THE ROOTS OF METHODISM
by W B FITZGERALD
Published 1903 by
Charles H Kelly, London

Rev W Blackburn Fitzgerald was a Wesleyan
Methodist minister who lived 1877-1931.
WBF wrote the Wesley Guild Founders Manual.
He suggested the Guild, a youth movement, which
was approved by Conference in 1896, with the
support of C H Kelly.
The Guild became a more adult oriented society with the
passage of time.

The physical book scanned was owned and scanned by Stephen Shaw,
Stockport, in 2022.

As the Author (WBF) died over 70 years ago and the book was published more
than one hundred years ago the copyright is considered to have lapsed.
This text file may be freely copied to any web site especially any dedicated to
archiving the written word.





THE ROOTS OF
METHODISM

“ Come, O Thou that hast the seven
stars in Thy right hand, perfect
and accomplish Thy glorious acts,
and as Thou didst dignify ourfathers’
days with many revelations above all
the foregoing ages since Thou tookest
the flesh; so Thou canst vouchsafe to
us, though unworthy, as large a portion 
of Thy Spirit as Thou pleasest,
seeing the power of Thy grace is
not  passed away with the primitive
times as fond and foolish men imagine,
but Thy Kingdom is now at hand, and
Thou standing at the door.”
JOHN MILTON.
”  

THE ROOTS OF
METHODISM
BY
W. B. FITZGERALD

LONDON: CHARLES H. KELLY
2, CASTLE ST., CITY RD., & 26,
PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1903




PREFACE

THIS little volume makes no pretence to original
research. It is simply an attempt to explain the
meaning of Methodism to the Methodists of to-day.
It is an endeavour to follow the ideas and institutions
of Methodism back to their roots, to trace
their origin in that wonderful story of the past which
is so full of inspiration for the present. Lives of
Wesley and Histories of Methodism abound, but
here will be found only those great outstanding
facts which every Methodist ought to know, ‘and the
knowledge of which will, it is hoped, lead to that
further study briefly outlined and suggested in the
final chapter. 

The story of our origin as a Church is full of
romance, crowded with incident, and rich in heroic
character;  and I have endeavoured to make the old
times live again in the imagination. Our Church
to-day is rich in young life, and it is to be feared
that very few have even a fragmentary knowledge
of the reasons for the existence of Methodism. It
is the feeling that such a knowledge would-result in
a widespread revival of the old spirit that has led me
to attempt a task which might have been better performed
by those more skilled than myself.

I am indebted to many writers, as every student
of the subject must be;  and in one chapter, “The
Faith of a Methodist,” I owe some exceedingly helpful 
suggestions to Dr. Findlay. In the final chapter,
“Itineraries of Thought,” I have been greatly helped
by several Methodist experts, whose names will be
found in the proper place. To the Rev. Richard
Green, known to everyone as a lover of all things
distinctively Methodist, I would also make grateful
acknowledgment for his kindness in reading the
proofs.
W. B. FITZGERALD.
HEADINGLEY, 1903.



CONTENTS

I.
A Red Letter Day in England’s History. 
The Strong Words of an Historian.
May 24th, 1738.
Three Revolutions and the Part played by Methodism.

II.
The Three Johns.
Wiclif, Hus, and Wesley: a Romance of History.

III.
The Chess-board of Heredity.
An Inheritance of Character.
“The Puny Parson” of Charmouth.
The Nonconformist of Poole.
A Return to Anglicanism.
Susannah Wesley and her Ancestry.

IV.
Life in a Country Parsonage .
John Wesley’s Early Home at Epworth.
 The Fire at the Parsonage.
 Lighter Memories.
 A Household Code of Laws.

V.
A Great Seat of Learning.
A Curious Contrast.
Nicholas Amherst and his Satires.
Oxford at its Lowest.
A Startling Sermon.
Wesley’s Three Periods:
Vivacious Student, Sombre Mystic, Energetic Methodist.
The Mission to Georgia.

VI.
The Three Leaders.
George Whitefield, Charles VVesley, John
Wesley: Orator, Singer, and Statesman of
the Great Revival.
John Wesley’s Supremacy.

VII.
The Great Methodist Year: 1739. 
The Beginnings of Methodism:
The First Love-feast.
First Field-preaching.
First Class Meeting.
First Chapel.

VIII.
John Wesley’s Preachers 
Thomas Maxfield’s Audacity.
The Preachers of the People.
A Village Martyr.
A Soldier-Saint.
An Irrepressible Stone-mason.
 
IX.
The story of the Conference.
A Saddle-bag Companion.
The First “Minutes”.
An Interesting Group of Pioneers.
Famous Conferences.
The Deed of Declaration.
the Sacrament Controversy.
Business of a Modern Conference.




X.
The Methodist Parish and its Councils.  
No Inch of Ground out of a Circuit.
A Preacher's Duties. 
The Quarterly Meeting.
a Gathering of Workers.
The Groups of which the Quarterly Meeting is composed and the Separate
Councils.

XI.
The Church Principles of John Wesley.
Was John Wesley a High Churchman?
Yes; and No !
What he himself said, and DID.

XII.
The Faith of a Methodist.
Methodism. with its Message to ALL MEN,
stands out against the Background of Extreme 
Calvinism, so general in Wesley’s Day.
It is the Religion of the Changed Life,
Based on Experience, and Rooted in the
Word of God.

XIII.
Thought Itineraries.
Books about Methodism, and Schemes of
Study.



1. 
A RED LETTER DAY IN ENGLISH HISTORY




“Now as Christian stood looking
and weeping, behold three shining
ones came to him, and saluted him,
with ‘Peace be to thee’; so the first
said to him, ‘Thy sins be forgiven.’

The second stript him of his rags, and
clothed him with change of raiment.
The third also set a mark in his
forehead, and gave him a Roll with
a Seal upon it, which he bid him
look on as he ran, and that he should
give it in at the Celestial Gate; so
they went their way.”BUNYAN.

“ Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest:
Cannot confound nor doubt Him:
nor deny:  
Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest;
Stand thou on that side, for on
 this am I.”
F. W. H. MYER’S “ST PAUL."


The Story of One Day
May 24th 1738




A RED LETTER DAY IN ENGLISH HISTORY
“It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the scene which
took place . . . forms an epoch in English history.”

THESE are the words of no irresponsible scribbler, no
squanderer of superlatives, no mad manufacturer of
sensations, but of Mr. Lecky, the sober, fair-minded,
though often rationalistic, historian of the eighteenth
century.
So important does Mr. Lecky consider the event
referred to, that he chronicles not only the year, but
the day, the very hour when it happened;  and one is
curious to know what it was in his estimation, that
warranted so strong a statement.

There were so many stirring events in the
eighteenth century.
There was the Battle of Plassey, for instance, in
1757. Historians love to chronicle battles, they give
colour to the narrative, and this particular conflict
turned the fortunes of a nation. It was no light
matter for Clive, daring as he was, to advance with
less than three thousand men against the fifty
thousand of Surajah Dowlah, and we do not wonder
that he pondered for an hour before giving the order
to fight. But the result was an utter rout of the
enemy, and the foundations were laid of our vast
Eastern empire.

But Mr. Lecky is a modern historian, and perhaps
he had in his mind the victories of peace. In 1769
Watt patented his steam-engine. The steam-engine
is a fit symbol of the industrial age, and its invention
might fairly stand out in the philosophy of history.

Or was it that thrilling scene in 1763, when ]ohn
Wilkes was sent to the Tower for daring to criticise
a minister of the Crown in the columns of the North
Briton. Wilkes himself was a worthless, profligate
fellow, but he represented the liberty of the press, and
the whole nation rose in his defence. 

When we think of the enormous influence of journalism in 
more recent times, we feel that the Wilkes’ case was 
undoubtedly one of the events that determine a
people’s destiny.
And yet the sentence at the head of this chapter
refers neither to Clive, nor Watt, nor Wilkes, but to a
remarkable incident which took place in the life of
John Wesley.

May 24th, 1738, at a quarter before nine.
That was the hour, the day, and year of this epoch-
making scene, and the story of what happened is best
told in Wesley’s own words.
His Oxford days were over- the days of the Holy
Club, the prison visiting, the rigorous discipline of
devotion and service, which still left the heart 
unsatisfied. He had just returned from Georgia after a
course of High Churchism, “ beating the wind,” as he
himself describes it, and apparently no nearer the
harbour than when he set out.


He landed in England on February 1st, and a week
later was introduced to Peter Bohler, who had
arrived with his little company of Moravians. The
story of the Moravians must be reserved for a later
chapter, for it opens out a romance of history of the
very deepest interest. Wesley had already felt the
influence of their simple godliness on the voyage to
Georgia, and during his residence there, but the
friendship with Peter Bohler was destined to be
critical. 

Wesley helped to find him lodgings, made
him. known to his brother, who became Bohler’s
English tutor, travelled with him, argued with him,
prayed with him, and soon discovered that this young
Moravian who was only twenty-five years of age had
a “peace through believing,” which he himself
longed to possess.

At last, on this momentous day, the great change
came. 
“I think it was about five this morning
that I opened my Testament on these words,
‘There are given unto us exceeding great
and precious promises, even that ye should
be partakers of the divine nature.’ ' (2 Peter,
vi. 4.)

“Just as I went out I opened it again on
these words, ‘Thou art not far from the
kingdom of God.’ In. the afternoon I was
asked to go to St. Paul’s. The anthem was,
*Out of the deep have I called unto Thee,
O Lord : Lord, hear my voice.’ 

“ In the evening I went, very unwillingly,
to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one
was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to
the Romans. About a quarter before nine,
while 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.”

It is of this scene, familiar to all readers of
Methodist history, that Mr. Lecky says:
“ It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that
the scene which took place at that humble
meeting at Aldersgate Street forms an epoch
in English history.”

A careful study of subsequent events fully justifies
the insight of our eighteenth-century historian.
When Wesley was doing the great work, which I
shall endeavour to outline in later chapters, there
were three rocks ahead for the English people.
The first of these was the Industrial Revolution.

During the early half of the century England was
a land of green pastures and pleasant waters; but
before the century closed, the great towns appeared
with their tall chimneys and murky atmosphere, and
the clear streams began to flow slowly, and yet more
slowly, until to-day they almost stick fast in their
beds. 

Between 1750 and 1801 the population
suddenly sprang from 6,000,000 to 9,000,000, 
outstripping all previous rates of increase, and the 
distribution entirely altered. 

In Gibbins’ Industrial History of England 
there are two maps of England,
coloured in various shades of green. The light
tints mark the thinly inhabited districts, and the dark
shade the denser populations. In the map which
represents the early part of the century, the dark
green is massed all about the basin of the Severn,
with a small patch in south-east Lancashire. In the
later map the whole of this southern district is light,
and the dark patches have gone northward.

Coal and steam were the great factors that made
for change, and the new populations clustered about
the great coalfields. New industries were created,
and old ones were developed. China and porcelain,
iron and coal, wool and cotton goods, began to be
produced in quantities unknown in the history of the
country, and Lancashire and Yorkshire, Staffordshire
and Northumberland, stirred with amazing activity.

It was the dawn of the inventive age. The names
of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton, of Newcomen, 
Watt, and Brindley, were soon to be associated
with the marvels of machinery and engineering. So
rapidly did the migration of the people take place,
so unexpected was the new tendency to mass
together in large towns, and so complete was the
failure of the Churches to deal with the new 
problem, that serious social and economical dangers
were created.

A great need arose, and Methodism met that need.
It was Methodism which raised up the men: men
of the people who were able to touch these new
populations as no others could. Not only did it
leaven them with a living and vigorous Christianity,
but in doing. so it accomplished a much larger task.

When the history of industrialism is fully written, it
will be recognised that it has been no small part of
the mission of Methodism to help the workers of
England to adjust themselves to the new conditions,
and to fit themselves for the popular government
which we now possess.

A second peril was occasioned by the French
Revolution. It came last in order of time, but it
will be more convenient to consider it here.

Why was there no reign of terror in England? It
easily might have been. There were all the elements
of unrest, intense discontent, large populations ill-
fed and worse educated, no adequate police force,
next to no local government. The events over the
water threw even our statesmen into panic; Pitt,
level-headed as he was, talked of “thousands of
bandits” eager for the sack of London.

It is necessary to turn to the social history of the
time to learn how such' fears were justiiied. The
moral life of the nation was at its lowest ebb.
Religion had ceased to be a restraint. 

“If one speaks of religion,” said a distinguished Frenchman,
“everyone begins to laugh.” Bishop Butler, in
weighty words, said, “It is come, I know not how,
to be taken for granted by many persons that
Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry”; 
On the contrary, it was “a principal subject;of mirth
and ridicule.” 

Immorality abounded in high life;
gambling infected all classes; sport was 'almost
wholly brutal; drunkenness was accounted no 
disgrace, and while the middle classes, then by no
means so powerful a section of the community as
now, were better than those above or below them,
the lower classes were simply pagan, herded together
in densely populated areas where law and order were
practically unknown.

There were all the materials for a conflagration,
and yet it was averted. A vast change passed over
the social conditions of the people, but without any of
the terrible accompaniments experienced by France.

Why, beyond a few local riots, did nothing
happen? The explanation cannot be given in
plainer language than that of Mr. Lecky:
“ ‘Peculiarly fortunate’ was it that the industrial
revolution 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.” That revival began with the preaching of
John Wesley, and was carried to the remotest corners
of the land by himself and his co-workers.

There was, however, one danger which was not
averted. Once in the course of the century the ship
of State went right on the rocks, and the result was
the American Reolution.
 Methodism again had a great part to play.

The Colonies, as we know, revolted, and set up for
themselves, with the result that a serious difficulty
arose. The Church of England, “as by law established,”
had no provision for such a heterodox
proceeding, and the Colonial clergy, almost to a man,
deserted their flocks and left them shepherdless.

There were none to administer the sacraments, the
sick were uncared for, the dead buried without
Christian rites.

But Methodism was already rooted on American
soil, and at the Revolution she rose in her strength.
Some loyalists there were who preferred to return to
England; even Barbara Heck, fine old saint as she
was, clung to British traditions, and went north to
Canada. 

But Asbury and his brave band of pioneers
cast in their lot with the new commonwealth. They
were the party of progress. All through the war
they held on bravely with their work, and when
peace came they had increased fourfold. The
period which followed was one of romantic enterprise.
The story of the “ backwoods’ preachers ” is one of
the most inspiring in religious history.

And the debt which America owes to them has
been fully acknowledged by statesmen of modern
times. “Since the days of the Revolution,” says
President Roosevelt, “not only has the Methodist
Church increased greatly in the old communities of
the thirteen original States, but it has played a
peculiar and prominent part in the pioneer growth
of our country, and has, in consequence, assumed a
position of immense importance throughout the vast
region west of the Alleghanies which has been added
to our nation since the days when the Continental
Congress first met.

“For a century after the Declaration of 
Independence the greatest work of our people, with the
exception only of the work of self-preservation under
Lincoln, was the work of the pioneers as they took
possession of this continent. During that century
we pushed Westward from the Alleghanies to the
Paciiic, southward to the Gulf and the Rio Grande,
and also took possession of Alaska.
 
The work of advancing our boundary, of pushing the 
frontier across forest, and desert, and mountain chain,
was the great typical work of our nation; and the men
who did it: the frontiersmen, the pioneers, the back-
woodsmen, plainsmen, mountain men: formed a class
by themselves. It was an iron task, which none but
men of iron soul and iron body could do. The
men who carried it to a successful conclusion had
characters strong alike for good and for evil. 

Their rugged natures made them powers who served light
or darkness with fierce intensity; and together with
heroic traits they had those evil and dreadful 
tendencies which are but too apt to be found in
characters of heroic possibilities. Such men make
the most efncient servants of the Lord if their
abounding vitality and energy are directed aright;
and if misdirected, their influence is equally potent
against the cause of Christianity and true civilisation.

In the hard and cruel life of the border, with its
grim struggle against the forbidding forces of wild
nature and wilder man, there was much to pull the
frontiersman down. If left to himseli without moral
teaching and moral guidance, without any of the
influences that tend toward the uplifting of man
and the subduing of the brute within him, sad would
have been his, and therefore our, fate. 

From this fate we have been largely rescued by the fact
that, together with the rest of the pioneers went the
pioneer preachers; and all honour be given to the
Methodists for the great proportion of these pioneer
preachers whom they furnished.”

This tribute is a generous one, and it is a striking
evidence of the effectiveness of Methodist teaching
and organisation that the Methodist churches in
the United States stand foremost among Protestant
evangelical communities throughout the whole
world, with a membership of 6,000,000, and not less
than 20,000,000 adherents.

How many people realise these things? At three
great crises in the history of the English people,
Methodism was needed and was not found wanting,
and the spiritual force which it represents may be
traced back to the change which took place in
Wesley’s life in that little room in Aldersgate Street.

That scene “formed an epoch,” says our eighteenth-
century historian; and with such high authority,
strengthened by a study of the times, we are 
undoubtedly right in describing May 24th, 1738, as 
a red letter day in English history. 




II
THE THREE JOHNS


“ Wiclif . . .  laboured to effect the
revival of religious life by the 
restoration of simple preaching, ‘a humble
and homely proclamation of the
gospel,’ and the distribution to the
people of the Word of God.”
H. B. WORKMAN.

“I have preached in towns and
market-places;  and now I preach
behind hedges, in villages, castles,
fields, woods. If it were possible, I
would preach on the seashore, or from
a ship, as my Saviour did.”
JOHN HUS.


“ Sent by my Lord, on you I call; 
The invitation is to ALL :
Come, all the world; come, sinner,
thou!
All things in Christ are ready
now.”  JOHN WESLEY.


Retrospect:  The Roots
of Methodism  far back
in the Middle Ages



ON the sand-dunes of our coast there grows a curious
plant with a long, tapering root, purple-brown in
colour, and nearly a foot in length: but beyond this,
burrowing into the sand, are a multitude of hairlike
fibrils, so long and so delicate, it is scarcely possible
to get to the end of them.

Now the big tap-root of Methodism is undoubtedly
in the eighteenth century, and there are branches
which we shall trace in another chapter to the
strenuous days of the Puritans, but there are also
thread-like rootlets linking us in the most interesting
way with the historic life of the Church in far earlier
times.

One of these tough, fibrous filaments of history I
purpose to follow as far back as it will take us.

The little meeting in the upper room at Aldersgate
Street was a Moravian meeting. Wesley had met the
Moravians before. He had wondered at their courage
in the storm on the way to Georgia; he had marked
the simplicity and devotion of their character; he had
discussed faith with Peter Bohler in the halls of
Oxford; it was from them that his soul caught fire.

And it is only when we understand the full significance
of the part that the Moravians played in the awakening
of Wesley that we realise that Methodism was no
mushroom growth, no birth of a night, but a living
organism deeply rooted in the religious life of the
past. 

In the Methodist movement an influence blossomed
and bore fruit, the origin of which must be sought in
the England of the fourteenth century.

Three reformers are curiously linked together by
the line threads of history.


John Wiclif, John Hus, and John Wesley.

The names suggest a thread of story intensely
suggestive to all who love to get back to beginnings.
It is the year 1378. In the chapel of Lambeth
Palace a great gathering of bishops, priests, and
monks has assembled to try John Wiclif.  What a
display of lawn and purple and angry faces! “They
brought them forth to their tryal, in order to their
condemnation,” says John Bunyan of the pilgrims in
'Vanity Fair. Such was the spirit of Wiclif’s assessors.
But the worthy men are in a difficulty. 

They want to pronounce him guilty. The Pope says they 
must.

But a message has just arrived from the Princess of
Wales to say they must not. The Pope or the lady?

Were ever time-serving ecclesiastics in more awkward
dilemma? The knot is cut, however, in unexpected
fashion. In rush a pack of Londoners, indignant that
the peo'ple’s priest should be put to such 
inconvenience, and they carry him off in triumph.

How curiously the times change! In the eighteenth
century there were clergy who set the mob on John
Wesley;  in the fourteenth, John Wiclif was rescued by
the mob from the clergy.

What was the secret of Wiclifs power?

He was a lover of the people.
Wiclif’s great idea, expressed perhaps less in words
than deeds, was a Church of the people. The Church
of his day was a Church of monks, friars, and priests.

The people were priest-ridden. Men became “clerics ”
for no other purpose than to sponge on the community, 
and escape lay responsibilities. Spiritual
religion was dead. And for the degenerate clergy of
the day Wiclif had no soft words. 

He boldly denounced the “ emperoure bishopis,” with 
their wealth and luxury; the friars he called “sturdy 
beggars”; their “letters of fraternity,” supposed to 
convey all manner of benefits to the owners, might 
be “good for to cover mustard pots.” But for the 
long-suffering, ignorant peasantry he demanded homely, 
heart-searching religion, the religion of the Lord’s Prayer,
which Christ taught His disciples, “nother in Latyn,
nother in Frensche,” but in the language of their
everyday life.

Wiclif gave the Bible to the people in their own
tongue. They welcomed it enthusiastically. Manuscript
copies were multiplied in all directions. Farmers
would give a load of hay for the privilege of reading
Such a copy for an hour daily. A village girl who
could “recite the Ten Commandments and parts of
the Epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter” was as much
in request as a popular singer of to-day.

It was he, too, who instituted an order of preachers
for the people; at first men actually in orders, and
then, as the need increased, simple laymen. There
was no nonsense about Wiclif. Like Wesley, he
respected tradition so long as it seemed useful, but
the moment it stood in the way of something better
than itself he went straight through it. Away went
precedent when he wanted preachers. For Paul, said
he, “preechide fast, and axide noo leve of Petir
hereto, for he had leve of Jesus Christ.”

He had magnificent leverage for this new work.
Oxford was the greatest of European universities, and
Wiclif was the greatest man in Oxford. Crowds of
students from town and village hung upon his
words, read his books, and swore by his teaching.

Very soon he had a following ready for any
enterprise, and he sent them into the highways and
hedges.

Out into the country lanes went Wiclif’s “poor
priests.” They “travelled from county to county 
and from town to town, in certain habits, under 
dissimulation of great holiness, without licence
of the Holy Father the Pope, or of the ordinary
of the diocese.”

So said a Statute of the realm, and it was truly
shocking. Without permission of Pope or bishop!
But away went these itinerant preachers in their
russet robes, making a pulpit of the market cross and
a chapel of the village barn; denouncing the bullying
rascals in cowl and habit who prowled about the
countryside with pardons, indulgences, and spurious
relics, and preaching plain, homespun sermons based
upon honest Scripture.

As Wiclif won the nation, so the “poor priest” won
the villagers. The people believed in him. There
was reality in his preaching. For, like Chaucer’s poor
parson of a town, in whom many have seen a portrait
of the reformer himself: 
“Christe’s lore and His apostles twelve
He taught, and first he followed it himself.”

Steadily the conspiracy against Wiclif deepened and
strengthened. His enemies persevered, and at last
secured a verdict against him. Still they dared not
touch him, and the brave old man died at last among
his much-loved people at Lutterworth.

“We shall be troubled no more,” said the friars.
But forty years later they found out their mistake,
for in 1415 there came a man to the Council of 
Constance, in whose soul the spirit of John Wiclif 
lived again.

That man was John Hus. 

In those days there was much interchange of
thought among the universities of Europe. They
used each other’s text-books;  scholars travelled from
one to another; students of Prague iinished their
studies at Oxford, and so came under the magnetic
influence of the great English reformer. 

They were the more numerous, perhaps, because a Bohemian
princess was then Queen of England. When they
returned to Prague they carried with them Wic1if’s
books and Wiclif’s ideas. In Bohemia the seed fell
into prepared soil. The Bohemians had never been
hearty Catholics. Greek Church traditions clung
about them. Their spirit was intensely national. 

So when John Hus became the exponent of the thought
of John Wiclif, the new teaching spread in every
direction. Neither Pope nor king could arrest 
its progress.

Dr. Johann Loserth has settled decisively the long-
debated question as to the extent of Wiclif's influence
over Hus. He has proved to a demonstration that
the Bohemian preacher was steeped in Wiclifite ideas.

The writings of Hus are often little else but 
paraphrases of his English master; and, indeed, parallel
columns make it abundantly plain that with sublime
indifference to plagiarism Hus borrowed whole phrases,
sentences, and paragraphs. He made no secret of the
obligation. Four years before the Council of Constance he said:

  “I and the members of our university have
possessed and read these books now for
twenty years."

And again, in noble tribute to Wiclif:
“I am drawn to him by the love which he
has for the law of Christ, in that he maintains
the truth thereof, namely, that this law
cannot in any point be false.” 

Since things were so bad, the Pope, as a first step,
ordered all Wiclif’s books to be publicly burned at
Prague.

Just five years later, the Council of Constance
burned Hus himself, and threw his ashes into the
Rhine. .




And then they ordered Wiclif’s bones to be dug up
and burned, and his ashes cast into the little river
Swift at Lutterworth;  and, in old Thomas Fuller’s
words:

“As the Swift bare them into the Severn,
and the Severn into the narrow seas, and
they again into the ocean, thus the ashes of
Wiclif is an emblem of his doctrine, which is
now dispersed over the world.”

And the priests said, “Two pestilent fellows, now
at last we have done with both of them.”

Done with them? Ah! not so easily.

A German peasant, says an old fairy tale, was
greatly troubled by a lively little elf who broke his
teacups, curdled his milk, and made his home in the
forest generally uncomfortable. So one day he packed
all his household goods on his cart, set fire to the
cottage, and drove off through the pines congratulating
himself, “ Now I shall get rid of the mischievous young
imp.” And the elf poked his saucy head from behind
the big bedstead on the cart, and said, “ If we hadn’t
run away we should both of us have been burned ! ”

The monks burned the house, but the troublesome
spirit of Hus was as much alive as ever.
At the news of his martyrdom the Bohemian people
rose in great wrath, and banded themselves together
in the Hussite League. To this was opposed the
Catholic League, which had at its command the
military resources of all Catholic Germany. Yet for
nearly twenty years this brave little people held its
own against the chivalry of Europe.

There were many parties among the Hussites, just
as in our own Puritan Revolution. I do not intend
to unravel the intricacies suggested by the Utraquists,
Calixtines, Taborites, Chiliasts, Picards, Orphans, or
Adamites. The two first were used of Moderates,
who demanded “communion in both kinds,” as an
outward pledge against the clericalism of Rome. The
last were fanatics, who wanted to go back, not merely
to primitive religion, but to primitive costume, and
were speedily suppressed.

The masses of the people were represented by the
Taborites, and their impetuosity soon carried more
hesitating spirits along with them. In open revolt
against Rome they deserted the parish churches, and
gathered by thousands on the hills, to which they
gave the Scripture names of Tabor, Olivet, and so on.

They chose their own preachers, and the vast open-
air services were conducted in the Czech language.
These resembled in more points than one Wesley’s
open-air preaching at Kingswood and Gwennap, or
the first primitive Methodist camp-meetings on Mow
Cop.

Imagine the enthusiasm of the huge assembly at
Tabor. Forty-two thousand were there, men, women,
and children. Processions of peasants came from
village after village, headed by their own priests
bearing the sacramental bread and wine. As they
met, they hailed one another as “brother” and
“ sister,” and passed on, rank after rank, to the great
open-air demonstration. 

It was Ziska, the “blind general,” who took hold
of these thronging multitudes and organised them for
victory. He it was who invented the “Wagenburg,”
or waggon fort, a strange, moving rampart of farm
waggons, linked together by chains, baffling the
mounted forces that opposed them, and sheltering
the brawny peasants armed with pikes, flails, and
massive clubs.
    
It was essentially a people’s movement. They
demanded what Wiclif taught, and sought to give to
his own countrymen: the Bible for the people,
sacraments for the people, and they were determined
that these things should be. 

Rome at last had to confess herself defeated. The
war ended in compromise, more dangerous than
resistance. With peace the Moderate party became
dominant, and as years rolled by, the differences from
the Roman Catholic Church became less and less
evident. But the heart of the people never surrendered, 
and out of the strife of party there slowly
crystallised the Church of the United Brethren.

It is not necessary to study the religious history of
Bohemia in further detail, From this point, for
three centuries, the history of Wiclifite ideas is the
history of the United Brethren. The conception of a
people’s Church never died. Kept alive, first in
Bohemia, then in Moravia and Poland, and again in
Germany, the tradition has been practically unbroken.

But the story has its picturesque stages.
There was the Socialist Stage  under Peter of
Chelcic. Peter was a forerunner of Count Tolstoi.

His ideal was the Sermon on the Mount literally
understood. He preached the doctrine of non-
resistance as plainly as his nineteenth-century 
successor. Wealth was an iniquity, and trade, beyond
the provision of necessaries, simply another form of
thieving. 

Out of his teaching, which, to tell the truth, was
only a very logical application of some of Wiclif’s
principles, grew the community of Kunwald, a happy
valley shut in by giant mountains, and communicating 
with the outside world only by a narrow gorge.

Here rich and poor, citizens and peasants, learned
and simple, lived together in quiet love for God and
for one another, until persecution broke out and
drove them, like hunted deer, to the shelter of caves
and forests.

Then followed the 0rganising Stage under Lucas
of Prague. He was a strong, far-seeing man, determined 
to rescue the movement from narrowness, and
to lay deep and broad foundations for the future.
Under his guidance the Church of the Brethren
became the “first free Evangelical Church in
Europe.” 

Is there a more curious incident in mediaeval
history than the search under Lucas for a primitive
Church? Somewhere in the East, among the lands
of the Bible, there must exist, he thought, some
survival of apostolic times. “Then we’ll find it,”
said he, and emissaries were sent to scour the Orient.

They went to the burning East and found frozen
Churches: they came home, sadder and wiser men,
and discovered primitive Christianity all aglow under
the glaciers and snow-peaks of the Alps. 

Among the Waldenses of Savoy, the disheartened travellers 
found a very near approach to the Church of early days. 
It was not their first contact with them, but it led to a
closer intercourse which marked a turning-point in
the history of both communities.

Another notable day in the history of the Brethren
was when they first heard of the young monk of
Wittenberg. Luther was a kindred spirit. They had
an instinct for God-sent men. Away went their
deputation to grasp the reformer’s hand, and to
assure him of their sympathy. Luther was deeply
interested. 

When he read their books and documents, and 
particularly a treatise by Hus himself
on the Church, he exclaimed, “We have all been
Hussites without knowing it.” This was in 1517,
and from that time the two streams, like twin rivers,
ran on side by side, carrying life and vigour wherever
they flowed.

The next hundred years were marked by great
literary activity, and rapid development of principles.
In Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland the Church of the
Brethren took deeper and stronger hold of the people.

But with the dawn of the seventeenth century there
came the blackness of thick darkness. A henchman
of the Jesuits became King of Bohemia, and the
Brethren and all Protestants were doomed. 

Their leaders were put to death, their Chapels reconsecrated
for Roman Catholic worship. The altars were beaten
with rods, the pulpits lashed with whips, and the walls
sprinkled with holy water, to free them from the taint
of "heresy. The whole Protestant population was
disfranchised, their marriages declared illegal, and
their, estates confiscated. 

Many of the noblest families were driven into exile. 

Thirty thousand burghers, with their wives and children,
left the country. The peasants, 'such as were unable to
escape, were dragooned into compliance with a
ferocity only paralleled by Turkish infamy in the
present century. The population dropped from three
millions to one. 

Still the faith of the people, the faith of Wiclif and
Hus, never utterly died. It smouldered among the
shepherds on their hills and the peasantry of the
villages. Stories of the old days were handed down
from father to son, and the children grew up with a
passionate longing for freedom and truth. "O Lord,
how long?" was the agonised yearning of many a saint,
and yet God gave no sign.

But when the eighteenth‘century was young, a
whisper passed from farm to farm among the
Moravian hills of one whom they called the Bush
Preacher. He was a shepherd whom God led by a
strange and eventful path to the light of life in Christ,
and in lonely copses and sheltered glens Christian
David revived the old spirit of Hussite days. 

Once more the hymns of the Brethren, never forgotten,
rang out among the hills;  and more and more boldly,
in cottage and barn, the peasants gathered to read
the Bible and pray. But the sleeping dogs of 
persecution were awake at the first echo of the old
teaching. There was no place for these simple-
hearted men and women in Moravia.

A strange migration took place. By moor and
defile and precipitous mountain paths a little band of
faithful men and women stole away by night, and
arrived footsore and weary at Count Zinzendorf’s
estate in Saxony. Band after band of peasants
followed, literally counting “all things but loss” that
they might win Christ. On the bleak Hutberg there
sprang up house by house the colony of Herrnhut, 
“the watch of the Lord.”

There the Church of the Brethren had its resurrection.
The Moravian Church, as we are now
accustomed to call it: and one of its most striking
characteristics was its breadth and catholicity. As
the years rolled on they planned a great missionary
programme. They would light beacons in other
lands. 

They saw that in even Protestant countries
the people were outside the Churches, while in distant
lands the heathen were untouched. They aimed at
the revival of evangelical teaching, at the restoration
of religion to the masses. So to England and the
American colonies, as well as to the snows of Greenland
and the jungles of India, the Moravian bands
went forth, counting not their lives dear unto them.

It is March, 1738. Two men are pacing with
earnest faces the quiet quadrangle of an Oxford
college. One is the most remarkable Oxford man
of his time, the other represents an influence which
went out from Oxford three and a half centuries ago,
and which now returns to give the initial impulse to
a great people’s movement. One is John Wesley,
Fellow of Lincoln;  the other, Peter Bohler, the leader
of the English Moravian Mission.

By a strange and wonderful providence, already
referred to, Wesley met the Moravian missionaries to
England on the day of their landing.
“Tuesday February 7th (a day much to be remembered). 
At the house of Mr. Weinantz, a Dutch
merchant, I met Peter Bohler, Schulius Richter, and
Wensel Neiser, just then landed from Germany.

Finding they had no acquaintance in England, I
offered to procure them a lodging, and did so near
Mr. Hutton’s, where I then was. And from this time
I did not willingly lose any opportunity of conversing
with them while I stayed in London.” Wesley's Journal.

The story of Wesley’s enlightenment has been told
in the previous chapter. But how interesting to trace
this unbroken line of succession: Wiclif, Hus, Wesley.

It is not a little remarkable that the leaders of the
fourteenth-century reformation and the eighteenth
revival should both be Oxford men. It was from
Oxford that the teaching went forth that kindled
John Hus, and burned steadily on through war and
persecution till the torch was carried back to the
English shore. And it was at Oxford that Wesley’s
soul was stirred by the man who represented Wiclif’s
unbroken influence.

With astonishing rapidity, as we shall see, the flame
spread throughout the land. And then, once more,
as in Wic1if’s day, the poor preachers went out into
the highways and hedges. On the village green and
by market cross the gospel story was told by plain
men with a power which swept their rude audiences
like a mighty wind. 

The new teaching: old, and yet
ever new was carried from town to town and village
to village on a wave of song. Step by step the
foundations were laid of a people’s Church on a scale
exceeding the wildest dreams of Wiclif and Hus.

The movement took a deep and lasting hold of the
industrial masses of our own country. In the United
States, and the greater colonies, with a fair field and
no favour, its growth has been unparalleled. And
when we look back to that small beginning, and
consider that Methodism to-day in its various
branches numbers at least thirty millions of adherents,
we can only feel that, if we are loyal to these inspiring
traditions, the possibilities of the future are nobler
than any achievement of the past.



III.
THE CHESS-BOARD OF
HEREDITY




“ The body in which we traverse the
isthmus of life is not a private carriage,
but a public omnibus, filled inside
and out with our ancestors.”
O. W. HOLMES.


“A person is a very different thing
from the tendencies that have converged and focussed in him through a
long line of ancestors. All these may be analysed and determined with the
utmost exactitude;  but when you have accomplished that stupendous task,
you have not explained the man.

Even granted that he is the product
of these, he is still something more,
something new, something different
from them, something greater and
more significant.”
ARTHUR HOYLE.



What Methodism owes
to its Founder Puritan
ancestry and Anglican
training




THE CHESS-BOARD OF HEREDITY

DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, in his Life of 
Emerson, suggests that Nature moves her pieces in
the great problem of life like chessmen on a board.

Sometimes qualities move straight on, descending
from father to son or mother to daughter, always
keeping the male or the female succession, just as the
black and white bishops move diagonally on their
own colours all through the game. 

In other instances the daughter seems to inherit the
character of the father, and the son has more of his
mother in him, and so it goes on in a sort of
alternate series, as the two rooks move from black
to white and white to black again. 

Occasionally a generation is skipped, and you are
told how much you are like your grand-father,
reminding one of the pawn’s first move, when
a square may be missed, and a move is taken from
queen’s second to queen’s fourth. 

And, not infrequently, Nature mimics the odd move
of the knight, with his one step forward and 
second sideways, and we see an uncle or aunt 
imaged in a nephew or niece, or some equally 
puzzling eccentricity of resemblance.

Though fanciful, the illustration is suggestive, and
certainly Nature seemed to exhaust all her moves in
centring in John Wesley all the finest qualities of a
strong and vigorous ancestry.

Will power stands out all along the Wesley line.
It is one of the fundamental qualities of the stock.
They were men the world could not bend, and found
it next to impossible to break.

There was Bartholomew, the Puritan, born the
year after Drake died, when the tales of the old
sea-dogs were ringing in the ears of every true-born
Englishman. He was called in derision by his
enemies “the puny parson," but his soul was as big
as his stature was small. He was rector of Charmouth, 
on the Dorset coast, when Charles II wanted
to escape to France after the defeat at Worcester, and,
but for the long prayers of the little minister, he would
undoubtedly have been taken. 

The King and Lord Wilmot took rooms at the village inn in
the characters of groom and groomsman on the way to a 
wedding, intending to take boat the same night. The boat
never came, and while they prepared to ride away to
other shelter, suspicions were aroused and word sent
to the rector. But the minister was at his devotions,
which none dare disturb, and before they were ended,
the royal fugitive was well on his way to hiding. 

“If ever the King came back,” said Bartholomew, “he
would be certain to love long prayers; for if I had
not been at that time longer than ordinary at my
devotion, I would have surely snapt him.”

Back the King came in good earnest in 1660, and
in two years’ time the strait-jacket of Uniformity
was offered to the Dorset rector, and, like two
thousand more, he resigned his living rather than
compromise his conscience. He was an old man,
and, having studied physic at Oxford, he spent his
last days at Charmouth, caring for the bodies, as
formerly he had cared for the souls of the parishioners.

And then there was John Wesley the first, the
grandfather of the one we know so well. He, like
his father, was a Puritan, and a minister;  and he,
too, was ejected from his living on St. Bartho1omew’s
Day, 1662. 

He was at Oxford in those great old
days when John Owen was vice-chancellor, and
Thomas Goodwin, Edmund Staunton, and John
Howe were heads of colleges; and when William
Penn, Philip Henry, and Christopher Wren were
undergraduates. He had no episcopal ordination,
but he satisfied the requirements of Cromwell’s
Triers, and so obtained a living.

But trouble was in store for him at the Restoration.
The little village of Winterhorn, Whitchurch, was in
the diocese of Bristol, and the newly appointed bishop
soon wanted to know why the Liturgy was not used
by the young clergyman, and if, in fact, he had any
right to be a clergyman at all.
 
A long conversation with the bishop, recorded in the
young minister’s diary, shows that he possessed 
plenty of the clear-headed, commonsense, reasoning 
faculty, which came out so vigorously in his more 
famous grandson. The bishop could make no impression, 
and indeed he himself seems to have been the one
impressed, for he let Wesley alone. But others were 
not so kindly, and before the Act of Uniformity 
was passed he was thrown into prison for the 
non-use of the Liturgy.

His courage and honesty came out once more in
his trial.

“ Call Mr. Meech,” said the judge, after vainly
trying to get Wesley to commit himself. “Does Mr.
Wesley read the Common Prayer yet?" “May it
please your Lordship,” said Meech, who knew the
man, “He never did, and he never will.”

The prophecy was a true one. Turned out of his
rectory, he continued to preach in village and
hamlet, now helping Joseph Alleine at Taunton,
now living in retirement in a small village near
Weymouth, and finally settling down as pastor of a
Nonconformist church at Poole. But there was no
peace. 

His meetings were broken up as conventicles; 
he lived in daily fear of imprisonment; for three
months he lay in Dorchester Gaol, and in the prison
at Poole for half a year. For months together he was
hunted from cover to cover, his wife and children and
flock left to themselves. But to silence him was
impossible, and one is reminded again and again of
the invincible will which in a later day denied all the
persecutions of the eighteenth century: The heroic
minister died in 1678, worn out too soon by the
hardships and privations of an intolerant age.

The brave Nonconformist of Poole left behind him
two sons. One, Matthew Wesley, became a doctor
of some popularity in London;  and the other,
Samuel, became a clergyman, and, eventually, rector
of Epworth.

Samuel broke with all the old Puritan traditions.
In character he resembled in many points both father
and grandfather; but in ecclesiastical opinion they
were at opposite poles. He became a stalwart upholder
of rule and rubric, a believer in Episcopacy
and Apostolical Succession, and an opponent of
Dissent in all its forms;  and yet his life was not without
its elements of heroism.

Several influences contributed to his complete
change of front. In his youth he was thrown among
Dissenters of a peculiarly aggressive type. In the
circles where he moved the lofty spirit of the old
Puritans had given place to a petulant, lampooning
temper, which could not long satisfy a young man of
honest convictions;  and deep-seated in his own nature
was an instinct for law and order which made the
Establishment attractive. Led to study the question
for himself, he resolved to abandon Nonconformity
and to take Orders.

By this decisive step he cut himself loose from all
his old friends, and, as yet, had not a single 
acquaintance in the Church of England. With forty-five
shillings in his pocket he entered himself as a poor
scholar at Exeter College, Oxford, and by indomitable
perseverance and industry not only obtained an
honourable degree, but left the university seven
pounds fifteen shillings richer than when he entered
it. The only financial help he received from friends
amounted to five shillings.

In Samuel Wesley we begin to recognise other
qualities which were prominent in his more famous
son. He was a scholar and a poet. Some of his
literary work received even royal recognition. His
poetry was mostly the dull, passionless, uninspiring
rhymed verse of the time. 

He spoke of himself humorously as one of those:

“Who for their own, or some forefather’s crime
Are doomed to wear their days in beating rhyme.”

And yet, if a poet takes rank from his highest
creation, the author of the Crucifixion hymn

“Behold the Saviour of mankind
Nailed to the shameful tree,"

will hold an honourable place among our noblest
hymnologists.

A good story illustrates both the humour and the
frankness which were equally characteristic of the son.

While rector of Epworth, Samuel Wesley was once
asked to dinner at the house of a miserly old man
who had never`been known to launch out into such
liberality before. Dinner over, the rector was invited
to return thanks, which he did in the following 
extemporaneous verse :

“Thanks for this feast, for ’tis no less
Than eating manna in the wilderness. 
 There meagre famine bears controlless sway,
And ever drives each fainting wretch away:
Yet here : Oh, how beyond a saint’s belief!
We’ve seen the glories of a chine of beef!
Here chimneys smoked which never smoked before,
And we have dined, where we shall dine no more."

“ No,” growled the eccentric host, as the last line was
uttered, “ No, gentlemen; it is too expensive.”



No reference to Samuel Wesley would be even fair
which failed to recognise the indomitable courage, the
inflexible faithfulness, the resolute pertinacity of his
pastorate at Epworth. He was a preacher of 
righteousness among an almost semi-barbarous people. 

He was surrounded by enemies. His income, small enough
for the necessities of a numerous family, was sadly
diminished by incendiaries who burned his flax and
twice fired the parsonage, reducing him at one time
to practical beggary. He was flung into Lincoln
Castle for debt, the consequence of disaster. Yet he
showed no malice, relaxed no effort, and worked ever
for truth and purity of life.

Abraham Mendelssohn, the banker, of Berlin, whose
father was Moses Mendelssohn, a thinker of European
fame, and whose son Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
won immortal honour as one of the world’s greatest
composers, used to say, when his boy was becoming
famous, “ I used to be known as the son of my father,
but now I am known as the father of my son.”

Samuel Wesley deserves to be remembered for his
own sake;  he would have a still further claim because
of his Puritan ancestry; but his supreme title to fame
is the fact that he was the father of the founder of
Methodism. He died four years before the Great
Revival.

It has been difficult to speak of the rector of
Epworth without mention of Susannah Wesley, his
courageous partner through all his difficulties and
hardships. With her another new force seems to
come into the Wesley character.


Susannah Wesley is one of the world’s great women.
Her influence in shaping Methodism can hardly be
overestimated. An old Spanish proverb says, “an
ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy,” and the
mother-power that helped to form John Wes1ey’s
character was more influential than all the tendencies
inherited from divines, either Puritan or Anglican.

She was a woman of clear judgment and strong
common sense, transparently sincere, not demonstrative
in affection, and both venerated and loved by
the numerous tribe which she brought up with almost
Spartan severity.

It is not a little remarkable that she, like her
husband, was of Nonconformist origin. Her father,
Dr. Annesley, had a church in London. Her grandfather 
on the mother’s side, John White, was a
barrister, and so thorough-going a Puritan, that,
during the Commonwealth, he was Chairman of the
Committee of Religion, and one of the Westminster
Assembly of Divines. 

Medical skill and poetic genius we have already found 
strongly developed in the Wesleys, and perhaps to
this Puritan lawyer may be traced some of the legal
acumen which was illustrated so strikingly in John 
Wesley’s provision for the future of the Methodist 
societies.

But Puritan tradition and environment were burned
through by the strong acids of a mind capable of
thinking for itself, and which the Nonconformity of
the time failed to satisfy.

A few years before her marriage she changed her
views of Church government, and accepted those of
the Anglican Church, in whose communion she
henceforward lived and died.

She possessed an extraordinary power of will. 

In fact, the two dominant wills in the Epworth rectory
were too strong for mutual comfort, and sometimes
came into serious collision. John Wesley himself
is authority for the story that his mother refused to
say “ Amen ” to the prayer for the king, on the
ground that she did not believe the Prince of Orange
to be her rightful monarch.

The rector roundly declared that if they were to have 
two kings they must part. And as Mrs. Wesley was 
“inflexible,” part they did for twelve months, until 
the death of William III., and the accession of Anne, 
whose claims both were prepared to admit, gave an 
opening for reconciliation. Such obstinacy is not 
exactly admirable, though one is reminded of the 
“ He never did, and he never will,” when the
rector’s father was before the magistrates.

There are other instances where the quiet, “inflexible,” 
purposeful spirit of the mother of the Wesleys
awakens nothing but admiration.

One of the most interesting incidents in the
Epworth record is the story of Mrs. Wesley’s services
in the rectory kitchen. Mr. Wesley was in London
on ecclesiastical business, and the curate left in
charge to take his work was apparently a failure.

The people were being spiritually starved, and Mrs.
Wesley, anxious about her own household, gathered
them together, children and servants, for a homely
little service. Then the farm-boy told his parents,
who begged to be allowed to come. The door once
opened, others followed, one after another, until the
little congregation numbered two hundred.

But:  the mind of Mr. Wesley was disturbed, for in
his eyes it was a conventicle, and the irregularity all
the greater because the meeting was conducted by a
woman. Mrs. Wesley’s very beautiful letter telling
how it all came about was not sufficient to overcome
his scruples, especially as the curate was evidently
annoyed by the want of appreciation of his own
ministry. Mrs. Wesley wrote again, and her last
words of appeal to her husband are full of character :-

“If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this
assembly, do not tell me you desire me to do it, for
that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your
positive command, in such full and express terms as
may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for
neglecting this opportunity of doing good, when you
and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal
of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is not difficult to recognise in those noble words
the spirit which was responsible in Susannah Wesley’s
son for the daring innovations of the Great Revival.
The same unswerving force of will makes itself
evident in the training of her children.

“I wonder at your patience,” the rector once said.
“You have told that child twenty times the same
thing.”
 
“Had I satisfied myself,” the mother replied,
“by mentioning the matter only nineteen times, I
should have lost my labour. You see it was the
twentieth time that crowned the whole.”


Susannah Wesley was the first Methodist. 

Read the long and deeply interesting letter to John Wesley
from his mother in 1732, explaining her principles of
education, and it is clear at a glance how Methodism
became possible. Some of the mightiest forces that
went to the making of Methodism were inherited by
Wesley from his mother, and were deepened and
strengthened in his own soul by his earliest training.

Yet Mrs. Wesley had a very modest estimate of her
own abilities. There is exquisite pathos in her words
to her own husband in the letter previously referred
to :-

“ I never durst positively presume to hope that
God would make use of me as an instrument in doing
good. The farthest I ever durst go was,‘ It may be; 
who can tell? With God all things are possible: I
will resign myself to Him’;  or, as George Herbert
better expresses it:

‘Only, since God doth often vessels make
Of lowly matter for high uses meet,
I throw me at His feet;
There will I lie until my Maker seek
For some mean stuff whereon to show His skill:
Then is my time.”’
There is the beauty of unconscious holiness in the
soul which these sentences unveil.

Such, then, were some of the influences that shaped
John Wesley. It took both the Revolution and the
Restoration to make him. Both Puritanism and
Episcopacy meet in him as in a single focus.
 
From father and mother alike he inherited a love of order
and method, a respect for established authority, the
instinct of patriotism and conformity. But behind
these nearer influences there was the virile strength
of the men of the Commonwealth, men of steady
purpose and unconquerable spirit.

And out of the mill of heredity came a man, a
personality, a new and original force, which impressed
its own stamp on the eighteenth century, and altered
the currents of history for all time. 

Puritan, preacher, lawyer, scholar, physician, poet; 
each of his ancestors contributed some potent element of character;
but the John Wesley whom we have to study was more
than the sum of them, and different from all of them,
a man with a great individuality: a “man sent from
God.”




IV
LIFE IN A COUNTRY PARSONAGE






“The time comes when the mother
is no longer the centre and sun of
the child’s world;  but he is no true
man who, having been endowed with
the priceless book of a good mother,
can forget his immeasurable debt to
her.”
AENIGMAE VITAE


The early years of John
Wesley in the home at
Epworth. 
From 1703 to 1720, when he left
the Charterhouse.





LIFE IN A COUNTRY
PARSONAGE

A CURIOUS searcher, looking for dawning genius,
would hardly have expected to find it in a small and
obscure village in a low-lying fen country. Natural
scenery unquestionably plays some part in the shaping
of character. The men of the hills differ from the
men of the plain, and the children of the sunny south
are widely separated in temperament from the sons of
the bleak and rugged north. But genius seems often
to ignore environment, just as an erratic mineral-
laden spring here paints the rocks on some wild
mountain side with a coat of many colours, and here
stains the soil of some lowland level with its red and
orange encrustations.

Certainly there might seem little in the fen-lands to
feed the imagination and stir the soul of a lad of
parts, and yet from the fens came men of such varied
power as George Fox, the Quaker; Isaac Newton,
the philosopher; Tennyson, the most musical of
poets;  as well as the great religious leader who is the
subject of these studies.

Epworth lies about 'the centre of the Isle of
Axholme, a sort of delta enclosed by the Trent and
Don and their tributaries, a fertile stretch of country,
made still more fertile by a process called “ warping,”
by which the low ground is flooded so that it may be
enriched by the black alluvial sediment left by the
retreating waters. 

The people in Wesley’s day were
rough and turbulent, but lovers of the soil. 

Arthur Young, the agricultural expert of the 
eighteenth century said "Many  do not live
as well as the inhabitants of the poorhouse;  but all
is made amends for by possessing land.” 

Of their barbarity and rudeness the Wesley family had not a
few experiences. 

The old Epworth rectory in which John Wesley
was born in 1703 was a very primitive structure.
The roof was of thatch, and underneath were three
low storeys: Kitchen, hall, parlour, butterie, and
three large upper rooms, and some others of common
use. A little garden, a barn, a dove-cot, and a
hemp-kiln, completed the little property, together
with the church lands where the rector grew his crops.

We never entirely get away from the influences of
childhood. There are events that grip the soul with
a power never to be outgrown. Such an event in
Wesley’s life was the burning of the old rectory one
wild February night when he was only six years old.

Kneeling on the old chest at the window, leaning out
of the little casement to get air to breathe, a crackling
furnace of smoke and flame behind him, and without,
a strange world full of piteous cries and lit up with a
terrifying red glare.

It was a scene never to be
erased from memory. Long years afterwards, when
one of his portraits was engraved, Wesley had a tiny
vignette of a burning house added below, with the
words, “Is not this a brand plucked from the
burning?" A life so spared was in the deepest sense
a consecrated life.

The old wood and thatch burned like tinder, and
little was saved, but among the few treasures discovered
among the blackened ruins were two scorched slips of
paper. 

One was a fragment of a Polyglot Bible,
bearing the words, “Vade;  vende omnia quae habes,
et attolle crucem, et sequere me,” “ Go;  sell all that
thou hast, and take up thy cross, and follow Me.”

The other was the manuscript of the rector’s own
hymn:
“Behold the Saviour of mankind
Nailed to the shameful tree;
How vast the love that Him inclined
To bleed and die for thee ! ”
But Epworth suggests other and lighter memories.

John Wesley was one of a gay, witty, active-minded
family, a little world in themselves, and no doubt
keen to mark any points of interest in the larger
world outside.

As a boy he might remember the wrathful rector,
his face ablaze with scorn, dragging the corn-thief,
caught in the act, into the open market-place, and
compelling him to turn out his corn-bulged pockets
before the eyes of his neighbours;  who, it is to be
feared, were readier to ridicule the parson than to
condemn the culprit.

  How his humour would fasten upon some of the
scenes in church, and not least the odd spectacle of
the old parish clerk, droning out the psalms from the
depths of one of his father’s cast-off wigs. And how
the whole tribe in the parsonage pew would enjoy the
situation, when, on one memorable Sunday, when the
rector lined out the words of the old metrical version,
“Like to an own in any ivy bush,"
the clerk, peering out of the big, ill-fitting wig, most
appropriately responded with the next line:
“That rueful thing am I.” 

The version in Sternhold and Hopkins is not quite
so pointedly expressed, but the story was told by
Charles Wesley as above.

John was argumentative as a child. He wanted a
reason for everything, and no doubt made himself a
nuisance to everybody at times. Many a hasty word
provoked by his combativeness would be forgotten;
but among the indelible memories was a day when
the rector turned sharply upon him and said, “ Child,
you think to carry everything by dint of argument;
but you will find how very little is ever done in the
world by close reason.” “Very little indeed ” is John
Wesley’s comment on the incident in later years.

But these scattered incidents only touch the surface
of a home life rich in formative infiuences. 

Mrs. Wesley had definite ideas about education, and she
carried them out with thoroughness. Her letter to
her son John, written at his request, and outlining
her system, is a most interesting document, and
deserves to be studied as a whole.


Her household was a little kingdom. Obedience
was its cornerstone. The tiniest children were taught
to “cry softly,” if cry they must; and, among the
older boys and girls, loudness and rude behaviour
were strictly forbidden.

The perfect gentlemanliness and exquisite courtesy
which characterised John Wesley in after life, had
their origin in a code of manners to which all had to
submit. The will of the children, strong enough as
time gave evidence, was not broken, but conquered.

They got nothing they cried for, and were taught to
“speak handsomely ” for what they wanted. They
had to eat what was set before them without question,
and the order of the house was three meals a day and
nothing between meals.

Some of the standing bye-laws of the household
were altogether admirable.
No child was ever whipped who confessed to a
fault and promised to amend. Never was a child
whipped twice for the same fault, or upbraided with
it afterwards. 

Obedience, especially when it was hard to obey,
was always commended. “If any child performed
an act of obedience, or did anything with an 
intention to please, though the performance was not well,
yet the obedience and intention should be kindly
accepted, and the child with sweetness directed how
to do better for the future.”

Rights of property were rigidly respected as between
the children even in the smallest matters, and
no child was ever permitted to take what belonged
to another, even if it were but a farthing or a pin.
Promises were absolutely sacred.
 
For nearly eleven years John Wesley lived in this
atmosphere, breathing day by day its spirit of 
truthfulness, sincerity, and justice, doing the same things
over and over again until they became a part of himself.

No wonder that, as a man, he became one of
the most open-minded, transparently sincere, and
supremely capable men of his day. He knew how
to command, because he had learned to obey.

But with Wesley, as with most boys, there came a
testing time. At thirteen years of age he was sent to
school at the Charterhouse, and made his first plunge
into the big world outside.  

In some country waggon he would be driven through fields
and over open country (for roads near Epworth there were none),
until they reached the Great North Road, and took
the stage coach up to town; and one can imagine
the excitement of the boy as the sights and sounds
of the busy city broke upon him for the first time.

Of his life at the Charterhouse there is little to
record. A few traditions survive, but they have small
bearing upon the making of the man.

One thing is certain, that in the new world of
school he tasted of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil, and for a time became careless and negligent
in religion. But the fact that in after life he could
look back upon his schooldays “not only without
bitterness, but with pleasure,” is evidence enough to
show that he never got very far astray from the strong
influences of the Epworth home. 





V.

A GREAT SEAT OF A LEARNING







“Beautiful city! so venerable, so
lovely, so unravaged by the fierce
intellectual life of our century, so
serene!
‘There are our young barbarians all at
play! ’
And yet, steeped in sentiment as she
lies, spreading her gardens to the
moonlight, and whispering from her
towers the last enchantments of the
Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, 
by her ineffable charm, keeps
ever calling us nearer to the true
goal of all of us, to the ideal, 
to perfection . . .”
MATTHEW ARNOLD,
“Essays in Criticism.”




Life at Oxford from 1720 to 1735.  
In that year made Fellow of
Lincoln. Returns after
a brief absence and
joins the Holy Club in
1729. Sails for Georgia
in 1735.





A GREAT SEAT OF LEARNING

A FEW years before Wesley went to Oxford there
came a youth to the university, Nicholas Amhurst by
name, whose career contrasts curiously with that of
the Methodist leader.

Both came from great public schools; both had
enjoyed the advantages of a good home training;
both possessed something of the reforming instinct;
and both found much that needed reform. But the
evils which stirred the one to noble endeavour,
poisoned and corrupted the other.

Nicholas Amhurst, like Wesley, was shocked with
the unrealities and hypocrisies of the new world in
which he found himself, but instead of bravely 
holding his own, he basely capitulated and sank to an
even lower level than the men he condemned. 

Finding his tutors indifferent to him, and the heads of
houses in some instances but sorry examples to the
youth under their charge, he abandoned religion
altogether, plunged recklessly into all kinds of excess,
and eventually was sent down in disgrace. 

He ended his life in Grub Street, a clever and satirical journalist; 
and terrible is his indictment against the university
where his own life was utterly wrecked.

His bitter letter to Dr. Delaune, the vice-chancellor,
is pathetic as a picture of the terrible disillusion which
must have awaited many another in those days when
the morals of Oxford were at their lowest.

“ I came to your college a raw, ignorant schoolboy,
and foolishly thought mankind in earnest in what
they professed: I took liberty for a real blessing,
and religion for the rea! worship of God. 
 
I often remember how scrupulous I was in the most common
concerns of life; with what awful dread I took an
oath, and with what tremendous veneration I received
the Sacrament;  but how much improved I am for the
better since, let my worst enemies bear witness!”:
(Jeaffreson’s Annals of Oxford, p. 248.)

But the evil influences which soured and spoiled
the life of Nicholas Amhurst were turned by Wesley
into stepping-stones to higher things. He entered
the university a gay, vivacious, intelligent youth, fresh
from the Charterhouse; he left it the most earnest
man in England.

But we have ample evidence that Nicholas Amhurst’s
bitter words were fully justified.
Gibbon, the historian, writing of a period only a
few years later, satirically describes one of his tutors
as a man who “remembered that he had a salary to
receive, and forgot that he had a duty to perform.”

Another, “one of the best of the tribe, was
satisfied, like his fellows, with the slight and 
superficial discharge of an important trust.” 

At first Gibbon attended the lectures of this easy-going 
professor with conscientious regularity, but finding them
“equally devoid of profit and pleasure,” he one day
tried the experiment of an apology for absence. 

It was “accepted with a smile.” Very soon the attendance
became the exception and the absence the rule,
but his tutor seemed blissfully unconscious whether he
came or stayed away.  No wonder Gibbon described
his university days as “the most idle and unprofitable
period of his life.”

Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, speaking
of Oxford during the years when Methodism was
becoming a power in the land, uses language even
more sweeping.

“In the University of Oxford the greater part of
the professors have for these many years given up
even the pretence of teaching. The discipline is in
general contrived not for the benefit of the students,
but for the interest, or, more properly speaking, the
ease of the masters.”

As Miss Wedgewood very forcibly expresses it:
“While the student lounged away his time in the
coffee~house and the tavern, while the dice-box 
provided him with a serious pursuit and the bottle a
relaxation, he was called upon at every successive
step to his degree to take a solemn oath of observance
of the academical statutes, which his behaviour
infringed in every particular.
 
While the professors received £100 or £200 a year for giving
no lectures, the candidates for degrees were obliged to ask and
pay for a dispensation for not having attended the 
lectures that never were given.

“ Religion,” says John Richard Green in his Oxford
Studies, “had dwindled to a roll-call,” and education
was “ found anywhere but in the lecture-room.”

But to see Oxford as it was in the eighteenth
century we must look through John Wesley’s eyes.
Years later, when the evangelical revival was at its
height, he preached in the university pulpit, and
with burning words denounced the life of the 
university as he himself had known it in early manhood.
Let us try to picture the scene.

It is St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24th, 1744,
the day when Bartholomew Wesley and John Wesley,
the Puritan ancestors of the founder of Methodism,
both distinguished Oxford men, were ejected from
their livings. 

Now the inheritor of their courage
and spirit, a Fellow of Lincoln, preaches in St.
Mary’s. Down the aisle of the famous old church
move in stately procession all the dignitaries of the 
university: first the beadles carrying the vice-chancellor’s
insignia of office, then the vice-chancellor himself
and behind him a little clergyman, decidedly under
the average height, and yet a man who at once
attracts the eyes of those about him. 

A young undergraduate, afterwards a famous Hebrew scholar,
looks down from the gallery and feels that he is in
the presence of a strong individuality. “His black
hair, quite smooth and parted very exactly, added to
a peculiar composure in his countenance, showed him
to be no ordinary man.”

Following the preacher are the proctors and
doctors of divinity, and as these take their places the
preacher ascends the pulpit, reads the quaint bidding
prayer, and very quietly and slowly announces his
text.

"And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.”

The sermon opens with a beautiful description of
primitive Christianity, but as the preacher goes on to
apply this early teaching to university life, a hush
falls upon the congregation. Some of the heads of
houses stand up, leaning forward as though they
would not miss a single word. Seldom have weightier
words fallen from St. Mary’s pulpit. One can imagine
the sea of upturned faces, swept by amazement,
anger, shame, resentment, as the bold indictment
is developed.

“What example is set us by those who enjoy the
beneficence of our forefathers? by Fellows, Students,
Scholars, more especially those who are of some rank
and eminence? Do ye, brethren, abound in the fruits
of the Spirit, in holiness of mind, in self-denial and
mortification, in seriousness and composure of spirit,
in patience, meekness, sobriety, temperance; and in
unwearied restless endeavours to do good to all men?

Is this the general character of Fellows of colleges?
I fear it is not. Rather have not pride and haughtiness, 
impatience and peevishness, sloth and indolence,
gluttony and sensuality been objected to us, perhaps
not always by our enemies, nor wholly without ground?

Once more: What shall we say of the youth of
this place? Have you either the form or the power
Df Christian godliness? Are you diligent in your easy
business, pursuing your studies with all your strength?

‘Do you redeem the time, crowding as much work into
every day as it can contain? Rather, are ye not conscious 
that you waste day after day either in reading
what has no tendency to Christianity, or in gaming, or
in: you know not what? Are you better managers
of your fortune than of your time? Do you take care
to owe no man anything? Do you know how to
possess your bodies in sanctification and honour?

Are no drunkenness and uncleanness found among
you? Yea, are there not many of you who glory
in your shame? Are there not a multitude of you
that are forsworn? I fear, a swiftly increasing 
multitude. 

Be not surprised, brethren: before God and
this congregation I own myself to have been of the
number solemnly swearing to observe all those customs
which I then knew nothing of; and all those statutes
which I did not so much as read over, either then, or
for a long time afterwards. What is perjury, if this is
not? But if it be, oh, what a weight of sin, yea, sin of
no common dye, lieth upon us! And doth not the
Most High regard it? '

“ May it not be a consequence of this that so many
of you are a generation of triflers with God, with one
another, and your own souls? Who of you is, in any
degree, acquainted with the work of the Spirit, His
supernatural work in the souls of men? 

Can you bear, unless now and then in a church, any talk of the
Holy Ghost? Would you not take it for granted if
anyone began such a conversation, that it was 
hypocrisy or enthusiasm? In the name of the Lord God
Almighty I ask, What religion are ye of?

It is a startling deliverance, and as the preacher
descends from the pulpit, and is joined by his brother
and one or two friends, they go out alone. They are
marked men. Never again will that voice be heard in
the university church. And yet it was a true indictment, 
as the impartial witnesses already quoted bear
ample testimony.

But we must go back to Wesley in his under-
graduate days.

With all its faults Oxford has to be reckoned as
a definite factor in the making of Wesley. It set
its stamp upon the whole man. The spirit of the
place took possession of him. For the famous old
city has a marvellous fascination. In springtime
when the foliage is at its greenest, or in autumn when
the creepers are aflame with crimson, and the gold of
sundown touches the mullioned traceries and steals
into college halls, there is an irresistible magic about
the place.

It is a city of inspiring traditions. In earlier 
centuries it was almost cosmopolitan. Students flocked
to its colleges from all parts of Europe. It opened its
doors to the poorest. It was a university in the
broadest sense, and not merely an aristocratic club or
High Church preserve.

Wesley caught something of the glow of these old
memories. Oxford stood with him, not merely for
scholarship and culture, but for the liberality which
seeks to give of these to the people. 

We shall miss something of the genius of Methodism if we fail to
realise how, in after years, this son of Oxford sought
to bring the purest of literature and the finest products
of scholarly genius within the reach of the
multitudes who were lifted by the evangelical revival
out of the slough of semi-barbarism. 

In the New World, at least, the same spirit has found fine expression 
in the Methodist colleges and universities of the
United States, where the poorest lad is welcome, and
where the endowments and privileges and equipment
rival, in some instances, the richest of the old Oxford
foundations. Methodism was born in a university,
and the evangelism of to-day must not forget that
it has a mission of culture.

Wesley entered Oxford in 1720. He took his
Bachelor’s degree in 1724. The next year he was
made Fellow of Lincoln. After two years’ residence
he returned home for a time to act as curate to his
father, whose health was rapidly declining; but he 
returned to Oxford in 1729, and remained, save for short
absences, until he went to Georgia in 1735.

His years at Oxford divide themselves into three
periods: in the first he was the vivacious student; in
the second a sombre mystic; and in the third the
energetic Methodist. 

The first period includes the years at Christchurch
from 1720 to 1725.

A contemporary of Wesley during these early years
cleverly and graphically pictures him as a “very 
sensible and acute collegian, baffling every man by the
subtleties of logic, and laughing at them for being so
easily routed; a young fellow of the finest classical
taste, of the most liberal and manly sentiments; gay
and sprightly, with a turn for wit and humour.”


It is an attractive portrait, and, indeed, of this
period little more need be said. Wesley studied
hard, and at the same time entered with zest into the
lighter side of undergraduate life. Neither he nor his
brother ever had the slightest sympathy with the
coarser indulgences which proved the ruin of men
like Nicholas Amhurst. 

Probably few made such good use of their time. 

There were not many like Chaucer’s “Clerke of 
Oxenford” who “spent all on books and learning,” 
and John Wesley had little to
spend. What little he had went freely, and he was
sometimes in debt, and the home letters of the time
show that it was no easy matter to find the minimum
required for his university expenses.

But there were infiuences at work turning Wesley’s
thoughts towards serious things. There is a story of
the time which is more than a little suggestive. 

Returning late one night to his college, Wesley indulged
in some merry chaff at the expense of the college
porter.

“ Go home and get another coat,” said he.

“ This is the only one I have in the world,” replied
the porter, “and I thank God for it.”

“GO home and get your supper then,” said
Wesley.

“I have had nothing but a drink of water to-day,
and I thank God for that,” was the rejoinder.

' “It is late, and you will be locked out, and then
What will you have to thank God for?"

“I will thank Him for the dry stones to lie on."


“John,” said Wesley, “you thank God when you
have nothing to wear, nothing to eat, and no bed
to lie upon; what else do you thank Him for?”

“I thank Him,” said the porter, “that He has
given me my life and being, a heart to love Him, and
a desire to serve Him.” 

A passing incident, but it left a deep impression.
John Wesley felt that this humble man had found
something in religion which he as yet did not possess.

This, and the deeper influence of his mother’s letters
led the young undergraduate to give himself wholly to
the religious life, and to take orders as a clergyman of
the Church of England. 

The next four years, from 1725 to 1729, are among
the most important of Wesley’s life. They witnessed
great changes of thought and character, and seeds
were sown, the fruit of which is seen in after years.
He became a mystic, and, for the time, of a very
sombre hue.

Three books had a share in his development: the
Imitation of Christ,  Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and 
Holy Dying and Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and
Holy Life. 

The Imitation, with its “lasting record of human
needs and human consolations,” deeply stirred Wesley’s
spirit, though he felt its imperfections. There are three
great factors in religion;  God, the soul of man, and
the world without. 

In the Imiiafion, God and the
soul are throbbing realities, but the world with all its
needs is forgotten. Its keynote is devotion, not
service.
 
 And yet there are sentences, pulsating with
emotion, which must have moved Wesley to the very
depths of his nature.

“ Why wilt thou defer thy good purpose from day to
day? Arise, and begin this very instant, and say,
‘Now is the time to be doing, now is the time to
be stirring, now is the time to amend myself’ ”

“Thou must pass through fire and water, before
thou canst come to a place of refreshment.”

“ Unless thou dost earnestly force thyself thou
shalt never get the victory over sin.

Jeremy Taylor, who had “devotion enough for a
cloister, learning enough for a university, and wit
enough for a college of viruosi” as a contemporary
said after his death, is largely responsible for the
strong High Church bent given to Wesley’s early
career. 

Anti-Calvinist, anti-Puritan, advocating high
sacramental doctrine with immense ardour, extravagant
in his view of baptismal regeneration, and holding 
extreme views of the Lord’s Supper, he appealed strongly
to Wesley’s sympathies as they had taken form at the
time. It was this book that brought decision. 
“I resolved,” said Wesley, “to dedicate all my life to
God.”

This resolute purpose was still further deepened by
the influence of William Law, who is certainly one
of the most remarkable men of the time. 

The eighteenth century had little enthusiasm, and more
than anything else discountenanced anything like 
intensity in religion. Yet Law was a mystic of the
mystics. He seems utterly out of harmony with his
environment. 


As Canon Overton says, “To come across 
such a man in the midst of his surroundings is
like coming across an old Gothic cathedral, with its
air of calm grandeur and mellowed beauty, in the
midst of the staring red brick buildings of a brand-new
manufacturing town.”

His Serious Call  was pronounced to be a masterpiece
by men so eminent and so different as Gibbon,
Doddridge, and Dr. Johnson. It is a curious fact
that he lived for some time in Gibbon’s father’s house,
and Dr. Johnson said that the Seerious Call  was the
first book that made him in earnest about religion.

The central teaching of the book may be summed
up in a sentence from its pages.

“ Nothing godly can be alive in us but what has all
its life from the Spirit of God, living and breathing
in us.”

The profound spiritual truth expressed in these
words had a vital influence on the teaching of the
Great Revival.

During these fruitful years, Wesley was not only
gaining, but losing. It was in 1725 that he finally
flung away the old husk of Predestinarianism. 

Calvinism, in its narrowest signification, was preached
everywhere. Its iron hand held both Anglicanism
and Nonconformity in its grip. Exceptions like
William Law were rare, and it needed no small
courage to dissent from the generally accepted creed.

But Wesley’s heart and reason alike rebelled against
the logical consequences of Predestination. Writing
to his mother, he says, “How is this consistent with
either the divine justice or mercy? 


Is it mercy to ordain a creature to everlasting misery? 
Is it just to punish crimes which he could not but commit? 

That God should be the author of sin and injustice: which
must, I think, be the consequence of maintaining this
opinion, is a contradiction of the clearest idea we
have of the divine nature and perfections.” 

And his mother agreed with him. “ Predestination,” she said,
“was shocking, and ought to be abhorred.”

But, if all may be saved, may they not know themselves
saved? That was the problem which naturally
presented itself to Wesley’s acute mind. In another
of those deeply interesting letters to his mother, which
so clearly reveal the working of his mind at this
period, he writes:

“If we dwell in Christ, and He in us (which He will
not do unless we are regenerate), certainly we must be
sensible of it.”

Thirteen years were to roll by before the conviction
was ratified by living experience, but it is significant
that in this formative period we find the germ of the
truth which was to eventually take a supreme place in
the Methodist teaching.

But there was another great lesson to be learned: 
Wesley’s teachers, as we have seen, were narrow in
their outlook. There was nothing in them to 
foreshadow or suggest the great mission to the people.

But God sometimes makes the humblest men messengers 
of His sublimest truths, and it was to a poor
man in the Isle of Axholme that Wesley owed the
seed-thought that afterwards brought forth so vast a
harvest. 


After obtaining his M.A. degree with great 
distinction, he retumed home for a while to assist his
father as curate; and it was during this time that one
day he travelled several miles to talk with a “serious
man,” not far from the village where his father now
held an additional living.

“Sir,” said this nameless thinker, “you wish to serve
God and go to heaven. Remember you cannot serve
Him alone; you must therefore find companions or
make them; The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.” 

The influences thus briefly outlined reached their
height during the time that Wesley was Fellow of
Lincoln. It was a strenuous life from every point
of view. “Leisure and I have taken leave of one
another,” he wrote to his brother, Samuel. “I 
propose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is
so long indulged me.” But little did the men of
Lincoln know what leaven was working among them.

Lincoln College was founded in the fifteenth century
by Fleming, the Bishop of Lincoln, who burned
Wiclif’s bones. Strange that it should be a Fellow
of Lincoln who rekindled in England the fire that
burned in Wiclif’s soul.

In 1729 Wesley was recalled to Oxford, and for the
first time appeared in the character of a “ Methodist.”

During his first period at Oxford he was spiritually
asleep. During the second he became thoroughly
awake. But now he arouses himself to action. He
becomes at once the recognised leader of the little
group of men who are variously nicknamed Bible Bigots,
 Bible Moths, The Holy Club, the Methodists.


John Wesley was not the first Oxford Methodist.
That honour belongs to his brother Charles. Nor
was the term altogether new. But though given in
derision, it was transfigured by the character of the
men who bore it. Wesley accepted it as a true
description of what he and his fellows desired to be.

“A Methodist,” he said in later years, “is one that
lives according to the method laid down in the Bible.”

In the first instance the Holy Club consisted only
of the two Wesleys, and two friends, William Morgan
and Robert Kirkham. By degrees others joined, and
the most notable addition was George Whitefield in
1735. The number, two years later, rose to twenty-
seven.

It is unnecessary to give much space to the work of
the Holy Club. Many of the men who formed it
were associated with the Wesleys in later life, and
did good work as clergymen of the Church of
England.

At Oxford they were marked by the strictness of
their lives, and by their many philanthropies. Wesley’s
religion was no longer entirely self-centred, but found
vent in many activities. The one aim of these men
was to be good and to do good. 

Some cultivated friendship with other undergraduates, with a view to
helping them to more earnest Christian life. Some
visited the poor of the city and taught them in their
homes. Wesley himself founded a little school, and
not only paid the mistress, but clothed the poorer
children.


 Morgan set the example of visiting the
prison, a work which involved real heroism. For
gaol fever, a deadly form of typhus, was rife in the
eighteenth century, and the Oxford prison was as
insanitary as any. There was “no infirmary, no
bath, no straw, and the prisoners lay in their clothes
on mats. The felons’ day room for men and women,
down five steps, was twenty-three feet by eleven; the
men’s dungeon, down five more, was eighteen by
sixteen, with only small apertures, and swarming with
vermin. 

The women’s night room was seven feet by
four. Debtors had to provide their own beds, and
then pay eighteen pence a week for the privilege of
lying on them. In fact, all the worst abuses of the
day were in full force at Oxford, and the fellows
and undergraduates who devoted themselves so nobly
to the service of these poor and degraded prisoners
were men of great soul and worthy purpose.
 
In 1735 Wesley’s life at Oxford came to a close.
The brave old man at Epworth closed a devoted life
with a triumphant death. His last words were a
prophecy, “Be steady. The Christian life will surely
revive in this kingdom. You shall see it, though I
shall not.”

Of the Georgia missionary experience it is 
unnecessary here to write at length. Outwardly an
apparent failure, it was actually a needful experience.

It was Wesley’s “Arabia,” a desert episode from
which he went forth to a world-wide mission vaster
than had entered into the heart of any man of his
time. The years spent in Georgia are well worthy
of study.


In this over-sea colony Wesley gave
his high views of Church order and discipline a full
and fair trial, and the lessons were salutary. 

His character was tested in strange and unexpected ways,
and when the story is fully told it will be seen that the
intense humanness of the man was only exceeded by
his noble spirit of loyalty to the divine voice. 

It was a period when many things hung in the balance, and
at the end of it he sailed for England humbler and
wiser, little dreaming that an event was at hand which
would turn the current of a nation’s history. In
February 1738 he returned, and three months later
the vast change took place which ushered in a Revival
whose energies were to sweep round the globe.





VI .
THE THREE LEADERS







“Great men exist that there may
be yet greater men”  EMERSON.



George Whitefield,
Charles Wesley, and
John Wesley.
Their place in the Evangelical
Movement, and estimate
of their character





THE THREE LEADERS

IN the first chapter of this volume I have told the
story of the epoch-making day when Wesley grasped,
by thrilling personal experience, the truths which
were to change the face of England and be felt to
the utmost limit of the civilised world. 

Step by step we have studied the influences which 
went to the making of Wesley’s character, and it has
been shown how the varied spiritual energies of the 
past focussed themselves in his powerful personality.
 
We have now to see how the new resultant force found
expression in a movement which had for its aim
the revival of scriptural Christianity, a movement
represented to-day, not only by the world-wide
federation of Methodist churches, but also in the
new life infused into almost every other branch of
the Christian Church. 

Wesley did not stand alone. 

By his side were others without whose aid
the work could never have spread so swiftly, and it
will be interesting to estimate the influence they
exerted in the great campaign.

“Just at this time,” says Wesley, “when we
wanted little of filling up the measure of our 
iniquities, two or three clergymen of the Church of England
began vehemently to call sinners to repentance. 


In two or three years they had sounded the alarm to
the utmost borders of the land. Many thousands
gathered together to hear them, and, in every place
where they came, many began to show such a concern
for religion as they had never done before 
(Works, vol. vii. p.203).

The three clergymen referred to were George
Whitefield, Charles Wesley, and John Wesley:  men
at the best of their life, without benefice, without
authority, and all three comparatively unknown. But
they were men of great ideas. It was impossible to
pen them up within the fence of a parish, or even
within the shores of a sea-girt island. The world was
in their hearts.

Whitefield was the orator, Charles Wesley the
singer, and John Wesley the statesman of the
movement. Equipped with varied and exceptional
gifts, they stood shoulder to shoulder in the iight, but
it is not a little remarkable that both Whitefield and
Charles Wesley preceded John in the possession of
that saving faith which became the keynote of their
preaching.

Whitefield was of humble origin. He started life
as tapster in a city inn. But there were latent powers
which soon showed themselves when, as a humble
servitor at Oxford, he entered the lists of university
life. As with John Wesley, the reading of the
Imitation and of Law’s Serious Call made a profound
impression upon his mind, and, after twelve month’s
residence at college, he became a member of the
Holy Club. 


When the Wesleys left for Georgia, Whitefield
became the moving spirit among the Oxford Methodists. 
His struggles after the light remind one of the
conflicts so graphically described by John Bunyan in
Grace Abounding. 

For seven weeks he went through indescribable 
agony of soul, fasting, praying, hoping,
despairing, and when at last he found deliverance,
his “joys were like a springtide, and, as it were,
overflowed the banks,” and the happy experience
once gained, deepened to the very end of life.

For such a man silence was impossible. The Word
of God was a fire in his bones, and when it found
expression, preaching became in his hands a new
power. His first sermon was preached in St. Mary’s,
Gloucester, and it was reported to the fine old bishop
who ordained him, one of the best on the bench, 
that fifteen of his hearers had gone clean mad. The
bishop quietly remarked that he hoped the madness
would continue.

His dramatic power as a preacher never rose
higher than when preaching to the tens of thousands
that crowded to Moorfields or Kennington Common
to hear the great orator. The vast multitude of faces
was like a wind-swept sea. Wave after wave of
emotion spread from centre to circumference, smiles
and tears rippled over the surface like sunshine and
driven cloud.
 
All sorts and conditions of men were there: 
great ladies, ecclesiastical dignitaries, street-
hawkers and working-men, merchants and beggars of
the slums, and all alike felt the power of his magnetic
personality. He had no grace or beauty of person.

His eyes were small, and had a slight squint; his
figure was stout, his dress careless, his wig often
awry; but his voice was an instrument of magical
sweetness and thrilling intensity. His eloquence
swept off their feet the keenest intellects of the time.

He appealed not to the head, but to the heart, and
tears ran down the manliest face as he lifted up
before his audience the crucified Saviour.

It was a refreshing change from the cold, devitalised
moralities to which most congregations were accustomed. 
A hard-headed Scotchman put the matter
in a nutshell when, reproved by his minister for
listening to so irregular an evangelist, he replied,

“ Well, when I hear you I am planting trees all the
time, but during the whole of Mr. Whitefield’s
sermon I had no time to plant even one.”

Whitefield did not possess the fine gifts of 
statesmanship and theological acumen combined in John
Wesley, and, when he separated from the Wesleys
and became the leader of a distinct community of
Methodists, the visible results of his work were
comparatively small. But the influence of his oratory
during the earlier years of the movement it is difficult
to overestimate.

Charles Wesley was the singer of the new Pentecost, 
and his songs were even mightier than the 
eloquence of Whitefield. His individuality is to some
extent overshadowed by the forceful personality of his
greater brother, but no study of Methodist origins
would be complete without an appreciation of the
work done by Charles as well as John. 


Both were built in heroic mould, and in Charles Wesley we
recognise the heroism of a man who rises above his
strongest prejudices. He hated irregularity, and
loved the liturgy, the rubrics, the decent and orderly
worship of the Anglican Church; and for a man of
his refined and delicate sensibility, with scholarly and
even aristocratic tastes, to preach in the open, to
fling aside the preferences of a lifetime, and to
recognise the necessity of a hundred innovations,
meant courage of no ordinary measure.

He also passed through the same spiritual conflict
as his brother, and found the peace and assurance
he desired just three days earlier. Curiously enough
the Moravians were also instrumental in his 
enlightenment. Soon after his arrival in England, Peter
Bohler “put himself under Charles Wesley’s care to
learn English,” and through him the English clergyman
learned the language of spiritual freedom.

While acting as tutor to the Moravian, Charles
Wesley had a serious illness. Bohler visited him,
and spoke to him very faithfully. “For what reason
do you hope to be saved?" he asked. “Because I
have used my best endeavours to serve God,” Charles
replied.
 
 “Bohler,” says Charles, in telling the story,
“Shook his head and said no more. I thought him
very uncharitable, saying in my heart, ‘Would he
rob me of my endeavours? I have nothing else to
trust to.”’

But the one who led him to the full knowledge of
the Saviour was “a poor ignorant mechanic, who
knows nothing but Christ.” 


This was a brazier, called Bray; and the cultivated young
clergyman insisted, ill as he was, on being carried to Bray’s
house, that he might learn from him the way of
salvation. 

It was there that he read Luther On the
Galatians, and the great forgotten truths of the
Reformation became living in the heart and 
imagination of the Protestant clergyman of the 
eighteenth century.

With Charles Wesley’s conversion a new note came
into English song. The very first words that met
his eye when he turned to the Bible on that eventful 
Whitsunday were, “He hath put a new song
into my mouth.” Charles Wesley was a poet, and
he at once set himself to tell in musical and
rhythmic phrase the story of his own deliverance.

Within two days he had committed to writing the
first stanzas of a hymn which more than any other
expresses the spirit of early Methodism. Intense
personal conviction and overflowing joy in God are
linked with mighty appeal. The first stanza is full of
the glow of his new and happy experience:

“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?”

But after a wonderful outpouring in verse after
verse of love and devotion, the irresistible missionary
and evangelistic impulse finds expression in the
lines:

“ Come, O my guilty brethren, come,
Groaning beneath your load of sin,
His bleeding heart shall make you room
His open side shall take you in;
He calls you now, invites you home;
Come, O my guilty brethren, come !”

It is little wonder, when songs like these went forth,
that the nation was moved to its very depths.

Charles Wesley’s hymns are steeped in scriptural
thought. Some of them suggest the great ideas of
inspiration in every line. Nor are they merely a
beautiful mosaic of biblical phraseology: they 
illuminate Scripture. Many are intensely theological,
but the most abstract of sciences glows with vitality
when touched by Charles Wesley. 

No truth is too deep, no thought too lofty, 
no conception too subtle to elude the
poet’s grasp, and there are luminous,
expository, experimental hymns in which whole
sermons and treatises are crystallised into beautiful
and forceful expression.

One of the finest illustrations may be found in
another hymn belonging to the same period, the one
beginning with the lines:

“And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Saviour's blood.”

At least thirty-six passages of Scripture are verbally
and definitely illustrated. 



The third stanza is a wonderful echo of Paul’s great 
philosophy of the “Kenosis”: the Emptying:  in the second 
chapter of the Philippians; and it is scarcely 
possible to imagine anything finer than the parallel in
the fourth stanza, between Peter’s deliverance from prison and
the emancipation of the soul:

“ Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”

Charles Wesley’s hymns have long overpassed all
ecclesiastic boundaries, and have probably done
more than any other influence to carry the energy
and life of the evangelical revival into communions
other than our own.

John Wesley was the statesman of the movement.
He was a born general and organiser: a
master of men.

His instincts as a leader come out grandly during
the troublous early years of persecution.

Small in stature, with delicate, refined features,
and quiet, gentle manner, he had an extraordinary
power over the mob. He was a man of unquenchable courage. 

It was his principle “always to look
a mob in the face.”  When riots broke out under
the preaching of the Methodists in any part of the
country, Wesley at once made his way to the centre
of unrest to deal with the difficulty in person. The
very light of his face seemed at times to still the
tempest.



At Bolton, in 1742, a furious crowd, ready for
any mischief surrounded the house where he was. 

A friend who went out to still them was seized,
rolled in the mud, and pushed back into the house
unrecognisable. Wesley quietly mounted a chair in
the doorway, and looked round on the sea of angry
faces. To use his own words, “The winds were
hushed, and all were calm and still. My heart was
filled with love, my eyes with tears, and my mouth
with arguments.”

At Plymouth the rabble was led by a young 
lieutenant and a number of riotous soldiers. Wesley
waited a while, but finding that the passions of the
crowd were becoming more and more inflamed, he
stepped right out into the heart of it, took the
captain by the hand, looking straight into his eyes.
Instantly the man’s whole demeanour changed.

“Sir,” he said, “I will see you safe home. Sir, no
man shall touch you. Gentlemen, stand off, give
back. I will knock down the first man that touches
him.”
 
And so the tall lieutenant and the little
minister walked side by side till they reached the
house where Wesley was staying, and then Wesley
turned round and talked to the people, who eventually
went away “in high good humour.”

On another occasion, in Falmouth, the mob attacked
the house where Wesley was. They were literally
besieged, and the outworks were very soon carried,
nothing but a thin partition separating them from the
mob.
“Oh, sir, what shall we do?" said Kitty, the
daughter of the house.
“ We must pray,” said Wesley.


“ But is it not better for you to hide yourself? ”
“ No,” quietly replied the brave man. “It is best
for me to stand just where I am.”

By this time some reckless sailors, who evidently
thoroughly enjoyed “parson baiting,” put their
shoulders to the door, shouting, “ Avast, lads, avast!”
and, at length, down it came with a crash. 

Without a moment’s hesitation, Wesley stepped forward, 
walking right into the heart of the crowd as the crowd
divided, saying, “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?"

And then as the crowd hushed for a moment in sheer
surprise, he cried, “ Neighbours, countrymen! Do
you desire to hear me speak? ”

“Yes, yes,” they shouted; “he shall speak,” and
the victory was won.

Another remarkable illustration may be found in
the story of the well-known riot at Wednesbury, when,
as Wesley began to pray aloud, the leader, a great
hulking prize-lighter, put himself in front of Wesley
and said, “ Sir, I will spend my life for you! Follow
me, and not one soul here shall touch a hair of your
head.”

When Charles Wesley; a few weeks later, asked
“Honest Munchin,” the ringleader in question
“What think you of my brother?" he replied,
“Think of him! That he is a mon of God: and
God was on his side, when so mony of us could not
kill one mon.”

The same intrepid courage and genius for leadership 
are equally evidenced in later years, when it
became necessary to tread unknown ways and to
make bold experiments which only a great faith
would ever have dared to attempt. A recent writer
maintains that genius, so far from being associated
with anything morbid or degenerate, is the uprush of
an underlying personality greater than any of which
we are conscious. 

In Wesley that may well have been true. 
Again and again we see him carried
beyond himself, and in these moments of penetration
and more than human insight we recognise not only
a great spiritual genius, but also the touch of the
divine hand.

These, then, were the Leaders, men of the age, each
unique in his own line, but the greatest is John
Wesley himself.

Charles had limitations from which his brother was
free, but never were two brothers more loyal to one
another. With John Wesley it was always, “My
brother and I ”;  and they worked lovingly together to
the end. Charles Wesley himself said that the chief
difference between them was that his brother’s
principle was, “First the Methodists, then the Church,”
while he reversed the order and would state it, “First
the Church, then the Methodists.” 

Theoretically, Charles held tenaciously to many of his
early Anglican views, but in practice he was nearly 
as broad as his brother.

The differences between Wesley and Whitefield
were more radical, and the divergence between the
two men was evident in their preaching.


Whitefield appealed to the emotions, Wesley was
calm, judicial, logical; Whitefield thought in feelings,
Wesley in syllogisms;  Whitefield was swept along by
the torrent of his own oratory, Wesley never lost self-
control; the one awakened terrifying fears or ecstatic
joys, .the other carried home relentless conviction.

Whitefield was like a storm that lashes the ocean
surface into fury, Wesley was like the deep-sea
current, never ceasing, never deflected;  Whitefield
saw in moments, Wesley had the vision of centuries; 
the present worth of Whitefield’s sermons was
perhaps the greater, but Wesley’s had a capacity for
accumulating power at compound interest.

With natures so different it is scarcely wonderful
that they failed to see eye to eye on the great
practical issues raised by the new order of things.

For years they were estranged, though happily they
were fully reconciled before Whitefield died. 

Whitefield, indeed, was in many respects a most lovable
man; though Wesley, by his life work, added more to
the sum-total of love in the world. In spite of all
differences, Wesley recognised the true nobility of his
early friend and co-worker.

A striking story, told in the Contemporary Review
at the time of the Wesley Centenary, illustrates his
humility and largeness of heart. Shortly after 
Whitefield’s death, a lady who knew and reverenced both,
and who was aware of their controversies, approached
Wesley with some anxiety.
“ Dear Mr. Wesley, may I ask you a question ?’
“ Yes, of course, madam, by all means?



“‘But, dear Mr. Wesley, I am very much afraid
what the answer will be.’
Well, madam, let me hear your question, and
then you will know my reply.’

“At last, after not a little hesitation, the inquirer
tremblingly asked, ‘ Dear Mr. Wesley, do you expect
to see dear Mr. Whitefield in heaven ? ’

“A lengthened pause followed, after which John
Wesley replied with great seriousness, ‘ No, madam.’
“ His inquirer at once explained, ‘Ah, I was afraid
you would say so.’

“To which John Wesley added, with intense
earnestness, ‘ Do not misunderstand me, madam;
George Whitefield was so bright a Star in the 
firmament of God’s glory, and will stand so near the
throne, that one like me, who am less than the least,
will never catch a glimpse of him.’ ”

John Wesley’s character stands out the more
grandly as we study it right through to the close of life.
He owed much to his magnificent constitution, to
his strong common sense, and to his power of self-
discipline.

He was a man of absolute honesty and unswerving
truthfulness. He knew no fear; he was conspicuously
free from jealousy and suspicion, and indeed from all
the little meannesses of human nature.

He was a thinker of swift perception. In practical
questions his decisions were quickly made and
seldom revised;  but when revision was necessary, it
was frankly and boldly done.


Few men have been more open-minded. 
He welcomed the light, and showed his true greatness in
his willingness to learn from the very humblest.

As a theologian he was governed by a strong love
of reality and a keen historic sense. 

He possessed that quality of taste of which Ruskin says, 
that “it grasps all that it loves so hard 
that it crushes it if it be hollow.” 

His generalship has been already referred to. 
He was unquestionably commander-in-chief of his forces.

But the power came to him unsought, and it was
never exercised for selfish ends. It is not a little
remarkable, that possessing almost despotic control,
he everywhere won the hearts of his followers.

In scholarship, versatility, and in the saving sense
of humour, he ranked high among the men of his day.
He was the busiest man in England. Few men
have ever possessed such an enormous capacity for
work. 

Dr. Johnson’s one grumble at Wesley was
summed up in the sentence, “He is never at
leisure.” During his strenuous life he travelled a
quarter of a million miles, and preached no less than
40,000 sermons.

No man that has ever walked this earth, save One
who was more than man, has been free from faults,
and Wesley had his. He made mistakes, and he had
one or two curious limitations. A lover of children
he was singularly ignorant of child nature, as the
extraordinary Spartan regulations for Kingswood
School are evidence. 


He recognised, as few have done, the noble 
service that may be rendered by
women to the Church of Christ; and yet women he
never understood, and some of the greatest sorrows
of his life are due to the fact.

Such was Wesley, and more: and this imperfect
estimate of the man may help to the understanding
of his work. It now remains to see how during
Wesley’s lifetime the foundations were laid, firm
and strong, on which the whole superstructure of
Methodism rests to-day. 




VII.

THE GREAT METHODIST YEAR: 1739






“ There is no other religious society
under heaven which requires nothing
of men, in order to their admission 
into it, but a desire to save their souls.

I do not know any other religious
society, either ancient or modern,
wherein such liberty of conscience is
now allowed, ‘or has been allowed,
since the age of the Apostles.”
WESLEY (“JOURNAL,” 1788).



The beginnings of Methodism, 
Chapels,
Class Meetings, 
Evangelistic Work and Fellowship, 

all brought into existence during one
wonderful year.






THE GREAT METHODIST YEAR: 1739

THE year 1739 was a year of origins. It saw the first
Methodist love-feast, the first field-preaching, the first
dawn of the Class Meeting, and the building of the
first Methodist chapel.

One of the most interesting gatherings of the early
Christian Church was the agape, or love-feast. It was
a simple, spontaneous expression of fellowship, and
from it all forms of Christian worship have been little
by little differentiated. The first believers met in
singleness of heart, as those who belonged to one
family. 

They broke bread together; they exhorted
one another; they read at the homely meeting the
letters from Paul or John that were handed from
Church to Church.
 
As time went on, after remembering the Saviour’s
dying love, they would read the
names and recall the lives of brothers and sisters in
Christ who had passed away. In earliest times it was
the centre of the Church’s life.

The Moravians revived this early institution, and
Wesley borrowed the idea from them, admiring its
simple and scriptural character; and on New Year’s
Day, 1739, the little group that instinctively clung to
Wesley as their leader met for a love-feast in a room
in Fetter Lane. 


It was not a Moravian meeting. 
It was the first Methodist Love-feast. 

Seven of those present were clergymen, and 
belonged to the Holy Club, but there were
sixty others, the first-fruits of the great
Church of the people so soon to be called into existence.

It was a memorable meeting, full of Pentecostal
power. “About three in the morning,” writes Wesley,
“as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power
of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many
cried out for exceeding joy. As soon as we were
recovered a little from the 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.’ ”

The love-feast became one of the most popular
institutions of Methodism; but, in recent years, its
form has become stereotyped, and its power is rarely
that of the olden days. 

The year thus begun was to carry the Methodist
leaders far before it ended. In February, Whitefield
went to Bristol, and experienced his first serious
rebuff. The churches were closed to him. 
 
The only building where he obtained permission to preach
was the gaol, the gaoler being one of his own converts,
and there he spoke daily until that also was forbidden
by order of the mayor and sheriffs.

Whitefield was not long in making his decision.
Not far from Bristol was the colliery village of 
Kingswood, one of the new industrial populations springing
up on the great coalfields, and practically ignored by
the Church.


 The people were no better than heathen,
notorious throughout the neighbourhood for their
lawlessness and brutality. 

But to reach them he must preach in the open
air, for they were absolutely without church
or school, and on February 17th he spoke for
the first time under the open roof of heaven.

The congregation was only two hundred on this first
occasion, but the numbers swiftly mounted up to two
thousand and four thousand, and then to ten, fifteen,
and twenty thousand. Day after day he addressed
these closely packed multitudes. 

They stood on the walls, they clambered on 
waggons, they lifted each other into trees, 
and, as Whitefield pleaded, the tears made 
white channels down their grimy faces. No
one had ever cared for their souls, and their 
hearts went out to the courageous preacher.

The work assumed such proportions that Wesley
was invited by Whitefield to help him. But Wesley’s
instinct of order rebelled against the innovation. He
writes:

“I could scarce reconcile myself at first to
this strange way of preaching in the fields,
having been all my life (till very lately) 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.”

But on his arrival, he listened to Whitefield; and in
the evening, to stiffen his own resolution, he spoke to
the little society, by this time formed, on the Sermon
on the Mount, which was certainly an illustration of
open-air' preaching if ever there was one.
 
The next day he flung prejudice to the winds, and 
preached to four thousand people from the text, 
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because 
He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.”

This was the first great breach in John Wesley’s
High Anglican defences. From this time forward he
preached everywhere, and more often out~of-doors
than in. On mountain and moorland, in Moorfields
and Gwennap Pit, he illustrated the noble principle
which he afterwards laid down for all his preachers,
“Go, not only to those who want you, but to those
who want you most.”

But the most interesting event of the year was the
rise of the Class Meeting. Strictly speaking, it did not
take shape until later, but its roots go back to 1739.

The Class Meeting simply represents the craving of
earnest souls for fellowship and association.
Methodism is an illustration of the fine old Cornish
motto, “One and All.”, It believes in the power of
the one, and in the still greater power which is gained
by linking the ones into a unity. 

“There are some things of the religious life,” 
says Phillips Brookes, “that a man can only
learn in the company of his fellows.” 

Wesley recognised the profound truth
expressed in these words, and made fellowship the
binding influence of the new movement.

Individuality is the centrifugal force of Christianity,
and it needs to be balanced by the complementary
force of association. 


Every planet in the solar system has its own
character, and, left to itself, would take its own course
through the infinite fields of space. But, stronger
than the impulse which would send it spinning aimlessly 
through wildernesses of death, is the silent
influence which holds it in steady revolution round
the sun, warmed by the sun’s bright rays, and not
alone, one of a group of planets similarly bound,
similarly blest.

So when a man becomes a Christian, he does not
lose his individuality, but he takes his place in a
fellowship of souls, each one of which looks to Christ
as the centre of his life. Fellowship is the centripetal
force of the Church.

The first attempt to realise such a fellowship in
something like a Class Meeting was at Bristol, not
long after the events just described.

On April 4th, 1739, “in the evening three women
agreed to meet together weekly, with the same 
intention as those in London, viz. ‘To confess their
faults one to another .... ’ 

At eight, four young men agreed to meet in 
pursuance of the same design.”

“How dare any man,” asks Wesley, “deny this to be
(in the substance of it) a means of grace ordained by
God?” 

The names of these Bristol Methodists deserve to
be remembered.

It was a woman’s idea. A Mrs. Panon “desired
that she might propose the design to ‘two others, Mrs.
Norman and Mrs. Greville,’ and offer them the liberty
of joining.”

The four men were “Samuel Witham, a
surgeon;  Richard Cross, upholsterer; Charles Bonner,
distiller; and Thomas Westell, carpenter.”

“If this work be not of God,” says John Wesley, in
the letter in which he gives these facts, “let it come
to nought. If it be, who can hinder it?”

It was, in truth, the little Church crystallising into
shape, following no lines of human organisation, but
taking new forrns of beauty designed by God Himself.

John Wesley gives a deeply interesting account of
the origin of the Methodist Society in his Appeal to
Men of Reason and Religion. He dates it from the
fellowship meeting which became necessary in London
the same year.

Those whose lives had been changed
through the preaching of the Wesleys, felt the need of
guidance, encouragement, companionship, and Wesley
advised them to meet together as often as possible.

“‘But,’ they said, ‘we want you likewise
to talk with us often, to direct and quicken
us in our way, to give us the advices which
you well know we need.’

“I asked,  "Which of you desire this?
Let me know your names, and places of abode."

They did so. But I soon found they were
too many for me to talk with severally so
often as they wanted it. So I told them, "If
you will all of you come together every
Thursday, in the evening, I will. give you the
best advice I can."

“Thus arose, without any previous design
on either side, what was afterwards called a
Society; a very innocent name, and very
common in London for any number of people
associating themselves together.”
(Works, vol. viii. pp. 249, 250.)


The Class Meeting, as we now know it, took shape
a little later in Bristol.

“The people were scattered: so wide in all
parts of the town, from Wapping to Westminster” 
(the boundaries east and west of continuous 
London a century and a half ago), “that
I could not easily see what the behaviour of
each person in his own neighbourhood was:
so that several disorderly walkers did much
hurt before l was apprised of it. .

“At length, while we were thinking of quite
another thing, we struck upon a method for
which we have cause to bless God ever since.

I was talking with several of the Society in
Bristol concerning the means of paying the
debts there, when one ”(Charles Foy)“ stood
up and said, ‘Let every member of the Society
give a penny a week, till all are paid.’

Another answered, ‘But many of them are
poor, and cannot afford to do it.’,Then,’ said
he, ‘put eleven of the poorest with me, and if
they can give anything, well; I will call on
them weekly, and if they can give nothing, I
will give for them as well as for 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.


In a while 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.

“As soon as possible, the same method was
used in London, and all other places.”
(Works, vol. viii. p. 252.)

In the story told by Wesley it is easy for us to
recognise the instinct of association working 
unconsciously among the people. 
But it was by no means popular. 

The prejudices of the age were against it.
There is a curious illustration of this in the journal of
Thomas Twining, a clergyman of Wesley’s day, and a
fair representative of the conventional ideas of the
time. He gives a lively description of the Gordon
riots in 1780, and then bursts into indignant protest:

“What punishment is too much for an endeavour to
inflame a people with religious animosity? especially
at such a time, when that kind of spirit has long been
quietly laid;  and mankind, if left to themselves, have
little or no propensity to that most horrible of vices
called zeal, . . . 

I am in hopes. that good consequences may follow 
this convulsion, that it may be a little help to
open people’s eyes, and to erring  into disgrace 
the associating spirit, by showing so evidently
its only tendency.”

No doubt the "associating” Methodists would come
equally under his ban.

If it had not been for the Class Meeting, Methodism
would have been a rope of sand. 


Wherever the Revival spread, there was the little 
meeting of Christians, a rallying point for all 
converts, in constant touch with the movement 
elsewhere, linking the units into a compact unity.
 
And in these days, when the principle of association 
is illustrated in the powerful trusts, combines, and
unions which, for good or ill, are revolutionising 
modern industry, there is need that, by every means
in our power, we should strengthen the spirit of 
comradeship in the Church. 

But, unless we are to make the same mistake as the
formalists of the eighteenth century, it must be kept
in mind that the essential point is not the Class
Meeting itself, but the principle of fellowship it 
is intended to express.

Before leaving the subject of fellowship, a word
ought to be said as to Methodist giving. The
financial bed-rock of Methodism is the “penny a
week and a shilling a quarter,” a method of 
systematic liberality the origin of which is 
told above.

There are many wealthy, open-hearted laymen in our
Church to-day who give largely of their abundance,
but the whole fabric would crumble to pieces if we
abandoned the regular weekly giving of the rank and
file. 'The Methodist churches have always regarded
giving as not merely a duty, but a privilege, a joyous
element of religion, and not a mere irksome necessity.

Their happiest and most prosperous members are the
most generous. In the working out of the principle
which has already so enriched us spiritually there is
room for development, and probably nothing would
do more to deepen and strengthen the best life of the
Church than a movement to promote consecrated,
systematic, and proportionate giving.


The amazing rapidity with which events moved is
shown by the fact that within a year of Wesley’s great
spiritual change the foundation was laid of the first
Methodist chapel.  

This was the “room” in Bristol, commenced on
May 12th, 1739. Wesley appointed eleven trustees
with himself, but they did very little to raise the
necessary funds, and, on the suggestion of Whitefield,
Wesley got rid of them, and took the entire 
responsibility upon his own shoulders.

He followed the same precedent in the case of
nearly all chapels subsequently built, and the property
of Methodism remained vested in himself until, by the
Deed of Declaration, he transferred it to the Legal
Conference.

The debts at Bristol referred to in the story of the
Class Meeting were the debts on this little chapel, and
it is interesting to note that they were paid out of the
freewill offerings of the people. 

The  Methodist “penny a week,” envied by some notable 
students of the movement, originated in this First chapel-
building scheme. Methodism has no tithes, endowments, 
or similar resources, the whole fabric rests on
the love and generosity of its members and adherents.

A still more famous centre of spiritual influence
was secured in London the same year. This was the
old Foundery, not far away from the site ofthe present
Book-room.

For thirty-eight years it focussed the
activities of London Methodism, and was then 
superseded by City Road chapel. 

Imagination lingers round the plain old building
where Methodism in the Metropolis first found a
home. It was little better than a ruin and was almost
entirely rebuilt, yet Wesley managed to get a chapel
seating fifteen hundred (part of it being used as a
schoolroom); a band-room holding three hundred, and  a
“book-room”.

Also 3 living rooms upstairs, used by Wesley
himself, and in which Susannah Wesley, his mother,
from this time lived and died; and, gradually, there
were added an almshouse and a dispensary, and it
became Wesley’s base of operations for all kinds of
religious and philanthropic work.

So, swiftly and naturally the new movement took
shape. A review of the events of this wonderful year
makes one hesitate to speak of John Wesley as the
“founder” of Methodism. He was rather the 
inspired genius to whom it was given to recognise the
divine leading. 

The new departures of 1739 were nearly all 
in the teeth of Wesley’s most cherished
ideas. He never intended to take these critical steps.

He took them unwillingly. Some of the most fruitful
suggestions came from the people. The most 
remarkable fact about the events is their spontaneity.

As Wesley himself describes it, speaking of these
early Methodist workers : 
“As they had not the least expectation, at
first, of anything like what has since followed,
so they had no previous design or plan at all;
but everything arose just as the occasion offered.


They saw or felt some impending or
pressing evil, or some good end necessary to
be pursued. And many times they fell unawares
on the very thing which secured the
good or removed the evil.”

Particularly was this true of the formation of classes
for fellowship under the guidance of leaders, the idea
which has shaped organic Methodism. It suddenly
flashed into the minds of Wesley and others while
they “were thinking of quite another thing.”

So the work grew, and, during this epoch-making
year, were laid down clearly and firmly the lines which
governed the whole of its after development.
 
It will now be necessary to study the types of men
created by the new order of things, the institutions
that gradually took shape, and the teachings as to 
Church and faith which Methodism was destined
to give to the whole world.





VIII.

JOHN WESLEY’S PREACHERS




“Sacred Courage indicates that a
man loves an idea better than all
things in the world, and will venture
all to put in act the invisible thought
in his mind.”  EMERSON.


Thomas Maxfields’ daring innovation: 

Three representative preachers: 
Mitchell, Haime, and Nelson.





JOHN WESLEY’S PREACHERS

THE marvellous growth of Methodism, so powerfully
illustrated by the events of one year described in the
last chapter, made it impossible for any three men,
however mighty in word and deed, to cover the work
to be done, and there sprang into existence a new
order of preachers, men of the people, and in some
instances men of extraordinary power and heroic
courage.

The first of these was Thomas Maxfield, one of the
lay helpers, who, in the very earliest years of the
Revival, attached themselves to Wesley and took
charge of the new societies in his absence. While
Wesley was on one of his journeys in 1742, Maxfield
was left at the Foundery, where Susannah Wesley at
this time had her rooms, and, carried away by his
enthusiasm, he actually had the audacity to preach.

Wesley soon heard of it and rode post haste to
London. The idea of a layman preaching was 
contrary to all his ideas of ecclesiastical fitness. 

As he owned a few years later, he had “the deepest 
prejudices against it,”--“to touch this point was to
touch the apple of my eye.” So strong was his 
feeling that he determined at once to put a 
stop to the irregular proceeding.


But a conversation with his mother checked his
impetuosity. His introduction of the subject was
blunt enough. 

“Thomas Maxfield has turned preacher, I hear.”

“John,” replied Mrs. Wesley, “you know what my
sentiments have been. You cannot suspect me of
favouring readily anything of this kind. But take
care what you do respecting that young man; for he is
as surely called of God to preach as you are.”

Wesley did the only sensible thing: he heard
Maxfield preach, and was compelled to acknowledge
the hand of God. From this day forward his scruples
against lay preaching went to the winds, and, little by
little, the new army of workers multiplied.

These men are worth studying if only for their
heroism. “Methodism,” said Isaac Taylor, was
“expansive and adventurous,” and the early preachers
were true pioneers. An interesting comparison might
be drawn between the sea-dogs of the Elizabethan
time and the brave spirits of the Great Revival.

England at the beginning of the sixteenth century
was only an island with little outlook beyond itself,
just as the religion of the eighteenth century was
narrow and insular.
 
Even as Queen Bess’s sailors
felt the call of the “great beyond,” and with 
matchless daring steered their cockle-shells of boats
into unknown seas, and along the coasts of new and
fascinating lands, so the early Methodists conquered
new worlds of experience, broke ground in untouched 
territories of the soul, and did so with a
dauntlessness which loses nothing by comparison
with the most fearless spirits of the dawntime of the
Empire.

“If the hero be the sincere man, why should not
every one of us be a hero?” said Carlyle. Certainly
the early preachers were conspicuously sincere.

Sincere, in the literal sense of the Greek equivalent,
means “judged by the sun”; and the figure suggests
the testing-room of a woollen mill, with its great
windows from floor to ceiling, and its rolls of woven
material unfolded yard by yard and scrutinised by
practised eyes in the cold north light. 

There are plenty of lives that pass 
muster in the crowd, tested by the 
average standard of the day. But what are
they like when judged by the sun? By the glare of
unfriendly criticism, by the cool north light of history,
by the tests of Scripture?

By any of those standards these men are heroes:
true, honest, resolute, self-sacrificing, men to admire,
men to imitate, 

The wealth of material for study is so great that it
is difficult to make an adequate selection. Names
crowd upon the memory: Thomas Walsh, the Irish
saint, of whom Wesley said, “I love, honour, and
admire him ”.

Olivers, the converted cobbler, to
whom we owe one of the finest lyrics ever written. 

Christopher Hopper, the first itinerant in Scotland;
Asbury, the pioneer of American Methodism.
 
But these, and others, must be passed by in order 
to give larger space to three typical men, whose 
names are worthy to stand beside those of far 
greater fame. 


The first of these is Thomas Mitchell, the “poor
man’s preacher,” as he was lovingly called, a man
who possessed the heroism of a martyr. The story
of his Lincolnshire persecution is one of the most
touching in all the annals of Methodism.

It must be understood that Wesley’s preachers
were under his absolute command. They went where
he bade them go, and they went on faith. They were
at first absolutely dependent on the hospitality of the
little societies that were springing up all over the land.

At the very first Conference the principle was laid
down: “Take no money of anyone. If they give
you food when you are hungry, or clothes when you
need them, it is good; but not silver and gold.”

Even Wesley himself was once reduced to a breakfast 
on blackberries. Not until 1752 was it decided
that each itinerant preacher should have a stipend of
£12 a year, to provide himself with necessaries.

It was a year earlier than this, on August 7th,
that Mitchell arrived in the small hours of the 
morning in the little village of Wrangle, and by 
five o’clock he was preaching. 

But the room in which the service was held 
was soon stormed by an angry mob, led by
two constables, who took the preacher into custody.

For eleven hours, by order of the parish clergyman,
the two officers of the law kept guard over him,
and then handed him over to the rabble, who 
proceeded to duck him in a pool of standing water.
The events which followed are best told in Mitchell’s
vivid and simple narrative.

“ It took me up to the neck. Several times I strove
to get out, but they pitched me in again. 


They told me I must go through it seven times. I did so, and
then they let me come out. When I had got upon
dry ground, a man stood ready with a pot full of
white paint. He painted me all over from head to foot;
and then they carried me into a public-house again.

Here I was kept, till they had put five more of our
friends into the water. Then they came and took
me out again, and carried me to a great pond, which
was railed in on every side, being two to twelve feet
deep. Here, four men took me by the legs and arms,
and swung me backward and forward. For a moment
I felt the flesh shrink; but it was quickly gone.

I gave myself up to the Lord, and was content His
will should be done. They swung me two or three
times, and then threw me as far as they could into
the water. The fall and the water soon took away
my senses,,so that I felt nothing more. But some of
them were not willing to have me drowned. So they
watched till I came above water, and then, catching
hold of my clothes with a long pole, made shift to
drag me out.”

Alarmed at their own handiwork, the ruffians 
dispersed, and Mitchell was carried, more dead than
alive, into the house of a compassionate neighbour.

But, hearing he was not drowned after all, the mob
returned, dragged him out of bed into the street, and
threatened to tear him limb from limb unless he
pledged himself to preach there no more. But the
plucky fellow plainly replied, “I will promise no such
thing”


Once again he got out of their clutches and was
put to bed; but in a little while his persecutors came
back again, armed with fresh orders from the clergy-
man, and, though his clothes were unfit to put on,
they put an old coat about him, hooted him out of
the village, and, with a final jeer, “God save the
King; and the devil take the preacher,” left him to find
shelter as best he might.

“Here,” continues Thomas Mitchell, “they left
me, penniless and friendless, for no one durst come
near me. And my strength was nearly gone;  so that
I had much ado to walk. But from the beginning
to the end my mind was in perfect
peace. I found no anger or resentment, but could
heartily pray for my persecutors.”

It would scarcely be possible to find a nobler 
example of what Emerson calls “Sacred Courage,” for
certainly the brave Yorkshireman “ventured all to
put in act” the consuming purpose that possessed
him. “He endured as seeing Him who is invisible.”

A man of a very different type was John Haime,
the soldier-saint. He was simply a dragoon in the
ranks, and fought in the last battle in which the
British army was commanded by the monarch in
person. 

His story is interesting, if only from the
soldier’s point of view, and doubly so when we realise
the wonderful work he accomplished. Certainly the
Christian life was no bed of roses to a British dragoon.

Haime said he had three armies against him, “the
French army, the wicked English army, and an army
of devils.” But this plucky soldier was by no means
satisfied with fighting this triple foe on his own
account; it was his great ambition to enlist his
comrades in the same Warfare. .


His success was phenomenal. He was only a
private in the ranks, with everything against him,
and yet he built up a Society of three hundred 
Methodists, six of whom became preachers like himself. So
great was the respect he won from his superior officers
that, when they went into winter quarters at Bruges,
the General in command gave Haime permission to
preach daily in the town church, and on Sunday the
Methodist soldiers were marched to the service.
 
Not infrequently he had as many as a thousand to hear
him, and the officers and their families were attracted
by the Methodist hymn-singing. During the week he
would pay others to perform his camp duties while he
tramped from camp to camp, preaching as often as
five times a day, and for a week together.

And when it came to actual Warfare, he was none
the less courageous. At Dettingen he was in the
thick of the fight. It was no long-distance conflict
with an invisible enemy, as in modern times. The
French troops were only separated from the British
by the swift current of the Maine. 

Thousands were cut down by the musketry 
of the enemy, or by their still more murderous 
artillery. 

Haime’s comrade on his left was struck down by
his side. But fear he had none. In the hottest of the 
fray this brave  Methodist soldier was communing with
God in the sanctuary of his own heart. “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.”


One of the finest characters produced by Methodism 
was the stalwart _John Nelson, a stone-mason by
trade, but a born thinker, and possessed of a ready
tongue, 'the sting' of which was often felt by' his
persecutors.

Nelson, longing for peace and forgiveness, went to
hear Wesley when he preached for the first time in
Moorfields. “As soon as he got up on the stand,”
says Nelson, “he stroked back his hair and turned
his face toward where I stood, and, I thought, fixed
his eyes upon me. 

His countenance struck an awful
dread on 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.”’

At the time of his conversion he was working at
the Courts of Exchequer, Westminster, and very
courteously but firmly he refused to work on Sundays.
“The King’s business requireth haste,” argued the
foreman. But it was no use quoting Scripture to John
Nelson, who knew that “the devil himself can quote
Scripture on occasion.” 

“Then religion has made
you a rebel against the King,” he was told. “ No,
sir,” he made answer, “it has made me a better
subject than ever I was. The greatest enemies the King
has are the Sabbath-breakers, swearers, drunkards,
whoremongers, for these pull down God’s judgments
upon King and country.” 


Still the point was pressed.
The Sunday work was made a condition of his 
retaining the place. “I will not wilfully offend God,” he
said, “for I had much rather want bread. It were
better to beg bread barefoot to heaven, than ride in a
coach to hell.”

Nelson stuck to his guns, and when the Sunday
was over, went back to fetch his tools. But, instead
of dismissal, the foreman set him to work again,
having evidently come to the conclusion that he
would get more work out of the Methodist in six
days than other men in seven. 

Nelson’s reflection was, “ I see it is good to obey 
God, and cast our care upon Him who will order all
things well.”

One of the most cruel and lawless attempts to
silence him was in 1744, when troops were being
raised to repel the invasion under the Young
Pretender, an invasion which took place the 
following year. 

While preaching, he was seized by the
constable, dragged before the commissioners, and
forced into the army. Bail was refused, his friends
were not allowed to open their lips in court, all
evidence was suppressed, and the whole of the
proceedings simply illustrate the truth of Nelson’s
own words at the time: “There is neither law nor
justice for a man that is a Methodist.” 

But in the sturdy Birstal mason they got more than 
they bargained for. He was a man of unconquerable
spirit, and had an inconvenient knack of turning the
tables upon his persecutors.


They flung him into Bradford town gaol, a horrible
dungeon underneath the shambles, reeking with the
blood and filth that soaked down into it. “But,”
says Nelson, “my soul was so filled with the love of
God that it was a paradise to me.”

Nelson’s ready wit and marvellous knowledge of
the Bible is illustrated by an incident that happened as
the troops were passing through Boar Lane in Leeds.

A “jolly, well-dressed” woman, who knew Nelson
and had no great love for him, pushed her face close
to his and said, “Now, Nelson, where is thy God? 

Thou saidst at Shent’s door, as thou wast preaching,
thou wast no more afraid of His promise failing than
thou wast of dropping through the heart of the earth.”

Instantly Nelson replied, “ Look in the seventh
chapter of Micah, and the eighth and tenth verses.”

The verses are these: 
“ Rejoice not against me, O my enemy:
when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in 
darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.” 

“ Then she that is mine enemy shall see it,
and shame shall cover her that said unto me;
Where is the Lord thy God ? ”

To the woman herself, if she was curious enough to
look for them, the words must have seemed nothing
less than a direct message from God Himself.

In York he was brought before the officers of the
regiment he was intended to join;  but stirred by their
godless language, the man who had been dragged into
the army to prevent his preaching, delivered his 
testimony against profanity in no measured terms.


“ You must not preach to your officers,” said one
of them, as soon as he could get his breath.

“There is but one way to prevent me,” said Nelson.
“What is that? ” they said.

“To swear no more in my hearing,” replied the
new recruit.

It was awkward for the military authorities that
Nelson would not take the King’s money. They
tried the effect of a night in prison with a plank bed,
but the prisoner slept as if he “had been on a bed of
down.” 

Then they court-martialled him, and the
Methodist preacher was guarded to his judges by
a file of musketeers with bayonets fixed.. In two
minutes he was preaching again, and seeing that he
roundly affirmed that he would not fight, they had to
be satisfied with his assurance that he certainly would
not run away.

For three months they tried to turn the preacher
into a soldier, but they found in Nelson a stronger
will than their own. He never complained, never
disobeyed orders, and never forgot his consuming
passion for souls. He always got the last word, and
it was a word that searched the heart. 

The only result of his compulsory service was the spread of
Methodism, not only throughout his regiment, but
wherever his regiment went; and when his release
was ordered, his major said, “ I wish I had a regiment
of such men as he is in all respects, save that one, his
refusing to fight : I would not care what enemy I had
to meet.” “


There were times when Nelson seemed to be
literally an inspired man. His power over a mob had
something almost supernatural about it. “His look is
not like that of other men,” would be said sometimes.

One of his most remarkable escapes was at
Horbury, near Wakefield. The roughs of the
neighbourhood determined to put an end to him.

This “ Methodist dog” should be drowned as he
deserved, with a halter round his neck. The attack
was organised by the “parson’s son,” and their plans
were laid with some knowledge of the man with whom
they had to deal. 

Six hand-bells were jangled to
drown his voice, the biggest men in the town: a
butcher and a half-crazy fellow six feet high were
put in charge of the halter; and thus prepared, they
surrounded the house where Nelson was at breakfast.

But when he came out to face them, their diabolical
plans all went awry. Nelson simply raised his hand
to push away the halter, and the big fellow who held
it fell to the ground “as if felled with an axe.” 

The butcher stood trembling and unable to move. When
the constable, as usual on the side of the mob, came
forward to take Nelson into custody, “I am glad
you are come,” said Nelson, “and I charge you in the
King’s name to do your office.”
 
"What is my office?” the constable replied.
“To quell this mob,” said Nelson, “and deliver me out of 
their hands. If I have broken the law, take me to a 
magistrate to be punished by the law.” 
The man turned pale, bid the mob be quiet, forced a way
through to the stable where Nelson’s horse was, saddled
it, held his stirrup for him, and saw him safely out of town.

There were occasions, it is true, when Nelson was
overpowered by the brutality of his persecutors; and
when we read what he went through, how he was left
for dead, and, bleeding, bruised, and helpless, was
again dragged by the hair over the rough cobble
stones of the village street, we do not wonder that
his enemies said, “I have heard that a cat has nine
lives; but I think he has nine score.”

These, and others like them, were the men who
made Methodism, confessors of which any Church
would have a right to be proud, and the remembrance
of their steadfastness and devotion ought to kindle
anew the fire of enthusiasm in the men of our own
time. The moral of their lives is summed up in the
stirring words on the Methodist Revival uttered by
President Roosevelt.

“If we are to advance in broad humanity, in 
kindliness, in the spirit of brotherhood, exactly as we
advance in our conquest over the hidden forces of
nature, it must be by developing strength in virtue,
and virtue in strength, by breeding and training men
who shall be both good and strong, both gentle and
valiant, men who scorn wrong-doing, and who, at the
same time, have both the courage and the strength to
'strive mightily for the right.”



IX.
THE STORY OF THE CONFERENCE


“The help of good counsel is that
which setteth business straight.” 
BACON, ESSAY XXVII.


“ That is the happiest conversation
where there is no competition, no
vanity, but only a calm, quiet interchange of sentiment.” DR. JOHNSON


A manuscript copy of the earliest Minutes.

Famous Conferences. The Conference of today.




THE STORY OF THE CONFERENCE

IN the Headingley College library there is a little
volume, bound in paper boards, six inches by four,
entitled, “Minutes of some late Conversations between
the Rev. Mr. Wesley and Others.” It is not printed,
but written by hand, and some of the corrections are
in Wesley’s own writing. The little book belonged to
Wesley himself, and was carried by him in his pocket
or in his saddle-bags as he journeyed all over England.
It is a manuscript copy of the first “Minutes of
Conference.”

“The Minutes”:  every Methodist knows them
to-day, black volumes, gold lettered, getting stouter
and stouter every year, and packed with information
from cover to cover.

We have travelled far since Wesley’s day, and yet
the very title-page of the latest volume links us with
the first Conference in 1744.

It is headed “Wesleyan Methodist Conference”
which certainly does not appear in the little manuscript volume. 
The Church, then, was only in germ.
But underneath we read, “Minutes of several
Conversations at the one hundred and fifty-ninth
Yearly Conference of the People called Methodists,
in the connexion established by the late Rev. John
Wesley, M.A., begun in Manchester, on Tuesday,
July 22, 1902.”



Half-way through the book, which contains no less
than 696 pages, after a loyal address to His Majesty
the King, we find an address to the “Methodist
Societies,”; addresses to or replies to addresses from
the Irish, French, South African, West Indian,
and Canadian Conferences. 

A visitor to the Conference itself would find that these are not all,
for on the Conference platform there are men
representing great Conferences in the United States
and in far Australia.

What is the “Conference,” and how did it begin?
As the “Minutes” were not printed year by year
until 1749, these precious little volumes are of special
and peculiar interest.

In 1744, then, six years after the Wesleys and
Whitefield began their marvellous campaign, the first
Conference was held in London. Wesley was a
man who had “understanding of the times.” His
statesmanlike mind foresaw that if the work was to
endure, it must be strengthened by careful organisation.

As we have seen, the Class Meeting was already in
existence. There were two thousand members in
London alone. The preachers numbered forty-five,
and there were preaching places not a few. Some of
the preachers were clergymen, helping as they were
able. But most were laymen, working for their
living, and, as they could afford to do so, making
their preaching tours far and near, as Wesley directed
them.


It was high time for Conference, for conversation
as to the “next step,” and Wesley did wisely to
take his workers into council with himself on the
pressing questions of the hour.

The Conference met at the Foundery, and was
entertained during its sessions by the Countess of
Huntingdon. This lady was one of a group of noble
women who played no small part in the early days of
Methodism. 

She was among the earliest to recognise
the power of the Wesleys, and not only became a
Methodist herself, but used her influence among the
men and women in high life among whom she moved.

Even in the bad old days of George II, her character
was a leaven for good. One day, so it is said, the
Prince of Wales asked why Lady Huntingdon
absented herself from Court circles. A flippant lady
replied, “I suppose she is praying with her beggars.”

The prince looked grave and replied, “Lady Charlotte,
when I am dying, I think I shall be happy to seize
the skirt of Lady Huntingdon’s mantle to lift me up
to heaven.” 

Such an incident speaks volumes as to
the esteem in which she was held by the very highest
in the land. As is well known, she inclined, with
Whitefield, to Calvinism, and founded a' “ Connexion”
known as Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion. But to
the end of her life she maintained a warm friendship'
with the Wesleys. 

In her aristocratic mansion, then, and in the plain
old Foundery, met the men who were shaping the
new movement; and we turn again to the little brown
volume to see if we can find any resemblance between
this little gathering and the great representative
assembly of to~day.

At the outset we note that it was a Conference of
ministers and laymen, or, more strictly speaking,
of clergymen and itinerant lay-preachers, for none
of Wesley’s assistants were as yet formally ordained.

A year later, at Bristol, a layman, Marmaduke
Gwynne, who never became a preacher, was present,
and in him we find the prototype of those loyal and
devoted men who, generation after generation, have
given noble service to the Methodist Church.

The names of those who were present at the first
Conference must not. be forgotten. 

In addition to John, and Charles Wesley, 
there were John Hodges, a Welsh rector;  
Henry Piers, vicar of Bexley;  Samuel
Taylor, vicar of Quinton;  and John Meriton, a clergy-
man from the Isle of Man, who journeyed extensively
in the endeavour to spread the infiuence of Methodism.

There were also four lay-preachers-Thomas Maxfield,
Thomas Richards, John Bennet, and John Downes.

All the business was done by the method of
question and answer. If we turn to the very
1atest volume of the “Minutes of Conference,” we
shall see at a glance that this common-sense way of
securing that subjects of.perennial importance shall
be regularly attended to, is still maintained. 

No one can fail to recognise the earnestness and
open-mindedness of John Wesleyand his friends..

At their very first meeting they laid down principles for
their mutual guidance, which one  cannot but admire.

“ It is desired that all things be considered
as in the immediate presence of God; that we
meet with a single eye, and as little children
who have everything to learn;  that every point
be examined from the foundation; that every
person may speak freely whatever is in his
heart; and that every question proposed may
be fully debated and bolted to the bran.”

As a matter of fact, we do find a very frank and
courageous discussion of many points which were
then by no means the commonplaces of to-day.

The subjects of conversation centred round three
practical questions, viz.
1. What to teach; 
2. How to teach; and
3. What to do.

The first two days were spent in the discussion of
Doctrine, and it was only on the third day that they
came to matters of Discipline and Church Order;
and, under the last-named point, it is interesting
to see how Wesley foresaw that it might become
impossible for his followers to remain in the Church
of England.

“We are persuaded that the body of our
hearers will even after our death remain in
the Church, unless they be thrust out. We
believe, notwithstanding, either that they will
be thrust out, or that they will leaven the
whole Church.” '

It became more and more evident as time went on
that the Church  was unwilling to be leavened, and
Wesley made full provision for the other and less
welcome alternative.

In this very first Conference we find many of the
terms familiar in modern Methodism, with a few that
have gone out of use.
 
 We read of:
Ministers: then used of the clergy only. 
Assistants: a term used to describe preachers in charge of a group of societies. 
Stewards; leaders; visitors of the sick; and schoolmasters.
And their duties are carefully defined. 

We have everything in germ which is characteristic of
Methodism as distinct from other ecclesiastical
organisations.

The Rules of an assistant, still read every year at
Conference, Synod, and Preachers’ Meeting, are here,
with merely verbal differences, striking, in the very
first words, the keynote of thoroughness and industry.

“ Be diligent, never be unemployed a
moment, never be triflingly employed.” 

And from that day to this no Methodist preacher,
loyal to these first principles, has had time to be
other than a busy man.

From 1744 onwards the Conference met regularly
once a year. It was summoned by Wesley himself,
and consisted of those whom he invited to join him
in consultation. 

Little by little it grew, and it will
be interesting to note a few of the more notable
Conferences which stand out as landmarks in the
history of Methodism. 

At the next Conference held in 1747 in London, Wesley and his
preachers arrived at some very remarkable conclusions 
with regard to Scriptural Church Organisation.

For this we must turn to what are
called the “Bennet Minutes,” another little manuscript
volume which belonged to John Bennet.

Take the following questions and answers by way
of sample.

Q. What instance or ground is there in the
New Testament for a national church ?
A. We know none at all. We apprehend it
to be a mere political institution.

Q. Are the three orders of Bishops, Priests,
and Deacons plainly described in the New
Testament?
A. We think they are, and believe they
generally obtained in the churches of the
apostolic age.

Q. But are you assured God designed
the same plan should obtain in all churches
throughout all ages ?
A. We are not assured of this, because we
do not know that it is asserted in Holy Writ.

Q. In what age was the divine right of
episcopacy first asserted in England ?
A. About the middle of Queen Elizabeth’s
reign. Till then all the Bishops and Clergy in
England continually allowed and joined in the
ministrations of those who were not episcopally ordained.

Q. Was there any thought of uniformity in
the government of all churches until the time
of Constantine ?
A. It is certain there was not; and would
not have been then, had men consulted the
Word of God only.

It is clear from these statements that Wesley’s idea
as to Episcopacy and Church government were
undergoing a radical change.

The Leeds Conference of 1769 will
ever be memorable as the one which
sent out the first preachers to America.

When Wesley asked, “Who is willing to go?" and
Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmoor responded,
no one dreamed of the wonderful work to be done in
the New World. 

The Methodist Episcopal churches
of the United States are to-day the wealthiest
Protestant churches in the world, and it is strange to
look back to that little gathering of preachers in the
West Riding of Yorkshire, and to note the question
and answer that follow the appointment of the two
pioneers.

“What can we do further in token of our
brotherly love ? ”
“ Let us now make a collection among ourselves.”

And these poor but generous men at once contributed 
£70, of which £20 was to pay the passage of
the two preachers, and the remainder to be carried
by them as a gift of love towards the building of the
first Methodist church beyond the Atlantic.

Fifteen years later, another Leeds Conference held
in 1784, may be described as epoch-making. 

It was the Conference at which the famous Deed of 
Declaration was accepted; the “Magna Charta of British
Methodism,” as an American writer has described it.


This was the document by which Wesley, now an old
man, handed over his unique and almost autocratic
power to a hundred of his preachers nominated by
himself.

John Wesley’s “Deed of Declaration,” sometimes
briefly called the “Deed Poll,” was a step of the first
importance. It gave Methodism a recognised status,
it provided for continuity of government, and prepared
the way for the separate existence of Methodism as a
Church, if “thrust out” by the Establishment.

The chief powers assigned to the Conference, or to
the Legal Hundred as composing the Legal Conference, 
are those of filling up their own ranks year by
year, electing the president, appointing the preachers,
deciding who shall be and who shall not be preachers,
and the holding of Methodist Church property.
 
The Deed Poll is responsible for the itinerancy. 

No preacher may be appointed to any chapel for more
than three years in succession, except in the case of
“ordained ministers of the Church of England.” 

It is interesting to note that, besides the Wesleys, there
were several clergymen members of the Conference,
who laboured as Methodist preachers in Circuits to
the end of their lives. One of these was James
Creighton, an Irish clergyman, who preached in
barns, old ruins, anywhere and everywhere so long
as he got a congregation. “I never saw any fruits
of my labour until I became irregular,” he said.


Wesley accepted him as one of his assistants, and
he worked chiefly in London. So also with others,
but in accordance with the Deed of Declaration, they
were not compelled to “move on” at the end of three
years. The “itinerancy” has proved itself to be a
wise and healthy principle, but even Wesley recognised
that there might be exceptions.

Between thirty and forty years ago, when an Act of
Parliament was sought to give similar powers to 
Conferences in Canada, Australasia, and South Africa, the
Deed Poll was carried down for examination to the
House of Lords. 

The peers present, including some
of the great Law Lords, clustered round the table
to look at the curious old document signed by John
Wesley himself, and one and all expressed amazement
at the skill and sagacity evidenced in the drawing up
of this brief but far-reaching instrument. 

It undoubtedly ranks as one of the most interesting legal
documents in the world.

On Wednesday, March znd, 1791,
John Wesley died, and the Conference
that met in Manchester the following
July had to face the future.

More than three hundred preachers were present,
the largest number ever convened together. 

The last message of the great leader to his fellow-workers, 
contained in a sealed letter written six years before, was
read to the Conference. It contained one very 
significant sentence. The Conference was advised to
carry on the work on the same lines as during
Wes1ey’s life, “so far as circumstances will permit”


It was at once determined that all the preachers in
full connection with the Conference should share in
its privileges and administration so far as the Deed of
Declaration would allow, the Hundred reserving to
themselves only the final vote. 

But there were questions of pressing importance
which, during the next few years, had to be fairly
considered and settled. There were three distinct
classes of Methodists. Some inclined to the Anglican
Church, others to Dissent, and a still greater number
steered a middle course between the two. 

The burning question was, “Shall all the preachers 'administer
the Sacraments.' 

The Church party said, “ No ”; 
the advanced party said, “ Yes, and at once ”;  
the majority advised patience and consideration.

At the London Conference it became
 evident that the voice of the people was
for independence, for that was what the
step meant. 

It could hardly be called separation from
the Church, for the vast majority of Methodists had
never been in the Church, and therefore could not
come out of it. 

As an acute Yorkshireman put it,
“If we are not Dissenters, we are absenters.” But
the feeling ran so high that eventually the 
Conference drew lots, and the result was postponement for
another year.


1793.

Once again a critical question came
up for discussion at Leeds;  and in 1793,
without any bitterness, it was agreed
that, wherever a Society was unanimous, the preachers
should have power to administer the Sacraments.

1794.
At the next Conference there was
trouble with the trustees. In several
places they claimed the power to veto
the decision of the previous year. It was an 
important point. The unity of Methodism depended
upon the decision, and it was made clear that the
Conference must be supreme.

1795
It was not until a year later, at Manchester, 
that the problem was finally
solved by a measure called “The Plan of
Pacification.” This provided that the Sacraments
should be administered wherever a majority of the
trustees, and of the stewards and leaders were in
favour, but that such decision, once given, was not
to be revoked.

This step was decisive. It marked the fact that
Methodism was practically outside the Church of England. 

It was simply a logical recognition of events.
This statesman-like measure made clear three points.

1. That, under the circumstances named, the
preachers had permission to administer the
Sacraments. 
2. That the Conference had sole power to
appoint preachers.
3. That the trustees were responsible for seeing
to the fitness of preachers so appointed.

It has been necessary to give these successive stages
in detail, as these five years were the most critical of
the early years of Methodism. 


The decision arrived at did not, of course, satisfy
all. 

On the one hand there were the Church Methodists, 
who were reabsorbed into the Church, or, some 
years later, formed themselves into a separate community, 
going to the parish church for the Sacraments, and acknowledging
in other ways the authority of the Establishment.


And at the opposite pole there were the extremists,
who were hostile to the Church, and who joined
one or other of the off-shoots of Methodism more
in harmony with their own views.

Of the divisions of Methodism it is not necessary to
tell the story. Some were in order to secure reforms
which would have come with years. Some were due
to misunderstanding. To-day it is doubtful whether
there is any really vital point of difference between the
various branches of the Methodist family. 


In Ireland, Canada, and Australasia, complete reunion has been
happily accomplished, and, whatever may be the slight
differences of administration,Methodism  is to-day
absolutefy one in doctrine. 

Save for a very insignificant
secession in 1835, there never has been any
division on questions of faith, and the great truths
which moved England and America in the eighteenth
century are as clearly preached to-day as in the days
of the Wesleys.

Perhaps the greatest change in the
Conference during the last century was
the adoption of Lay Representation in
1877.
 
As early as 1801, laymen began to attend the
Synods, or District Meetings, as they were then called; 
and for many years, in the old Committees of Review,
laymen met in council with the ministers. But the
new legislation gave laymen a definite place in the
Conference itself, and it is to-day generally agreed
that the Conference has gained immeasurably in
influence. 

As one or two changes have since taken
place, it may be well to close this chapter with an
outline of the Order of Conference as now in force.

The Representative Session of the Conference now
meets first, and consists of three hundred ministers
and three hundred laymen. The president and
secretary are nominated the previous year by the
Pastoral Session, and the first business, after filling
up any vacancies in the Legal Hundred caused by
death, is their election by the Legal Conference.

The representatives are chosen by the May Synod,
and the laymen must be members of the Church
of at least five years’ standing, and be already trustees,
members of some Quarterly Meeting, or of the Synod;
in brie£ they must be workers, definitely rendering
some kind of service to the Church.

The business of the Representative Session is largely
financial, and deals with the administration of the
great departments of Methodism, including Foreign
Missions, Home Missions, the Theological Colleges,
Education, Sunday Schools, the Wesley Guild, 
Temperance, and similar questions.

In this, as in the Pastoral Session, the conversation
on the work of God always holds a prominent place.


The Pastoral Session deals mainly with doctrine,
discipline, the reception of candidates, and 
appointment of ministers. Probably no Church in the world
goes so thoroughly into matters of doctrine, character,
and fitness for the work, as our own.


The Ordination Service is a session of the Pastoral
Conference, and nothing could be more impressive.

Ordination is by laying on of hands, a practice adopted
in 1836, as in harmony with primitive usage. The
president with two or three other senior ministers lay
hands on each candidate, and a charge is delivered by
the retiring president.

Such, in barest outline, is the story of the Methodist
Conference, ,and, whether we speak of the mother
Church, or of the many Conferences which have
sprung from it, it is in all cases an assembly of
real administrative  power.

Convocation in the Anglican Church is strictly
limited in its range of influence. It has no power
in the parish. It appoints no clergyman, and no
vicar or curate can by its authority be called to
account. 

The Assemblies of the Scotch Churches
have legislative power, but much more restricted in
range. 

The Congregational and Baptist Unions are
purely voluntary and deliberative. 

The decisions of the Methodist Conferences are frankly and
cheerfully accepted by Methodists everywhere, and
for the reason that the Conference represents the
ministers and people of Methodism all over the
world.

Before passing from the subject of the Conference, a
few words should be added with regard to the District
Synods, which were, in the first instance, simply 
committees of the Conference. 


The actual division of the whole country into 
districts first took place in 1791, the year of John Wesley’s
death. There was no arrangement for an annual meeting. 

The preachers were simply called together at any
time by any superintendent minister who wished to
have the advice of his brethren.

In 1797 the Chairmen of Districts were elected by
ballot of the Conference, and shortly afterwards the
District Committee became a stated annual assembly.
Its name was changed to Synod in 1892.

It does not fall within the scope of this work to
outline the business. The Order and Form of 
Business, containing not only the subjects dealt with, but
also a digest of the laws and regulations under each
head, is itself a volume of more than a hundred pages,
and reference may be made to it by those who want
fuller information.

To-day the Synod is not merely ministerial. On
the second day of the annual meetings in May, and at
the September Synod, laymen are present, including
district lay officers, circuit stewards or their 
substitutes, and representatives elected by each Quarterly
Meeting. 

The presence of this large lay element,
changing to a great extent from year to year, 
immensely increases the interest of the circuits in
district administration, and tends to promote a spirit
of unity and progress.

The District Synod in its Pastoral Session is one of
our Methodist Courts of Discipline, and a Court of
Appeal for members who have been found guilty
under any charge before the Leaders’ Meeting. 


It may perhaps be useful here to sketch in bare
skeleton the scheme of Methodist discipline. A
different course is taken with regard to ministers,
local preachers, trustees, leaders, and members.

Regular inquiry is made at the May Synod with
regard to the character, orthodoxy, loyalty, and ability
of each individual minister. No name, in any
circumstances, is passed over. 

If a charge be preferred
against any minister during the year, it is heard
before a minor Synod, and the report presented to
the May Synod, and handed on to Conference.

Leaders or members who are accused are tried by
the Leaders’ Meeting, and if found guilty they have
right of appeal to a minor Synod, the Annual District
Synod, and the Conference.

A trustee against whom any charge is brought,
must be tried before a court composed of his fellow-
trustees and the Leaders’ Meeting of the same
Society.

A local preacher is answerable, in all matters that
concern his standing as a local preacher
to the Local
Preachers’ Meeting, but as a member he is amenable
with all others to the Leaders’ Meeting.

There are other special courts, but these are the
most important. The essential point is to note that
purity of life and doctrine are guarded at every point.

There is no expensive legal system. There are no
ecclesiastical lawyers. Discipline is maintained by the
simplest means and at the lowest cost, and the very
poorest member is assured of his rights as a member
of the Christian Church without any cost to himself.



X.
THE METHODIST PARISH AND ITS COUNCILS




“ There are to be no useless hands
or sleeping partners in the Church’s
business, none who receives without
giving back. 

In a healthy body every
tissue, fibre, and artery has its office
to discharge, nothing is wasted or
inert or superfluous;  so in a healthy
Church, ‘According to the effectual
working in the measure of each single
part, it builds up itself in love.’ 

Such was St. Paul’s ideal for the Societies
he founded;  it is the ideal of Methodism.”-
G. G. FINDLAY, B.A., D.D.



The Circuit. 
Its central gathering, and its
smaller councils for
spiritual, financial,
and evangelistic purposes.




THE METHODIST PARISH AND ITS COUNCILS

IN very old days, before the Norman Conquest, 
England was divided into townships, and the townships
were grouped into hundreds. The township, in Anglo-
Saxon times, was the unit of local government.

Then came Christianity, and the land was mapped
out in parishes for purposes of ecclesiastical 
convenience, and until Methodism arose, the parish was
the only religious unit, which included in the aggregate
the Whole country. 

Travel where you will, you are never out of a parish. 

The institution of the civil parish was of later date, 
and was really a revival of the
old Saxon township under a different name.

The Circuit is the Methodist parish. 
A Methodist Atlas (and there is or was such a thing) takes in
every acre of Great Britain and Ireland. 

Snowdon, Helvellyn, Dartmoor, Epping Forest: no corner is left
out. The loneliest shepherd’s hut among the hills of
Wales or Scotland is in some circuit or other, and all
the chapels and preaching places within the area of a
given circuit are linked together under one common
government.

John Wesley had the instincts of a great 
commander. In a very few years he saw that the work he
and his preachers had to do was only to be bounded by
the Seven Seas, and with military thoroughness he 
proceeded to map out the country. 

As early as 1746, England and Wales were divided into seven Circuits. 
today, including the foreign field, there are over a thousand,
and as the Church grows they will continue to multiply.

The circuit, like every other part of our organisation, 
has had a gradual development. And just as in
the Northrop loom, with its electric motor, its delicate
adjustments, its lightning speed, and its shuttle changing
automatically when the thread is spent, you can
still see the old hand-loom of a hundred years ago.

So in the compact modern circuit, with its up-to-date
methods and economy of power, you can see a distinct 
relationship to the simple arrangements necessitated 
by the spread of Methodism in the middle years
of the eighteenth century. 

As already pointed out, circuits are first mentioned
in the manuscript Minutes of 1746, But in two years
they had become so numerous as to be grouped into
nine districts, each including a number of circuits
within its borders.


To each circuit an assistant was appointed, with
one or more helpers. These were the itinerant
ministry of the day, and they were under the 
personal direction of Wesley himself.

Their duties are outlined by Wesley in Works,
vol. viii. p. 319, and include some of the most 
important responsibilities of modern circuit life. 
They were:
(1) To see that the other preachers in his
circuit behave well, and want nothing. 

(2) To visit the Classes quarterly and deliver
Tickets. 

(3) To take in or put out of the Society, etc. 

(4) To keep Watchnights and Love-feasts. 

(5) To hold Quarterly Meetings, and therein diligently
to inquire into both the temporal and spiritual state of each Society.

(6) To take care that ‘every Society be duly
supplied with books.’ 
On this Wesley says emphatically: “The Societies are not half 
supplied with books. Oh! exert yourselves in this. 
Be not weary. Leave no stone unturned.”

(7) To send from every Quarterly
Meeting a circumstantial account to London
of every remarkable conversion and remarkable death. 

(8) To take exact Lists of his
Societies every Quarter, and send them up to
London. 

(9) To overlook the Accounts
of all the Stewards.
(Works, vol. viii. p. 319.).

The Methodist parish has its Councils, and chief
among these is the Quarterly Meeting.

We first read of the Quarterly Meeting in 1750,
when John Bennet, one of the preachers, was asked
to draw up a plan for its conduct. 

But its constitution was not fully defined until 1852,
more than a hundred years later.

A stranger entering a Quarterly Meeting would at
once be impressed by its popular character. 
Methodism is in the best sense a Church of the people, and
the fact is very evident in this administrative assembly.


In a large circuit there will be from one to two
hundred entitled to attend. 

County magistrates, lawyers, aldermen, blacksmiths, carters, coachmen,
manufacturers, tradesmen.  All sorts and conditions
of men are there, and all are interested. 

By no  process of direct election would it be possible to get a
more representative gathering.

It is a council of workers. Everyone is present
in virtue of some duty assigned, or of some service
actually rendered.

First of all there are the ministers appointed by
Conference, the superintendent at their head. He is
a “bishop,” in the New Testament sense of the word,
and his official designation is simply a literal Latin
translation of the Greek “episkopos,” and signifies an
“overseer.” Supernumerary ministers resident in the
circuit have also the right to be present.

Foremost among the circuit officials are the circuit
stewards. They are the financiers of the meeting,
responsible for the circuit income, receiving the
monies from the society stewards and reporting to
the meeting the income and expenditure. 

They pay all allowances and connexional assessments, and look
after the furnishing and renewal of the ministers’
houses. In a Church where the term of residence is
only three years, some such arrangement is necessary,
and it is difficult to estimate the service so willingly
rendered by earnest and large-hearted laymen. 

Ex-stewards have also seats in the meeting, and their
experience is often of value to their successors.

A third group consists of the society of stewards, poor
stewards, and class leaders of the various societies.

In a circuit where there are ten or twelve chapels,
there will sometimes be seventy or eighty such
workers, men and women, directly interested in the
most spiritual service of the Church.

Another field of work is represented by the local
preachers, all of whom, if fully accredited, have the
right to be present.

Property interests are under the care of the trustees,
and every trustee of every chapel in the circuit has a
seat, provided that he is a member of some society
within the circuit.

Sunday schools are entitled to send the senior
superintendent and one or more representatives, according to
the size of the school. In all cases such representatives
must be church members of three years’ standing.

The business is essentially practical.

After the reading of the Minutes follows the 
quarterly budget, presented by the circuit stewards, a
careful and detailed statement of receipts and expenditure, 
open to consideration on the part of the
meeting. 

More important still is the census of membership
read by the superintendent minister, and
usually followed by an earnest conversation on the
spiritual condition of the circuit.

All schemes for new chapels, schools, or houses
must come before this meeting for sanction. Lay
agents employed in any society are under its oversight. 

The invitation of ministers, the reception of
candidates for the ministry, the election of 
representatives to the Synod, proposals for the division of the
circuit, education in day and Sunday schools, 
Temperance and Foreign Missions, the appointment of
circuit officials, and, in brief almost everything that
concerns the well-being of the Church, must come
before this united council for consideration.

And from first to last it is a gathering of those who
are aiming at the advancement of the kingdom of
Christ, and who are willing to give their personal
service for that end.

Now, as we look again at the personnel of the
meeting, it will be seen that it may be analysed into the
following groups:

1. The preachers, itinerant and lay; 
2. The stewards, circuit, society, and poor stewards;
responsible for the monies raised for the support of
the ministry and for the care of the poor; 
3. The leaders or sub-pastors; 
4. The trustees, who have the care of the Church
property; 
5. The Sunday-school representatives, who, with
others present in virtue of various offices, are specially
interested in the youth of the church.

In British Methodism, all these groups have also
their separate councils, except the second and third
groups, which are united in the Leaders’ Meeting. 

In the Methodist Episcopal Church of America the
three classes of officers, leaders, stewards, and trustees;
meet:
(1) separately, under the chairmanship of the.
minister, for the transaction of business peculiarly
their own;  
(2) unitedly, as the Official Board, for
mutual deliberation and administration;  and 
(3) once in three months, as a Quarterly Conference, under the
chairmanship of the “presiding elder.” 

This last-named gathering corresponds to the Quarterly 
Meeting in British Methodism.

But at every point, in the New World as in the
Old, in the greater councils as in the less, you find
workers. This basis of work is one of the great 
unconscious ideas that have shaped our organisation,
and the clear recognition of it may help the 
development of the principle. 

That Church is the healthiest
which finds most work for its members, and most
frankly admits its workers into council.

It will be useful to note very briefiy the character
of the smaller circuit gatherings.

The Local Preachers Meeting is also quarterly, and
is a united gathering of the lay preachers of the
circuit. Long before the “itinerant” became an
“ordained” preacher, John Wesley’s assistants had
each his corps of “local” preachers, who followed
their ordinary trades and pursuits, but gave what time
they could spare to evangelistic service within the
circuit. 

The earliest printed plan, containing the
names of such volunteer helpers, goes back to 1777,
and at the Conference of 1796 we first hear of the
Local Preachers’ Meeting. 

After the lapse of a whole
century, at the Conference of 1896, legislation on the
subject of lay preachers reached the high-water mark
of completeness. The laws and usages of intervening
years were gathered together, revised and codified,
and with one or two more recent additions, constitute
a code which is nearly ideal.


Probably few ever consider how large a proportion
of the pulpits of Methodism are occupied week after
week by laymen. Our indebtedness to these voluntary 
workers is powerfully illustrated by some interesting 
figures prepared in 1897 for the Local Preachers’
Committee of the Bristol district. 

Three months were selected, and a careful calculation was made
as to the number of services conducted by ministers
and local preachers respectively. 

The following figures give the result :-

Number of chapels, 376.
Number of Sunday services for the three
months, 8940.
Number of ministers: 101.
Number of local preachers: 852. 
Number of services conducted by ministers, 1979
Number conducted by local preachers, 6961.

No less than 77% per cent. of actual services
during the three months were taken by
laymen.

The proportion for the whole country would not
be quite so high. According to a reliable estimate,
five out of every seven sermons preached on a Sunday
in Wesleyan churches in England and Wales are
preached by local preachers. If on any given Sunday
all local preachers went out on strike, the result would
be disastrous. 

The big town churches would carry
on their services as usual, but in country towns,
agricultural villages, and mission-rooms, there would
be, in most instances, no preacher. Without this
vigorous lay army.  We should be utterly unable to
maintain the work of our Church in scores and
hundreds of towns and villages.

The Leaders Meeting is a gathering of under Pastors. 
In circuits where several churches are under the care
of each minister, a sub-pastorate is absolutely 
necessary. The Work done by curates in the Anglican
Church, and by elders in the Presbyterian, is effected
in Methodism by the grouping of members into classes,
each of which is under the care of a leader. 

It is a method which has answered admirably in the past,
and needs to-day not so much change as development. , .

The spiritual welfare of the Church, the contributions
from the classes towards the support of the
ministry, the administration of the Poor Fund, all
come under review in the Leaders’ Meeting. 

It is also a court of discipline to consider any charge that
may be brought against a member of the Church.

'The Trustees’ meeting is responsible for the property
of the Church, for its care and maintenance, and for
the carrying out of all schemes of extension sanctioned
by the Quarterly Meeting. The duties of trustees, and
the provisions of the Model Deed, are fully outlined
in handbooks named in a later chapter. ,

The trustees do not own the property of which they
have the care, but hold it in trust for the Wesleyan
Methodist Church. It cannot be alienated, or
handed over to another Church, and no preacher
duly appointed can be excluded from its pulpits. 

At a meeting some years ago, with reference to Roman
Catholic property in Great Britain, the Methodist
Model Deed was referred to by the late Cardinal
Manning as the finest legal instrument he knew for
the security of property for ecclesiastical purposes.

These four councils have constitutions definitely
fixed and understood, and no deviation is permissible.

In addition to these, the Sunday school has its 
Committee and Teachers’ Meeting (though in these there
is not uniformity), and the Wesley Guild has its
executive, clearly defined by its constitution. These
represent great interests which will more and more
call for earnest and thoughtful attention.

The outline given in this chapter refers chiefly to
the organisation of the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

In the smaller Methodist Churches there are variations
in detail, but most of the essential principles are the
same. There is “variety of operation, but the same
spirit.”



XI.
THE CHURCH PRINCIPLES OF JOHN
WESLEY





“A foolish consistency is the 
hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers, and
divines. With consistency a great
soul has nothing to do. He may as
well concern himself with his shadow
on the wall.”  EMERSON.


Was John Wesley a High Churehman?
What he himself SAID
 -and DID.






THE CHURCH PRINCIPLES OF
JOHN WESLEY


AGAIN and again ill-informed or disingenuous 
Anglicans have deliberately charged Methodists with
unfaithfulness to their great leader. 

“John Wesley,” they say, “was a Churchman, and a High Churchman, 
rigid in his adherence to the articles, the rubrics,
the principles of Anglicanism. He would never have
consented to the creation of a separate Church. 

Consequently all good Methodists who wish to be true
to the spirit of Wesley himself, ought to return at
once to the bosom of the mother Church.”

Now the answer to the question, “Was John
Wesley a High Churchman?" is 
(1) He was; and
(2) He was not. 

It is altogether a question of dates.
During his mission to Georgia, and previously, at
Oxford, John Wesley was ihe highest of High Churchmen.


By a High Churchman I mean one who believes
in apostolical succession, in the divine authority of
Episcopacy, in the priestly idea of the Sacraments,
and who attaches great importance to the details of
ritual.
John Wesley was all that, and more.



He read the prayers at five in the morning, and
advocated fasting communion; he enjoined fasting
and confession;  he observed an old rubric requiring
the baptism of children by immersion.

He rebaptized the children of Dissenters; he refused to read the
burial service over those who had not received
Episcopalian baptism; he repelled from the Lord’s
Table those who were not in communion with the
Church of England. 

A Moravian, John Martin Boelzius, a good man 
and devoted Christian, presented himself at
the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,
and Wesley refused to administer the bread and wine
to him, because he had not been baptized by a 
clergyman episcopally ordained. Referring to this incident
in later years, Wesley said:

“ Can anyone carry High Church zeal higher
than this! And how well have I since been
beaten with my own staff!" 

Up to the very moment of his leaving Georgia,
John Wesley was unquestionably an extreme High
Churchman.

But it is equally true that from the day of the 
great spiritual change that took place in 1738, 
Wesley began, step by step, to unlearn and discard his High 
Churchism. 


The old superstitions fell away, one by one,
like worn-out husks, pushed off by the new life
within.

Seven years went by. They were, as we have seen,
years of marvellous awakening. Wesley was carried
along on the flood-tide of new spiritual life.



He saw the colliers of Kingswood, the smugglers of Cornwall,
the roughs of Wednesbury, and the rabble of Newcastle, 
changed, purified, transformed, not in churches,
but in cottages and barns, in quarries and on open
moors, not only through the instrumentality of his
own preaching, but that of plain, unordained,
unlettered men, whose only call was direct and
divine. 

He learned that “God fulfils Himself in
many ways.” Throughout these strenuous years he
was preaching, travelling, observing, reading, and
thinking; and by the end of them, the divine right
of bishops, apostolical succession, and the sacred
obligation of rubrics, had all gone overboard.

To make the matter perfectly plain, it will be
interesting to note first of all, what John Wesley
actually said on these points, and, further, what 
he did.

And firstly, WHAT JOHN WESLEY SAID.
On Episcopacy this is his ripe and deliberate
verdict:

“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. 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 particular form of
Church government; and that the plea of
Divine right for Diocesan Episcopacy was
never heard of in the Primitive Church.”
( Works, Vol. xiii. p.211.)

In a letter written in 1784, he still further
says: 

“Lord King’s Account of the Primitive
Church convinced me many years ago that
Bishops and Presbyters are the same order,
and consequently have the same right to
ordain” (Works, vol. xiii. p. 251).

Apostolical Succession he describes in emphatic
language as a broken chain.

“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 uninterrupted succession ? ”
(Works, vol. iii. pp. 44, 45.)



And in a letter written only a few years before his
death, he reiterates this judgment in the plainest
possible terms.

“I firmly believe I am a scriptural episkopos
(or bishop) 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.”)
(Letter on the Church, dated August 19th, 1785.
Works, vol. xiii. p. 253.)

As to Rubric and Ritual, he was led, step by step,
and often against his will, to allow one innovation
after another, until vast departures were made from
the decorous traditions of the Anglican Church.

Such practices as open-air preaching, and lay 
preaching especially, called forth the wrath of his 
contemporaries. 

Secker, afterwards archbishop, bitterly
attacked Wesley, and declared such practices to
be:

“Oppositions to the most fundamental principles
and essentially constituent parts of our Establishment.”


In a letter dated April roth, 1761, Wesley deals
trenchantly with this statement, and his reply shows
how far he had travelled since the days in Georgia.

“The most fundamental principles!  No
more than the tiles are the most fundamental
principles of a house. Useful, doubtless
they are, yet you must take them off if
you would repair the rotten timber beneath.

‘Essentially constituent parts of our Establishment.’
 Well, we will not quarrel for a
word. Perhaps the doors may be essentially
constituent parts of the building we call a
church. Yet if it were on fire we might
innocently break them open, or even throw
them for a time off the hinges. 

Now this is
really the case. The timber is rotten, yea,
the main beams of the house; and they want
to place that firm beam, salvation by faith,
in room of that rotten beam, ,salvation by
works.
 
A fire is kindled in the Church, the
house of the living God; the fire of love
of the world, ambition, covetousness, envy,
anger, malice, bitter zeal. In one word, of
ungodiiness and unrighteousness. Oh! who
will come and help to quench it? 

Under disadvantages and discouragements of every
kind, a little handful of men have made a
beginning, and I trust they will not leave off
till the building is saved, or they sink in the
ruins of it” (Works, vol. xiii. pp.235 to 237).

On Catholic Priciples Wesley became “exceeding
broad.”

“If by Catholic Principles, you mean any
other than scriptural, they weigh nothing
with me: I allow no other rule, whether of
faith or practice, than the Holy Scriptures.”
(Works, vol. i. p.201)

And he summed up the whole question in the
words quoted by Richard Watson from a letter to
Charles Wesley. 

“Church or no Church, we must attend to
the work of saving souls.”
(Letter to Charles Wesley, Watson’s Works, vol. v.
P199).


But WHAT JOHN WESLEY DID was even
more remarkable than what he said.
With a man of his character, to be convinced was
to act.

He disregarded all parochial limitations. 

He went straight to the people. They needed his
message, and he laughed at all barriers.
 
Methodism is sometimes described as a schism from the Anglican
Church. Even so far as the leaders were concerned,
it was not true, for they were practically forced out of
it. But the vast majority of the early Methodists
were never in the Church. The masses of the people
were utterly neglected, and Wesley felt that their
need was his opportunity. 

Within a little more than a year after the great 
spiritual crisis of his life, Wesley
settled this point very definitely; and in a letter to a
friend declared his intentions in a phrase which will
never be forgotten.


“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 ” (Works, vol. i. p. 201). 

Wesley built chapels all over the land. Not one of
them was consecrated. He never asked for consecration.



And though at first they were intended to
supplement, and not to supplant the services of the
Church, yet their building was a daring transgression
of parochial rights.


But even more significant than the absence of consecration, 
was the fact that some of Wesley’s chapels
were actually “licensed” as dissenting places of
worship. The “New Room ” at Bristol was licensed
in 1748, and the Methodists were deliberately 
described in the document as 
“Protestant subjects dissenting from the Church of England.” 

That Wesley did this with his eyes open is evident from
the vehement protest of Charles Wesley, with which
the parchment is endorsed.

It is still more significant that Wesley allowed 
unordained laymen to preach. As We have seen, this step
involved a great wrench on his part: “To touch this
point,” he says, “was to touch the apple of mine eye.”
But convinced that it was right and necessary, he
never hesitated for a moment. 

Another illustration of his detachment from his old
ecclesiastical principles is the fact that he revisedf the
Thirty Nine Articles.
Yes, he deliberately shortened and modified them,
and reduced them to twenty-five.

His omissions are suggestive, such as the following:-

Article 8. The Three Creeds.
Article 17. Predestination and Election.
Article 20, The The Authority of the Church.
Article 23. On Ministering to the Congregation. L

Article 34. Altered as follows :-Every particular
Church may ordain changes, or abolish rites and
ceremonies, so that all things be done to edification.”

 Article 36. Consecration of Bishops and Ministers.

But the climax was reached when Wesley himself 
ordained men as bishops and presbyters.

America was the first problem which led Wesley to
take this step. The position was extraordinary. At
the Revolution the Episcopalian establishment was
abolished, and the religious institutions of the country
were in chaos. Methodism had already taken root,
but it needed care and development. 

There were fifteen thousand members, and eighty-three 
itinerant preachers, but as yet their forces were not organised.

Twice Wesley tried to persuade Lowth, the Bishop of
London, one of the most liberal men of the time, to
ordain at least one of the preachers, so that the 
Sacraments might be administered to the people, but with
no avail; and, after long delay, Wesley determined to
cut the knot in characteristic fashion.


In September, 1784, Wesley met Coke at Bristol,
and ordained him as the first bishop of the Methodist
Church in America;  and, at the same time, he
ordained two other preachers as presbyters. On
crossing the Atlantic, their first act was the ordination
of Bishop Asbury, one of the heroes of the old
American days.

It is interesting to remember that the Methodist
bishops were the first Protestant bishops of the New
World; and the Methodist Episcopal Church, with a
fair field and no favour, rapidly became the greatest
Protestant community in the World. 

But, the Rubicon once crossed, Wesley went even
further.

At the Conference in London, in 1785, he ordained
three preachers to administer the Sacraments in Scotland.

During the next year he extended the same
privilege to Ireland and the West Indies.

In 1787, at the Manchester Conference, Mather,
Rankin, and Moore were ordained, with authority to
administer the Sacraments in any part of England.

Mather received bishop’s orders, though Wesley 
preferred to use the term “Superintendent."
Every superintendent was a New Testament bishop in
Wesley’s eyes.

One step more was necessary, and it was taken
when Wesley framed the Deed of Declaration, 
preparing the way for the existence of Methodism as a
distinct Church. 


This was in 1784, prior to the
above ordinations, but supreme in order of importance. 
Separation was contrary to his wish and
early hope, but he saw that it must come. Only
three years before his death he wrote:

“A kind of separation has already taken
place, and will inevitably spread, though by
slow degrees ” (Works, vol. xiii. p.264).

“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” (Works, vol. xiii. p.266).

Such were John Wesley’s principles, acted upon
with honesty and courage. It may safely be said
that during his later years there is not a page, not a
line, not a Word, to show that he ever deviated from
the convictions mainly arrived at in 1746.

He was never bitter, always reasonable and conciliatory, 
unwilling to break away from old and venerable traditions, 
but when once a path opened out which he
believed to be right, nothing could hold him back.

And throughout, his attitude towards men who
differed from him in opinion was always that 
expressed in his own fine words:

“I desire to form, a League, offensive and
defensive, with every soldier of Jesus Christ.”



XII.
THE FAITH OF A METHODIST



“Our wills are ours, we know not
how;
Our wills are ours to make them
thine.” (In Memoriam).


“I am housed at Mr. Wildman’s,
an old friend of mine in these parts; 
he and his wife are two perfectly
honest Methodists. 


When I came I
asked her after news, and she replied:
‘Why, Mr. Tennyson, there’s only one
piece of news that I know: that Christ
died for all men.’ And I said to her,
‘That is old news, and good news,
and new news.’ ”
Lord Tennyson in a letter to Miss
Sellwood, 1839.


Methodism with its
message to ALL MEN
stands out against the
background of Calvinism and Deism.
 

The one the prevailing theological, as the other the
philosophical creed of the eighteenth century.

Methodism is the religion of the changed life, based upon experience and
rooted in the Word of God.



IN Ian Maclaren’s Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers
there is a tremendous scene where Rabbi Saunderson,
cut to the quick by the latitudinarian views of his
young friend Carmichael, delivers his soul on the
dread subject of the divine decrees. 

It had to be done. The inexorable logic of his creed drove him
to do it, though the words had to be wrung out of his
very heart’s blood.

He took as his text “Vessels of wrath,” and the
congregation sat breathless with dread expectation,
for the old man was loved and venerated, and his
words went deep.

His divisions, announced after a grave introduction
on the Divine Sovereignty, were:
“‘First,:" and between the heads the Rabbi paused, as one whose
breath failed him:  every man belongs absolutely to
God by his creation.’.

Second. The purpose of God about each man precedes his creation.’ 

‘Third. Some are destined to Salvation, and some to Damnation!

‘ Fourth: here the hard breathing became a sob
‘ each man’s lot is unto the glory of God.’

Men went white and women trembled as he developed his theme, 
and they gazed fascinated at the preacher as, with painful 
determination, he enforced the idea of absolute divine supremacy.

“ It is as a sword piercing the heart to receive this
truth, but it is a truth and must be believed. There
are hundreds of thousands in the past who were born
and lived and died, and were damned, for the glory
of God. There are hundreds of thousands in this
day who have been born and are living and shall die,
and be damned, for the glory of God. 

There are hundreds of thousands in the future who shall be
born and shall live and shall die, and shall be
damned, for the glory of God. All according to the
will of God, and none shall dare say nay nor change
the purpose of the Eternal.”

Then the flickering lamps go out. Only two are
left, and they smoulder down into darkness as the
Rabbi slowly forces out his last words.

“Shall. not. the. Judge of all the earth. do.  right?”

He finishes, and a great sigh echoes through the
church; and out of the silence a woman’s voice
ejaculates, “God have mercy upon us.”

Round the old Rabbi is thrown all the glamour of
Ian Maclaren’s wonderful pathos, we love him in
spite of his rigid views, as John Carmichael did, and
it is well, perhaps, that we should be made to feel how
true men could so believe and still hold fast to God.

But it is undeniable that “the robust Calvinism with
which every Scot is saturated,” found, in days gone by,
expression just as uncompromising as in the Rabbi’s
sermon. 

But it is even more important for us to remember
that Calvinism, more or less modified, was, speaking
generally, the Working creed of orthodox Christianity
in the eighteenth century, and, when Wesley began
his work, Calvinism practically meant predestination,
election, and reprobation.

Calvinism is, of course, not to be dismissed with
a scoff at the extreme views so terribly expressed in
the Scotch sermon. As a philosophic system of
theology, it has both dignity and grandeur. In
breadth of conception, strength, and consistency it
stands unrivalled. God is supreme. 

The divine will is everything. The divine nature is the focus
around which all other thoughts of man and the
universe crystallise. It produced great men and
powerful preachers. 

Whitefield himself was a Calvinist.
Berridge, Toplady, and Rowland Hill were
all men of power; while Robert Hall and Spurgeon,
in later times, are evidence of a strength in the creed
which no elements of error can belittle.

It was, indeed, utterly removed from some flabby and 
sentimental theories of modern times, in which God’s
will counts for little, and adoration and reverence
are scarcely recognised at all. What we urgently
need in the reshaping of theology to-day is a
philosophy of religion just as vigorous and logical as
Calvinism, but more generous in its conception of
the divine nature. 

With the doctrine of the divine
sovereignty we have no quarrel, and from larger
views of God will issue nobler views of human life.
But when Wesley began his work, the accidents  of
Calvinism had become the essential.
 
Predestinarianism was relentlessly taught, both from Anglican
and Nonconformist pulpits, and the hard repulsive
theory of the divine decrees, finally and inexorably
determining man’s destiny, paralysed evangelism and
deadened the spiritual life of the Church.

But the widespread apathy of Wesley’s time had
another and deeper cause. If Calvinism was the
popular theology, Deism was the philosophic creed
of the time. No doubt it was to some extent a
reaction against the severer forms of Calvinism as
taught in the seventeenth century, but in Wesley’s
day it was a distinct force to be reckoned with, and
one of the most deadly character. 

Bishop Butler, its most powerful opponent, in a charge to his
Durham clergy, boldly declared that “as different
ages have been distinguished by different sorts of
particular errors and vices, the deplorable distinction
of ours is an avowed scorn of religion in some, and
a growing disregard to it in the generality.” 

Bishop Warburton, a man of altogether different character,
said, with equal emphasis, “I have lived to see what
law-givers have always seemed to dread, as the
certain prognostic of public ruin, that fatal crisis when
religion hath lost its hold on the minds of a people.”

This “great growth of atheism and infidelity,” as
Hartley, the physician, described it, was undoubtedly
due to the subtle ridicule poured upon religion by
the Deists, whose baleful infiuence was exerted,
not so much in open warfare, as in scoffing irony
and contempt. 

Freethinking became popular, and
the most sacred beliefs were discussed with no
little sceptical bias in drawing-rooms, coffee-houses,
taverns, and all places of public resort. It is no
wonder, then, that in the absence of any inspiring
view of religion, and stifled by this atmosphere of
unbelief the pulpit almost ceased to be a power.

There was no vigorous conviction behind its teachings. 
There were good and scholarly men in the
Church of England, but their sermons had “no
teeth.” 

The fashionable exquisites and well-dressed
sensualists of the day could attend church 
without the least fear of discomfort. 

The one great
dread of the average preacher was lest he should be
accused of zeal. Polite, agreeable discourses that
disturbed nobody, were the order of the day, and
though Hogarth’s Sleeping Congregation  may be a
caricature, we may be sure that in some cases it was
not far from the truth.

Against the background of a perverted Calvinism,
then, and even more clearly against the apathy and
irreligion due to the Deistical philosophy of the period,
the faith of the early Methodists stands out in bold
relief. 

They boldly and definitely taught that:

All men need to be saved;  
that All men may be saved; 
that All men may know themselves saved;  
and that All men may be saved to the uttermost.

To us these propositions are truisms;  but if we
would understand Methodism, we must remember
that they were all either doubted or denied. 

The first was controverted by the shallow philosophy of
the time, with its easy-going views of human nature;
the second was in direct opposition of the commonly
accepted creed of a limited salvation; while even
the worthiest theologians and preachers of the time
held it doubtful whether any can know themselves
saved, and highly improbable that men can be saved to
the uttermost save in the very hour and article of death.

Now these four principles stated above stand for the
four cardinal doctrines accentuated by Methodism.

Original sin.
Universal redemption.
The witness of the Spirit.
Scriptural holiness.

But though distinctive enough in the eighteenth
century, they are by no means distinctive to-day. 

I have painted in the lurid background of error and
unbelief, and have emphasised the predestinarianism
of the time, to show how much they were needed
then, but the evangelical revival has so leavened all
Churches, that it is difficult to find a man who still
holds the old theory of election and reprobation.

Religion to-day, if it be real, is invariably respected.
The Calvinism of our time has nobler views of God,
and its teaching has mellowed and deepened. It is
not dead, but has cast off excrescences which two
hundred years ago were so prominent that they were
mistaken for the creed itself.
 
But there is none the less need for the Methodist
witness. Other Churches may be needed to emphasise
their own special vision of truth, but it is our chief
mission to preach deliverance, pardon, and holiness
for every soul of man. 


The central thought of Methodism, therefore, is the
changed life. It is the religion of the healthy
soul. It holds that it is not necessary for a man to
go limping all his days, or be hampered by taints
of spiritual disease, which lower the moral tone and
destroy the joy of life. He may be strong, vigorous,
and free. 


Sin to the early Methodists was a terrible
reality. The Deism of the day ignored sin, and
ridiculed the idea of a man whimpering and groaning
about the state of his soul. But to the preachers of
the Great Revival, who knew men’s hearts as few
ever have done, sin was a disease, and a disease to be
extirpated. 

It was not merely to be alleviated and
kept under. It was to be conquered and cast out.

And in harmony with this strong conception of
sin, holiness with Wesley was simply healthiness,
a sane and natural meaning of the word. He taught
his followers to sing:

“The seed of sin’s disease,
Spirit of health remove.
Spirit of finished holiness,
Spirit of perfect love.”

His declared aim was to “spread scriptural holiness”
scriptural healthiness “throughout the land.” Nor
was there anything earthy, narrow, or accommodating
about this conception of the ideal life. Holiness
meant nothing less than a soul flooded, drenched,
penetrated by a divine life that would cast out
everything lower than itself.

“Send us the Spirit of Thy Son,
To make the depths of Godhead known,
To make us share the life divine.”

The last line of the verse quoted above 
suggests the characteristic idea under which holiness
was conceived. It was perfect love. “Pure love
reigning alone in the heart and life; this,” said
Wesley, “is the whole of Christian perfection.”

And it was, first and foremost, a consuming love for
God. The Christian is a God-possessed man; and
if we would know what such a mighty love can do
for a man, and how it issues, not in dreamy mysticism
or narrow pietism, but in the raising to its highest
power every noble human faculty, in the opening
out of a life of infinite progress and ever more
glorious possibilities, we must read the inspiring
series of hymns, "On Seeking for Full Redemption", 
and then study the lives of the brave and saintly
men to whom such hymns came with the force and
freshness of a new revelation.

It is necessary now to see how the faith of the
Methodist is related to Catholic truth in general, and
to the principles of Protestantism in particular.
Our doctrine of God is that of the great Creeds:
“ God, in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.”

Indeed, in so brief a summary as the present, it is
almost sufficient to say, so far as this aspect of our
subject is concerned, that every Methodist accepts
the Apostle`s Creed as an evidence that he is “one
in faith and doctrine” with “Christians of every land
and age.”

But the doctrine of the Trinity in a very special
manner was the very root and inspiration of all
Methodist teaching, and, since the days of the early
Christian martyrs, it has perhaps never received such
striking expression as in the life and thought and
song of the early Methodists. 

In the very beautiful group of hymns 
in the old hymn-book headed
“Believer’s Rejoicing,” no less than eighteen are
ascriptions of praise to Father, Son, and Spirit; and
some were among the most joyous hymns of 
gladness inspired by the Great Revival.

In the four characteristic truths of the Methodist
faith already named, while the first emphasises the
fact of sin, the other three powerfully illustrate the
idea of the Trinity as:

involved in the work of salvation-redemption through the Son;
 
assurance through the Holy Spirit; 

and holiness, “perfect love,” which is also perfect 
childhood, through faith in the living Father. 

And so GOD in all His perfection becomes ours, a 
thought beautifully expressed
in one of the hymns just referred to:

“ A thousand oracles divine
 Their common beams unite,
That sinners may with angels join,
To worship God aright; 
To praise a Trinity adored,
By all the hosts above,
And one thrice-holy God and Lord,
Through endless ages love.

Triumphant host! they never cease,
To laud and magnify,
The Triune God of holiness,
Whose glory fills the sky;
Whose glory to this earth extends,
When God Himself imparts,
And the whole Trinity descends,
Into our faithful hearts.”

If, further, we are asked where we get our
authority for the truths we teach, we are at one
with Protestantism in making our appeal to Scripture
and experience. 

The Bible is our Rule of Faith. The faith of the
Methodist rests upon the solid rock of Scripture.

It is built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets. As life passed, Wesley’s keen intellect
cut deep down through all human creeds, forms,
and confessions, to the very heart of the Word itself
There, and there only, he found a complete answer
to the mysterious problem of life. 

One of the most striking passages in Wesley’s
writings is the one in which he declares himself to
be a “man of one _book”;  and which, for intensity
of feeling and noble expression, and for reverent
sense of the mystery of human life, might stand
beside some of the greatest words ever spoken.

“To candid, reasonable men I am not afraid to
lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my
heart. I have thought, 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 God;
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 down 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. 
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 or intricate? I lift my
heart to the Father of lights. ‘Lord, is it not Thy
Word?’ If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of
God. Thou givest liberally and upbraidest not.
Thou hast said, if any man be willing to do Thy
will, he shall know. I am willing to do; let me
know Thy will.”


Side by side with the Bible we place Experience.

The Holy Spirit’s inward witness to the truth is the
supreme positive authority of Protestantism.

It is curious that Luther’s writings had so much to
do with the enlightenment of both Charles and John
Wesley. The passage from Luther’s Commentary on
the Galatians, which so greatly helped the younger
brother, is full of the spirit of assurance which sounded
so clearly in the early days of Methodism. 

“Read these most sweet and comfortable words,” he says:
“‘Who loved me, and gave Himself for me,’.
 
Inwardly practice with thyself that thou with a sure
faith mayest conceive and print this upon thy
heart and apply it to thyself not doubting that thou
art of the number to whom this me belongeth; also,
that Christ hath not only loved Peter and Paul, and
given Himself for them, but that the same grace also
which is comprehended in this me cometh unto us as
unto them.”

And John Wesley’s own power began on that
fateful day when he too grasped this powerful truth.

Religion became for him a matter of experience,
and he was able for the first time to say, “ I felt that
I did trust in Christ, in Christ alone for salvation.”

From that time forward he boldly preached, to
cultured and ignorant alike, a full, free, immediate,
instantaneous deliverance.

A deliverance which meant new power of
life in the soul, upward in its
tendency, touching the whole man, issuing in a
consecration of every power of body, soul, and spirit
unto God. 

Every true Methodist could say with St.
John:
“That which we have seen and heard declare we
unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us.”

The hymns of early Methodism ring again with
this personal note. 

Dr. William Taylor, of America,
tells how, when he was a boy, he once heard a
sermon on “appropriating faith.” His first question
on getting home was, “Father, what is appropriating
faith?”:

Not very complimentary to the preacher. 
His father replied, “My boy, take
your Bible and underline all the me's, my's and mine's
and you will soon find out what ‘appropriating faith’ is.” `

If the three words were were underscored in
Charles and John Wesley’s hymns, it would show
better than anything else the intense personal force
behind the Great Revival.

And out of the glow of Experience,Evangelism.
With the early Methodists it was only one step from
“me” to the “world”.
 
With deep and reverent faith
he would sing:

“Lord, I believe Thy precious blood,
Which at the mercy seat of God,
For ever doth for sinners plead,
For me, even for my soul was shed.”

But instantly the mind flings itself out to the 
uttermost limits of the human race. The gift received is
a gift for all, and the missionary spirit of Methodism
finds glorious expression in the very next stanza:

“Lord, I believe were sinners more.
Than sands upon the ocean shore,
Thou hast for all a ransom paid,
For all a full atonement made.”

It is not a little remarkable that these two verses,
which I have instinctively quoted, are from a Moravian
hymn translated by John Weasley, a hymn which adds
another link to the spiritual genealogy traced in an
earlier chapter. The Moravian Church is the mother
of modern Protestant Foreign Missions, and the debt
ought to be fully and gratefully acknowledged. 

The hymn is Count von Zinzendorf’s “Christi Blut und
Gerechtigheit,” composed in 1739, the supreme year
of the Methodist movement, during his journey home
from the West Indies. 

Wesley published his translation in 
“Hymns and Sacred Poems” the following
year. It was, therefore, one of the earliest hymns to
sound the great evangelistic and missionary note from
end to end of the land.

And now, gathering together these thoughts into
one focus, we shall see that the faith of the Methodist
finds its natural expression in Fellowship.

In a creed which finds in Perfect Love its ideal of
the Holy Life there is no room for selfishness. For
those who heartily believe the whole law to be
summed up in the commandment: 

“ Thou shalt love,”: first “the Lord thy God,” and then “thy
neighbour as thyself, ”there is a magnetism which,
as has been shown in an earlier chapter, draws
men together, and creates for itself new modes of
communion.
 
Fellowship is of the very essence of
Methodism, the fibre of its organisation, the resultant
of the truths most emphasised in its teaching.

And in fellowship We find the basis of the Methodist
conception of the Church. In the last chapter we
saw how Wesley, step by step, was led to abandon
his early High Church theories, and to seek more
scriptural forms of Church organisation.

But the positive theory which supplanted the discarded ideas
was never definitely formulated. The new conception
was a growth. Methodism was unconsciously a
Church long before it assumed the name. 

To-day it is possible to define our position, and it cannot
be done more simply or clearly than in the Words of
Dr. Findlay:
"To us the Church is not the priesthood,
the ritual, the form of Sacrament or government: it is
the Society of Jesus. We find its germ-cell in the little
company of brother disciples gathered round the
Master in common talk and at a common table.

The entire aggregate of the Christian Church throughout the 
world is formed by the repetition, multiplication, and 
reproduction in ten thousand varied forms
of that germ-cell: it is the development of the
original communion of Christ and His spiritual
brethren .
The Church is the body of the
recognised citizens of the Divine Kingdom.”

The conception embodied in these two sentences,
of the Church as “a society” “of citizens,”
perfectly harmonises with the idea suggested in the
word “ecclesia” so frequently used in the New
Testament.

It is a Greek word with an interesting history.
Literally it means the “called out,” and it was the
name given to the great council, open to all free
citizens, and in which they discussed and managed
their own affairs. 

The Greek, always proud of his
citizenship, never more fully realised its meaning than
when he met his fellow-citizens in the “ecclesia.”
And in that powerful assembly three ideas were ever
recognised. As citizens they felt the bond of a
common life, they shared common ideals, and they
joined in common worship, for special religious rites
were always associated with the ecclesia.

These three ideas are equally characteristic of the
fellowship of the Christian Church. It is a community
of people who have found a common life in
Christ, who bear witness to common ideals of faith
and holiness, and who lind common ground in worship.

But in the Christian “ecclesia” the order is 
completely reversed. Worship takes the first place. We
meet in the ever-hallowed name of the Father, and
our recognition of our common life and common
testimony springs naturally from that relationship.

The early Christians “were accustomed to meet on a
stated day,” said Pliny in his letter to Trajan, “and
sing a hymn to Christ as God,” and in such simple
worship they realised that they were a “kingdom of
priests,” united by the holiest of ties. 

What was a mere formality in other assemblies was an intense
reality to them. 

The divine presence and love overpowered and governed
all other ideas. And, from the
very beginning, the sacred rites in which Christian men
and women most deeply recognise their common
citizenship were the two Sacraments, Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper.

The one witnessing to the life to which
in Christ all men are called, and the other to the
truths of salvation through faith in which we possess
that life, and of which we are living witnesses.

Both are essential to a complete Christian fellowship, 
for in the one rite we claim the unconscious
little ones for the Kingdom, and in the other, as 
intelligent believers in Christ, we recognise in the most sacred
manner possible our oneness with Him. 

It is an interesting fact that in the early days of Methodism
the Sacraments were greatly prized by the people, and
one of the strongest demands, which Wesley found it
very difficult to resist, and which at length he partially
gratified, was that they should receive the Sacraments
in their own houses of worship, and from the hands
of their own ministers. 

The fellowship, which is of
the essence of the Church, demanded it.

Such then, in brief and imperfect outline, is the
faith of a Methodist, but this living, experimental,
scriptural creed by no means exhausts the contents
of Methodist teaching. There is a catholicity about
Methodism which claims the whole Empire of Truth.

Every great word that may stir the soul and uplift the
life may be spoken from its pulpits. It welcomes
light from every quarter, and in each successive age
it is the work of its preachers to find new and vivid
expression in the living language of the people of
the deep things of God. 

The truths emphasised 
in this chapter are fundamental, and can only
be laid by as useless when sin has ceased to exist. 

There is need for largeness of view and intensity
of purpose. The lives of men are wider and more
complicated, their interests innumerable, and there is
need that the old faith should take possession of the
new fields.

There is nobility in the devotion of the olden
days, even if the life of the eighteenth century was
narrower than our own. 

As Miss Fowler has finely
expressed it in Isabel Carnaby:
“The Methodists of the past generation lived
always with their lamps lit and their loins girded, as
those that wait for their Lord; and they sought so
diligently for the True that they had no leisure to
look for the Beautiful, for it had not yet been revealed
to them that the True and the Beautiful are one.

They were so fearful of confounding the substance
with the shadow, that they did not altogether realise
that the shadow is, after all, but the reflection of the
substance, and therefore a revelation of the same,
and they gazed so steadfastly into heaven that they
were in danger of forgetting how God made the earth
as well as the heavens, and saw that it was good. 

To their ears there was no message in the wind, or the
earthquake, or the fire; but they heard clearly the
still small Voice, and they did whatsoever it 
cormmanded them.”

For us new worlds have dawned. Art, science,
and literature have opened to men fields of thought
unknown to the wisest of our forefathers.
 
 We live at the end of the telephone, and can feel the throb
of the big world as readily as a Methodist of the old
time could know the doings of his quiet village. 

It is no use trying to narrow our lives so as to make
religion easier. It cannot be done.

If we even attempt to do it, we drop out of the march 
of humanity. What we need is not a smaller life, but a
bigger religion, faith raised to a higher power, 
consecration more intelligent and larger in comprehension.

“Christians of old,” it has been said by a present-day
writer, “lived in a bare and narrow room, but the
fire of faith was sufficient to warm it. If you enlarge
the room as you are doing, if you throw into it one
space after another till it is a great hall, it follows that
the fire must be increased. And it must be the true
fire that is used to warm it, not a fire kindled of the
world.”


There is not only still need for the old Methodist
fire: what we really need is more of it, to send a
bright glow through the whole atmosphere of the
modern world. 

“Religion, not a corner of life;  not
life narrowed down; but life more abundant, filling
and illuminating every interest of body, soul, and
spirit.” That, and nothing less, is the ideal of faith
for the twentieth century.





XIII.
ITINERARIES OF THOUGHT


“ A well-judging man will open his
trunk-line of study in sueh a direction
that, while habitually adhering to it,
he may enjoy a ready access to such
other fields of knowledge as are most
nearly yrelated to it.”
SIR JAMES STEPHEN.


Lines of study to be followed by those who
wish to extend their knowledge of Methodism, with notes on the
books to be read.



IN making a real study of a special subject, the first
question that arises is, from what point to set out,
and the second, along what lines to travel. 

This  little volume is intended simply as a point of 
departure, and it will be well perhaps to indicate in a
closing chapter some of the routes that may be
followed in further exploration. 

A great purpose will be served if others are stirred to thorough and
extensive reading on some of the topics suggested.

We have among us a number of Wesley experts, and
their ranks might usefully be increased; but it is
desirable that among such experts, in addition to
men of patient antiquarian research, we should have
students of historical and philosophical bent, who
will follow up some of the threads that the foregoing
chapters only indicate.

Some, no doubt, will not have the time to follow
any of the extended courses outlined below. 

For them I would suggest simply:
Lelievre’s “Life of Wesley” .

Find1ay’s “Church of Christ as set forth in
the New Testament”:  A small book, but
invaluable as defining the Methodist position.


Overton’s “ Evangelical Revival in the Eighteenth Century ” 
An admirable and fairminded survey of the whole Movement.


The groups of books that follow are not intended
to be exhaustive, but rather suggestive, contributions
to a larger Bibliography of the subject than has yet
been attempted. 

The arrangement of topics proceeds
from broader to more specialised reading: first the
history of the century in which Wesley lived, then
his Life, and, following it in natural order, the History
of the Methodist Church.
 
These are preliminary to
such byways of study as the history of the Moravian
Church, and to topics of such great importance as
the Methodist conception of the Church, and the
machinery of Methodism.


I. WESLEY’S ENVIRONMENT

“ Outlines of the World’s History.” By Sanderson. 
Part IV. Modern History.   
Chapter IV., on the eighteenth century, is an
admirable sketch of the World-events of Wesley’s
time.
It is interesting to know that during Wesley’s
early years, Peter the Great was raising Russia to a
formidable position among the nations; Frederick
of Prussia, “the greatest sovereign of the eighteenth
century,” was practically Wesley’s contemporary,
being born only ten years later. 
George Washington, during the same period, was raised up to steer the
American colonies through the dangerous years of
their early independence.

The same century witnessed the decline of the Turkish Empire, and
the terrors of the French Revolution, a political
earthquake which shook the whole of Europe.

Among famous men of the period are Benjamin
Franklin, Emanuel Swedenborg, Laplace the astronomer, 
and Immanuel Kant the great metaphysician.

The names of Galvani, Volta, Lavoisier, and Fahrenheit 
are all suggestive of discoveries of immense
value to the race.

Goethe and Schiller, Rousseau
and Voltaire, were foremost in the world of European
literature. 

Bach, Handel, Hadyn, and Mozart, all
did their best Work during Wesley’s life. It was
an age of movement preparatory to the great 
expansion of the nineteenth century.


“A Short History of the English People.”
By John Richard Green.
The appearance of this work marked a new departure in
historical method. History in Green’s hands,
instead of being little more than a record of battle
and conquest, became a mirror to the life of the people.

One of the most notable features of the volume when
first published was the space devoted to the study of
Wesley and the Methodist Revival. Green’s estimate
ought not to be overlooked by any earnest student of
Methodism.


Lecky’s “History of the Eighteenth Century.”
Vols. III. and IV. 
It is not a little remarkable that
Mr. Lecky, one of the most thoughtful and impartial
historians of the century, should devote one hundred
and fifty pages to the rise of Methodism. 

Mr. Lecky in some respects grasps the philosophy of Methodism
as scarcely any other writer does. 

Naturally, by a historian of rationalistic tendency, the extraordinary
physical manifestations and the supposed credulity of
Wesley are unduly emphasised. 

Yet Mr. Lecky speaks
of Wesley as “one of the most powerful and most
active intellects in England.” And giving full value to
“the career of the elder Pitt, and the splendid victories
by sea and land that were won under his ministry,”
he declares that “they must yield in real importance
to that religious revolution which shortly before had
been begun in England by the preaching of the
Wesleys and of Whitefield.” 

An independent testimony such as this is of great value.


“The Evangelical Revival in the Eighteenth
Century.”. Epochs of Church History. By Canon
Overton.
Canon Overton has studied Wesley and his times very
sympathetically, and, though writing from the Anglican
standpoint, he is always conspicuously fair in spirit.

This little volume treats of the Methodist Revival as
part of a larger evangelical movement. The chapter
on “The Doctrines of the Revival” is particularly
useful.


“The English Church in the Eighteenth Century.” By Abbey and Overton 
 A study of life and thought in the Church
of England from the Anglican point of view.


“Religion in England under Queen Anne and
the Georges.” Ecclesiastical History, vols. V., VI.,
and VII. By Dr. Stoughton 8 vols., 
Full of uncommon information and enriched 
by many wise and judicious estimates of men
and events. Dr. Stoughton is particularly helpful in his
portraiture of Nonconformists and Nonconformity.

“History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.” By Leslie Stephen.
A book in which the movement is surveyed from the
standpoint of thought and literature. Considerable
attention is given to Methodism. 


In addition to these, a study may be made of 
contemporary literature. It is too large a subject to be
even outlined here, but those who wish to understand
the life of the time should be familiar with such
works as:
“ The Spectator ”.
Boswell 's “ Life of Johnson”.
Hannah More’s “Life and Letters.” 
the “ Letters of Mrs. Delany”  formerly Mary Granville, with whom Wesley
corresponded while at Oxford, and similar works.


Hogarth’s Engravings and, for those to whom
they are accessible, the original paintings in the
National Gallery, are deeply interesting as illustrating
the life of the period. 

George Morland’s paintings
may be studied with the same intent; idylls of home
and country life in the same century.


2. THE LIFE OF WESLEY
“ Wesley’s Journal.” Of this there are several editions, and 
others in preparation.

1. “The One Volume Journal,” uniform with this 
volume, omitting only the long disquisitions,
and such portions of the story as are of lesser
interest.

2. “The Two Volume JournaI,” with introduction by 
the Rev. W. L. Watkinson 

3.“The Four Volume Journal” (Students’ Edition).

4. “The Library Edition, of the Journal,”
with valuable annotations. 
This is now being prepared by the Rev. W. L. Watkinson,
and, when complete, will be a work of national interest.


Lives of Wesley. 
A full list of Biographies and Biographical Notices 
has been published by the Wesley Historical Society. 
Here it is only necessary
to mention a few of varying character. They are
placed under the name of the author. 

Lelievre. One of
the best all-round lives. The new edition translated
by a brother of the author, is admirably done.

Tyerman.1870. The most elaborate attempt at a complete
biography yet made, but it falls far short of what is
needed. There are the maferials for a biography,
but many of the estimates founded upon them will
have to be modified by more recent studies and
further discoveries.

Southey.The first great
Life of Wesley from an independent standpoint. It
was published in 1820, and in some points gave rise
to great controversy. Southey regarded ambition to
be one of the leading motives of Wesley’s character,
a judgment he afterwards entirely reversed in a letter
reproduced in facsimile in Dr. Smith’s “History of
Methodism.”


Overton. 1891. 
Canon Overton was formany years rector of Epworth, and
devoted immense time and labour to the study of the
Movement and the century. It is one of the most
sympathetic pictures from the pen of an outsider yet
printed. 

Snell.World's Epoch-Makers.There are many curious byways of
thought and information in Mr. Sne1l’s volume, but
the “ Epoch-making ” character of John Wes1ey’s Work
is just what he seems to miss. It adds little of value
to the study of the Movement from a national stand-
point.

Telford. 1886. 
One of the best shorter lives, careful and accurate. 
Mr. Telford has also published a Penny Life and a Penny
History, which have had a large circulation.


Wedgwood. 1850. Miss Wedgwood’s “John Wesley and the
Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century,”
deserves to be read by every student of the Movement. 
For breadth of conception, and grasp of the
significance of events, it ranks highly. It is not a
systematic biography, but a series of philosophical
studies. It merits far greater attention than it has
yet received.

There are other interesting studies by Dr. Rigg,
the Rev. Richard Green, and others.



3. THE HISTORY OF METHODISM

Histories, again, are so numerous that only a few
of the more important can be named.

Smith, “ History of Wesleyan Methodism.”
In three volumes, dealing respectively with “Wesley and his
Times,” “The Middle Age,” and “Modern Methodism.” 
It was first published in 1857, but there have
been more recent editions. It is our standard history
down to the year 1849.

Stevens, “ The History of the Religious
Movement of the Eighteenth Century, called
Methodism.”(3 vols) 
A valuable survey, strong in biographical
sketches of the men of Methodism, and in summaries
of its progress decade by decade. 

Hurst, “The History of Methodism.
(3 Vols) This is a work on ambitious lines, 
originally intended to cover:
(1) British Methodism, 
(2) American Methodism, and 
(3) World-wide Methodism. 
The three volumes on British
Methodism are published at the Wesleyan Methodist
Book-Room. They are profusely and beautifully illustrated. 
Some of the reproductions of famous paintings, 
and photogravures of drawings done specially
for the work, are of great merit. 
The three volumes are crowded with interesting information. 
The facts are well grouped, and there is a great amount of new
material. It is a work which ought to find a place
in every library, public and private. 
The style is attractive, and for a history of British Methodism at
once thoroughly popular and accurate, scarcely anything better can be desired. 

“American Methodism.” By Abel Stevens,
(1885). A shorter history compiled from the author’s
“ History of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”


“Wesley and his Preachers, Their Conquest of Britain.” 
By G. Holden Pike.  A recent work, brightly and effectively 
written, and showing careful study of an
extensive field of Wesley literature.

“A Short History of the People called
Methodists.” By W. H. Daniels.
Especially good on the work in America.

“ A History of Methodism in Ireland." By
C. H. Crookshank, M.A. (1888; 3 vols.)



4. MORAVIANS AND METHODISTS:

“ A Short History of the Moravian, Church.”
By J. E. Hutton, M.A. 
This little handbook is everything that could
be desired: scholarly, accurate, and interesting from
cover to cover. 
It is divided into two parts:
(1) The Ancient Church, and 
(2) The Renewed Church. 
The two chapters on “The Beginning of Missions,”
and “The Brethren in England,” are especially
valuable. `

“ The Beginnings of the Brethren’s Church
in England.” By Gerard A. Wauer (translated by
John Elliott). 


“The Dawn of the Reformation.” Vols. I.
and 11.
 
“The Age of Wiclifh" and “The Age of
Heus,” by Herbert B. Workman, M.A. 
These two volumes ought to be read by any who want thoroughly
to understand the origin of the Moravian Church and
its true place in history. They are not only clear and
attractive in style, but models of what Church History
ought to be. Mr. Workman has a line faculty for
seeing to the heart of events. 


5. THE METHODIST IDEA OF THE  CHURCH

On this subject the literature is not great in
quantity, but excellent in quality.


“The Church of Christ as set forth in the
New Testament.” ,By G. G. Findlay, B.A., D.D 1893. 
This little volume should be the text-book of any who wish to make a
special study of. this topic. It consists of two lectures
delivered a few years ago to the young Methodists of
Leeds at the request of the Leeds Methodist Council.

Every thoughtful young Methodist ought to possess
the book, which only costs one shilling. The lectures
are clear as crystal, rich in New Testament thought
and feeling, and deeply convincing. A more beautiful 
ideal of the Church we need not seek, for it is the
ideal of Christ and His apostles. This invaluable
little work ought to be read by tens of thousands in
Great Britain, America, and in all parts of our
Empire.


“John Wesley and Modern Church Teachiing.”  By G. R. Osborn. 
A small  booklet gathering together into one focus Wesley’s own words
on Church principles. The reading of this pamphlet
would open the eyes of some of those who talk great
nonsense about John Wesley’s High Churchmahship.
In every case the compiler quotes chapter and verse,
so that no possible doubt can be felt as to the
accuracy of the quotation.


“Was John Wesley a High Churchman?”
A Dialogue. By Dr. Rigg. 
In several villages I have known where high 
Anglican rectors were trying to persuade their parishioners
that John Wesley was a sympathiser with their own
extreme views, the fallacy has been effectively exploded
by the circulation of this little booklet. The arguments
are plain and irrefutable.


“ Handbook of Scriptural Church Principles.”
By Dr. Gregory. 
A helpful Manual crowded with New Testament 
teaching. Some chapters, such as the
one on “The Power of the Keys,” are highly instructive.


“Methodism in the Light of the Early
Church.” By W. F. Slater, M.A.


6. THE MACHINERY OF Methodism: 

The subject of Methodist polity is a very wide one,
and one where it is easy to go astray. Happily we
have specialists who have made the subject their
own.
I am able to add to the list of books
suggested some deeply interesting notes from the pen
of the Rev. John S. Simon. 
Some of the rarer books are also included in the list at his suggestion. 

With Mr. Simon’s help I have endeavoured to make the
outline valuable to young ministers who Wish to
master the polity of their own Church.

It is scarcely necessary to say that this special
study must follow and be accompanied by a study
of Methodist History. Our institutions can only
be truly interpreted in the light of the events which
led to their adoption. Such, indeed, is the principle
which underlies the whole of the present volume.

1. Text Books:

“ Handbook of Wesleyan Methodist Polity
and History.” By the Rev. Benjamin Gregory,
A good sketch of Methodist History with which
every student ought to be acquainted.


“The Connexional Economy of Wesleyan
Methodism.” By Dr. Rigg. 

“Church Organisation.” By Dr. Rigg, 1891.

.
2. Works on the special business of church meetings:


(a) The Conference.: Simon’s “Summary of
Methodist Law and Discipline.” 
Section on “The Conference”;  
supplemented by the “ Revised Regulations adapted to the changed order of
Conference Sessions” in the Minutes of Conference,
1902, pages 523-527.

(b) The Synod: “Order and Form of Business ” (New Edition, 1903)

(c) The Circuit: “Superintendent’s Handbook.” By the Rev. James E. Hargreaves.



3. Works on The Duties of Ministers and Office Bearers:

(a) Ministers: “The Large Minutes.”

(b) Stewards: “The Duties of Stewards.” By the Rev. Edward Workman.#

(c) Leaders:
     “Rules of Society and Introduction to the Class-book.”
     “A Manual of Instruction and Advice for Class Leaders.” By Rev. John S. Simon. 

(d) Local Preachers:
    Lay Preachers Handbook.” By C. O. Eldridge, B.A.
    "A History of Lay Preaching.” By John Telford, B.A. 
    
(e) Wesley Guild Workers: “The Wesley Guild Manual.”

.
4. Referebce  Books and Works of Interest on Special Topics:

“A Summary of Methodist Law and Discipline.” By the Rev. John S. Simon, 1896.
(Second Edition, 1898) Every minister receives
at his ordination a copy of this book, which has taken
the place of the “Large Minutes.” 

The document upon which the “Summary” is founded was drawn up
in 1797, and contained the Rules which were believed
to be “essential to the existence of Methodism.”

The original document was signed by Dr. Coke as
president, Samuel Bradburn, secretary, and by a
number of other preachers. Mr. Simon’s book is a
codification of the rules which have been passed up
to the year 1898. It is a book of standard reference
on all questions relating to the Society, the Circuit,
the Minister, the Synod, and the Conference, and
it is “ our only official code of laws.”


“The Constitution and Polity of Wesleyan
Methodism.” By Dr. Williams. Revised by Dr.
Waller. This is a work more expository and historical.
It explains the meaning of our institutions, and traces
their growth from stage to stage. 


“Essay on the Constitution of Wesleyan
Methodism.” By Dr. Beecham. 
Of this, Mr. Simon writes : “There is one book dealing
with the principles of our government which every
young minister should read. It is Dr. Beecham’s
“ Essay on the Constitution of Wesleyan Methodism.”
Francis A. West introduced it to my notice when he
was my chairman. He said, ‘Wear your coat until it
is green, but get that book.’ After many years of
study of Methodism I still hold Dr. Beecham’s Essay
in the highest esteem.”


“The Constitution and Discipline of Wesleyan Methodism.” 
By George Turner. 
“A little-known and admirable volume written
shortly after the events of 1835.”


Grindrod's  “Compendium of the Laws and
Regulations of Wesleyan Methodism.”
“If a man wishes,” says Mr. Simon, “to
do his work thoroughly, he will read Grindrod’s 
Compendium, noting as he does‘ so the changes in the
Constitution that have taken place.”


Peirce’s “Ecclesiastical Principles and Polity
of the Wesleyan Methodists.” “I also
like,” writes Mr. Simon, “to consult this work. You
get in Peirce an historical sketch interwoven with the
regulations, and can see the progress of legislation
from the earliest Methodist times. I am afraid that
the book has fallen out of use, but its value is great.”


“ The First Volume of the Minutes of Conference.”  Revised by Dr. Osborn,
and published in 1862. “ Most interesting as showing
the foundation lines upon which our Constitution rests.
Special note should be taken of the fact that the 1862
edition is the best.”


“Handy Digest of Wesleyan Rules.”
By Charles Povah. “It served a good
purpose in its day;  but as it was published in 1883,
many changes have occurred since then.”


“ Ross’s Telescope.” A handy chart,
showing at a glance the growth of Methodism, and
the dates of the chief events in our history since the
death of Wesley.


“Handbook and Index to the Minutes of
Conference.”  By Charles E. Wansbrough.
“Indispensable,” says Mr. Simon, “to a man who
possesses a complete edition of the Minutes of 
Conference. It is a most painstaking and exact book,
valued by every one who has to do hard work on
the regulations of the Conference. I was much
helped by it when I had to codify a hundred years of
Conference legislation.”

“London Quarterly Review.” 
Articles by the Rev. John S. Simon on the Constitutional 
History of Methodism from 1739-1835.
The articles _will be found in:
Jan. 1884; Oct. 1884; Oct. 1885; 
Oct.1886; July.1887; July 1888; April 1890;
Oct.1890; Jan.1892; April 1892; Oct. 1892; 
and Oct.1893. 

Mention ought also to be made of two articles
in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, July and August
1887, giving a sketch of the Methodist Constitution as
it appeared in 1810.

Mr. Simon also says, “The man who would understand 
the Constitutional History of Methodism must
give his days and nights to the study of piles of
pamphlets. We have, in the Didsbury College
Library, a valuable collection. But I am afraid
that such thorough study of the subject is rare.”

It may be hoped that this outline of study will
make a thorough knowledge of the growth of our
Church more general in the future.


7. THE SISTER CHURCHES OF METHODISM:

The books named under this head have all been
suggested by either the Editor or, Book Steward of
each of the Churches concerned. 

The affiliated Methodist Conferences are not mentioned separately,
as their polity is practically the same as our own.

In every case the books selected are, as far as
possible, brief, and non-controversial in character.
The study of them would greatly help to an 
understanding of Greater Methodism. 

1.  The Methodist Episcopal Churches of America.
“Methodist Constitutions and Charters.”
A volume of 316 pages, containing the charters and constitutions
of all the chief organisations in connection with the 
Methodist Episcopal Churches of America, both North and
South.


“ The Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”


2. The Canadian Methodist Church.
“The Doctrine and Discipline of the
Methodist Church.’ 


“Centennial of Canadian Methodism.”


3. The Primitive Methodist Connexion.
‘Handbook of Primitive Methodist
Church Principles.”


4. The United Methodist Free Churches.
“Historic Sketches of Free Methodism.”
By Joseph Kirsop 

“Free Methodist Manual.”


5. The Methodist New Connexion.
“The Centenary Volume,” 1797-1897.

“Handbook for the Methodist New Connexion.” By W. J. Townsend,


6. The Bible Christians.
“Digest of Rules and Regulations.”


7. The Calvinistic Methodists.
“The Confession of Faith.”

“Welsh Calvinistic Methodism.” By
Rev. W. Williams 




8. METHODIST SONG

This most interesting topic, the importance of
which is felt by every student of Wesley, whether
he approaches the subject from the theological, the
historical, or the biographical side, deserves much
broader treatment than it has yet received. There is
a large field for new workers. For the following very
valuable notes I am indebted to Mr. J. T. Lightwood,
of Lytham, who has a knowledge of both the hymnology 
and psalmody of Methodism which very few
possess.


METHODIST HYMNS AND TUNES.

Notes by Mr. J. T. Lightwood.

A. Hymns.

The study of hymnology has been taken up so
thoroughly during the last few years that the field of
original research in this subject, especially from a
Methodist standpoint, is somewhat limited. 

However, for the great majority who have neither time nor
opportunity for original study, there is a fine collection
of works setting forth the history of all the hymns in
current use in the Churches, together with much information
about the writers. 

For Methodist hymnology
the first place must undoubtedly be given to the late
G. J. Stevenson, whose “Methodist Hymn-Book ” 
contains a detailed account of all
the hymns in the 1875 edition of the Hymn-Book.

This book is specially adapted for the use of teachers in
the senior classes of our Sunday schools, and also for
leaders and local preachers. It contains a wealth of
illustrative anecdote showing the circumstances under
which the hymns have been used on special occasions,
and the whole work is a wonderful testimony to the
value and popularity of the Methodist hymns. 
It should be understood at once that the phrase, “Method-
ist hymns,” does not mean hymns by Methodists, but
those in general use by Methodists. 

The Methodist Church did not produce a nineteenth-century
hymnwriter of the first rank, but it is the glory of our
Churches that when we reach our hymn-singing,
sectarianism vanishes.

Stevenson also published an earlier work in 1869,
“The Methodist Hymn-Book and its Associations,” 
a second edition of which was published in
1871. 
This work had special reference to the book then in use, but
it was allowed to go out of print when the 1875
hymn-book appeared. 


There are four other works referring to the hymn-
book in use in the earlier part of the nineteenth
century, all by Wesleyan ministers.

1. Wesleyan Hymnology. By Burgess.
2. Original Titles of Hymns. By Kirk.
3. Round and through the Wesleyan Hymn-Book. By Ward.
4. Two Lectures on the Wesleyan Hymn-Book; By Heaton. 


These may occasionally be met with in the second-
hand book shops, or consulted in the reference
libraries of our largest towns. Burgess’s work is
critical, the others dwell principally on the historical
aspects of the hymns.

Two works by the Rev. S. W. Christophers
should by all means be consulted. 

His “ Poets of Methodism ” is a most interesting 
work, and furnishes ample proof that if Methodism
has not produced many hymn-writers, she has brought
out poets of great excellence. This is probably the
only book in existence that deals in detail with the
poetical works of such well-known men as Smetham,
B. Gough, John Harris the Cornish miner, with T.
Garland and Richard Rodda, also of Cornish birth,
and many others. This work is indispensable to a
lover of Methodist literature.


Another work by Christophers is called “Hymn-
writers and their Hymns” This is of a more general character, but
the plan on which it is laid out is excellent, and
each chapter treats of a set of well-known hymns on
a particular subject. Christophers was a vivid and
interesting writer, though sometimes perhaps a little
diffuse, and his books should not be allowed to fall
into disuse.


Let us now consider the works on hymnology by
writers outside the Methodist Church. One of the
best available books on the subject is 
“The Hymn-Lover,” by Garrett Horder 
This book contains a capital estimate of hymns and
hymn-writers, and the author’s criticisms are singularly
apt and fair. Moreover, the work possesses
considerable literary style, and its author is a recognised 
authority on tl1e subject. 

Mr. Horder has also issued a
most valuable and complete collection of hymns under
the title of “ Worship Song”
which is largely used in Congregational Churches.

The most recent popular work on this subject is
“Famous Hymns,” by F. A. Jones.   It contains a few facsimiles and
several excellent portraits. The subject-matter is put
together in an interesting manner, and the book
could be recommended more cordially if it did not
contain some silly anecdotes of mythical origin, the
recital of which is bound to impair the value of the
hymns to which they allude. 

This book is evidently
the result of long and diligent research, and the
author brings to light many new facts.


The standard book of reference on this subject is,
and will be for many years to come, the monumental
work by the Rev. Dr. Julian, the “ Dictionary of
Hymnology."  It may be consulted in most
large reference libraries, but is rather a book for special
reference for the student, and not likely to be of much
use to the ordinary reader.

A very useful little book is “Hymns that have
Helped,” compiled by W. T. Stead.
It is a double number of the
“Penny Poet” series, and furnishes some interesting
information not found elsewhere. It also contains
some very fine hymns that are not usually found
together under one cover.


“Lyric Studies”, by Dorricott and
Collins, is a useful companion to the Primitive
Methodist Hymnal of 1887. The first part is
biographical, while the second contains useful notes
on each hymn.

It is well known to what extent our Hymnody is
enriched by translations from the German. One of
the best-known translators is Miss Winkworth,
who has also written an excellent manual, entitled
“Christian Singers of Germany” 
 
A most interesting account of hymns
belonging to the earlier periods of the Christian
Church is “Te Deum Laudamus,” by Mrs.
Rundle Charles.

These last two works
possess the additional advantage of being written in
good, well-chosen language, a remark which also
applies in a high degree to Rev. F. W. Macdonald’s
able study of “Latin Hymn-writers and their
Hymns,” 

While this list could of course be considerably
extended, it contains most of the principal works on
hymns and hymn-writers that are published at a price
within the reach of all (except Julian’s). 

One other book should, however, be mentioned: the “Life
of John Ellerton”. This contains an
interesting account of the life and labours of one of
the finest of modern hymnists, and at the end there
is a collection of essays and biographical sketches
by Ellerton, which are of considerable value. I


B. Tunes.

Although hymn-singing has always been a special
featurein the services of the Methodist Church, it is
a remarkable fact that scarcely anything is known
about the history of the tunes or the lives of the
composers. It may be stated at once that there is
no special literature on the subject of Methodist
music, and its history is yet to be written. There
is here an immense field of work for any who are
fond of Church music and singing to work in.
 
If the Wesley Guilds would initiate some scheme of this
kind, they would be rendering invaluable service.

Early in 1903 a circular letter appeared in many of
the religious papers appealing for information on this
subject, and the number of letters received in reply
showed how great was the desire to know more
about the tunes and their composers. 

Although Methodist music has not yet received the attention
it deserves, there is a certain amount of literature on
the history of Church music.
 
One of the most readable books of this nature is 
“Studies in Worship Music” 
Two series have been issued, but
the first is the more interesting and important.
It is by Mr. J. Spencer Curwen, and he has
spared no pains to make his book as complete as
possible. The chief feature of the work is a series
of chapters devoted to the history of the music of
various Nonconformist Churches, and the chapter
devoted to Methodist music is very interesting.


A very useful book for ministers, local preachers,
organists, and all who have authority over the music of
the Church, is “United Praise,” by F. G. Edwards.
It contains chapters on
chanting, hymn-singing, the special uses of music in
Nonconformist churches, and other allied subjects.
Mr. Edwards also wrote a few short biographies of
hymn-tune composers (Gauntlett, Dykes, Monk, etc.),
which were inserted in a work called the “Romance
of Psalter and Hymnal,” by Revf R. E. Welsh,
and F. G. Edwards 

The book as a whole, however, cannot be recommended, 
as the non-musical part is very poor and
“scrappy.”


There is a good article on “ Congregational Singing”
in a little book by the Rev. H. C. Shuttleworth, called
“The Place of Music in Public Worship”. 

“Chapters on Church Music,” by Rev.
R. B. Daniel is a useful and interesting book,
but the subject is treated entirely from an Anglican
point of view. 

There are very few works on eighteenth-century
Church music, for the simple reason
that there was none in the proper sense of the term.

Several pamphlets were issued, chiefly by clergymen,
finding fault with the deplorable state of music in the
Church of England. 

John Wesley makes very few
references to music in his “Journals,” but his 
introduction to a tune-book issued under his direction,
called “Sacred Melody,” might be read with advantage
in Methodist chapels (and elsewhere) every
now and then.

There are various articles on Church music, and
on the history and writers of certain hymn-tunes,
scattered through the musical and other magazines,
but it is impossible to specify these. 

There is, however, a connected history of the use of Methodist
music appearing at intervals in the “Proceedings
of the Wesley Historical Society.”

Nor is the literature of eighteenth-century music
generally much richer. True, the period is embraced
in the large musical histories to be found in the
libraries, but we look in vain for a readable book on
the times when not only Handel and other foreigners
flourished in England, but when also Croft, Carey,
Arne, Nares, jackson, and others were popular composers. 

Until such a work is forthcoming, biographies
of individuals must suffice, and an interesting and
generally well-written series is “The Great 
Musicians” (14 volumes). 
The volumes dealing with Handel, and with “English
Church Composers,” are suitable. 

The story of Charles Wesley’s two precocious sons 
is told in his “journals,”
and it contains references to contemporary musicians.

The student who wishes to go further into the
matter may be referred to Davey’s “History of
English Music”. The work as
a whole is good, and many parts are very readable.



9. METHODIST ANTIQUARIAN STUDY

“Proceedings of the Wesley Historical
Society.” Three volumes published, the fourth
commenced. The Wesley Historical Society was
instituted to promote the study of our Church and
its growth. 

Among the most important numbers of the Proceedings yet issued are:

“The Bennet Minutes,” 1744-48, referred to in
the chapter on “The Conference.”

“Published Biographies of John Wesley.”
An invaluable collation of Wesley’s Lives, Histories,
Essays, and Pamphlets, by the Rev. Richard Green.


“ Wesley Bibliography.” By the Rev. Richard
Green.  “An exact account of all the
publications issued by the brothers Wesley, with
descriptive and illustrative notes.” Indispensable to
anyone engaging in Wesley research, and suggesting
a score of pathways as yet scarcely trodden.

Among subjects the fringe of which has scarcely
been touched by previous publications may be
named:-
Wesley’s Character as Illustrated in his Correspondence.
Wesley’s Place in Literature.
Wesley’s Intercourse with the Men of the Eighteenth Century.
Wesley and Children.
Wesley as a Pioneer in Social and Philanthropic Enterprise.
Wesley and the Industrial Revolution.
Wesley’s Writings in the Arminian Magazine.





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