with great and, as time advanced, Wesley increased, docility, as he taught him that true faith was always accompanied by a constant peace, arising from a sense of being forgiven, and by dominion over sin, and that this faith is given instantaneously. Böhler produced persons who bore witness to these doctrines from their own experience; and Wesley, with his naïve way of accepting personal testimony, straightway received the doctrines. Almost immediately after his own conversion, Wesley set out with his friend Ingham to visit the Moravians in Germany. He was not altogether satisfied with them, nor they with him; but he continued to throw in his lot with them. He returned to England a little before the end of 1738, and on New Year's day there were seven of the Methodists, including the two Wesleys and Whitefield, taking part in a Moravian love-feast in Fetter Lane. For some two years Wesley associated himself with the Moravians, and attended their meetings; but in July, 1740, he separated from them, with a company of twenty-five men and fifty women, and established meetings at a place called the Foundery. The chief point in dispute was whether the ordinances" should be slighted. The Moravians preached "stillness" to those who were waiting for the assurance of forgiveness: they were to use no means of grace, lest they should trust to them. The two Wesleys held by the means of grace and the Church of England; and the Moravians and Metho 6 In some estimates of the number of Methodists throughout the world, the Calvinistic Methodists are counted as if they were branches of the original Wesleyan stock; but Wesley had nothing to do with their origin, and would not have been anxious to claim connection with them. The founder of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism was one Howel Harris. He was a young Welshman, who preceded Wesley and Whitefield in the mode of preaching by which they made their converts. This may be distinguished by the title Revivalist from the professedly "quiet" work of the Moravians. Revivalism began in New England under Jonathan Edwards, about 1730. With a similar kind of preaching, there was a remarkable Revival movement in Scotland, at Kilsyth and other places, in 1740. Harris's preaching in Wales began in 1736. He was converted in the previous year, being then twenty-one years of age. Soon after he went up to Oxford; but remained there only a single term, being unable to bear with "collegiate immoralities," and returned to Wales and immediately began to preach salvation through a sudden consciousness of being forgiven. His experience was in many respects anticipatory of Wesley's. His irregularities as preacher provoked much persecution from Tyerman's Life of Wesley, i. p. 220. a clergy, magistrates, and mobs; and the | in more religious times, hardly supplies a persecution helped to make him success- parallel. He went to bid his friends at ful. He began almost immediately to Bristol farewell. The mayor of Bristol form his converts into societies, in imitation of the Church of England "religious societies," which I have already mentioned. As a preacher, he resembled Whitefield rather than Wesley, both in character and in doctrine; but he joined with his fervour and his Calvinism an organizing instinct which was foreign to Whitefield's nature. His work remains in the large sect of Calvinistic Methodists, which is the most numerous religious confession in Wales. appointed him to preach before the corporation; Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, people of all denominations, flocked to hear him; the churches were as full on week-days as they used to be on Sundays; and on Sundays crowds were obliged to go away for want of room. "The whole city," he says, "seemed to be alarmed. The doctrine of the new birth made its way like lightning into the hearers' consciences." On a second visit to Bristol multitudes came out on foot to meet him, Whitefield, the greatest preacher of the and some in coaches, a mile without the age, preached without organizing, and left city; and the people saluted and blessed behind him a great reputation, and relig- him as he passed along the street. When ious influences on men's minds known to he preached his farewell sermon, and said God alone, but no sect. Here I have to the people that perhaps they might see only a few words to say with reference to his face no more, high and low, young and the commencement of his career. Though old, burst into tears. Multitudes after he made the acquaintance of the Wes- the sermon followed him home, weeping; leys at Oxford, his religious life seems the next day he was employed from seven to have owed little or nothing to their in the morning till midnight, in talking influence. After their departure for Georgia he, having previously sought righteousness by the High Church methods, received happiness, at a certain time, through a full assurance of faith. But he did not break abruptly with his former habits or beliefs. The conversion came at the end of an illness which caused him to leave Oxford for a time, and pay a visit to his native city, Gloucester. There his zeal was known to the bishop, who sent for him, and proposed to ordain him, without a title, before he had taken his Oxford degree, at the age of twenty-one. No bishop on the bench in these days would allow himself to act in so unusual a manner. His first sermon, preached at the church of his baptism and first communion, had a powerful effect on his hearers. Complaint was made to the bishop that fifteen persons had been driven mad by it; the bishop only "wished the madness might not be forgotten be fore the next Sunday." In the course of a few months Whitefield received letters from Wesley, begging him to join him in Georgia. He resolved to do so, against the urgent solicitations of many friends, but with the approval and benediction of his good bishop. He offered himself to the Georgia trustees, was accepted by them, and prepared to set sail. But a delay of some months occurred, during which the youthful preacher, not yet twenty-three years of age, was the object of enthusiastic demonstrations, to which the history of the most popular preachers, and giving spiritual advice to awakened hearers; and he left Bristol secretly, in the middle of the night, to avoid the ceremony of being escorted by horsemen and coaches out of the town. In London he enjoyed the same inconvenient popularity. If he preached at six o'clock in the morning, churches were crowded; and on Sunday mornings, in the latter months of the year, long before day, the streets were filled with people going to hear him, with lanterns in their hands. The collections made for charities, after his sermons, were unprecedented. People stopped him in the aisles and embraced him; they came to him at his lodgings to lay open their souls; they begged of him religious books, with his name written in them by his own hand.* Such scenes of emotional excitement amongst the congregations of metropolitan churches, stirred in a moment by the fervid enthusiasm of an eloquent young clergyman, are not easy to reconcile with what we read of the condition of the Church of England in the middle of the eighteenth century. The people were manifestly not unimpressionable; and a certain wave of religious sensibility appears to have been spreading itself far and wide over the earth. Another evidence of the same religious craving will also serve as an illustration of what was being done by clergymen of the Church of England, apart from Wesley's * I have taken this account from Southey's "Life of Wesley." |