THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME ; OR, WESLEY AND THE METHODIST MOVEMENT, JUDGED BY NEARLY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY WRITERS, LIVING OR DEAD. EDITED BY REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D., LL.D. NEW YORK : PHILLIPS & HUNT. CINCINNATI: WALDEN & STOWE. J. W. BURKE & CO., MACON, GA. J. B. M'FERRIN, AGENT, NASHVILLE, TBNN. L. D. DAMERON & CO., ST. Louis, Mo. 1881. COPYRIGHT 1880, BY cfe? NEW YORK. 1. If Methodism continue in vigor and purity to future genera- tions, it will be associated with the name of its founder, and encircle his memory with increasing luster. Richard Watson. 2. These gentlemen are irregular, but they have done good, and I pray God to bless them. Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury. 3. Mr.' Wesley, may I be found at your feet in heaven. Loivth, Bishop of London. -4. In him even old age appeared delightful, like an evening cloud; and it was impossible to observe him without wishing fer- vently, " May my last end be like his." Alexander Knox. 5. I consider him as the most influential mind of the last century the man who will have produced the greatest effects centuries, or perhaps millenniums hence, if the present race of men should con- tinue so long. Robert Southey. 6. His life stands out, in the history of the world, unquestionably pre-eminent in religious labors above that of any other man since the apostolic age. Abel Stevens. 7. His quarrel was solely with sin and Satan. His master passion was, in his own often-repeated expression, the love of God and the love of man for God's sake. The world laas at length done tardy jus- tice to its benefactor. Overton. M45169 PREFACE. HEIST a traveler over the mountains of California first sees at a distance those great trees, which, on their dis- covery, astonished the world, he experiences a sense of disap- pointment. They are only trees large trees, it is true, and well proportioned, but yet only trees. But after he has stood in the midst of the grove after he has walked for more than three hundred feet close around a single trunk, and looked up to branches as high above him or perchance has walked upon some fallen tree a hundred feet above the ground, with a trunk so wide that along it a team might be driven ; then, and not till then, does he realize their immense magnitude. So is it with great men. First seen they are only men common men in their appearance and habits. "Not until we study their movements, record their labors, follow them in critical moments, consider their decisions, look out on their broad views, and feel the throbbings of their hearts, do we comprehend their greatness. The one grand and only perfect character our world has ever seen was not recognized by his own age. He had no " beauty that they should desire him," and " they esteemed him not." But after eighteen cent- uries he towers above all other characters. In some measure, such was the life of John Wesley. "No man of his time was less understood. He was singular, because he fixed his eye upon and followed only the truth. He was maligned and traduced. Pulpits denounced him, the press satirized him, and every year pamphlets and volumes attacked his doctrines and movements, and impugned his motives. But, unmoved, he kept steadily to his purpose, and went about doing good. To-day nearly a century has passed ; the names 6 PEEFACE. of many of his detractors have perished, but every-where he is associated with the great thinkers and glorious workers of the world. His name to-day is upon more lips, in more lands, than is that of any other man of his times. It was a happy thought of the editor of this volume to secure different writers, from different Churches, and from different stand-points, to present their estimates of Mr. Wesley's life and works. For Wesley was many-sided, and from many points of view his characteristics are worthy of record. To us, two elements in him are pre-eminently conspicuous. First, his unwearying labor and perseverance : second, his en- tire dedication of himself to Christ and his work. He planned his work skillfully, and did it thoroughly. It has been said of him that " he read more, wrote more, preached more, and traveled more, than any minister, if not than any man, of his times." His long life,' spanning nearly a century, gave him great opportunities, and they were well improved. Two entries in his journal illustrate his life : " Here I rested for two weeks, that I might write up my notes, preaching only every morning and evening." And in his eighty-third year,' preparing Mr. Fletcher's life, he says : " To this I dedicated all the time I could spare till November, from five in the morn- ing till eight at night. These are my studying hours : I can- not write longer in a day without hurting my eyes." He knew no rest till he found it in the grave. He early read, translated, published, and took into his own heart and life, the little book of Thomas a Kempis, called the Imitation of Christ. To be like Christ, to think Christ's thoughts, to speak Christ's words, to carry out Christ's plans, to do, as far as man might do, Christ's works, was the one grand ambition of his life. Hence those broad ideas of toler- ation,. Christian fellowship and unity, which the Christian world is slowly embracing. He heard the Master say, "The field is the world ; " and his heart echoed back, " The world is my parish." A PREFATORY POEM. SEE God's witness unto men ! Faithful through all the earnest years, As though, from old anointed seers, One had been bid to earth again For ordered work among his peers. Kindle as ye read the tale, The thrilling tale of duty done-, Of gospel triumphs, nobly won By Truth, almighty to prevail, By Love, unselfish as the sun. They to holy missions born, Who shed a bloom upon the days, And work for Christ in loving ways ; For them the envious blasts of scorn But scatter seeds of future praise. Time the great avenger is Of patient souls with lofty aim ; For whom the blind to-day hath blame, The wiser morrows hoard the bliss, And fill the ages* with their name. v Who themselves for others give, Need not to slander make reply, Nor falter in their purpose high ; For God hath willed that they should live, While all the proud self-seekers die. True hearts wish no flattering songs ; They humbly bow in holier fane ; Men do not bless the clouds for rain. The music of the lyre belongs To the skilled hand which wakes the strain. 8 A PEEFATOEY POEM. Service is its own reward If the deep love but prompt the deed. All heaven-sent souls can ask or need Folds in the favor of the Lord ; Their guerdon this their highest meed. Praise we then OUR GOD ALONE, Who made his servant thus complete I And pour we, in libation sweet, Our wealth of spikenard each his own In tribute at the Master's feet. March 17, 1879. CONTENTS. PAGB PREFACE ................................................................ 5 Rev. M. SIMPSON, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. PEEFATOEY POEM ...................................................... 7 Eev. W. MORLEY PUNSHON, LL.D., of the British Wesleyan Methodists. INTEODUCTION ........................... . ............................. 18 Eev. J. 0. A. CLARK, D.D., LL.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. THE WESLEY FAMILY 27 Mr. GKORGE J. STEVENSON, M.A., of the British Wesleyan Methodists. WESLEY AND METHODISM 51 Eev. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D., LLD., of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. WESLEY AND THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 76 Eev. J. H. EIGG, D.D., of the British Wesleyan Methodists. WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON THE INTELLECTUAL, SOCIAL, AND RE- LIGIOUS LIFE OF THE ENGLISH MASSES 98 THOMAS AUSTIN BULLOCK, LL.D., of the Methodist New Connection in England. WESLEY AND PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 128 Eev. CYRUS D. Foss, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. WESLEY AS AEEVIVALIST 149. Eev. GEORGE DOUGLASS, LL.D., of the Methodist Church of Canada. WESLEY THE FOUNDEE OF METHODISM 164 Eev. HOLLAND N. M'TYEIRE, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. METHODIST DOCTEINE 168 Eev. WILLIAM BURT POPE, D.D., of the British Wesleyan Methodists. IDEAS WESLEY DEVELOPED IN ORGANIZING HIS SOCIETIES 191 Eev. ORLANDO T. DOBBIN, LL.D., (Trinity College, Dublin, and University of Ox- ford,) of the Church of England. 10 CONTENTS. PAQM WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON THE RELIGION OF THE WORLD 213 Eev. WILLIAM COOKE, D.D., of the Methodist New Connection in England. WESLEY AND CHURCH POLITY .' 245 Eev. THOMAS WEBSTEB, D.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada. WESLEY AND THE COLORED RACE 256 Eev. L. H. HOLSEY, Bishop of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church of America. WESLEY THE PREACHER Eev. J. H. EIGG, D.D., of the British Wesleyan Methodists. WESLEY AS AN ITINERANT. Eev. GEORGE F. PIERCE, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. WESLEY AS A POPULAR PREACHER 294 Eev. M. LELIEVRE, of the Methodist Church in France and Switzerland. WESLEY AS AN EDUCATOR 300 Eev. EEASTUS O. HAVEN, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. WESLEY AND HIS LITERATURE 810 Eev. W. MORLEY PITNSHON, LL.D., of the British Wesleyan Methodists. WESLEY AND SUNDAY-SCHOOLS 829 Sir CHARLES EEED, M.P., LL.D., (Yale,) of the Independents of England. WESLEY JUGE PAR de PRESSENS^ .,.. 335 WESLEY JUDGED BY DR. de PRESSENSE" 339 Eev. EDMOND de PRESSENSE, D.D., (University of Breslau,) of the Eeformed Church of France. EPWORTH A POEM 348 Eev. DWIGHT WILLIAMS, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. WESLEY AND WHITEFIELD 850 Eev. JOSEPH KIRSOP, of the United Methodist Free Churches of England. JOHN WESLEY AND HIS MOTHER S61 Eev. JOHN POTTS, D.D., of the Methodist Church of Canada. JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY 878 Eev. J. E. JAQTTES, Ph.D., D.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada. PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN METHODISM Eev. ANDREW A. LJPSOOMB, D.D., LL.D., of the Methodist Protestant Church. CONTENTS. 11 PAGE WESLEY AND THE EVIDENCE WEITEES, ESSAYISTS, AND OTHERS 404 Rev. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D., LL.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. WESLEY THE WORKER 418 Eev. B. F. LEE, L.B., of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. WESLEY AND FLETCHER 427 Eev. J. H. OVERTON, (University of Oxford,) of the Church of England. WESLEY AND CLAEKE 435 Eev. J. P. NEWMAN, D.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church. WESLEY'S LIBERALITY AND CATHOLICITY 452 Eev. A. P. STANLEY, D.D., (Dean of Westminster,) of the Church of England. WESLEYAN LYEIC POETRY 464 Eev. ABEL STEVENS, D.D., LL.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church. WESLEYAN HYMN MUSIC 473 Miss ELIZA WESLEY, granddaughter of Charles Wesley. WESLEY AND COKE 481 Eev. WM. M. WIGHTMAN, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. WESLEY AND ASBUEY 497 Eev. THOMAS O. SUMMERS, D.D., LL.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. IN MEMORI AM. CHARLES WESLEY, HYMKOLOGIST 529 BENJAMIN GOUGII, of the British Wesleyan Methodists. WESLEY AND LAY PREACHING 532 Eev. ISAAC P. COOK, Local Preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church. WESLEY'S DEATH AND CHARACTER 548 Eev. LUKE TYERMAN, of the British Wesleyan Methodists. THE WESLEY MEMORIAL IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY 594 Eev. A. P. STANLEY, D.D., (Dean of Westminster,) and others. WESLEY IN SAVANNAH AND THE WESLEY MONUMENTAL CHURCH 606 Eev. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D., LL.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. WESLEY AND THE METHODIST MOVEMENT JUDGED BY NEARLY ONE HUNDRED WRITERS, LIVING OR DEAD 649 Eev. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D., LL.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 12 CONTENTS. PACK THE WESLEY MONUMENTAL CHURCH 700 Eev. LOVICK PIEBCE, D.D., with an Introduction by Eev. A. G. HAYGOOD, D.D., both of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. STATISTICS OF METHODISM 706 Eev. W. H. DE Pur, D.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church. APPENDIX 725 CONTAINING OFFICIAL AND OTHER PAPERS, APPROVING THE WESLEY MONU- MENTAL CHURCH, FROM THE FOLLOWING METHODIST BODIES AND OTHERS. THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH ; THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH ; THE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS FROM GEORGIA ; THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES; THE SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES ; THE METHODIST PROTESTANT CHTJKCH ; THE AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH ; THE COLORED METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF AMERICA ; THE METHODIST CHURCH OF CANADA ; THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF CANADA ; THE BRITISH WESLEYAN METHODISTS ; THE METHODIST NEW CONNECTION IN ENGLAND ; THE METHODIST UNITED FREE CHURCHES IN ENGLAND ; THE PRIMITIVE METHODISTS OF ENGLAND ; AND THE METHODISTS OF FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND ; ALSO, CONCLUDING REMARKS BY THE EDITOR RELATING TO THE APPROACHING METH- ODIST ECUMENICAL COUNCIL. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PACK PEOFILE OF JOHN WESLEY Frontispiece PORTRAIT OF SUSANNA WESLEY 26 PORTRAIT OF JOHN WESLEY 269 PORTRAIT OF CHARLES WESLEY 372 FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM JOHN WESLEY TO ADAM CLARKE. 446, 447 FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM DR. CLARKE TO LORD TEIGN- MOUTH 448-451 THE MEMORIAL TABLET IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY 599 WESLEY MONUMENTAL CHURCH, SAVANNAH, GA 607 INTRODUCTION. TN offering the WESLEY MEMORIAL YOLUME to the Public, it JL may be proper to state the facts in which it had its origin. Its object is twofold: first, to erect by pen-pictures, drawn by leading minds, a MEMORIAL to WESLEY which shall be, we trust, more enduring than marble : second, to aid the comple- tion of the WESLEY MONUMENTAL CHURCH, now building in Savannah, Ga., the only city in America in which Mr. Wesley had a home and a parish. To the completion of the MONU- MENTAL CHURCH the net proceeds of the sale of the book will be exclusively devoted. During the Editor's late visit to England the MEMORIAL YOL- UME was conceived. It was suggested to his mind, with almost the force of an inspiration, that such a work would not only aid his efforts to build the MONUMENTAL CHURCH, but help to illustrate the life-work of John Wesley, and bring the various METHODISMS OF THE WORLD into closer union and fellowship. While lying, pressed by many a care, upon his bed at his hotel in London, the MEMORIAL YOLUME, with its name, its sub- jects, and its contributors, was, after constant and earnest prayer to Almighty Grod, mapped out with such vividness and distinctness that he arose at once and wrote out the plan. The book now offered to the public is the result. The work is given, in all its essential features, just as it was first conceived and planned on that, to the Editor at least, eventful morning. A few subjects have been added, and a few names substituted ; but the great majority of the contributors are those who, from its inception, were assigned to the subjects upon which they have written. That the Editor might be more 14 INTKODUCTION. likely to succeed, to some of the themes more than one writer was assigned. If one failed, there were others equally able to whom he could apply. "With the exception, therefore, of cer- tain subjects subsequently added, and of a few prepared by writers other than those to whom an invitation to write for the 'work was first given, and whose previous and unfulfilled en- g-ageae:ntg allowed 'them to take no part in it, the volume, both in its subjects and contributors, is very nearly what the Editor designed from the beginning. On the same day the work was conceived, the Editor began a correspondence with some of those whom he had selected to write for it. On some he called, and made personal request. In a few days he received the pledges of the Rev. Dr. James H. Rigg, the Rev. Dr. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Mr. George J. Stevenson, M.A., Sir Charles Eeed, LL.D., and the Rev. Dr. Abel Stevens. To these were soon added the pledges of the Rpv. Dr. "William Cooke, the Rev. Joseph Kirsop, the Rev. Dr. "W. Morley Punshon, the Rev. Dr. William B. Pope, the Rev. Dr. O. T. Dobbin, the Rev. Dr. E. O. Haven, and the Rev. Luke Tyerman. "With these pledges, received in London, the Editor returned home to complete what was so auspiciously begun abroad. How he has succeeded will appear in the volume itself. In it the reader will find representative writers from nearly all the Methodisms of Europe, Canada, and the United States. It was the Editor's wish that no Methodist organization claiming John Wesley as its spiritual founder should be left out of the MEMORIAL YOLTJME. Every effort in his power to secure this result has been made. If any one is omitted it has been from no fault of the Editor, for he loves all the people called Method- ists, and prays that all, with one heart and one soul, may pre- serve the unity and purity of Wesleyan Methodism. The Editor would here gratefully record his obligations to all who have contributed to the work. It is, indeed, marvel- ous how readily responses were made to his call. This is INTRODUCTION. 15 more a matter of surprise when it is remembered that every contributor is overburdened by Church work and other pressing engagements, and that every article has been a free- will offering a voluntary contribution to the MONUMENTAL CHURCH. Every article, as Dr. Abel Stevens called his when he sent it from his temporary sojourn by the lakes and mount- ains of Switzerland, is the author's "brick" in the monu- mental edifice which we are building in America in honor of the great and good "Wesley. To one and all the Editor returns his heartfelt thanks. May God reward them for what has been to each a labor of love and self-sacrifice ! In returning thanks to the noble corps of writers who have aided him, the Editor must return special thanks to those who belong to other communions. May Heaven's choicest blessings rest upon them ! To this simple but sincere prayer we are sure that our common Methodism will respond a hearty Amen. Besides those whose names appear as contributors to the volume, the Editor is under obligation to others. It is very gratifying to be able to record that from every one except three or four both in Europe and America, with whom, while preparing the work, the Editor has corresponded, answers have been received. But perhaps it is due to the three or four who have failed to answer his communications, to say, that the Editor has no evidence that they ever received the letters which he addressed to them. Their silence may, there- fore, be explained by the fact that his letters to them never arrived at their destination. From all others, however, most prompt and courteous answers came, nearly all of which were full of tenderest sympathy, of good cheer, and of sincere re- grets on the part of such as were prevented by prior and imperative engagements from writing the articles requested. For such universal promptness and kindness the Editor can account but in one way: it was a beautiful tribute to the memory of the great Christian teacher and reformer whose life work he was seeking to honor. It showed more fully than 16 INTKODUCTION. anything else could show, what a hold the name of John Wes- ley has upon all true Christian hearts the world over. And this is the more remarkable when it is remembered, that many of these answers came from those who are not called by Mr. "Wesley's name. In nearly every instance, both those who have written for the MEMORIAL VOLUME and those who were compelled to decline, have pronounced it a very great honor to be asked to contribute to such a work. It would, no doubt, give great pleasure to Methodists and the friends of Mr. Wesley to read the letters themselves, or to see them in print. But they are too many and voluminous to be given here. While this is true, the Editor may be permitted to give a few to the public, either in whole or in part. And this he does the more readily, because, when he asked contri- butions, he requested either articles on the subjects assigned, or letters which might be used in the published volume. Out of the many received the Editor gives only the answers of such as have no article in the book itself. They are given in the order in which they were received, and the names of the dis- tinguished writers are as follows : the Eight Hon. W. E. Glad- stone, ex-Premier of Great Britain ; the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, of the Tabernacle, London; the Kev. Newman Hall, LL.B., of Christ Church Square, London; Mr. Wm. E. H. Lecky, M. A., author of " Eationalism in Europe," " European Morals," and " England in the Eighteenth Century ; " the Right Kev. Dr. Ellicott, Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol ; the Kev. Dr. W. Antliff, of the Primitive Methodist Theological Insti- tute, Sunderland, England ; the Kev. Dr. J. F. Hurst, Presi- dent of Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey ; the Kev, Dr. Wm. M. Taylor, Pastor of the Broadway Taber- nacle, New York city ; the Kev. Dr. M. Simpson, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; the Kev. Dr. Philip Schaff, of New York city ; the Kev. Dr. Wm. Bacon Stevens, Bishop of th<*Diocese of Pennsylvania ; the Kev. Dr. Daniel A. Payne, Bishop of the African M. E. Church, United States ; and the INTRODUCTION. 17 Rev. Dr. Alexander Clark, editor of the Methodist Protestant " Recorder," Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The" Editor regrets to add that the Rev. Dr. Clark is since deceased. The letters are as follows : HAWARDEN, September 7, 1878. Dear Sir: The design described in your letter is full of moral and historical interest, but I regret to say, it is quite beyond my power to take part in it. It would require me to enter upon a new and distinct set of studies necessary for the proper execution of the work, whereas my engagements already begun are in sad arrears. I must, therefore, ask you to excuse me. I remain, dear sir, your very faithful and obedient REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. W. E. GLADSTONE. NIGHTINGALE LANE, CLAPHAM, September 13, 1878. Dear Sir : I count it a great honor to have been asked to contribute fco the Wesley Volume ; and you have rightly judged that I should have written in a tone which would show that no doctrinal differences pre- sent my feeling deep veneration for the character of John Wesley. I am, however, unable to attempt more work. I am burdened as it is, and can hardly hold on from week to week. I have no leisure, nor the prospect of any, and I could not undertake the work which you re- quest of me. Yours very truly, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. C. H. SPURGEON. THE TRY HOUSE, CHRIST CHURCH SQUARE, HAMPSTEAD HEATH, September 17, 1878. My Dear Sir : I feel deeply grateful for the high honor your request confers on me. I only wish my ability were equal to my desire to comply with it. But the fact is, that I have just returned from my va- cation to a long series of preaching engagements in different parts of the country, which, added to my onerous pastoral work, entirely pre- vent my venturing to undertake so honorable and responsible a service. With hearty good wishes, believe me, dear sir, faithfully yours, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. NEWMAN HALL. 38 ONSLOW GARDENS, S. W., October 4, 1878. Dear Sir: I am sorry I cannot write an article for the Memorial Volume, for I have already in 'hand a long book which requires all my 18 INTRODUCTION. energy and time ; and I have, moreover, very recently published, at con- siderable length, my views about Wesley and his relations to English history. If men may be measured by the work they have accomplished, John Wesley can hardly fail to be regarded as the greatest figure who has appeared in the religious history of the world since the days of the Reformation ; and few men have produced a religious revival in a time so little propitious to religious emotion, or have erected a great Church with so little of the spirit of a sectarian. It was a strange thing that, at a time when politicians were doing so much to divide, religious teachers should have done so much to unite, the two great branches of the English race ; and that, in spite of civil war and of international jealousy, a movement which sprang in an English university should have acquired so firm a hold over the hearts and intellects of the American people. Wishing every success to your Memorial, I remain, dear sir, your obedient servant, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. W. E. H. LECKY. PALACE, GLOUCESTER, October 5, 1878. My Dear Sir: I am much honored by your kind and explicit letter. I am unfeignedly sorry, as I have told Dr. Rigg, that I am unable to take any part, however little. My time is now used up to every mo- ment ; and I am under a pressure which positively precludes my under- taking any more. I can now hardly keep up my correspondence. This must be my excuse for this brief answer to your most friendly and interesting letter. I have no doubt that the forthcoming Volume will be received with interest in both this country and America. I shall keep your letter as an example of true, heart-whole enthu- siasm in the cause you so ably advocate. Excuse one overpressed for saying no more, but believe me, Very faithfully yours, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. C. J. GLOUCESTER and BRISTOL. PRIMITIVE METHODIST THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, SUNDERLAND, October 31, 1878. Dear Sir: Yours came to hand just as I was leaving home on Saturday. I take the earliest opportunity of thanking you for the honor you do me INTRODUCTION. 19 in asking me to write for the WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. On account of the state of my health, and my numerous engagements, I am obliged to decline the undertaking. I am very sorry I cannot help you in your most laudable work. With my best wishes, I am, Yours truly, REV. DR. CLARK. W. ANTLIFF. DREW THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, MADISON, 1ST. J., November 8, 1878. My Dear Doctor: I have read your letter with great interest, and think you have made a very wise and successful choice of writers for your happily-conceived work. I regret to say that it would be impossible for me to prepare any thing worthy of the subject within the coming six months, as I am so far committed to other enterprises as to be unable to find the time. Wishing you great, and continued success in your work in behalf of the Monumental Church, I am, Yours very truly, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. J. F. HURST. 5 WEST THIRTY-FIFTH STREET, NEW YOEK, December 4, 1878. My Dear Sir : I have read your letter of 28th ult. with grea't interest, and if I could have assented to your request, I should have felt it to be a high honor to be associated with so many excellent men in so good a cause. But I am already working up to my very last pound of steam, and I must not undertake any thing extra. Such a paper as you wish should be one's best. But the subject is rather out of the line of my studies ; I should have to read up for it as well as write on it, and with my present duties on me it would be madness for me to attempt any thing more. Not, therefore, because I have no interest in your work, but rather because I have not the time to give to any extra literary work, I am compelled to ask you to excuse me. Believe me, Yours faithfully, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. WM. M. TAYLOR. PHILADELPHIA, December 6, 1878. Dear Brother : Yours of 29th ult. is just received. I am much pleased with the character of the work you are about to publish. The titles of the 20 INTRODUCTION. articles and the names of the contributors must secure it success. I regret to say, however, that it will not be in my power to contribute an article as you desire. ... I could not devote an hour to any other liter- ary work. I have been obliged to lay over every thing else on account of the pressure that is upon ine. Wishing you success, Yours truly, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. M. SIMPSON. BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK, December 12, 1878. My Dear Sir: Your favor of November 28 was received this morning. With the best disposition to contribute my humble share toward honor- ing the memory of the great and good Wesley in your proposed volume, I must reluctantly decline, as my time and strength are already taxed to the utmost tension. Respectfully yours, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. PHILIP SCHAFF. EPISCOPAL ROOMS, 708 Walnut-Street, PHILADELPHIA, January 11, 1879. Reverend and Dear Sir: In reply to your kind and interesting letter of the 3d inst., in reference to the WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME, I beg leave to say, that my engagements are so numerous and so pressing, that I cannot conscientiously undertake the work you suggest, and must, therefore, respectfully decline your kind request. The volume which you contemplate making, will, I doubt not, prove both interesting and instructive. Very truly yours, REV. J. O. A. CLARK, D.D. WM. BACON STEVENS, Diocese of Pennsylvania. XENIA, Ohio, January 12, 1879. My Dear Sir: Yours of November 29 came to hand late in December. I am in sympathy with your enterprise. I think it a grand one, and hope you may succeed beyond your most sanguine expectations. At the same time I regret that numerous unfinished manuscripts now before me will consume at least twelve months in finishing them. They are official, and, therefore, cannot be laid aside for any other work. So that to overhaul the Journal of Wesley in order that I might write such an essay as you desire, and the dignity of your book demands, is entirely out of my power at the present time. Very respectfully yours, REV. i. O. A. CLARK, D.D. PAYNE. INTRODUCTION. 21 METHODIST PROTESTANT BOARD OF PUBLICATION, PITTSBURGH, April 7, 1879. MY DEAR DR. CLARK : The announcement that you had undertaken the preparation of a WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME, by which to perpetuate the historical associations of Methodism, has given real satisfaction through- out our Methodist Protestant Branch of the Wesley family. Our people are thoroughly Methodistic in doctrine, in usage, in taste, and in all the fraternal sympathies of the Gospel. Ours claims to be a republic of mutual-righted preachers and people, holding the faith of John Wesley precious, and rejoicing with our older and larger sisters of the Method- ist persuasion in a common joy at the constantly enlarging dominion of this many-agented but unifold organization. The spirit of the world's Methodism is ever the same ; and it is the spirit of love, of peace, and of devotion. Whatever may be the differ- ences of polity among the Methodist branches, the life and power are forever one. It is full salvation which Methodism proclaims to the dy- ing world, as if the consecrated messengers knew but one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and shouted the glad tidings as a one-hearted song. Our branch of this happy family, whose parish is the world and whose heritage is heaven, unites with all the others in congratulation that the hallowed garden-ground at Savannah is to be marked henceforth by a monument, not as over a grave but as over a cradle ; for your service is to commemorate the new birth of Christianity in the wilderness ; to re- cord the consequent life and beauty of Methodism ; and to foretell the coming glory of this wonderful manifestation of the divine favor. Yours is a gracious privilege. You do the will of a vast multitude. What Plymouth Hock is to Congregationalism, the rich soil of Georgia, where Wesley planted Methodism, is to a vastly larger host of Christian people 4his day. The Puritans wrought a work in America worthy of their rigid integrity, and a million voices speak blessings on their names; but the doctrine of free-grace, as interpreted by the scholar of Oxford, preaching beneath the pines and palmettos of the New World, has found a welcome in a much larger multitude of exultant souls. I greet you, dear brother, with a warm right hand in your most com- mendable service. Others of our branch, authorized to speak for us more officially President L. W. Bates, D.D., of Lynchburgh, Virginia, and Secretary George B. M'Elroy, D.D., of Adrian, Michigan will doubtless send you a message of becoming ecclesiastical recognition, and I venture to speak my Amen to their communication beforehand, or in the midst, or afterward, wherever, in the method of responsive Method- 22 INTKODUCTION. ism, this sincere word may chance to strike the current of the more im- portant correspondence from the body to which I have the honor to belong. And may heavenly benedictions crown your efforts in a thousand lingering joys, until our glory is complete in Jesus Christ our Lord! Affectionately, ALEXANDER CLARK. Before dismissing this Introduction it should be stated, that all the articles in this volume,, except a very few, were written expressly for it, and have appeared nowhere else. And of those excepted nearly all have been rewritten or especially arranged by their respective authors. For the poem, "In Memoriam Charles Wesley," by the late Benjamin (rough, the writer is indebted to Mr. George J. Stevenson, of Pater- noster Row, in whose excellent work, " The "Wesley an Hymn Book and its Associations," the poem originally appeared. The Editor takes this occasion to say, that to no one while abroad was he under greater obligations than to George John Stevenson. For so much patient service, at the cost of so much labor and self-sacrifice, and for so many delicate atten- tions to himself and other American strangers in the great and crowded metropolis of England, the writer of this will ever pray that the benedictions of Heaven may always rest upon Mr. Stevenson and his equally kind and hospitable family. For the paper, " The "Wesley Memorial in Westminster Ab- bey," the Editor is indebted to the distinguished ^ personages who shared the leading parts in the beautiful and appropriate ceremonies which witnessed the unveiling of the Wesley Mon- ument in that venerable mausoleum. The hand of Dean Stan- ley himself, chief speaker on the occasion, has arranged his address for publication here. And to the same worthy Dean we are under special obligations for permission to print his late address before the WESLEYAJST CHILDREN'S HOME of London. This address, never before given to the public, revised by Dean Stanley, and printed for this volume at the press of the INTRODUCTION. 23 Children's Home, was sent to the Editor by Mr. T. B. Stephen- son, M.A., its able and distinguished president. To Miss Eliza "Wesley, of London, grand-daughter of Charles Wesley, the poet of Methodism, the Editor is indebted for two tunes by her father, Samuel "Wesley, and one by her late brother, Samuel S. Wesley, both of whom were eminent mu- sical doctors, and musicians to the English Court. To the Kev. Dr. Edmpnd de Pressense, of Paris, pastor of the Reformed Church of France, whose aid, at the request of the Editor of this volume, was procured through the kind intervention of the Eev. M. Lelievre, of L'Evangeliste, Nimes, and whose communication was sent both in French and in the English translation, the Editor has the pleasure of returning his sincere thanks. Many have been the letters received in which the prayers of the writers were offered up for the success of the WESLEY ME- MOKIAL YOLUME! Writing from his Irish home, in Dublin, Dr. Orlando T. Dobbin, of the Church of England, thus con- cludes a letter to the Editor : " Allow me to wish you a favorable voyage, and a return cargo richer than that of a Spanish galleon, with your hand- some venture. With yourself I anticipate for the good Ship, John Wesley, a hearty welcome in every port the bark may touch at. Better than this, I believe and hope your book will do real good to souls, and lead many to think what it was that wins all this renown to your once humble preacher but now exalted saint." WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. THE WESLEY FAMILY. THE righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance, is the declaration of the psalmist; and the truth of those words was probably never more clearly demonstrated than in the family of the Epworth Wesleys, but more particularly in the persons of John and Charles "Wesley, the founders of Methodism. In almost every country under heaven there are to be found adherents and followers of John Wesley by the name of Methodists ; and in a much wider sense the influence of Charles Wesley is felt, for his hymns are sung by Christians of every denomination ; and whether these people, spread all over the earth, acknowledge their indebtedness to tl^ose two brothers or not for helps in their religious services, the fact re- mains the same. Though at first despised, insulted, and every-where spoken against, the Wesleys persevered in the glorious work which they commenced at Oxford about the year 1729, and which assumed a more definite and permanent form ten years afterward, when, in the month of November or December, 1739, John Wesley commenced the " United Societies," which have spread and in- creased until they now reach the uttermost parts of the earth. Now the question arises on many lips, Who are these Wesleys, and whence came they ? 28 THE WESLEY MEMOKIAL VOLUME. For a period of two hundred and eighty years nothing was known of the history of the W'esleys beyond the seventeenth century. Dr. Whitehead, Dr. Adam Clarke, and Dr. Robert Southey, all three of whom wrote what they considered to be elaborate and exhaustive memoirs of the Wesleys, all failed to throw even a glimmer of light on their early history, while one of these learned men declares, that all the records of the family of an earlier date than the reigns of the Stuarts in England are lost. That statement has no foundation in truth. Records do exist, by which we are enabled to get a continuous genealogy of the Wesleys during fully one half of the Chris- tian era : but the three learned doctors named above did not persevere in their researches long enough to receive the reward which has crowned the perseverance of the writer. It is be- lieved that we are indebted to a near relative of the Duke of Wellington for the gathering together and completing the Genealogical Table of the Wesley Family, so far as it is com- plete, which was done nearly a century ago. It is a curious circumstance that about the period these inquiries were being made by the descendants of the Earl of Mornington, John Wesley should have made the declaration, that all he or his family knew of their ancestry went no further back than a " letter which his grandfather's father had written to her' he was to marry " in a few days. That letter was dated 1619, so that Bartholomew Wesley was then a single young man. Be- yond that period the Epworth Wesleys knew nothing of their ancestry. Had they known what we do, it might have had the effect of diverting their minds from that great work which has made their memories so precious to multitudes of people all the world over. In the annals of both England and Ireland the Wesleys, or Westleys, or Wellesleys, (for they exist under all these desig- nations,) have a place which marks them in successive genera- tions as among the foremost men of the age for loyalty, chiv- alry, learning, piety, poetry, and music: not all represented THE WESLEY FAMILY. 29 in any one person or generation, but in the successive agea these are distinguishing features of the leading members. These marks of mental and moral culture, as well as of emi- nent natural genius, were not extinct in those members of the family who have but recently passed away from earth ; nor are they in those who still survive. When the venerable Samuel Wesley died, in 183T, it was acknowledged by those who knew him best, that as an extempore player on the organ, or as a composer of organ-music, he had but few equals and no supe- rior ; while in the person of his son, Dr. Samuel Sebastian Wesley, who died as recently as April 19th, 1876, the same surpassing excellence was readily accorded to him as had been bestowed on his father. Long before the Normans conquered the country called En- gland, the Wesley family occupied a prominent place in the land. Before surnames were used, and before England was united under one sovereign, this family flourished. When Athelstan the Saxon ruled in this land, A.D. 925-940, he called Guy, the then head of the family, to be a thane, or a member of his parliament. This Guy married his kinswoman, named Phenan, the daughter of an old chieftain ; he resided at Welswe, near Wells, in Somerset. His son was Geoffrey, who occupied a prominent position among his Saxon compeers, and having been unjustly treated by Etheldred, he joined himself to the Danish forces, and marched with Sweyn against his own coun- trymen. His son was Licolph, who is said to have been con- cerned in the murder of Edmund the Elder, A. D. 946, and he was in his turn murdered on his way home to Etingdon many years afterward. His eldest son, Walrond, married Adelicia Percy, and long resided on his ancestral estate, the Manor of "Welswey, and died there about A. D. 1070, leaving two sons, Avenant and William. Both these persons were owners and occupiers of large landed territory. Avenant obtained the ser- geantry of all the country east of the river Peret to Bristol Bridge. About that period surnames began to be used, or 30 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. terms which led to them; hence we find the elder of these brothers thus designated in contemporary records : Avenant of Welswey, or Wesley ; while the younger is mentioned as Will- iam de Wellesley, who married Elene de Chetwynde. The son of the latter was the heir, whose name was Eoger de Welles- ley; he married Matilda O'JSTeal, and left issue, two sons and two daughters. The marriage of these four children into some of the principal families in England greatly increased the property of the family, and extended their influence in the country. Stephen, the heir, married Alice de Cailli, county of York. He having distinguished himself with Sir John Courcy in the wars in England and Gascony, was sent with Sir John to Ireland in 1172, to try and subdue Ulster. Of their four chil- dren, Walter, the youngest, who had been initiated into all the arts of chivalry, was permitted to accompany his father to Ire- land, and he had the distinguished honor of being appointed standard-bearer to the King, Henry II., who led the warlike expedition. For his military services in Ireland he obtained large grants of land in the counties of Meath and Kildare, and he settled in that country on his property. A standard, sup- posed to be the one carried in 1172, was preserved in the Irish branch of the family to quite a recent period. The Irish Wes- leys became a numerous and influential family. Leaving the Irish branch of the Wesley s to the heir, Valeri- an, his younger brother, Nicholas de Wellesley, married Laura Yyvyan, daughter of a Cornish Baronet, and inherited the En- glish estates in the west of England. He was engaged in much military service, for which he was amply rewarded, and left i%- sue four sons and two daughters, several of whom married, by which the family estates were again increased. William was his heir. He is sometimes called Walrond, and was grand- son of the standard-bearer. He married Ann, daughter of Sir "William Yavaseur. Contemporary history mentions him as Walrond the younger, a great warrior ; he was slain, with Sir Eobert Percival, in a battle with the Irish, October 22, 1303, THE WESLEY FAMILY. 31 aged seventy years. For his courage and conquests the honor of knighthood was conferred on him. His eldest son, Will- iam, was also slain in battle with the Irish. His youngest son, John, became the heir as Sir John de Wellesley, Knight, who married a daughter of the English Wellesleys, of the county of Somerset. His son, Sir John de Wellesley, was summoned to Parliament as a baron of the realm, and as sheriff of Kildare. William, the younger son, became the heir, with the title Sir William de Wellesley. He was one of the most influential men of his time, and his family represented interests of such magnitude as but seldom concentrate in one household. We take a new starting-point here, as from this center there emanate three very prominent streams of family life and influ- ence. Sir William was married to Elizabeth, by whom he had one son, Edward, and three daughters. Edward joined the Scottish army during the Crusades, and set out with Sir James Douglas and the Crusaders to Palestine with the intention of placing the heart of Robert Bruce in the Holy Sepulcher : he died in a contention with the Saracens in 1340. This incident entitles the Wesleys to use the scallop shell in the cjuarterings of their family arms ; indeed, the Epworth Wesleys filled their shield with that feature only. While these events were trans- piring in the Holy Land, Sir William was created a peer of the realm under the title of Baron E"oragh, and married, for his second wife, Alice, daughter of Sir John Trevellion, and had issue, four sons, named Walrond, Richard, Robert, and Ar- thur. Robert was a monk, and died unmarried. Each of the other sons became the head of a distinguished family, whose descendants have come down to our times. Their father, Sir William, was summoned to Parliament as a peer in 1339, but previously he had received from Edward II., in 1326, a grant by patent for the custody of the Castle of Kildare, but this was afterward changed by the king for the custody of the Manor of Demore in 1342, with the yearly fee of twenty marks. A grant of land was also made to him for his defense 32 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. of the Castle of Dunlavon, and for his services against the O'Tothells, (powerful anti-royalists,) one of whom he took pris- oner. He was afterward made governor of Carbery Castle in Ireland, by Richard II. He died at a very advanced age. His heir was Walrond. His second son, Sir Eichard de Wel- lesley, became the head of the Wesleys of Dangan Castle, county of Meath, in Ireland, from whom descended the Mar- quis of Wellesley, Governor-general of India, and his brother Arthur, the Duke of "Wellington. His fourth son, Arthur, became the head of the family of the Wesleys, in Shropshire and Wales, who in the Middle Ages took the name and estates of Porter, and from whom descended Sir Robert Ker Porter, the traveler and author, and his sisters, Anna Maria and Mary Jane Porter, well-known authoresses of the early years of the nineteenth century. Walrond de Wellesley married into the family of the Earl of Kildare. He succeeded to Wellesley Manor, county of Somerset, in England, leaving to his brother Richard the Irish estates. He accompanied Prince Edward in a military expe- dition to France, and subsequently set out with the king to check an invasion of the Scots in Northumberland, where his brother was killed. He was eventually taken prisoner with the Earl of Pembroke, and died in France, 1373. Gerald de Wellesley, third Baron Noragh, succeeded to the estates, but, having offended King Henry IV., was deprived of them, and was imprisoned for some years, but was liberated on the accession of Henry V., in 1413. His estates were returned to him, but the title of nobility was refused. He had issue, three sons and three daughters. Arthur was his heir. Arthur, on coming to his inheritance, took the name of Westley. He married Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Ogilvy. Relieved of the responsibilities which had rested on his father, he devoted himself to the improvement of his prop- erty and to the extension of his influence, in both which he was very successful. Of his four son, John entered the Church, THE WESLEY FAMILY. 33 Richard married one of the Wellesleys of Dangan Castle, Humphrey married the daughter of Robert Wesley, of West- ley Hall, and Hugh, the heir, obtained the honor of knight- hood, and resumed the name of Wellesley. Sir Hugh de Wellesley married into the family of the Earl of Shrewsbury, ancient, wealthy, and influential, by which he recovered much of the position his grandfather had lost ; this was further increased by the marriage of his children. His son Richard fell in battle with the Irish in 1570. William de Wellesley, the heir, married in 1532, into the family of the Earl of Devon, by which his influence was greatly extended among the nobility. He had one son and two daugh- ters. One of the latter married into the family of Wellesleys of Dangan. Walter, only son of the foregoing, took the name of Wesley, or Westley, and married into the wealthy family of Tracey. They had issue six daughters and one son. Herbert was the only son of Walter Wesley, and had the honor of knighthood conferred upon him. Sir Herbert mar- ried (temp. Queen Elizabeth) Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Wesley, of Dangan Castle, Ireland, by which event both the English and Irish branches of the family were again united. They had issue three sons, William, his heir, Harphame, who died unmarried, and Bartholomew, who was ordained a priest, and became the head of that branch known as the Wesleys of Epworth. William, the heir, was contemporary with King James I. He had issue three sons. William Wesley was his heir, and married the daughter of Sir Thomas Piggot. He had two sons and two daughters. George Arthur Wesley was his heir, who spent some years in the army, and squandered most of his prop- erty. He was twice married. Their issue was one son and one daughter. Their son, Francis Wesley, born in 1767, mar ried Elizabeth Bamfield. They had six children. Francis died in 1854, aged eighty Tseven years, his wife died a few years 34 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. previously, aged eighty-two years. Alfred Wesley was their heir, born in 1804, and married Anne Lilly. They had issue, six sons, five of whom are now living : one is a clergyman in the Church of England, the Rev. Lewis Herbert Wellesley Wesley. Eeturning to Bartholomew Wesley, third son of Sir Her- bert Wesley, we get to the source from whom the founders of Methodism were directly descended; the same person of whom John Wesley wrote in the brief extract previously given. The Rev. Bartholomew Wesley was born in the county of Dorset about the year 1595. Chivalry held high rank at that period, and his father and his mother's father had been brought up under the strongest impulses of that mighty influence. Great deeds, both in Church and State, were often the theme of conversation in the family of Sir Herbert Wesley, and chiv- alry, doubtless, became the standard of aspiration to his sons. Poetry, as well as religion, laid hold on chivalry, and took some of its most popular themes from the heroism of their ancestors. Religion was no strange thing in their household, and Puritan- ism was developing in the National Church when Bartholo- mew Wesley was sent to Oxford to complete his education. He studied both physic and divinity at the University, and about the year 1619 he married the daughter of Sir Henry Colley, of Kildare, Ireland. We find no trace of any family, excepting one son, named John, who has had his name perpet- uated in the annals of English Nonconformity. From the time of the marriage of Bartholomew Wesley to the year 1640 we find no records concerning the family, but in that year he was installed Rector of the small parish of Catherston, county of Dorset. To that small living was added that of Charmouth, the two being of the yearly value of 35 10s. Out of that sum he had to maintain the dignity of a clergyman, the posi- tion of the son of a knight of the shire, and educate his son for the ministry ! If we consider the privations, persecutions, THE WESLEY FAMILY. 35 and sufferings which this good minister had to endure in the course of his protracted earthly pilgrimage, (for he lived through more than fourscore years,) we are amazed at his fidel- ity to Christ and his cause, and see in that endurance the same spirit as that of which St. Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Hebrews, in describing the faith of the patriarchs. After the battle of Worcester, in 1651, King Charles II. wished to escape to France, and in his journeyings he came, incognito, to the village where Mr. Wesley resided. Being suspected at the smithy, where one of the horses of the royal party had to be shod, Mr. Wesley, as the minister, was appealed to, and steps were taken by him to try and arrest the fugitive king ; but the king escaped. The incident brought Mr. Wes- ley into notice, and contemporary historians, who favored popery, speak of him with contempt for his conduct on that occasion. Lord Clarendon calls him " a fanatical weaver who had been in the parliamentary army," and again, he is described as "the puny parson." All the Wesleys, for three hundred years, were of small stature, ranging between five feet four inches and five feet six inches. Bartholomew Wesley was one of the ejected ministers in 1662 ; so, also, was his son John, who was then minister of Winterburn-Whitchurch, in Dorset. The merciful providence of God undertook for him and his, when cast upon the world without means, and one of his neigh- bors wrote of him in 1664, that " this Wesley, of Charmouth, now a Nonconformist, lives by the practice of physic in the same place " where he had ministered the Gospel. He was afterward exiled from his home and friends, and had to endure fierce and cruel persecution, so that we know neither the time nor place, exactly, of his death, but he expired about the year 1680, at about the age of eighty-five years. John Wesley, A.M., only son of Bartholomew, was born about the year 1636, in the county of Devon. Receiving a thorough education at the best schools in that county, he was sent to Oxford, where he entered New Inn Hall, and seems to 36 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. have received special help and favor in his studies from Dr. John Owen, Yice-Chancellor of the University. He acquired considerable learning, took his M.A. degree, left college about 1658, returned home to his father's house, and soon gathered a Church at Weymouth, where he preached for some months. A vacancy occurring in the parish of Winterburn- Whit church, John Wesley was examined by Oliver Cromwell's " Triers," and having passed with approval, was appointed by them to minister in the vacant parish, in May, 1658. The living was valued at 30 a year, and on that pittance he commenced his public ministrations, and the same year he married the daugh- ter of the Rev. John White, " the Patriarch of Dorchester," and one of the members of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Dr. Callamy tells us that they had a numerous family, but for over a century the names of only two of their children were known ; subsequent and recent inquiry has made known the following: Timothy, born April, 1659; Elizabeth, born January, 1660 ; Matthew, born May, 1661 ; Samuel, born De- cember, 1662, and Thomas, date unknown. John Wesley, their father, endured sorrows, losses, persecutions, and priva- tions of the most painful character, and they brought him prematurely to the grave in the year 16Y8, at the early age of forty-two years. He is said to have died in the village of Preston, Dorset, and to have been secretly buried in the night, as the royalist party, then in power, refused his body burial in the church-yard, where he had so long ministered ! His widow survived him thirty-two years, enduring great and continued hardships, supported chiefly by her two sons, Matthew and Samuel, the latter of whom spared his mother (out of his own small income) " ten pounds a year, to keep her from starving." She died in 1Y10, at a village near Coventry. Such is a brief, but faithful sketch of the parents of Samuel Wesley, Eector of Epworth, and the grandparents of the founders of Method- ism. THE WESLEY FAMILY. 37 THE EPWOKTH WESLEYS. History can scarcely furnish a more doleful picture than that which was presented in the homes of no less than two thousand clergymen in England, in the month of August, 1662, a period known as " black Bartholomew," as on St. Bartholomew's Day that number of ministers of the Gospel were ejected from their homes, their livings, and many of them from all sources of income, excepting what the charity of neighbors sup- plied. John "Wesley, then a young married clergyman of only twenty-six summers, with a young wife, and three very young children, was ejected from his living at Winterburn-Whit- church. Four months after that great calamity Mrs. Wesley gave birth to her fourth child, on December 17, 1662, and they called him Samuel. Born in the midst of social and national troubles of more than ordinary severity and continuance, it was his hard lot to struggle with difficulties, hardships, and almost penury, during nearly sixty years. Surrounded by pious influ- ences, he was yet deprived of his godly father while a boy at school, and his devoted and pious mother had a heavy respon- sibility resting on her, with her large family, so that Samuel, when once removed from her home and sent to school, knew nothing more of home till he made one for himself. How he struggled for a bare subsistence and -to pay for the best education he could obtain in some of the best schools and at college, is a record of deep and appealing interest, even now, after the lapse of two centuries. At the age of nineteen he wrote and published a book called " Maggots," to help to pay his expenses at college. Dr. John Owen often proved his friend, as he had previously been to his father before him. He took his B.A. degree in June, 1688, and afterward his M.A. degree, both at Oxford and Cambridge. Dr. Thomas Spratt, Bishop of Kochester, gave him deacon's orders August 7, 1688, and he was ordained priest by Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, February 24, 1689. Both those prelates were at Ox- ford with his father. 38 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. The same year lie had a curacy given him, with the liberal salary of 28 per annum. For a few months he was a naval chaplain, at the handsome salary of TO a year, but this was soon given up for another curacy, at 30 a year, and while holding the latter preferment he earned 30 more by his pen ; so that in 1689 he was passing rich on 60 a year, and on the strength of that income he entered on the marriage state, hav- ing for his bride Susanna, the youngest daughter and twenty- fifth child of the learned and pious Dr. Samuel Annesley. Mr. Wesley was ordained in the Church of St. Andrew, Hoi- born, and he is believed to have been married there also. JSTo man was ever more suitably mated. Mrs. Susanna Wesley be- came the mother of nineteen children ; of these, her three sons who reached maturity, Samuel, John, and Charles Wesley, occupy each a distinguished place in the annals of the country which gave them birth, and of the Church in which they were such eminent examples of piety, earnestness, and devotion to the work of their lives. Unable to live in London on 60 a year, with a wife and child, Mr. Wesley gladly accepted the living of South Ormsby, Lincolnshire, where six children were born to them, one in each year. In the year 1696 the living of Ep worth was pre- sented to him, which was worth 200 a year at that time, and which would have been a comfortable living but for the birth of one child annually in the family for nineteen successive years, the falling of his barn, and the burning of the rectory- house twice. The costs of those repairs, with his heavy family expenses, and much affliction, made life burdensome, and for forty years they were hardly ever free from debt, part of which had to be satisfied by the incarceration of the worthy rector in Lincoln Castle. Mrs. Wesley directed the education of all their children, preparing the boys for college at Oxford, and the girls to go out as teachers in schools for young ladies. The success of Mrs. Wesley's efforts in that department of home duty has made her a model for all English women ; while THE WESLEY FAMILY. 39 the father of the Wesleys, as the Rector of Epworth is now called, was most diligently employed in pastoral work, in prep- aration for the pulpit, and in writing books, so that by the aid of his pen he might add somewhat to the income which was felt to be so sadly inadequate to the wants of the family. He died in the midst of his family, just before sunset, April 25, 1735, aged seventy-two years, saying, a few minutes previously, after reviewing his past life : " I thank Him for all ; I bless Him for all ; I love Him for all." He was interred in Epworth church- yard three days afterward. The " Gentleman's Magazine " of that year described him as " a person of singular parts, piety, and learning, author of several poetical and controversial pieces." Susanna, the wife of Samuel Wesley, is now generally des- ignated " the mother of the Wesleys." She was born in Lon- don, January 20, 1669. This remarkable anecdote is related by Dr. Callamy, in reference to the birth of this child : " How many children has Dr. Annesley ? " To which Dr. Thomas Manton replied, " I believe it is two dozen, or a quarter of a hundred." For many years it was difficult to determine which number was correct, but recent research has proved that both numbers are correct. She was her father's twenty-fifth child, but she was the twenty-fourth, child of her mother, who was Dr. Annesley's second wife. Her mother was the daughter of John White, a member of the Westminster Assembly of Di- vines ; he was a man of considerable influence in London, who died in 1644, and was buried with much ceremony in the Tem- ple Church, and over his grave is a marble tablet with this inscription : " Here lieth a John, a burning, shining light, Whose name, life, actions, all were WHITE." It is curious that the mother of Samuel Wesley, her husband, was also a daughter of a John White, who also was a member of the Westminster Assembly. The education of Mrs. Wesley was thorough, and included a 40 THE WESLEY MEMOKIAL VOLUME. knowledge of Greek, Latin, and also French. She excelled in all the graces and accomplishments which a finished education could bestow. The systematic manner in wjiich she con- ducted the education of her children, and the remarkable success which she had in her efforts, led her son to obtain from his mother details of the same, which he published, and these, with other circumstances arising out of them, have tended to invest her memory with imperishable fra- grance, which will be perpetuated to the end of time, wher- ever Methodism is known. The trials and difficulties she went through were so numerous and protracted no language can describe them ; these she endured almost without a murmur. She lived to see the commencement of Methodism. Her last home on earth was the residence of her son John, at the Foundery, Moorfields, where she peacefully entered into rest July 23, 1742, aged 73 years, and was interred by her son John in the burial-ground of Bunhill Fields, London. A mar- ble obelisk to her memory was erected in 1870, in the front of Mr. "Wesley's Chapel in the City Road, about two hundred yards from the spot where she is buried. Dr. Adam Clarke, in summing up the incidents of her life, says : "I have been acquainted with many pious females ; I have read the lives of others ; but such a woman, take her for all in all, I have not heard of, I have not read of, nor with her equal have I been ac- quainted. In adopting Solomon's words, I can say, 'Many daughters have done virtuously,' but Susanna Wesley has ex- celled them all." Her son, Charles, wrote his " Hymns for the Lord's Supper " shortly after his mother's death, and he is be- lieved to have had the life of suffering and the peaceful death of his beloved parents in his mind, when he wrote the following lines : " Who are these arrayed in white, Brighter than the noonday sun, Foremost of the sons of light, Nearest the eternal throne ? THE WESLEY FAMILY. 41 These are they that bore the cross, Nobly for their Master stood ; Sufferers in his righteous cause, * Followers of the dying God. " Out of great distress they came, Washed their robes by faith below, In the blood of yonder Lamb, Blood that washes white as snow ; Therefore are they next the throne, Serve their Maker day and night; God resides among his own, God doth in his saints delight." HER CHILDREN, TO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION, RISE UP TO CALL HER BLESSED. Owing to the burning of the Epworth rectory-house in Feb- ruary, 1709 and with it were destroyed all the parochial regis- ters the record of the births of their nineteen children was lost. After many years of inquiry and research eighteen out of the nineteen have been found. They are as follows : CHILDREN OF THE EPWORTH WESLEYS. Name. 1. Samuel Wesley, M.A., 2. Susanna Wesley, 3. Emilia Wesley, 4. Annesley Wesley, ) 5. Jedediah Wesley, f 6. Susanna Wesley, 7. Mary Wesley, 8. Mehetabel Wesley, 9. Infant, 10. John Wesley, 11. Benjamin Wesley, 12. Boy, 13. Girl, 14. Anne Wesley, 15. John Benjamin Wesley, 16. Son, smothered, 17. Martha Wesley, 18. Charles Wesley, 19. Kezia Wesley, Where Bom. London, So. Ormsby, So. Ormsby, So. Ormsby, When Born. Feb., 1690, Jan., 1691, Dec., 1691, When Died. Nov., 1739. April, 1693. 1771. 1694, Jan., 1695. So. Ormsby, 1695, Dec., 1764. So. Ormsby, 1696, Nov., 1734. Epworth, 1697, March, 1750. Epworth, " 1698, 1698. Epworth, May, 1699, 1699. Epworth, 1700, 1700. Epworth, May, 1701, 1701. Epworth, 1702, Epworth, June, 1703, March, 1791. Epworth, May, 1705, May, 1705. Epworth, 1706, July, 1791. Epworth, Dec., 1707, March, 1788. Epworth, March, 1709, March, 1741. 42 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. To most Methodists, the chief interest in the Wesley family is concentrated in the Epworth Wesleys. For any service of blessing to mankind, all the labors of all the Wesleys for a thousand years past, so far as we know them, are not to be com- pared with the labors of John and Charles Wesley, numbered respectively 15 and 18, in the family roll as given above. A few words respecting each of the children may be considered interesting. Samuel Wesley, the first-born of their large family, had this peculiarity, he was dumb till he was five years old, then com- menced to talk as perfectly as any child. He was the only child in the family who went to any school apart from home. He was a scholar in Westminster School. In 1711, through the advice of Bishop Atterbury, he became a student at Christ Church, Oxford. He took his M.A. degree, got ordination, then returned to Westminster as an usher, where he remained till January, 1732, when he was appointed head master of Blundell's School, in Tiverton, where he died rather suddenly in November, 1739, about a month before the first Methodist Society was organized. He had strongly opposed his brother John in his evangelistic labors. He married Miss Berry, by whom he had one son and two daughters ; the son died young, the daughters married, and became disconnected with the Meth- odists. He published a volume of poems, in which are sev- eral good hymns which have a place in all Methodist Hymn Books. Susanna, the first of that name, died at the age of a little over two years. Emilia grew to woman's estate, and, after enduring many hardships and privations, married Eobert Harper, a tradesman in Epworth without a trade, whom she had to keep for some years, but from whom she was afterward separated, and her brother John became her protector and friend. He gave her apartments in the house connected with his chapel in West- street, London, where she died in peace in the year 1771, in her THE WESLEF FAMILY. 43 eightieth year. She had an exquisite taste for music and poetry. Annesley and Jedediah have their names recorded in the registers at South Ormsby, where they were both baptized, and died, and were buried. Susanna, the second daughter of that name, was taken by her uncle Matthew, in London, after the rectory-house was burned down in 1709. While she was yet a girl and away from home her mother wrote to her a long letter on the chief arti- cles of the Christian faith, based on the Apostles' Creed, which has been printed, and will be preserved to the end of time as a marvelous theological production from the pen of a woman. She afterward married Richard Ellison, of Epworth, but the marriage was not a happy one, and they were separated. She died in full assurance of faith, at the house of her daughter Ann, in London, in 1764, leaving four children two sons and two daughters. Her descendants are now a numerous host, some scores of whom are named in the "Memorials of the Wesley Family," published by Phillips & Hunt, New York. Mary Wesley was of a weak constitution, and deformed in body ; but this defect was compensated for by a face which was exceedingly beautiful, and by a mind and disposition al- most angelic. In 1734 she was married to John Whitelamb, who had been her father's amanuensis ; and who became the rec- tor of Wroote, where Mrs. Whitelamb died before she had been married a year. She had been the household drudge at Ep- worth, and had by her needle added much to the comfort of both John and Charles Wesley. Mehetabel Wesley was in personal appearance, in accom- plishments and genius, the gem of the family. She was the first of the family born at Epworth, and as an infant she gave evidence of that remarkable art and mental power which marked her as possessing a combination of all the excellences of the Wesley character. Possessed of handsome features, graceful form, winning manners, and mental powers far above 44 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. her years, her company was the delight of all who knew her. Alas, her career proved to be one of the hardest and most checkered of all the family. Opposed by her father in her early love affairs, she at length threw herself away on a wretched man very much below her in every respect, and after giving birth to several children, who all died in infancy, she at length herself sank into the grave, in 1750, under the weight of accumulated griefs and sorrows ; but she has left behind her some few specimens of her poetic genius, which, for tenderness and beauty of sentiment and expression, will live to the end of time. She was a contributor to the pages of the " Gentleman's Magazine," and her own memory is embalmed in that work in some very touching lines. She died happy, and Charles Wes- ley attended her funeral. John and Benjamin Wesley were two sons who both died soon after their birth, but around whose memories their moth- er had entwined such kindly associations that she determined to have both their names united in one if she had another son. When, in June, 1703, she had another son who lived to be bap- tized, she had him called John Benjamin. This is he who be- came the founder of Methodism. The second name was never used after infancy, and the register of baptism being destroyed in the Epworth fire, this fact would never have been known but for its preservation as a family tradition. Twin children, a boy and a girl, were born in May, 1701 ; they are mentioned in a letter written by their father to the Archbishop of York the day after their birth. They died be- fore any record was made of their names. Anne Wesley was married to John Lambert, a surveyor of Epworth, in 1725. In 1726 John Wesley was sponsor at the baptism of Mrs. Lambert's first-born, who was named John. The family removed to Hatfield, near London, where all trace of them was lost after the year 1742. John Wesley, A.M., the Founder of Methodism, was born in June, 1703, but of the place and date of his birth there is THE WESLEY FAMILY. 45 no existing record ; these were consumed in the rectory fire in 1709. John was six years old when that fire took place, and the manner in which he was rescued that night makes his escape with life one of the most remarkable deliverances from instant death upon record. He was baptized by his father at Ep- worth a few hours after his birth, and, by desire of his mother, was named John Benjamin, but the second name was never used by the family, although the fact itself is preserved in documents belonging to other relatives. Till he was eleven his mother was his instructor ; but in 1714 he was removed to the Charter-House School, and in 1719 his brother Samuel be- came his tutor in the "Westminster School. In 1720 he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford. He was ordained by Bishop Potter in 1725, at the age of twenty-two, and his excellent scholarship and efficiency as a teacher in the University secured him, in March, 1726, a Fellowship in Lincoln College. In February, 1727, he took his M.A. degree, and in August be- came his father's curate. September, 1728, he was ordained priest by Bishop Potter, and in November, 1729, the zealous young men he had gathered around him were first called Meth- odists. Until 1735 his time was chiefly spent as a tutor in the University ; he was with his father at Epworth in April, 1735, and in October, the same year, he sailed with General Ogle- thorpe to Georgia, in America. From February, 1736, to December, 1737, a period of nearly two years, John Wesley was most earnestly and diligently employed in that part of America, conducting religious meetings which correspond to Methodist class-meetings, and in carrying on a Sunday-school there forty years before he thought of such a work in England. Leaving America December 22, 1737, he arrived in England February 17, and early in the next month he met with Peter Bohler, from whom he began to learn the plan of salvation by faith more perfectly. On May 24, 1738, he experienced that change of heart which completely altered the whole course of his religious teaching; and the simplicity, earnestness, and 46 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. courage which he manifested immediately afterward, in preach ing salvation by faith alone, was marked by so many demon strations of spiritual power, that thousands crowded to his ministry, whom he was obliged to address out of doors ; and in that way the Methodist, or United Societies, were com- menced in December, 1739. How the work grew and spread till it had reached all the great centers of population in England, history has recorded. Details of that marvelous work will be found recorded in the fourteen separate " Lives of John Wesley," which have been published, all of which are in print. For more than fifty years John Wesley labored in connec- tion with these Societies, and at the time of his death, March 2, 1791, there were in the world belonging to the Methodist Societies, no less than one hundred and thirty-four thousand five hundred and forty-nine persons. At the present time, January, 1879, there are probably not less than five millions of persons belonging to the Methodist Societies all over the world, while the total number of worshipers in the various churches and chapels belonging to Methodism is probably not less than fifteen millions of persons every Sabbath day. Truly may we say in the words of Mr. Wesley himself, " What hath God wrought ! " The sixteenth child on the roll of the Epworth Wesleys was a son, who was born May 8, 1705. The registers having been de- stroyed, we do not know his name ; but the Hector has recorded the circumstances of his death in a letter he wrote to the Arch- bishop of York, in which he says : " On Wednesday, May 30, being the election day, great excitement prevailed, and during the night his nurse overlaid the child, and in the morning she found him dead in bed. He was buried the same evening." This child has not been noticed by any other biographer of the Wesley family. Martha Wesley was the seventeenth child of that family. The registers being burned, we have only circumstantial evidence by which to determine the time of her birth, which appears to THE WESLEY FAMILY. 47 have taken place in the autumn of the year 1706. From in- fancy she was deeply attached to her brother John, whom she resembled in person, manners, and handwriting, in the most remarkable way. Dr. Adam Clarke, who knew them both per- sonally, said that in their countenances they could not be dis- tinguished from each other. She spent much time with her uncle Matthew, in London, where she was introduced to a young Oxford student, Westley Hall, one of her brother John's pupils, to whom she was married in the summer of 1735. A more unfortunate marriage was, perhaps, never recorded. The narra- tive of her married life, as published in " Memorials of the Wesley Family," is one of extreme sadness and suffering. She was left a widow in 1776, after which period her brother John took care of her. She was a woman of considerable learning, deep piety, wonderful patience, and of captivating speech. She was a great favorite with the learned Dr. Samuel Johnson, the leviathan of literature, to whose society she was frequently in- vited, occasionally with her brother John, and her niece, Miss Sarah Wesley. She had a large family, but all her children died young. She survived her brother John only four months. She was the last survivor of all the nineteen children of her mother. John Wesley left her a legacy of 40, but the Meth- odists of 1791 were too poor to find so large a sum, and she died without receiving the amount. She was interred in the same vault as her brother John, being in her eighty-fifth year. Charles Wesley, A.M., the poet of Methodism, was born December 18, 1707. It is a curious fact that he did not know his own age, and his brother John and sister Martha both dif- fered in their opinion concerning his age. It was not till about one hundred and forty years after his birth that a letter was found, written by his father in 1709, by which the age of Charles is satis- factorily determined. He is there by implication said to have been fourteen months old when the rectory-house was burned down in February, 1709. Charles was prematurely born, and he lay wrapped up in wool during several weeks without active con- 48 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. seiousness until the exact time when he should have been born ; then he began to cry. He was feeble and delicate during all his long life. Educated by his mother till he was nine years old, he was then, in 1716, sent to Westminster School. He was there when Garrett Wesley, Esq., of Dangan Castle, Ireland, wanted to adopt him as his heir. Charles determined, after several years' entreaty, to refuse the adoption ; had he accepted, it is more than probable England would have had no Methodists, but the Wesleys might have become rich and great. Charles Wesley accepted ordination at Oxford in 1735, where he had studied since 1726 ; the following Sunday he was ordained priest by Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London. In Oc- tober of the same year he accompanied General Oglethorpe to Georgia, in the United States of America, as his private secretary. Charles brought dispatches to England from the Governor of the Colony in less than a year after his first arrival, and he did not return to America. He was afflicted with weakness and disease for several years. In May, 1738, while confined to his bed with pleurisy, at the house of T. Bray, in Little Britain, he entered into the liberty of the children of God. His conversion was clear, and it influenced for good in a marvelous manner all his future life. He first became an itinerant evangelist, then poet, then, uniting both vocations, he thus labored on for nearly fifty years, with results for good which are marvelous in every respect. For fifty years after his death his manuscript journals were concealed in a sack ; no one knew of their existence. In 1841 they were found and published, since which time we have known something of the variety and extent of his ministerial and pastoral labors. In 1749 he married Miss Sarah Gwynne, a lady who would have been a rich heiress had she not joined herself to the despised Methodists ; but she never regretted the choice she made. They had a considerable family of children, but only three of them reached mature years, Charles, Sarah, and Samuel. As the poet of the sanctuary, Charles Wesley stands in the foremost THE "WESLEY FAMILY. 49 place in all Christendom. He died in great peace, March 29, 1788, leaving more than six thousand hymns as his legacy to the Church ; and quite recently, in 1876, the new street just made by the side of the house where he lived and died, has been named Wesley-street, in honor of his having resided there. He was in his eighty-first year, and was buried in the grave- yard of old Marylebone Church, where also are interred his wife and his two sons, Charles and Samuel. Mrs. "Wesley sur- vived her husband thirty-four years, dying in 1822, at the ripe age of ninety-six years. Keziah Wesley was the nineteenth and last child on the Ep- worth roll. She was born one month after the burning of the rectory-house, on March 10, 1709, and about fifteen months aft- er her brother Charles. She never was very strong, but was thoroughly educated, and spent the few years of her maturer life as a teacher. Afterward she was much in attendance on her brother Charles during the periods of illness which fre- quently laid him aside before he was thirty years of age. Her last days were spent under the roof of Mr. and Mrs. Piers, of Bexley, John Wesley allowing them 50 a year for that pur- pose. She died at Bexley in March, 1741, within a few days after she had completed thirty-two years. She died unmarried. Hers was the last death in the family which their mother lived to know of. Sixteen months afterward Mrs. Wesley herself died in London. Of the three children of Charles Wesley, the first and sec- ond, Charles and Sarah, died in advanced life, both unmarried ; Charles was aged seventy-seven years, and Sarah only six months short of seventy years. Their biographies have been recently written for the first time in the " Memorials of the Wesley Family." Samuel Wesley, the youngest son of Charles and Sarah Wes- ley, is the only member of the family from whom have de- scended the numerous families of the Wesleys now living. Samuel was born on St. Matthias's Day, February 24, 1766. 50 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. He was born a musical genius. At the age of six years he had mentally composed, and when eight wrote out a complete ora- torio, the manuscript of which is still preserved by his daugh- ter, Miss Eliza Wesley. He was married, first in 1793. Out of many children born to him, there only reached maturity Charles Wesley, D.D., who for many years was sub-dean of the Chapel-Royal, St. James' Palace, and one of the chaplains to the Queen of En- gland, and who died in 1859 ; Emma Frances, their next child ; and the next, John William Wesley. These two died beyond the age of fifty. His second marriage took place about the year 1810 to Sarah Souter. She became the mother of four sons and three daughters, all of whom are now living excepting one, the oldest, the late Dr. Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the emi- nent organist and composer, who died in April, 1876. Their father, Samuel Wesley, was one of the most accomplished or- ganists and musical composers England has ever known. The story of his life surpasses that of any romance for exciting in- terest and wonderful genius. He died in 1837, at the age of seventy-one years, and over his grave was sung an anthem by the most skilled choir in the metropolis, combining exquisite music which will never be surpassed. His distinguished son, the accomplished Dr. S. S. Wesley, named above, died at the age of sixty-six years. The other members of the family, all living, are Rosalind Wesley, married first to Robert Glenn, then to Oliver Simmonds ; Eliza Wesley, unmarried, residing in Islington, the same age as Queen Victoria ; Matthias Eras- mus Wesley, a distinguished citizen in London, associate of the institute of civil engineers, and treasurer of the college of or- ganists in England ; John Wesley, who was some years a book- seller in Paternoster Row ; Thomasine Wesley, married to Richard Alfred Martin; and Robert Glenn Wesley, married in 1858 to Juliana Benson. There are about sixty children and grandchildren living. WESLEY AND METHODISM. FT! HE history of the Church may be divided into three grand JL epochs, respectively distinguished by certain great men who were each the embodiment of some great religious fact. The first, beginning with the creation and fall, ends with the flood. Its representative men are Abel, Enoch, and Noah. By the offering of blood through faith, Abel attested the need of atone- ment to obtain forgiveness, and the willingness of God to accept, through that medium, the sacrifice of a broken heart. By his translation the reward of his holy walk with God through faith Enoch prefigured the immortality of the soul and the resur- rection of the body. And Noah, by faith in God's threatened judgment, and obedience to the divine command, saved himself, condemned the world, and proved the certainty of the death pronounced . against the sinner, and the life promised to the righteous. The second epoch extends from the flood to the coming of Christ. Its representative men are Abraham, Moses, and Eli- jah. When, by faith, Abraham left his father's house to so- journ in the land of promise as in a strange country, and after- ward offered up his son through whom he received the fulfill- ment of the promises, he discovered beyond the grave a city which hath foundations, and witnessed to the power of grace to endure the severest trials by which God puts to the test the faith of his people. And when Moses, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, refused a crown, he made evident the power of the same grace to deliver the godly out of the subtlest arts of the tempter ; and, as part recompense of the reward, he was made the deliverer of the Hebrews from their bondage in Goshen, the divinely appointed 52 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. receiver and expounder of the -only code of laws given by Jeho- vah to man, and the only one of the Old Testament prophets to whom Christ likened himself. The Tishbite raising to life again the dead son of the widow of Sarepta, triumphing over the priests of Baal in the trial by fire, standing upon the mount before the Lord when Jehovah passed by, and ascending to heaven in a chariot of fire borne aloft by horses of fire, dem- onstrated, as the name of the prophet implies, that Jehovah is God, and the fitness of the prophet himself to appear afterward with Moses on Tabor as a witness of the transfiguration of Jesus the Lord's anointed Prophet, Priest, and King. These two epochs, embracing the periods of the altar, the tabernacle, and the temple, prepared the way for the third and last. The third which is the fulfillment of the types and prophecies of the former proclaimed the grandest of all truths, the culminating fact of all inspiration " God is a Spirit : and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." This epoch stretches from the birth of the Baptist until the Lord " come the second time without sin unto salvation." Its representative men, thus far, are John, the Baptist ; St. Peter, the great apostle to the Circumcision; St. Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles ; Martin Luther, the great Protestant ; and John "Wesley, the great Methodist Kef ormer. Our purpose not allowing us to notice the special work of the representative men of this epoch, except that of the Founder of Methodism, we proceed first to briefly epitomize what chiefly distinguishes the Wesleyan period. If asked what distinguishes-Wesleyan Methodism, we answer : It is a deliverance from the severe dogmas of Calvinism, from antinomianism, from lifeless forms, from the fiction of an unbroken apostolic succession, from pharisaic bigotry and intol- erance, and from bondage to the mere letter of ordinances. It restored and sanctioned lay-preaching saying with Moses, in spirit, " "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them." It has organ- WESLEY AND METHODISM. 53 ized an itinerant ministry, constrained by the love of Christ and willing to be all things to all men, if by any means it may save some. It contends for a pure and spiritual worship, believing that all times, all places, and all forms are accept- able to God, being sanctified by the prayers and faith of the worshiper. It has revived, in a restricted form, the ancient agapce, or love-feasts. It has restored, under the name of class-meetings, the meetings in which the early Church spoke often one to another to edify one another, and to provoke unto love and good works. It encourages and promotes revivals of religion as vital to the health and growth of the Church. It preaches a free and full salvation, justification by faith alone, carefulness to maintain good works as the evidence of the gen- uineness of faith and measure of final reward through grace, the witness of the Spirit to the believer's present acceptance with God, holiness of heart and life, devotedness to Christ, a burning love for souls, missionary zeal, a true catholicity toward all who bear the image of Christ, and an entire reliance upon the Holy Ghost and his 'gifts as the only source of spir- itual power. Methodism, however, as a system, was not the work of a day ; nor did it spring from the brain of Mr. Wesley a perfect sys- tem, as the fabled Athene, full-panoplied, from the brain of Jove. It has grown by the teachings of years into the grand system it now is. But to Mr. Wesley pre-eminently belongs the honor of being its heaven-appointed author and genius. Its illustrious founder, however, was not without obligation to others. It is questionable whether he would have met any thing like the unprecedented success that crowned his labors if he had not been seconded, from the first, by those who were specially qualified to push forward the great work to which they were mutually called of God. It has often been said that the early Methodist preachers in America were unlearned and ignorant men. In the January number of the " North American Review" for 18T6, in the 54 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. leading article : " Eeligion in America, 1776-1 876," Dr. Diman tells us, that with the sole exception of Coke, none of the preach- ers who established Methodism in America were educated at college. But this, however true of American, was not true of British Methodism, or of Methodism as a system. The system under which the early preachers in America labored was con- ceived and set on foot by profound thinkers, wise theologians, and eminent scholars. It is doubtful if an equal array of learn- ing, talent, and genius ever stood sponsors to any other Church since the days of the apostles certainly never did such a variety of special and appropriate gifts as nurtured Methodism from its very birth. True it is, that its young manhood was tried by the waves of the stormy Atlantic in the ship which bore Wes- ley, the Moravians, and the Salzburgers, to Georgia, and by the persecutions which befell it in the wilderness on the banks of the Savannah. But its infancy was cradled in the rectory at Ep- worth and rocked by the hands of Susanna Wesley ; and its early youth was nurtured in the classic halls of Oxford. John Wesley, Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, William Morgan, James Hervey, and other scholars at Oxford were its earliest professors. It afterward numbered among its followers John Fletcher, Adam Clarke, Joseph Benson, Eichard Watson, and Thomas Coke. And who are these ? John Wesley, Fellow of Lincoln College, Presbyter of the Church of England the eminent scholar, pro- found logician, with talents for organization and government that would have qualified him, had he been born a prince, to be the greatest monarch that ever sat on the throne of Alfred to plan and develop the system, and to organize and direct its forces : Charles Wesley whom Dean Stanley calls " sweet psalmist of the Church of those days," but whom we call the sweetest singer in Israel since David, Israel's great lyric poet, swept the chords of his tuneful harp to write its songs : George White- field the greatest pulpit orator^ living or dead to preach it to the multitude : John Fletcher of Madeley, prince of polemics with wit well-tempered and keen as blade of Saladin, and with WESLEY AND METHODISM. 55 logic ponderous and crushing as mace wielded by arm of Coeur de Leon, but with heart as tender and loving as a woman's to defend its doctrines : Adam Clarke, the great encyclopedic and oriental scholar of his day, and the learned Joseph Benson to write its Commentaries : Richard Watson, who " soared," said the great Robert Hall, "into regions of thought where no genius but his own can penetrate," and who was " the only sys- temizer," said Dr. Alexander of Princeton, " who in theology approached the eminence of Turretin, or reasoned like Paley, and descanted like Hall " to write its Institutes of Theology : and Thomas Coke, of Jesus College, Oxford, doctor of civil law, and the father of modern missions to carry Methodism " into the regions beyond." Such were the authors and illus- trators of Wesleyan Methodism. Well may it challenge the Churches to present a greater array of various and peculiar gifts ! When these things are considered, it is no wonder that Meth- odism has made comparatively greater progress than any other evangelical Church. Its effects are seen and felt not only in the millions who have lived and died, and the millions now liv- ing in its communion, but in all the evangelical Churches from Wesley's time to the present. Martin Luther delivered the hu- man mind from the bondage and superstition of Rome ; John Wesley rescued English Protestantism from the dead formal- ism and sinful lethargy of national churchmanship. Luther re- vived the Pauline doctrine of justification ; Wesley, the Paul- ine doctrine of sanctification. Luther showed how we are justified by faith alone ; Wesley, how by faith in the blood of the Lamb we are cleansed from all sin. The early English Reformers, wisely separating from the Church of Rome, set up the Church of England, but unwisely held on to certain unscriptural dogmas which distinguished the corrupt Church from which they separated; John Wesley, throttling these dogmas, proved that infallibility is an incommunicable preroga- tive of the Divine mind ; that apostolic succession depends not 56 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. upon ordination by bishops claiming unbroken descent from St. Peter, but upon a call to the ministry sanctioned by the baptism of the Spirit, attested by the gifts, grace, and useful- ness of him who is called, and confirmed by his presbyters ; and that grace, whether the sacraments be administered by men with or without episcopal ordination, is communicated to all who receive them with faith in Christ. The same reformers rescued Englishmen from the civil power of the Pope, but de r livered them over to an imperious king ; John Wesley gave to this union of Church and State its deadly wound a wound from which it has never recovered, and from which, sooner or later, it must die, whether its life goes out with the convulsive throes of a final struggle or quietly ebbs away with its latest gasp ; a wound which Wesley dealt it when he organized the Methodist Episcopal Church of America, and committed its ordinations and its sacraments to lay-preachers consecrated by the imposition of his own hands and the hands of his co-pres- byters. The Methodism of "Wesley is every-where felt outside of itself. Its true mission is acknowledged ; its claims un- disputed. Chalmers called it " CHRISTIANITY IN EARNEST." Judged by its spiritual power, by its marvelous effects in the awakening and conversion of souls, its scriptural and apostolic authority has received the highest and weightiest sanctions. Nor is its mission ended. Its conquests have been greater in the past twenty-five years than in any other quarter of a century of its history. Its field is still " the world," not only the world of sinners, but its sister Churches, to lead them to a higher life and greater devotedness to Christ. And this will be its mission so long as Methodism is true to the work and genius of its founder, till some greater than Wesley arise, com- missioned of God to conduct the Church to higher and nobler things. The spirit of Mr. Wesley projected itself not only into the millions called by his name, but into all Christians of whatever WESLEY AND METHODISM. 57 name. The great enterprises of the evangelical Churches which have distinguished the last century and a half received their origin and impetus from his labors and zeal. Mr. Wes- ley was a writer and distributer of tracts long before the Society in Paternoster Row had an existence. John Wesley and Thomas Coke, seventeen years before the Eeligious Tract Society of London was formed, organized the first Tract So- ciety the world ever had. Methodism gave birth to the Naval and Military Bible Society the first Bible Society that was ever formed, years before the organization of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The^great missionary awakening belongs to the Wesleyan period. The London Missionary Society and the Church Missionary Society are traced directly to Mr. Wesley and his preachers. At the old Foundery in Moorfields Mr. Wesley projected and started the first Medical Dispensary the world had ever known. John Wesley and Adam Clarke founded the first Strangers' Friend Society, in 1789. Before Bell and Lancaster, Wesley provided day schools for the education of the children of the poor. And children were gathered by Mr. Wesley into a Sabbath-school in Savannah nearly fifty years before Robert Raikes had a Sabbath-school in Gloucester. The leaders of the great revivals of the pres- ent day have all drank into his spirit. John Wesley preaches in the lay-sermons of Moody; Charles Wesley sings in the songs of Sankey. The power of Methodism as a pioneer spiritual force was long ago acknowledged. To awaken and convert sinners hard- ened in sin ; to reach the poor and outcast ; to occupy the out- posts, or to be thrown, out as skirmishers in time of a general engagement with the powers- of darkness these, and things like these, were said to be its mission. But how different the judgment of the world at the close of the centennial of Meth- odism! Methodism, especially in America, has been the pio- neer Church. Its axmen have plunged into the wilderness, and with sturdy strokes felled the trees of its forests. . Its plow- 58 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. shares have turned up the virgin soil; its husbandmen have not only committed the precious seed to the furrow, watered the tender plant, kept it free from weeds, and watched its growth with sleepless care, but they have thrust in the sharp sickle, reaped down the fields bending to the harvest, gathered the loaded sheaves into barns, and from their great granaries supplied famishing millions with the bread of life. Method- ism, in its great revivals, has been to the nations like the river Nile. It has often overflowed its banks and spread itself far and wide. Its fertilizing waters have enriched and softened the hard soil beneath, and prepared it to receive into its yield- ing bosom the harvest-bearing seed; and, like the same Egyp- tian river, these overflows, in their results, have been perennial. Methodism, too, has not only carried the war into the ene- my's country, but taken his strongholds, and fortified and held the places it has won. It has not only blasted the rock out of the quarry, but given form and beauty to the shapeless mass. Nor is its elasticity as a working power confined and fettered by forms and precedents. The swaddling-bands of the cradle have long since been laid aside ; the toga^prcetexta of childhood exchanged for the toga^virilis of manhood. That man, indeed, but little understands the true genius of Wesleyah Methodism who does not see that the wonderful elasticity by which it adapts itself to times, and places, and circumstances, is one of the chief characteristics which its common-sense founder gave to it from its beginning. Whitefield preaches in the open air and shocks Wesley by his irregularity ; Wesley, when driven from the pulpits of the Establishment, follows the example of his Oxford disciple and is soon heard addressing multitudes in Moorfields and on Kennington Common. At the old Found- ery Thomas Maxfield, without orders and without imposition of hands, warns sinners to repentance, expounds the word of God to the faithful, and arouses Wesley's indignation ; Wesley, acting on his mother's advice, hears Maxfield for himself. Per- suaded that the same divine power attends Maxfield's preach- WESLEY AND METHODISM. 59 ing which had attended his own, Wesley from that moment makes lay-preaching a part of the Methodist polity. Method- ism, extending its borders, soon numbers, " in the regions be- yond," thousands without the sacraments. Wesley, seeing that lay-ordination, is a providential need, ordains lay-preachers for America and Scotland. The American colonies separate from the English hierarchy and become politically and ecclesias- tically independent; the ordination of Thomas Coke, to be General Superintendent, or Bishop, over the Methodist Soci- eties in the 'New World, immediately follows. And when these Societies, in General Conference assembled, erect themselves into a distinct and separate Church, John Wesley sanctions the deed, believing that the Methodist Episcopal Church in America is as much a E"ew Testament Church as the apostolic Churches at Philippi and Thessalonica. All that has been here said about Mr. Wesley and Method- ism and much more is now confessed. Lord Macaulay long ago sentenced to oblivion those " books called HISTOEIES OF ENGLAND, under the reign of George II., in which the rise of Methodism is not even mentioned." To Mr. Wesley a pre- eminent place in history especially in ecclesiastical and En- glish history is now well-nigh universally assigned. The lit- erature of the eighteenth century was leavened by the optim- ism of Pope and Shaftesbury, and the skepticism of Hume and Gibbon. " Its theology," says Mr. Leslie Stephen, " was for the most part almost as deistical as the deists." The picture of English life drawn by Mr. Wesley in his " Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion," the irreligion, false-swearing, Sabbath- breaking, corruption, drunkenness, gambling, cheating, disre- gard of truth among men of every order, and the profligacy of the army and immorality of the clergy was no over-drawn picture. Leslie Stephen confesses that these things, " described in the language of keen indignation " by the pen of Wesley, "lead to a triumphant estimate of the reformation that has been worked by the Methodists." " The exertions of Wesley, 60 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. and their success," he adds, "are of themselves a sufficient proof that a work was to be done of which neither the rational- ist nor the orthodox were capable." The religion of England, from the Revolution till the Meth- odist movement pervaded the Establishment with its spirit, says Mr. Lecky, in his " England in the Eighteenth Century," "was cold, selfish, and unspiritual." It was, however, "as he tells us, " a period not without its distinctive excellences." "To this period," he writes, "belong the 'Alciphron' of Berkeley ; the ' Analogy ' of Butler ; the ' Defense of Natural and Eevealed Eeligion ' of Clarke ; the < Credibility of the Gospels ' of Lardner ; as well as the ' Divine Legation ' of War- burton, and the Evidential Writings of Sherlock, Leslie, and Le- land." But " the standard of the clergy " especially outside of the great cities " was low, and their zeal languid." Mr. Lecky, therefore, does not think it surprising that, at such a time, a movement like that of Methodism should have exercised a great power. " The secret of its success," he says, " was that it satisfied some of the strongest and most enduring wants of our nature, which found no gratification in the popular theology, and revived a large class of religious doctrines which had been long almost wholly neglected." "The utter depravity of human nature," he adds, " the lost condition of every man who is born into the world, the vicarious atonement of Christ, the necessity to salvation of a new birth, of faith, of the constant and sustaining action of the Divine Spirit upon the believer's soul, are doctrines which, in the eyes of the modern evangelical, constitute at once the most vital and the most influential por- tions of Christianity ; but they are doctrines which, during the greater part of the eighteenth century, were seldom heard from a Church of England pulpit. The moral essays, which were the prevailing fashion, however well suited they might be to cultivate the moral taste, or to supply rational mo- tives to virtue, rarely awoke any strong emotions of hope, fear, or love, and were utterly incapable of transforming WESLEY AND METHODISM. 61 the character, and arresting and reclaiming the thoroughly depraved." Nor was this all. The healthful influence of Wesley upon politics though not a politician was no less significant. It was due to him more than to any other, that " the great moral precedent of an appeal to conscience in a political question " was first established. " The religious movement of Wesley," says Leslie Stephen, " w T as so far removed from any political influence that Wesley himself, and many of his followers, were strongly conservative ; and indeed the movement itself was, perhaps, a diversion in favor of the established order. It pro- vided a different channel for dangerous elements." And henCe we are sure it was owing, in a great measure, to Wesley's pow- erfully conservative influence upon the thought of the eight- eenth century that England was indebted for her escape from the infidelity, disorders, and horrors of the French Revolution. " The evangelical movement," says Mr. Lecky, " which di- rectly or indirectly originated with Wesley, produced a general revival of religious feeling, which has incalculably increased the efficiency of almost every religious body in the community, while at the same time it has seriously affected party poli- tics." ..." The many great philanthropic efforts which arose, or at least derived their importance, from the evangelical move- ment, soon became prominent topics of parliamentary debate ; but they were not the peculiar glory of any political party, and they formed a common ground on which many religious de- nominations could co-operate." The writings of Yoltaire and the Encyclopaedists, the meta- physics of Condillac and Helvetius, and "the wild social dreams" of Rousseau threatened "the very foundations of society and of belief." " A tone of thought and feeling," says Mr. Lecky, "was introduced into European life which could only lead to anarchy, and at length to despotism, and was be- yond all others fatal to that measured and ordered freedom which can alone endure. Its chief characteristics were, a hatred 62 THE WESLEY MEMOKIAL VOLUME. of well-constituted authority, an insatiable appetite for change, a habit of regarding rebellion as the normal as well as the noblest form of political self -sacrifice, a disdain of all compro- mise, a contempt for all tradition, a desire to level all ranks and subvert all establishments, a determination to seek progress, not by the slow and cautious amelioration of existing institutions, but by sudden, violent, and revolutionary change. Keligion, prop- erty, civil authority, and domestic life, were all assailed ; and doctrines incompatible with the very existence of government were embraced by multitudes with the fervor -of a religion. England, on the whole, escaped the contagion. Many causes conspired to save her, but among them a prominent place must, I believe, be given to the new and vehement religious enthusi- asm which was at that very time passing through the middle and lower classes of the people, which had enlisted in its service a large proportion of the wilder and more impetuous reformers, and which recoiled with horror from the anti- Christian tenets that were associated with the Revolution in France." While the revolutionary spirit, which was of foreign birth, was thus menacing the established order, and seeking to intro- duce political and religious chaos, England was threatened from within by dangers scarcely less portentous. The great me- chanical inventions, " which changed with unexampled rapidity the whole course of English industry, and in a little more than a generation created manufacturing centers unequaled in the world," gave rise to an angry contest between capital and la- bor, between rich and poor, that " brought with it some polit- ical and moral dangers of the gravest kind." "But few thinkers of any weight," says Mr. Lecky, "would now deny that these evils and dangers were greatly underrated by most of the economists of the last generation." " The true great- ness and welfare of nations," he adds, " depend mainly on the amount of moral force that is generated within them. Society never can continue in a state of tolerable security when there WESLEY AND METHODISM. 63 is no other bond of cohesion than a mere money tie; and it is idle to expect the different classes of the community to join in the self-sacrifice and enthusiasm of patriotism if all unselfish motives are excluded from their several relations. Every change of conditions which widens the chasm and impairs the sympathy between rich and poor cannot fail, however bene- ficial may be its other effects, to bring with it grave dangers to the State. It is incontestable, that the immense increase of manufacturing industry and of the manufacturing population has had this tendency ; and it is, therefore, I conceive, pecul- iarly fortunate that it should have been preceded by a relig- ious revival which opened a new spring of moral and religious energy among the poor, and at the same time gave a powerful impulse to the philanthropy of the rich." But these benefits, good as they were, were not, in Mr. Lecky's opinion, the greatest triumphs of the Methodist re- vival. Its chief triumphs, he thinks, " were the consolation it gave to men in the first agonies of bereavement, its support in the extremes of pain and sickness, and, above all, its stay in the hour of death." These results, he remarks, were in some sort effected for the bereaved and dying by the teachings and ceremonies of the priests of Rome, But this was done, he believes, by connecting absolution indissolubly with complete submission to their sacerdotal claims ; and, in doing this, the Catholic priests framed what Mr. Lecky calls " the most formi- dable engine of religious tyranny that has ever been employed to disturb or subjugate the world." The work of Mr. Wes- ley and the evangelists, he says, was to destroy this engine of priestcraft. It was they who taught that the intervention of no human being, and of no human rite, is necessary in the hour of death. It was they who demonstrated that they could " ex- ercise a soothing influence not less powerful than that of the Catholic priest." "The doctrine of justification by faith," adds Mr. Lecky, " which directs the wandering mind from all painful and perplexing retrospect, concentrates the imagination 64 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. on one Sacred Figure, and persuades the sinner that the sins of a life have in a moment been effaced, has enabled thousands to encounter death with perfect calm, or even with vivid joy, and has consoled innumerable mourners at a time when all the commonplaces of philosophy would appear the idlest of sounds." " This doctrine," continues Mr. Lecky, " had fallen almost wholly into abeyance in England, and had scarcely any place among realized convictions, when it was revived by the evan- gelical party. It is impossible to say how largely it has con- tributed to mitigate some of the most acute forms of human misery. Historians, and even ecclesiastical historians, are too apt to regard men simply in classes, or communities, or corpo- rations, and to forget that the keenest of our sufferings as well as the deepest of our joys take place in those periods when we are most isolated from the movements of society. "Whatever may be thought of the truth of the doctrine, no man will ques- tion its power in the house of mourning and in the house of death. < The world,' wrote "Wesley, ' may not like our Meth- odists and evangelical people, but the world cannot deny that they die well.' " Mr. Leslie Stephen says that " Wesleyanism is, in many respects, by far the most important phenomenon of the eight- eenth century," and that "its reaction upon other bodies was as important as its direct influence." Mr. Buckle, the skeptical author of the " History of Civilization in England," confidently affirms that the effects of Wesleyanism upon the Church of England were hardly inferior to the effects exerted by Protestantism, in the sixteenth century, upon the Church of Eome. And when he compares the success of Wesley, whom he calls " the first of theological statesmen," with the difficulties which Wesley surmounted, Mr. Buckle is of the opinion that Macaulay's celebrated estimate of the founder of Methodism is hardly an exaggeration, when that great essayist and historian pronounced Wesley's "genius for government WESLEY AND METHODISM. 65 not inferior to that of Richelieu." By the great Methodist theological statesman was effected, "after an interval of two hundred years," what Mr. Buckle calls " England's second spir- itual Reformation." But in this connection we must not fail to notice what Buckle intended as a fling at Methodism. He condemns it for its " mental penury," because it has produced no other equal to John Wesley. This is no reflection on Methodism : it is directly the greatest compliment to Mr. Wesley, and indirectly equally so to Methodism. As well condemn the "mental penury" of Christianity, because it has produced no greater apostle than St. Paul; or the "mental penury" of the Reform- ation, because it has produced no greater reformer than Martin Luther. The truth is, neither Methodism nor the whole Christian Church has had more than one John Wesley since the days of the apostles. As Mount Everest lifts its tall head not only above every other peak of the Himalayas, but above the tallest peak of every other mountain range ' in the wide world, so does John Wesley, as a revivalist and reformer, tower not only above the other great men of Methodism, but above the greatest in all the other Churches of Christendom. " Tak- ing him altogether," writes his latest biographer, Mr. Tyer- man, " Wesley is sui generis. He stands alone : he has had no successor ; no one like him went before ; no contemporary was a co-equal." " A greater poet," writes Dr. Dobbin, of the Church of England, " may arise than Homer or Milton ; a greater theo- logian than Calvin ; a greater philosopher than Bacon ; a greater dramatist than any of ancient or modern fame ; but a greater revivalist of the Churches than John Wesley never ! " The time, indeed, is not distant when every historian who regards the truth of history, or respects the judgment of his contemporaries and posterity, will give to Mr. Wesley his true place in both ecclesiastical and English history. High-church- men, against whose bigotry and intolerance he protested; rationalists and infidels, whose skepticism he refuted ; poets, 66 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. historians, and essayists, whose irreligion he condemned; and statesmen and philosophers, whose loose morality he assailed ; have been slow to acknowledge his powerful influence upon almost every phase of English thought. But the time will come if it has not already come when all will say, with Mr. Lecky : " If men may be measured by the work they have ac- complished, John Wesley can hardly fail to be regarded as the greatest figure who has appeared in the religious history of the world since the days of the Reformation." "With the same great writer, British and American authors will confess the obligation of England and America to those religious teachers who, " while the politicians were doing so much to divide, were doing so much to unite, the two great branches of the English race." With this greatest of English historians since the death of Macaulay they will see though like him they may think it " a strange thing " how it was " that, in spite of civil war and of internatioilal jealousy, a movement which sprang in an English university should have acquired so firm a hold over the hearts and intellects of the American people." And to this we add, they will further see how it was, that, by a re- ciprocal influence, the English people, forgetting the same enmities and conflicts, have been drawn so closely to their American cousins. The most brilliant essayists and historians who, since Wes- ley's times, have written specifically on English thought and English civilization, have been for the most part rationalists and skeptics. It is not to be expected that they who are such will in all things treat with fairness one with whose religious convictions they have no sympathy; whose enthusiasm they call f anatacism ; and whose holy life they denounce as asceti- cism. What Mr. Wesley magnified as of chiefest importance is foolishness to them. It cannot be understood by them, be- cause it is only spiritually discerned. Wesley's experience in the things of God is a mark for their wit and ridicule. Justi- fication by faith alone, the new birth, the witness of the WESLEY AND METHODISM. 67 Spirit, heaven and hell, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment, are with them figments worthy to be classed with the vain delusions of an effete mythology. Having no belief in the eternal verities which with Wesley were convic- tions, they regarded his writings and teachings, while weighing their influence on English thought and civilization, solely in the light of their own deistical or infidel philosophy, and the language of those who are considered the great masters of English prose. Judged by their standard, Wesley has exerted no beneficial influence on civilization, like Yoltaire and Paine, or on literature, like Rousseau and Hume. He added nothing, they tell us, to the philosophy, nor did he add any thing to the literature, of his age. He added nothing to its so-called philosophy, it is true ; but he rescued many thousands from its poison and death. And did he add nothing to its civilization ? To lead a blameless life in a corrupt age, and by precept and example turn thousands from profligacy and vice to virtue and holiness did this, and a great deal more that Wesley accom- plished in Church and State, add nothing to the civilization of England ? The writings of John Wesley, it is true, have not the splen- did diction of the infidel author of " The Decline and Fall," or the classic eloquence of that other infidel historian who traced the history of England from its beginnings down to the close of the reign of James II., last of the Stuart kings. But they have been read by millions now testing, beyond the grave, the realities of the things in which Wesley believed, and by mill- ions more now living whose religion and lives have been molded by the great truths which he preached, and about which he wrote. Judged by this standard, did he not accom- plish far more than any other religious writer of his day? Are not his writings even now influencing more minds than the writings of any other uninspired religious teacher since Martin Luther wrote his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans? Wesley, as no one will question, was a master of 68 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. English thought and of the English tongue. Few in his day were more skilled in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin. To him, at an early day, the principal languages of the continent of Europe were familiar studies. Excellent grammars, in English, of several of these tongues the old and the new were made by Mr. Wesley at a time when, in England, gram- mars in English of the ancient tongues were things unknown, and philology was an undeveloped science. His translations from three of the languages of modern Europe are among the best hymns of the Wesleyan Hymn Book. He was not only a master of tongues, but a master of logic and rhetoric. His edu- cation was classic ; his culture all that the oldest English uni- versity, severe study, a retentive memory, and great intel- lectual powers, could bestow. If he had formed his style on the classic model of Tully's Epistles to Pomponius Atticus if he had copied the best writers of the Augustan age of English literature who doubts that he might have attained preemi- nence in the realm of letters ? Lord Macaulay says : " He was a man whose eloquence and logical acuteness might have ren- dered him eminent in literature." But all mere literary fame John Wesley sacrificed, and he sacrificed it for a purpose. He who would not wear " a fine coat " that he might satisfy the hungry with bread, laid aside " a fine style " that he might make the Gospel of our salvation plain to the miners of Corn- wall, the colliers of Kingswood, and the felons of Newgate. His words may not have been, in the judgment of his critics, " with excellency of speech," but they were " in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power." Like St. Paul whom Wesley more nearly resembled than any other man has resembled that great apostle Wesley was called a babbler by the Epicurean statesmen and philosophers of his times. The Gospel preached by Mr. Wesley was foolishness to Horace Walpole, but to millions it has been " Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." But let Mr. Leslie Stephen, the skeptical author of the WESLEY AND METHODISM. 69 " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century," who tells us that "Wesley "added nothing to the stores of English rhetorical prose," and that his " writings produced nothing val- uable in themselves, either in form or substance," say what he really thinks of Mr. Wesley's literary powers. " It would be difficult," says this writer, " to find any letters more direct, forc- ible, and pithy in expression. He goes straight to the mark without one superfluous nourish. He writes as a man confined within the narrowest limits of time and space, whose thoughts are so well in hand that he can say every thing needful within those limits. The compression gives emphasis, and never causes confusion. The letters, in other words, are the work of one who for more than half a century was accustomed to turn to account every minute of his eighteen working hours." " Wesley's elo- quence," says this same writer, " is in the direct style, which clothes his thoughts with the plainest language. He speaks of what he has seen ; he is never beating the air, or slaying the dead, or mechanically repeating thrice-told stories, like most of his contemporaries. His arguments, when most obsolete in their methods and assumptions, still represent real thought upon ques- tions of the deepest interest to himself and his hearers." " We can fancy," he adds, " the venerable old man, his mind enriched by the experience of half a century's active warfare against vice, stained by no selfishness, and liable to no worse accusa- tion than that of a too great love of power, and believe that his plain, nervous language must have carried conviction and chal- lenged the highest respect." After thus writing, Mr. Leslie Stephen asserts that Wesley's " thoughts run so frequently in the same grooves of obsolete historical speculation" the ital- ics are ours " that he has succeeded in producing no single book satisfactory in a literary sense." And yet we venture to say that Wesley's plain, terse, and direct English had almost as much influence upon what Mr. Buckle calls "the cumbrous language and long-involved sentences " of the times which im- mediately preceded the great revivalist, as his preaching had 70 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. upon a lethargic Church and a sinful world. * For it was Wes- ley's powerful influence secret, it is true, but none the less powerful upon the literature of his day, which, more than any thing else, discarded the old, and introduced what Mr. Buckle calls " a lighter and simpler style " a style " more rap- idly understood," adds Mr. Buckle, and " better suited to the exigencies of the age." - But we are further told by Mr. Leslie Stephen that "Wes- ley's writings possess " nothing more than a purely historical interest ; " that Wesley's theology, because of its " want of any direct connection with speculative philosophy," is "con- demned to barrenness ; " that, having " no sound foundation in philosophy," Wesleyanism " has prevented the growth of any elevated theology, and alienated all cultivated thinkers." The above fairly represents much of the criticism to which Mr. Wesley and Methodism have been subjected. Its author belongs to a class of writers who can be somewhat just to Methodism when it comes into comparison with other forms of evangelical Christian thought. But while their testimony in that respect is invaluable and we have seen what it is, for we have put them on the stand and heard their witness for Methodism and its founder these writers see neither in Methodism nor in any other phase of thought which has the plenary inspiration of the Bible as its basis any thing ex- cept a weak and blind superstition. The facts of the great revival they affect to describe with the fidelity and accuracy of historians. But to them these facts are mere emotional phe- nomena, or phenomena which they ascribe to mere natural and secondary causes, and not to any supernatural and divine power. And has the great revival been " condemned to barrenness ? " Have all "cultivated thinkers" been "alienated" from it? Has Wesley left no permanent influence on English thought ? Do his writings possess " nothing more than a purely historical interest ? " How is it, then, that Kis followers are numbered WESLEY AND METHODISM. 71 by millions ? How is it that these are found all over ths Chris- tian world, numbering thousands whom the Christian world regards as " cultivated thinkers ? " If it has been " condemned to barrenness," what mean its myriad Christian temples ? its many hundred universities, and colleges, and seminaries of learning ? its many thousand educated men in the ministry, in law, in medicine, in philosophy, in science, and in government ? What will one say of its thousand printing-presses? of its great publishing houses ? its .newspapers, its magazines, its re- views ? its tracts and books ? its great benevolent institutions ? its orphan asylums? its homes for the poor and outcast? its great missionary and Sunday-school societies? What means the aggressive force which constantly enlarges its borders? How is it that in a little over a hundred years it has accom- plished results which are the wonder of the world? How is it that in many parts of the world, the old and the new, it is to-day increasing in a greater ratio than at any period since its beginning? What means its influence upon other Churches, upon their theology and practice ? Is Calvinism, or any other phase of Christian theology which Wesley combated, the same it was when Wesley -began to write against it ? Have they not been greatly modified by Wesley's teachings, by Wes- ley's spirit, and by Wesley's catholicity ? Since Wesley spoke and wrote, and exemplified what he spoke and wrote by his own beautiful life, have not the evangelical Churches been drawing nearer and nearer together ? Are they not more sweetly striving together for " the faith once delivered to the saints ? " Is there not a more harmonious endeavor to " keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace ? " And have Wesley's writings " nothing more than a purely historical interest \ " How is it that there are over a hundred thousand Methodist preachers now living, who have not only read Wesley's sermons, but studied them, prayed over them, and before received into the traveling connection been examined on them ? And who will say how many thousands more are now in 72 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. heaven who did the same thing ? And has this great army of itinerant and local preachers, the living and the dead, exer- cised no influence upon English thought ? And have not mill- ions of pages in newspapers, in magazines, in reviews, and in tracts and books, been written to illustrate, to defend, and to enforce the writings which Wesley left to his followers ? The writings of what other religious teacher outside of revelation have been so extensively read, or left a wider and deeper trace on the Anglo-Saxon mind and heart ? But what is English thought, about which we hear so much from a certain class of writers ? With them it means not the old theology of Moses and St. Paul, nor even that of Socrates and Plato ; but it means the old philosophy of Leucippus, Democritus, and Lucretius, and of their disciples in skepticism, Hobbes and Hume, Voltaire and Kousseau, Spencer and Dar- win. It means whatever is skeptical in thought, whatever its modifications may be, whether atheism, deism, infidelity, ration- alism, or whatever is included in what is called the speculative philosophy, and is opposed to the Bible as a written revelation of God and his will. This, with certain writers, is the whole of English thought. The " cultivated thinkers " are all found there, and nowhere else. Every thing else, provided it savor directly or indirectly of revealed religion, is excluded. And yet, perhaps, not all of revealed religion. For if one profess- ing to believe in the sacred Scriptures so interprets them as to exclude the divinity of Christ, the doctrine of human deprav- ity, the necessity of repentance, the new birth, the witness of the spirit, holiness, and the existence of heaven and hell, espe- cially the latter, he may be taken, by an act of philosophic grace, into the number of the " cultivated thinkers." Such an one is admitted into the "charmed circle of speculative philoso- phy because he is only half a religionist at the most. He is not fully in the light of the true philosophy, but he is not alto- gether in darkness. There is hope that he may emerge out of the dim and shadowy twilight of a semi-philosophy into the WESLEY AND METHODISM. 73 bright and unclouded noon of the philosophy of " cultivated thinkers." Hence, perhaps, Samuel Clarke and Benjamin Hoadley have left some impress upon English thought ; upon it can be found no traces of Philip Doddridge and John Wesley. We thank God that these devoted ministers of the Lord Jesus added nothing to English thought, as English thought is in- terpreted by the skeptics. As already noticed, the only influ- ence John Wesley exerted upon English thought in their sense of it, has been to save millions of the English-speak- ing race from its blight and its curse. Had it not been for Wesley's burning love of souls for whom Jesus died, and his apostolic zeal to pluck them as brands from the burning ; had it not been for his faithful Gospel-preaching in church and chapel, in barns and the open air ; and had it not been for the thoroughly evangelical tracts, and treatises, and hymns, and sermons which came trooping from his unresting pen, the so- called English thought would have embraced millions deliv- ered by Wesley's labors from its skepticism and death. If John Wesley has left no trace upon true English thought not the English thought of the skeptics how is it that his name, his life, and his labors are now filling a much larger space in the English literature of the day than those of any other uninspired Christian teacher that has ever lived ? How is it that these are so much the theme not only of the religious newspapers, and magazines, and reviews, and books issued from Methodist printing-presses and the printing-presses of other evangelical Churches, but of the secular histories- and quarterlies of the times ? How is it that there is, at this mo- ment, a revival of thought on his life and work all over the world'? How is it that so many, in other evangelical Churches, are emulating one another to do honor to his memory ? How is it that even the skeptical historians of English thought and of English life though they do not give to him the full place to which he is entitled are yet assigning him, with Mr. Buckle, the chief est place among " theological statesmen," and, 74 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. with them all, the highest rank among Church revivalists and reformers? And how is it that the Established Church of England, from whose pulpits he was so rudely shut out, is now, though late, claiming him as her own as the one to whom she is most indebted for deliverance from rationalism and French infidelity on the one hand, and a lifeless formalism and an arrogant claim to Poprish infallibility on the other '? Witness England's recent tribute to the Wesleys ! A sculpt- ured memorial of John and Charles Wesley not long since was unveiled by Dean Stanley in Westminster Abbey. The worthy Dean, who delivered the address on the occasion, spoke of the Wesleys as those whom the Church of England de- lighted to honor, and hoped that no one would deny to them a place in that .venerable mausoleum of England's noble dead. Fitting place for a sculptured memorial' of the brothers ! For to none of the many eminent dead whose memory that splendid old Abbey perpetuates has England been more indebted than to John Wesley, the great Methodist reformer, and to Charles Wesley, the great Methodist lyric poet. Nor is all acknowledg- ment of England's indebtedness to the Wesleys a thing of such recent date. When the music of Charles Wesley, Jun., like the effect of David's harp on King Saul, revived the spirit of King George III., the old king, laying a hand on one of the shoul- ders of the musician, said : " To your uncle, Mr. Wesley, and your father, and to George Whitefield and the Countess of Huntingdon, the Church in this realm is more indebted than to all others." If the Bible is the inspired word of God ; if God out of Christ is a consuming fire ; if the Gospel of Christ is the pow- er of God unto salvation ; if, without faith in Christ as the only sacrifice for sin, no one can be delivered from its con- demnation and guilt"; if the blood of Christ alone can cleanse the defiled and polluted heart ; if the fruits of the Spirit are the only sure evidence of acceptance with God, and holiness the only fitness for an inheritance with the sanctified ; if Christ WESLEY AND METHODISM. 75 is judge of quick and dead ; and if believers in Christ are re- warded with the crown of eternal life, and all unbelievers pun- ished with the pains of eternal death then an impress, greater than that made by any other Englishman, has Wesley made upon the Anglo-Saxon mind and heart. If it be a supreme work to revive a lifeless Church and awake it to its true mis- sion on earth to be instrumental in saving the greatest number of souls from death, and to exert the greatest and widest influ- ence for good while living, and, when dead, keep it alive by the recollection of a life of perfect consecration to Christ and unselfish devotedness to the best and highest interests of man, then John Wesley must be regarded the greatest of English revivalists and reformers. And if, after death, to speak to millions of the English-speaking race in the writings which one has left behind him with the same authority with which his utterances in life were received by comparatively a few thousand, be any evidence that one has left an impress upon English thought then John Wesley, the founder of Meth- odism, has exercised a more powerful influence upon true English thought than any other Englishman, living or dead. Finally, if John Wesley, claiming the world as his parish, with no spirit of a sectarian and with no thought of founding a Church, has founded a great Church which has been instru- mental in winning more trophies to the Cross of Christ than any other if he has infused his own apostolic spirit into the other evangelical Churches and made them better witnesses for Jesus and the resurrection then John Wesley is not only " the greatest figure who has apppeared in the religious history of the world since the days of the Reformation," but since the days of the apostles. And such will be the deliberate judgment which the ages will pronounce upon the life and labors of John Wesley, " who devoted," says Lord Macaulay, " all his powers, in defiance of obloquy and derision, to what he sin- cerely considered the highest good of his species." WESLEY AND THE CHTJECH OF ENGLAND. THE Methodism of to-day will never be understood until the history of its founder is rightly understood ; and neither the history of Wesley himself, nor the character of his life- work, can ever be understood, until it is recognized that his life was divided into two distinct, and in many respects sharply-con- trasted, periods the period preceding, and the period following the spring of 1738. Much confusion and error have arisen from failing to recognize the critical changes and the momentous de- velopments which have marked the course of certain statesmen, who have been unjustly accused of treachery, of holding at one and the same time a medley of conflicting opinions, and of hav- ing no honest and real principles at all. Similar confusion has arisen as to Wesley's opinions and principles from failing to observe the fact to which I have referred. The opinions of his earlier years have often been attributed to him as his perma- nent convictions and principles, although he had abandoned them fifty years before his death, while the real principles which guided all his course as the founder of Methodism have apparently never been apprehended at all by many who have undertaken to pronounce on the subject both of Wesley him- self and of the community which he founded. It is my pres- ent purpose to exhibit, as clearly as I can, what Wesley was after his High-Church views were abandoned in 1738, and to indicate also, at least in part, how the Methodism which he founded was molded' by the principles which he then adopted, and which became ever afterward the controlling principles of his life and work. Let 1738 be well marked. Wesley's inner and essential High Churchmanship belongs to the period preceding that date. His WESLEY AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 77 Churchmanship in after-life, and through the space of half a century, included neither high sacramentarian doctrine nor serv- ile veneration for rubrics, nor any belief in either the virtue or the reality of what is commonly called " the apostolical suc- cession." Wesleyan writers take their stand here. None have shown so distinctly and fully the rigid and excessive Churchmanship of Wesley up to the date 1738. But they insist that from that date every thing was essentially different, and that the essential difference very swiftly developed into striking results. The High Churchman, they argue, makes salvation to be di- rectly dependent on sacramental grace and apostolical succession. Whereas the Evangelical Believer the man who has received the doctrine of salvation by faith as it was taught by Peter Bohler, and as it is understood by the Reformed Churches in general, learns from St. Paul that " faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Hence, according to his conviction, the Christian salvation justification, regeneration, and sanctification must be realized by means of the " truth as it is in Jesus." Truth and life are for him indissolubly associ- ated. He cannot forget the words of the Word Himself : " Sanc- tify them through thy truth ; thy wprd is truth ; " and again, " I am the way, the truth, and the life ; " nor the words of St. Paul, when he speaks of himself and his fellow-workers as " by manifestation of the truth commending " themselves " to every man's conscience in the sight of God." It is the truth in the sacraments, according to his view, which fills them with blessing to those who receive them with faith ; they are " signs and seals" eloquent symbols and most sacred pledges but they are not in and of themselves saturated with grace and life ; they are not the only ' organ and vehicle through which grace flows to the members of Christ's mystical body, altogether irre- spective of any divine truth apprehended and embraced by the mind and heart of the believer. They admit that, up to 1738, Wesley had been a High-Church 78 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. Ritualist, but they insist that all his life afterward he taught the Evangelical doctrine of salvation by faith; that he very soon, and once for all, discarded the " fable," as he called it, of " apostolical succession ; " and that he presently gave up all that is now understood to belong to the system, whether theological or ecclesiastical, of High-Church Anglo-Catholicism. "The grave-clothes of ritualistic superstition," they say, " still hung about him for awhile, even after he had come forth from the sepulcher, and had, in his heart and soul, been set loose and free ; and he only cast them off gradually. But the new prin- ciple he had embraced led," as they affirm, " before long to his complete emancipation from the principles and prejudices of High-Church ecclesiasticism." Such language as this may seem to High Churchmen harsh, and perhaps uncharitable, but the one question really is, how far it is warranted by the history and recorded sentiments of Wesley himself after the year 1738. Modern Wesleyans can- not be expected to be more High-Church than their founder. I propose, accordingly, to show now, in some detail, what Wes- ley did actually claim and hold as to matters ecclesiastical during the half-century which followed his " conversion." Ecclesiastical claims and theories are founded on theological * O dogmas. We shall see how the newly-received doctrines of grace and of faith gave color and form to the ecclesiastical prin- ciples of the founder of Methodism. It is hard to conceive views as to the public ministry of the word, and the government and discipline of the Church, more hazardous and untenable, according to the standard of High Churchmen, than those which were maintained by John Wesley. He held, as I will presently show, after the year 1745, that the office of presbyter or priest and that of bishop being orig- inally, and essentially one, he, as a presbyter, had the abstract ind essential right to ordain presbyters, in a new sphere a sphere of his own creation, so to speak if by his so doing WESLEY AND THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 79 neither he nor they whom he ordained became intruders into other communions, or trespassers within other jurisdictions. Acting on this principle, he ordained " presbyters," and even " superintendents," * or bishops, for America ; he ordained presbyters for Scotland; and eventually even conceived him- self to be constrained to ordain presbyters to assist him in ad- ministering the sacraments to his own Societies in England, one of his strong pleas being, that the clergy, in many instances, would not admit his people to the Lord's Supper. Indeed, there is high authority the authority of Samuel Bradburn, one of his ablest and most eminent preachers for saying that Wesley went so far, at the Conference of 1Y88, as to consecrate one of his English preachers as "superintendent," or bishop. The Methodist Conference did but extend this principle to its obvious consequences when, a few years after his death, those of them whom -Wesley had already ordained were pre- sumed to have the power to share their prerogatives with their brethren and partners in common charge of the Societies, so that all the Societies which desired it might receive the sacra- ments from their own preachers. Quite as radical, indeed, as any opinion of a modern Meth- odist on these points, and far more startling, as coming from John Wesley, is the following passage contained in the Min- utes of Conference for the year already noted, 1745 : Q. 1. Can he be a spiritual governor of the Church who is not a be- liever nor member of it ? A. It seems not: though he maybe a governor in outward things by a power derived from the King. Q. 2. What are properly the laws of the Church of England ? A. The rubrics ; and to those we submit as the ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake. * In Wesley's time, the senior preacher in charge was called " assistant," not, as now, "superintendent," and the junior preachers, "helpers." "Superintendent," in Wesley's ecclesiastical nomenclature, meant u bishop ; " he held, of course, that his " superintendents," or " bishops," were not in order, but only in office, distinguished from presbyters. 80 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. Q. 3. But is not the will of our governors a law? A. No ; not of any governor, temporal or spiritual. Therefore, if any bishop wills that I should not preacli the Gospel, his will is no law to me. Q. 4. But what if he produce a law against your preaching ? A. I am to obey God rather than man. Q. 5. Is Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Independent church government most agreeable to reason ? A. The plain origin of Church government seems to be this. Christ sends forth a preacher of the Gospel. Some who hear him, repent and believe the Gospel. They then desire him to watch over them, to build them up in the faith, and to guide their souls in the paths of righteous- ness. Here, then, is an independent congregation subject to no pastor but their own; neither liable to be controlled in things spiritual by any other man or body of men whatsoever. But soon after, some from other parts, who are occasionally present while he speaks in the name of Him that sent, him, beseech him to come over to help them also. Knowing it to be the will of God, he consents, yet not till he has conferred with the wisest and holiest of his congrega- tion, and, with their advice, appointed one or more who have gifts and grace to watch over the flock till his return. If it pleases God to raise another flock in the new place, before he leaves them he does the same thing, appointing one whom God has fitted for the work to watch over these souls also. In like manner, in every place where it pleases God to gather a little flock by His Word, he ap- points one in his absence to take the oversight of the rest, and to assist them of the abilities which God giveth. These are deaoons, or servants of the Church, and look on the first pastor as their common father. And all these congregations regard him in the same light, and esteem him still as the shepherd of their souls. These congregations are not absolutely independent; they depend on one pastor, though not on each other. As these congregations increase, and as their deacons grow in years and grace, they need other subordinate deacons or helpers, in respect of whom they may be called presbyters or elders, as their father in the Lord may be called the bishop or overseer of them all. Q 6. Is mutual consent absolutely necessary between the pastor and his flock ? A. ]STo question. I cannot guide any soul unless he consent to be WESLEY AND THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 81 guided by me. Neither can any soul force me to guide him if I consent not. Q. 7. Does the ceasing of this consent on either side dissolve that re- lation ? A. It must, in the very nature of things. If a man no longer consent to be guided by me, I am no longer his guide : I am free. If one will not guide me any longer, I am free to seek one who will. This remarkable extract contains implicitly the whole theory of Methodist government and discipline, regarded as an or- ganization created and controlled by Wesley for the purpose of converting souls and of watching over his converts. Wes- ley regarded himself as a sort of bishop, his " assistants " or chief preachers in charge as quasi-presbyters, and the junior or probationary " helpers " as a sort of deacons. If he never car- ried out this conception thoroughly in practice, and especially never conceded to his chief preachers generally the distinct status of presbyters, it was because he cherished, more or less, though with heavy doubts and misgivings, the hope that the bishops of his Church might be brought to give virtual effect to his desires, and that Methodism might become an affiliated branch of the Church of England. It is true, indeed, and it is very singular, that even at the time he penned the remarkable extract just given, Wesley still retained some relics of his ecclesiastical High Churchnianship. The date of the minute is August, 1745. On December 27, of the same year, he prints in his journal a letter to his brother-in- law, Hall a letter well-known and often quoted by Churchmen in which he upholds the doctrines of apostolical succession, and of the three-fold order of the ministry. On the very next page of his journal, however, under date January 20, 1746 and no doubt the juxtaposition was calculated and intended by the journalist he declares and publishes his definitive renun- ciation of these self -same views, as the result of reading Lord (Chancellor) King's "Account of the Primitive Church." From this conclusion he never afterward swerved. It is well 82 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. known that in a letter to his brother Charles many years afterward, (1785,) he spoke of " the uninterrupted succession " as " knowing it to be a fable, which no man ever did or can prove." During his subsequent course he repeatedly speaks of himself as " a Scriptural Episcopos ; " and, as we have seen, he acted on this persuasion. In the " Disciplinary Minutes " for 1746, it is said, that the Wesleys and their helpers may, " perhaps, be regarded as extra- ordinary messengers, designed of God to provoke the others to jealousy." The following suggestive question and answer are also given in the same Minutes : Q. Why do we not use more form and solemnity in the receiving of a new laborer ? A. We purposely decline it : first, because there is something of stateli- ness in it; second, because we would not make haste. We desire to follow Providence as it gradually opens. The Minutes for 1747 contain the following decisive series of questions and answers : Q. 6. Does a church in the New Testament always mean a single congregation ? A. We believe it does. We do not recollect any instance to the con- trary. Q. 7. What instance or ground i there, then, in the New Testament, for a NATIONAL Church ? A. We know none at all. We apprehend it to be a merely political institution. Q. 8. 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. 9. But are you assured that 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 as- serted in Holy Writ. WESLEY AND THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 83 Q. 10. If this plan were essential to a Christian Church, what would become of all the foreign Reformed Churches ? A. It would follow they are no parts of the Church of Christ; a con- sequence full of shocking absurdity. Q. 11. 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 ministration of those who were not episcopally ordained. Q. 12. Must there not be numberless accidental varieties in the gov- ernment of various Churches ? A. There must, in the nature of things. For as God variously dis- penses his gifts of nature, providence, and grace, both the offices them- selves and the officers in each ought to be varied from time to time. Q. 13. Why is it that there is no determinate plan of church-govern- ment appointed in Scripture ? A. Without doubt, because the wisdom of God had a regard to this necessary variety. Q. 14. Was there any thought of uniformity in the government of all Churches until the time of Constantino ? A. It is certain there was not, and would not have been then had men consulted the Word of God only. So far "Wesley had traveled since 1738 ; so thoroughly differ- ent were his views in 1747 from what they had been in 1735 ; so profound was the contradiction between the principles of the Oxford Methodist, and of the founder of the Methodist Connection of Societies. The former was a priest and pastor among " the schools of the prophets," devoted to the rubrics and order of his Church ; the latter was an itinerant evangelist for his nation and the world, loving his National Church, in- deed, but regarding it as a " political institution," and always prepared to sacrifice, if it were necessary, his Churchmanship to what he regarded as his higher and wider mission as a preacher and teacher of the Gospel to all men. Nearly forty years later, in 1785, in the letter to his brother Charles, lately referred to, "Wesley re-affirms all that he had said in the " Min- utes " I have quoted, and even speaks more decisively as to the 6 84 THE WESLEY MEMOKIAL VOLUME. definition and character of the Church of England. It is true that one of his latest sermons, that on "The Ministerial Office," preached in 1790, flames with indignation against un- authorized intruders into the office of the " priesthood," whom he compares to Korah and his fellows. But it must be remem- bered that he regarded ordination by himself, conferred on one of his preachers, as equally valid with any that might have been bestowed by the hands of any bishop of whatever Church. What he objected to in some of his preachers was, that they had presumed to administer the sacraments when he had not appointed them. " Did we ever appoint you," he asks in this sermon, "to administer sacraments, to exercise the priestly office? Where did I appoint you to do this? Nowhere at all!" Nevertheless, in 1Y75, writing to a Tory statesman, Wesley described himself as " a., High Churchman, the son of a High Churchman ; " and this fact is sometimes brought forward as evidence that he retained through life, substantially unchanged, the principles of his Oxford Ritualistic Churchmanship. The more, however, the question is investigated, the more untena- ble will any such view appear. Wesley was never a political Low Churchman. He had no Dissenting predilections, or Pu- ritan punctilios, or latitudinarian laxity. He was a Tory in Church and State. But during the last forty or fifty years of his life he altogether abandoned the positive principles of High Churchmanship, both in theology and in relation to ecclesiastical government. The letter to which I have referred was, however, one in which he put prominently, forward his Toryism, as regarded from a political point of view, in order that he might the better commend the argument of his letter to the attention of a Tory statesman. He was writing to Lord North on behalf of the revolted American colonists, urging counsels to which it would have been well if the Government had listened. He was writing on a political question to a poli- tician. Accordingly he says, "Here all my prejudices are WESLEY AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 85 against the Americans ; for I am a High Churchman, the son of a High Churchman, bred up from my childhood in the highest notions of passive obedience and non-resistance." These words indicate the scope and bearing of the High Churchmanship of which he speaks. And yet it is curious how he goes on to illustrate, even in the political sphere, the independence and liberal tone of his Toryism. He proceeds thus: "And yet, in spite of all my long-rooted prejudices, I cannot avoid thinking, if I think at all, these, an oppressed people, asked for nothing more than their legal rights, and that in the most modest and inoffensive manner that the nature of the thing would allow." His actual position in regard to High Church and Low Church to Anglicanism and Nonconformity is very clearly t indicated in the following passages. In his journal, under date of Friday, March 13, 1747, he write*: "In some of the follow- ing days I snatched a few hours to read i The History of the Puritans.' I stand in amaze ; first, at the execrable spirit of persecution which drove those venerable men out of the Church, and with which Queen Elizabeth's clergy were as deeply tinct- ured as ever Queen Mary's were ; secondly, at the weakness of those holy confessors, many of whom spent so much of their time and strength in disputing about surplices and hoods, or kneeling at the Lord's Supper." In April, 1Y54, again he writes : " I read Dr. Calamy's i Abridgment of Mr. Baxter's Life.' In spite of all the prejudices of education, I could not but see that the poor Nonconformists had been used without justice or mercy, and that many of the Protestant bishops of King Charles (the Second) had neither more religion nor humanity than the Popish bishops of Queen Mary." But still more decisive, perhaps, as to the limited and modified sense in which alone Wesley could be regarded as a High Churchman, even when he described himself as such, is the following passage, written two years later than his letter to Lord North, namely, in 1T77. In it he is, notwithstanding 86 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. his letter of 1775, appealing to Dissenters to show loyalty to the King in the struggle then going on with the revolted col- onies ; and he exclaims : " Do you imagine there are no High Churchmen left? Did they all die with Dr. Sacheverell? Alas ! how little you know of mankind ! Were the present restraint taken off, you would see them swarming on every side, and gnashing upon you with their teeth. ... If other Bonners and Gardiners did not arise, other Lauds and Shel- dons would, who would either rule over you with a rod of iron, or drive you out of the land." We have seen how far Wesley had traveled since 1738. The investigation which we have thus far conducted is fundamental to any correct view of the relations of Methodism to the Church of England. There are some who still hope that a violent and entire breach between Methodism and the Church of England may yet be averted. But \)f this there can be no hope, if the position and the principles of Wesley himself are forever to be misunderstood. Those who at the same time summon Meth- odists, on the authority of their founder, to return to the fold of the Church of England, and deny to their pastors and preachers the status of ministers, both mistake the facts of the case, so far as Wesley himself was concerned, and do all that lies in their power, so far as modern Methodism is concerned^ to widen sep- aration into alienation, to harden and provoke independence into animosity and antagonism. Wesley had plans dreams, many may think them by which he conceived that the Methodist organization, as such, might in great part have been attached to the Church of England, might have been the means of largely reviving that Church, of absorbing not a little of explicit and professed Dissent, of making the Church living and national throughout the land. He feared that, if this did not come to pass, if nothing were done by the rulers of the Church toward meeting his views, his people would, after his death, become a separate people. In his independent organization of American Meth- odism, he embodied in general his own ideal of an independent WESLEY AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 87 ]\Athodist Church. He knew full well the mind of many of his leading preachers, headed by Dr. Coke, as to the high benefit and desirableness, if not the necessity, of Methodism in En- gland becoming an independent organization. But he desired to postpone such a consummation as long as possible, and to .prevent it if possible. He was bent upon securing for his own Church the utmost space and opportunity for effecting an or- ganic union with his Societies, and he endeavored so to use his influence to the last as to keep as many of his people at- tached to the Church as possible, and at least to preclude a sep- aration on dissenting principles. It is wonderful how long and how far his influence has extended. Even such a policy as that represented in the pastorals of the Bishop of Lincoln, and ex- emplified in the outrage recently inflicted by the Yicar of Owstoii Ferry, has not fully availed to drive Methodism to make a breach with the Church of England. It may yet be possible, by a wise and generous policy, to retain many friends in the Methodist Connection who hold that it is well, apart from all voluntary communions, to have a liberal Protestant Established Church ; or who, at all events, are opposed to a disestablishment agitation. But it is no more possible, by quoting the authority of Wesley, on the one hand to win back, than it is by petty persecutions on the other to drive back, any appreciable number of Methodists into the ranks of the Church. All that such conduct can do is to irritate and alien- ate at large. In fact, the principles which Wesley embraced in 1738 de- termined all his future course, and every step he afterward took looked toward separation and independence, unless, in good time, Methodism could somehow be taken up into organic union with the Church of England, and yet left as a system in its substantial integrity. It is evident from the terms of the Deed Poll, by which, in 1784, he legally constituted the Conference, that Wesley contemplated the possibility of the chief ministers in some of his circuits being stationary ordained clergymen of 88 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. the Church of England, with and under whom itinerant Meth- odist Evangelists might do the work of the " circuits." The limitation of a preacher's labors in connection with the same chapel to a period of three years as provided by that Deed does not apply, according to the terms of the Deed Poll itself, in the case of an ordained clergyman. Wesley's dream, probably, was, that a number an increasing number as years passed on of Methodist preachers might be appointed to benefices situated respectively at the head place, or in the center, of the " circuits " of Methodism, and that, living there, they might act as the chief ministers of such circuits, having unordained itinerants as their subordinate colleagues and co- adjutors. The celebrated Mr. Grimshaw, Yicar of Ha worth, and the still more celebrated Fletcher, of Madeley, did thus act as the chief ministers of Methodist circuits, and had their names as such upon the " Minutes of Conference." If this process had gone on, these ordained Methodist clergy being members of the Conference, there might conceivably have been a Meth- odist order and organization within the Church of England, of which the members, distinguished by zeal and activity, might have been extending their lines and labors in all directions. I can see no necessary reason why something like this might not have taken place : the orders of the Church of Rome have done a work somewhat analogous ; have had their own assem- blies, their special organization and discipline and generals. "Wesley had early studied closely, and has left on record his admiration of, the ge'nius and discipline of Loyola. And it was, perhaps, his highest desire to do, in a frank and evangel- ical sense and spirit, for the Church of England a work some- what resembling what Loyola had organized with such mar- velous success for the Church of Eome. Whatever, however, might have been his ideas in regard to this matter, they were not to be fulfilled ; and, apart from such fulfillment, the steps he successively took were directly bent, as I have said, toward one goal the goal of separation, of organized independency. WESLEY AND THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 89 When, in 173$, Wesley organized a system of religious Soci- eties, altogether independent of the parochial clergy and of Episcopal control, but dependent absolutely on himself, he took a step toward raising up a separate communion, especially as the " rules " of his Societies contained no requirement of alle- giance to the Established Church. When, in 1740, he built meeting-houses, which were settled on trustees for his own use, and began, with his brother, to administer the sacraments in these houses, a further step was taken in the same direction. Calling out, in 1741, lay preachers wholly devoted to the work of preaching and visitation, was still a step in advance toward the same issue. The yearly Conferences, begun in 1744, tended obviously in the same direction. The legal constitution of the Conference in 1784, and the provision for vesting in it, for the use of the " People called Methodists," all the preaching- places and trust property of the Connection, was a most impor- tant measure, giving to the Union of the Societies a legally corporate character and large property-rights. The ordination of ministers, even for America, as Charles Wesley forcibly pointed out at the time, could hardly fail to conduct toward the result which Wesley had so long striven to avert, namely, the general ordination of his preachers in Great Britain. If it was necessary to ordain for America, they would plead that it was highly expedient to ordain for England. The principle was conceded that the only question was one of time and fit- ness as to its more extended application. The ordinations for Scotland were refused by Wesley so long as he could refuse them with either safety or consistency. Without them, his people would, in very many cases, have been left quite with- out the sacraments, as the Calvinistic controversy had become imbittered, and Wesley and his followers were accounted here- tics by the Orthodox in Scotland. Nevertheless, ordaining for Scotland could not but hasten the day when preachers must be ordained for England. It was hard to require that Mr. Taylor should administer in Scotland, and should hold himself 90 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. forbidden and unable to administer in England. And when, at length, Wesley was compelled to ordain a few ministers for England, it could not but be seen that what had been done in the case of the few could not always be refused as respected their brethren at large. As little could it be .expected that while, for various reasons, in addition to London and Bristol, which had enjoyed this " privilege " from the beginning, more and more places were allowed to enjoy the privilege of preach- ing in church hours, the concession of the same privilege to other places which might desire it could be permanently denied. In weighing this summary of facts, Churchmen are also bound in justice to remember that it was the continued refusal of the clergy in Bristol to administer the Lord's Supper to the Methodists, and even to the Wesleys themselves, which drove them to administer it to their Societies in their own meeting- house. Similar conduct constrained Wesley to allow separate services in more and more places, and, in the end, to ordain some of his own preachers to assist him in administering the sacraments to his Societies even in England. Much is made by many of the clergy of the injunctions which Wesley so often gave to his people down to his last days, not to separate from the Church of England. There can be no doubt that he had a passionate desire to keep them as long as possible, and as many of them as possible, within that fold ; but no injunctions or entreaties on his part could change the logic of facts, or alter the necessary consequences of the course he himself pursued so steadily for fifty years. Besides, his say- ings on the other side were sharp and strong, and cannot but have the more weight as having been wrung from him in spite of him- self in spite of the strongest bias in the other direction. Writing to his brother Charles, Wesley says, in 1755 : " Joseph Cownley says, For such and such reasons I dare not hear a drunkard preach or read prayers.' I answer, I dare, but I can- not answer his reasons." And again, writing still to his brother thirty years later, in 1786, he says : " The last time I was at WESLEY AND THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND. 91 Scarborough I earnestly exhorted our people to go to Church, and I went myself. But the wretched minister preached such a sermon that I could not in conscience advise them to hear him any more." It is truly said, and much stress is laid upon it, that Wesley urged his preachers and people not to hold their services in church hours. This was his rule ; but it is equally true that in London and Bristol, his chief centers, the services had almost from the beginning been held in church hours ; that he sanc- tioned many other exceptions to the rule ; and that the number of exceptions increased as the years went on, until at length, in 1788, general liberty was given to hold such services wherever the people did not object, except only on sacrament Sunday. This exception was absolutely necessary, because, as a rule, Methodists could only obtain the sacrament at church. As yet but few of the preachers were ordained. Wesley and Coke, Wesley's lieutenant after his brother Charles ceased to itinerate, could rarely visit any given place, .and they never visited some places. Local preachers supplied the pulpit, leaders met the classes ; but neither could administer the sacraments. Wesley's views as to the Established Church were very lax. Eegarded as a national Church we have seen that he defined it to be merely a political institution. He seems to have con- sidered that every one who believed the main doctrines of the Church of England, and lived a Christian life, according to his best lights and opportunities, so long as he did not consciously or deliberately dissent from that Church, was to be regarded as a member of it. We must bear this in mind if we would un- derstand how it was that Wesley, at the same time, earnestly desired and entreated his people generally to remain as closely as possible attached to the Church of England, and yet, whenever any usage, or customary right, or even law of that Church, seemed to come into conflict with what he regarded as the spread of evangelical truth and life, he was prepared to make an entire and unhesitating sacrifice of it. He regarded the 92 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. Church of England, indeed, and all belonging to it, as only a means to an end. Hence, in 1755, when his brother Charles was trembling and indignant in the prospect, as he foreboded, of a speedy and organic separation of many of the preachers and of the Societies from the Church, "Wesley wrote to him thus : ''Wherever I have been in England the Societies are far more firmly and rationally attached to the Church than ever they were before. I have no fear about this matter. I only fear the preachers' or the peoples' leaving, not the Church, but the love of God, and inward or outward holiness. To this I press them forward continually. I dare not, in conscience, spend my time and strength on externals. If, as my Lady Huntingdon says, all outward Establishments are Babel, so is this Establishment. Let it stand for me. I neither set it up nor pull it down. But let you and I build up the city' of God." Again, still more notable are his words which follow : " My conclusion, which I cannot yet give up that it is lawful to continue in the Church stands, I know not how, without any premises to bear its weight. I know the original doctrines of the Church are sound : I know her worship is, in the main, pure and Scriptural. But if the ' essence of the Church of England, considered as such, consists in her orders and laws (many of which I can myself say nothing for) and not in her worship and doctrines,' those who separate from her have a far stronger plea than I was ever sensible of." Again, in 1786, writing to his brother, Wesley said : " As you observe, one may leave a Church (which I would advise in some cases) without leaving the Church. Here we may remain in spite of all wicked or Calvinistic preachers." In the same year, a month earlier, he had written, also to his brother, " Indeed, I love the Church as sincerely as ever I did ; and I tell our Socie- ties every-where, ' The Methodists will not leave the Church, at least while I live.' " The limitation intimated in the last clause quoted is not WESLEY AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. "93 without significance. But there were occasions on which Wes- ley contemplated the possibility of actual Dissent, even on his own part, although assuredly no alternative, no extremity, could well have been more repugnant to all his tastes and feelings. The Bishop of London having excommunicated a clergyman for preaching without a license, Wesley wrote respecting this, " It is probable the point will be now determined concerning the Church, for if we must either dissent or be silent, actum est" " Church or no Church," again he wrote, " we must at- tend to the work of saving souls." It was at last brought to the sharp issue which Wesley dreaded, so far as many, and in the end all, of his congregations were concerned. They were obliged either to dissent or ~be silent. One of Wesley's latest letters, addressed to a bishop, relates to this subject. The Methodists found themselves forced either to register their meeting-houses as "Protestant Dissenting" places of worship, or else forego all the protection and benefits of the Toleration Act. I give the Methodist patriarch's letter entire. He was eighty-six years old when he wrote it : MY LORD : It may seem strange that one who is not acquainted with your lordship should trouble you with a letter. But I am constrained to do it; I believe it is my duty both to God and your lordship. And I must speak plain, having nothing to hope or fear in this world, which I am on the point of leaving. The Methodists, in general, my lord, are members of the Church of England. They hold all her doctrines, attend her service, and par- take of her sacraments. They do not willingly do harm to any one, but do what good they can to all. To encourage each other herein, they fre- quently spend an hour together in prayer and exhortation. Permit me, then, to ask, Cui bono ? For what reasonable end would your lordship drive these people out of the Church? Are they not as quiet, as inoffen- sive, nay, as pious as any of their neighbors, extept perhaps here and there a hare-brained man who knows not what he is about ? Do you ask, Who drives them out of the Church ? Your lordship does, and that in the most cruel manner, yea, and the most disingenuous manner. They desire a license to worship God after their own con- science. Your lordship refuses it, and then punishes them for not hav- 94 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. ing a license! So your lordship leaves them only this alternative, " Leave the Church or starve." And it is a Christian, yea, a Protestant bishop that so persecutes his own flock. I say persecutes, for it is a persecution to all intents and purposes. You do not burn them, in- deed, but you starve them, and how small is the difference ! And your lordship does this under color of a vile, execrable law, not a whit better than that De Hceretico Comburendo. So persecution, which is banished out of France, is again countenanced in England. O my lord, for God's sake, for Christ r s sake, for pity's sake, suffer the poor people to enjoy their religious as well as civil liberty. I am on the brink of eternity. Perhaps so is your lordship, too. How soon may you also be called to give an account of your stewardship to the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls ! May he enable both you and me to do it with joy ! So prays, my lord, Your lordship's dutiful son and servant, JOHN WESLEY. Thus were the Methodists compelled, against their own will, as well as sorely against the will of their founder, to become in legal construction Protestant Dissenters. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how slowly the process of act- ual separation proceeded. The date of the letter just quoted was June 26, 1790, a few weeks before the last Conference at which Wesley presided. What effect the new condition of things might have produced on his views or conduct if he had been a younger man, and had lived a few years longer, it is im- possible to conjecture. He was still hoping for relief from this stringent and impolitic application of the Conventicle Act up to the date of his death. But it is certain that the dissent- ing party within the Conference and among the Societies (by no means a small or feeble party) must have been stimulated and strengthened by finding themselves forced into the legal position of Dissenters. Nevertheless, the spirit of Wesley prevailed in the councils of his followers after his death to a degree which, all things considered, is really surprising. In 1787 Wesley had said, " When the Methodists leave the Church of England, God will leave them;" in 1788, that the " glory " of the Methodists had been " not to be a separate body," WESLEY AND THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 95 and that "the more he reflected the more he was convinced that the Methodists ought not to leave the Church ; " in 1789, that they would " not be a distinct body ; " in 1790, that " none who regarded his judgment or advice would separate from the Church of England." And as a matter of fact, notwithstand- ing the enforcement of the Conventicle Act, the Conference after Mr. Wesley's death did not " separate from the Church of England." What Wesley dreaded first and most in separation was its want of charity, its schismatic temper and tendency. Many passages might be quoted to prove this. His whole soul re- voltqd from the thought of his people deliberately, for reasons assigned and upon a manifesto of dissent and separation, sever- ing themselves from the Church. If there were to be a sepa- ration, his determination through life was, that the separation should be imposed and forced upon, not sought or determined by, the Methodists. He could not but be aware, moreover, that the conscious and deliberate organization of his people into a separate Church would be in many ways a hazardous and pre- carious experiment. He was persuaded that the express adop- tion of the status and principles of a Dissenting sect would bring disorganization and ruin to Methodism. The Conference, as I have said, after Wesley's death, acted in harmony with the spirit of their founder. Even the enforce- ment of the Conventicle Act, the hardships of which were not removed till 1812, when Parliament, under the ministry of Lord Liverpool, passed an act repealing the obnoxious and oppressive restrictions on the liberty of preaching, did not drive them into any extreme course. They suffered, indeed, between 1791 and 1795, the peace of the Connection to be most seriously embroiled, and allowed many of their churches to be brought to the verge of dissolution, before they consented to permit even the gradual extension of separate services in church hours, and of sacramental administration by their own preachers for the members of their Societies. In giving 96 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. this guarded permission they still did but follow the prece- dent of Wesley, and act in conformity with his spirit and principles. They never, at any time, decreed a separation of Methodism from the Church of England ; that separation was effected by the particular Societies distributively and the indi- vidual members personally, not at all by the action, or on the suggestion, but only by the permission, of the Conference. The Wesley an Conference did not, in fact, recognize and provide for the actual condition of ecclesiastical independency into which the Connection had been brought, until that condi- tion had long existed ; and Methodist preachers abstained from using the style and title appropriate to ordained ministers, and from assuming in any way collectively, the language of complete pastoral responsibility, until by the universal action of the Connection their people had, of their own will, practi- cally separated themselves from the Church of England, and forced their preachers into the full position and relations of pastors pastors in common of a common flock, who recognized them alone as their ministers, and among whom they itinerated by mutual arrangement. Looking at the whole evidence, it appears to be undeniable that, as it has been said, so far as respects the separate develop- ment of Methodism, " Wesley not only pointed bat paved the way to all that has since been done, and that the utmost diver- gence of Methodism from the Church of England at this day is but the prolongation of a line the beginning of which w r as traced by Wesley's own hand." It is idle to attempt to purge Wesley of the sin of schism in order to cast the guilt upon his followers. It is manifestly now too late to think of the re-absorption of Methodism into the Church of England, for English Method- ism is not only itself a large and consolidated communion, but it has been the fruitful mother of many other communions ; of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States, by far the largest Protestant Church in America, perhaps in the WESLEY AND THE CHUBCH OF ENGLAND. 97 world; of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; of the Colonial Methodist Churches ; and of Mission Churches almost without end not to mention other Methodist Churches in both hemispheres. With such a family of Churches derived from itself, that parent stock of Methodism which claims direct de- scent from John Wesley, is never likely to consent to merge its own identity or annul its historical position. WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON THE INTELLECTUAL, SOCIAL, MD EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE ENGLISH MASSES.* IN dealing with the character and career of John Wesley, as our allotted space forbids all introductory, rhetorical, or eloquent vaporing, we shall only premise by saying that Wesley differed essentially from all previous religious reform- ers, including "Wiclif, Luther, Calvin, Zwinglius, Cranmer, Knox, and all the great and good men of the Puritan age. When Wesley looked upon the ruins of an old abbey in Scot- land, he said, " God deliver us from reforming mobs. . . . He does not, cannot need the work of the devil to forward reform." Wesley's reforms were quite of another stamp. He saw that people's hearts and lives needed* reforming, and he had the sagacity to go back to the ages of the apostles and those imme- diately succeeding, for his examples of Christian life and work. No one knew better than he that the Reformers of the six- teenth century merely struck at the outworks of a gigantic system of corruption and fraud, while they left the heart of the great evil still living and beating. They lit a great fire which consumed huge masses of refuse, but it sometimes burned too fast and even too much, and, in most instances, soon burned itself out. Wesley aimed to light a fire in men's hearts rather than in their passions, and hence we now see the * In this paper every fact or incident may be verified by reference to the follow, ing works: Watson's "Life of Wesley;" Everett's "Life of Adam Clarke;" Southey's " Life of Wesley ; " Tyerman's " Life and Times of Reverend S. Wes- ley ; " " The Oxford Methodists ; " " John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century," by Julia Wedgwood ; " John Wesley's Place in Church History," by R. Denny Urlin ; and above all, Tyerman's " Life and Times of John Wesley." WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 99 results in the religious decadence of the work of the old Reformers, and in the permanence and ever-increasing growth of the spiritual light and heat which he kindled. The old Reformers set the mind of Europe free from a religious and political bondage unequaled in the history of mankind, and so far laid the world under undying obligations; but "Wesley came to do another and still higher work : to awaken the inner and spiritual life, and call men's attention to the great fact, every- where lost or overlooked, that there is something worth the attention of rational beings beyond the physical and ma- terial, or even the intellectual ; that in fact there are spiritual laws which govern the universe, and which take cognizance of men and human affairs. Wesley started with a fixed and im- movable resolve to reawaken mankind to the dread reality and pressing importance of these great truths, and to inspire in them a higher spiritual life. John Wesley was an eminent example of English manliness and disinterested love of frruth. When he set out on his un- promising mission there was no place in the Church not fairly open to him, and, with his fine natural abilities and attainments as a scholar, there would have been no undue ambition had he aimed at its highest dignities. The Epworth parsonage for him had no charms, nor was the possible gain of the primacy to be put in competition with the glory of awakening his fellow-countrymen to a sense of the importance and value of a new spiritual life. Ambitious prospects of promotion, Church friends and associations, emoluments and allurements promised by a life of comparatively quiet repose, were freely sacrificed to this one great purpose. No man more sincerely and de- voutly loved the Church of England than John Wesley, but when it stood in the way of saving men's souls he could not long hesitate as to his duty. Field-preaching seemed " disor- derly," and excited the Church prejudices of himself and others, but when the church doors were closed against him he took to the fields ; when the work required "helpers," and 7 100 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. the clergy gave none, he called men from their trades ; when the sacrament was denied his followers, he provided for its administration in his " preaching-houses ; " when " ordination " was denied by the English bishops and became a necessity, he ordained for himself; and when his brothers and friends frowned upon him for his u irregularities " and " innovations " he perseveringly and manfully kept to his work. Once the time came to act for himself for he was slow in assuming a spirit of self-dependence he went on with giant strides. His mother, a woman of unusually strong common sense, was then the only person who could exercise authority over him ; but she did little to restrain him, and the organiza- tion and consolidation of his Societies went on rapidly, aided by a host of men striving, with all their powers, for the same ends. His discipline was severe and decisive, but he had the eyes to see that it was necessary, the sagacity to understand the times in which he lived, and the fortitude to meet with justice and promptitude all the needs which sprang up around him. Besides, if his rule was necessarily severe, it was not oppressive, and bred up no . craven or cringing spirits. The Methodists cheerfully submitted to his rule ; but where are the traces of slavishness? The very carriage of their leader could hardly fail to teach them a genuine English manliness. At the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy there was evidence enough that John Wesley trained up no men of cowardly or mean spirit. There, on those bloody fields, a small band of Methodists were the pride and flower of the English forces. Every rogue and reprobate who joined that little knot of John Wesley's follow- ers was quickly made into a new man. The thief, who had often risked his neck the drunkard, who had besotted himself the swearer, who only knew oaths the Sabbath-breaker and the unclean were transformed into honest, orderly soldiers, many of them praying privates, who, on the battle-day, know- ing no fear, were the true Methodist Ironsides of King George, and before whose onset the enemy quailed. On those WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 101 memorable fields the model men for manliness an& fortitude were those whose courage and spirit John Wesley had in- spired. John "Wesley fearlessly faced a fierce turbulence, brutal as was ever let loose amid the confusion of mob lawlessness and riot. "When he aimed his blows at the prejudices, diversions, and vices of society, society rose in passionate resentment that threatened his life. The very social and national instincts of the time naturally poured out the vials of their wrath on any object they could find, as a mere diversion to gratify their love of riot and cruelty ; mere brutality was a popular pastime, a social sensational sport which delighted in nothing so much as daily disquiet and uproar. Public morals were so bad as hardly to admit of description, and the man who daily hurled thunderbolts at them in the form of religious truths was sure to come in for abuse. The clergy, too, in the background, annoyed at the success and angered at the rivalry of "Wesley, at first encouraged the national instincts, and animated into outbreaks the wild and lawless mobs of the streets. But who ever heard of "Wesley being cowed by threatened popular out- breaks, or turning his back, or slinking away in fear of a tumultuous rabble ? Wesley was a plain, honest, unartificial Englishman, who de- tested all flash and sham, and had the courage to say so. His love of the natural and simple had made him almost despise that which was chiefly embellishment. He was a man who hated all pretense and tinsel ; plain in his dress, his habits, his style, his speech, his food, his furniture, his tastes ; and he loved plain truth and plain people. In Lady Huntingdon's mansion he never felt much at home, nor did he relish Charles Wes- ley's frequent visits there. Yet he was no democrat in the En- glish sense ; no bigot, no leveler ; but a lover of order, and loyal to the core. Had the king been a tyrant or an incorrigible des- pot, with all his deference to " the powers that be," he would easily have found his way to the conclusion as did his ances- 102 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. ' tor'uride'i* Jame's II. that he was in his wrong place on the throne of England. The two brothers generally acted in con- cert, though John was the controlling and directing spirit in all enterprises. Sometimes Charles forgot this. Not only was John the elder, but he had always been the originator, the mover, and the ruler ; and he fairly claimed the right of keep- ing the reins in his own hands. Had he not done so, Charles, with ' his unyielding " High "-Churchmanship, would have wrecked Methodism fifty times over during his life. Like all wise governors, John knew when to keep the bridle tight, and when to slacken it ; but Charles did not. John reined Charles in when he got restive. " As to advice," he wrote to Charles, " you are far from asking it ; and yet I may say without van- ity, I am a better judge of this matter than either Lady Hunt- ingdon, Sally, [his brother's wife,] Jones, or any other. . . . In making the alteration (as to the sacrament) you never consulted me" And then to Lord Dartmouth, with whom he was on the best terms, he wrote, " I can truly say that I neither fear nor desire any thing from your lordship ; to speak a rough truth, I do not desire any intercourse with any person of qual- ity in England. I mean for my own sake. They do me no good, and I fear I can do them none." ..." Have you a per- son in all England who speaks to your lordship so plain and downright as I do ? who considers not the peer^ but the man f who is jealous over you with a godly jealousy, lest you should be less a Christian by being a nobleman f " Yet Wesley was tractable and teachable beyond most men. No man would take reproof more meekly, nor acknowledge faults more manfully. He pleaded guilty to a charge of over-strong language used to a controversial opponent, and wept while he said, " The words you mention were too strong / they will no more drop from my mouth." He had not only the wisdom of a leader, but the soul of an Englishman. Before the magnates of Oxford he said, in his sermon before the University, " In the presence of the great God, you that are in authority over us, and whom I reverence WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 103 for your office' sake. ... in the name of the Lord God Al- mighty, I ask, what religion you are of ! " But, with matchless manliness, "Wesley was neither proud nor self-sufficient. Whoever wants a pattern of docility and willingness to learn, may go to the early history of the Oxford leader of the "Holy Club." A vulgar error prevails, even among Dissenters, that he was merely a controversial revivalist. All that is true of this is, that he was always being pestered by petty cavilers. As to controversy, he detested it, and when- ever he could he shunned it, and often forbade his " preachers " the practice. Though he disputed with a master mind, and made all opponents quail before his sterling common sense and irresistible logic, he never sought nor encouraged disputation, except with the vice and depravity with which he was sur- rounded. In the Calvinian controversy he was not the aggress- or, but was dragged and drwen into it. All his followers were again and again warned not to touch it ; and but that he was abused and badgered into conflict by a set of fierce fanatics, John "Wesley would never have appeared in the history of the Church of his country as the chief of those who drove Cal- vinism from British pulpits. As a revivalist, for over half a century he traversed the country without fee or pay, "and sought to revive primitive Christianity in the hearts and lives of the people. His preaching usually was quiet as a Quaker's, and stately as the lectures of a professor. For years his inquir- ing and teachable spirit was the most striking and distinguish- ing feature of his character. Long and long, while he was yearning to understand " the truth as it is in Jesus," he sought light and guidance from his strong-minded and well-informed mother, a woman quite competent to discuss religious questions with any bishop then on the bench. A man himself of un- common parts, and, in those days, of uncommon culture, he did not seek after the truth by seeking, like many sharp-witted men, to pick it up incidentally as it might drop from others ; but he went like a learner, with all the simplicity of a child, to 104 THE WESLEY MEMOKIAL VOLUME. be taught. Among the Moravians he thought he saw the pure G-ospel, and seemed never at rest but when in their company. He joined their Society at " Fetter Lane " simply because he thought he had found the true " followers of the Lamb." To the Continent he went, and spent weeks with these people at their head-quarters, listening to the teaching of men whose chief characteristic appears to have been a large amount of general ignorance, simply because he thought they understood better than others the " plan of salvation ; " and he submitted in England to an amount of personal catechising and impertinent dogmatism that can only be ac- counted for by the fact that he had resolved nothing should stand in the way of his finding the truth. He soon found, however, that, with a little truth, there was among the " United Brethren " of that day (we do not think it applies to the pres- ent) a great deal of fanatical fooling, which did not do for the man who had about the clearest head and the most practical and logical mind in the country. In the same anxious and teachable spirit he went to the celebrated William Law, than whom no man was better qualified to direct and instruct in questions of practical religion. Law's teaching had much weight with Wesley. But when he subsequently found that Law had led him wrong on a vital point, the shock and revul- sion were so violent that he wrote an angry and pettish letter to Law, making strong and unwarrantable charges against him for having misled him so seriously in his search for truth. This was a grave mistake, one of the two mistakes of a busy life of nearly ninety years, and for which Wesley suffered the penalty by a well-merited rebuke administered by Law for what he rightly considered an unjustifiable impertinence. Still Wesley was young and inexperienced ; but his earnestness, sin- cerity, and manliness are transparent through the whole of this unfortunate indiscretion. He was so intent on his work thus early that any sensible person might have taught Wesley, pro- vided the teaching had any thing in it worth learning. Amid WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 105 a rude, vicious, and materialized age, he was in a sacred hurry to get a vivid sense of all that related to the unseen and spirit- ual ; and it was too much for his anxious spirit to bear, when he found he had been led into darkness by one he thought pre-eminently qualified to lead him into light. An error it doubtless was, but it was born of the same spirit and temper which led "Wesley, above all other men, into a yearning desire to awaken a depraved nation to a new life a life founded on the ideas of an ever-present God, and of an all-sufficient Sav- iour ever nigh at hand. "Wesley was a man who cared much for his friends, but he ever loved truth more than persons. Where was love ever seen more deep and fervent than that between Wesley and his great and large-hearted fellow-worker, George Whitefield? But, though Wesley avoided all cause of offense, and resolved never to come in collision with him, and though they mutually agreed not to dispute with each other on the Calvinian ques- tion, and though Whitefield, in his zeal and natural impetuos- ity of temper, violated his pledge by a violent attack on Wesley, the latter never retaliated, and declared he never would, however much he might be provoked. Indeed, when Whitefield decided to violate this mutual covenant, and showed Wesley his manuscript prior to printing, to save him from gross mistakes in matters of fact and to protect him from rid- icule on account of his ignorance, Wesley suggested certain* omissions. Whitefield, urged on by his Calvinistic friends, published, and preached, too, against Wesley in no measured terms ; but Wesley kept his word not to avenge himself, and left open the way to a reconciliation, which, later on, led to a renewal of the friendship, which was never again disturbed. This we call manliness, scarcely to be paralleled in the history of English literature, especially when we remember Wesley's advantage over his antagonist in culture, logical acumen, and intellectual force. But during the Calvinian controversy, in which both sides were 106 THE WESLEY MEMOKIAL VOLUME. hotly engaged for many years, their usual friendly intercourse for some time was interrupted. "Wesley, however, engaged his opponents elsewhere. He would not dispute with his friend, but no friendship, however sacred, could close his mouth! or restrain his pen against what he regarded deadly error. His vigorous and logical mind could see nothing but a horrible cruelty in Whitefield's notion that a large portion of his fellow- Christians were condemned to a fate the mere thought of which should make every serious man shudder ; nor could he see any thing much better in Whitefield's views of slavery. About vital truths like these Wesley could make no compro- mise. Whitefield, it is true, pleaded with the planters of Georgia for kindness toward the negroes, but at the same time he helped on the institution of slavery by his evidence before the House of Commons. Thus this apostolic man, whose glowing eloquence brought from the eyes of the rough Kings- wood colliers " tears which made gutters down their black cheeks," by showing sympathy on the one hand and a willing- ness to enslave on the other, well vindicated the spirit and tem- per of Calvinism, and ran counter to the deep feelings anfl equally deep convictions of Wesley. It is well, perhaps, that Wesley and Whitefield parted company for a season, because he who at the same time could extol the loving-kindness of the Creator and make him chargeable with "reprobation" who could seek with one hand to lessen the evils, and with the other to enlarge the area, of slavery was hardly the man to work harmoniously with John Wesley, who could only see in- finite love in the great Father, and whose whole lif e was an incessant yearning for the salvation of the whole race. John Wesley showed his countrymen the true methods of rousing into intellectual activity an uneducated and igno- rant populace. There were, indeed, no lack of men of talent and genius ; of men, too, who saw and regretted the gross igno- rance of the times ; but no. one seemed to know how to reach the evil ; how to teach, and what to teach. There were men WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 107 who made efforts to mend matters by parliamentary inquiries and resolutions, but their best efforts were fitful, feeble, and futile. The better disposed and most capable aimed badly, for they shot right over the heads of the people, with the effect of blank cartridge fired over the heads of a mob, to be ridiculed and mocked. Pope wrote inimitable poetry; Garrick on the stage did his brilliant mimicry ; Boling- broke flourished proudly his false and fatal philosophy ; John- son, with unrivaled diction, discussed etymologies, politics, poetry, and public morals ; Doddridge wrote seriously and well on the " Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," but died early ; "Warburton descanted learnedly on the " Divine Lega- tion of Moses," and found that the Jewish system knew noth- ing of a future or an immortal life ; David Hume, with sullen sarcasm and a stoic's indifference, canted about the "Natural History of Religion," which made Warburton call him " that low fellow, Hume ; " Swift devoted himself to what he thought good joking, and was an expert in ridicule and raillery ; Priestley, enamored of Socinianism and philosophical necessity, discovered that there was no such entity as an immaterial spirit ; Berkeley, that in the whole universe there was no such thing as matter ; Tindal proclaimed " Christianity as Old as the Creation ; " Chatham electrified the " Upper House," and made its name the symbol of finished oratory ; Chesterfield, if not a dancing-master, made excellent dandies ; North laid f oolish taxes on the colonies ; Wilkes, spite of his hideous squint the most popular man of his day, was professor of lewdness, and expos- itor-general of unbridled license and vulgar clap-trap ; Defoe taught boys not to run away from home, lest they should get separated with some good man Friday from civilization ; Burke, in rounded periods and rolling eloquence never since equaled, taught the science of politics and statesmanship with a wisdom not excelled by ancient tribunal or modern senator; and the clergy, Episcopal and Dissenting, see-sawed in the pulpits on the "sovereign decrees" .and the obligations of morality, till 108 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUBLE. the people laughed at their theology, and left them to preach it to the pews. How was all this to raise an ignorant and be- sotted populace to intellectual and spiritual life and activity ? A man was required to take a sensible and practical view of the real condition and urgent wants of the country, and that man was John Wesley. To his powerful and rousing preaching Wesley superadded attention to the education of the young. From the first he saw that where he could he must begin with the children ; so that, the pulpit working from above and the schools from below^ he might permeate the social mass, quicken into life and activ- ity the national mental torpor, and infuse spiritual vitality into that which had been little less than a body of mental and moral death. In his " early Oxford days " he was soon with the chil- dren ; such members of the " Holy Club " as he saw fit being appointed to do the work at the little school of ragged urchins. At the work-house and prisons they attended on the same er- rand, and many a poor child and many a gray-headed thief and vagabond, who entered these places blind as moles, came out able to read the Bible, write a letter, and " cast simple accounts." None in those days saw so clearly as Wesley that to teach the heart you must go through the understanding. At Bristol, at Kingswood among the colliers, and at the " Foundery," Wesley early established schools. Wherever in his earlier and later travels an opportunity offered, he provided the means of initia- tion into intellectual life. Easy and natural as this may appear in our day, it was the reverse in Wesley's days. In this respect modern thought and sentiment are a complete inversion of the thought and sentiment of the early Hanoverian period, and no man did so much in the start of this " turning up side down " as John Wesley. It was not popular then to have ragged-schools ; it would have been deemed mistaken meddling, or a modified madness. It was then deemed an unmitigated folly to educate the vulgar poor, and Wesley was among the very first public men of that age to teach, by precept and practice, that it was WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 109 consummate wisdom. True, there was in Germany some recog- nition of the principle during Luther's struggle, and in England during that of Cranmer and Cromwell, but the question was buried in a Romish rubbish-heap, pertaining not to a " new birth," " a clean heart," and a Christian deportment, but to images and relics, doctrines and discipline, fast days and saint days, monk- ery, moonshine, and silly asceticism. In England, Henry, in his zeal for Protestantism and haste to get rid of his wives and the Pope, declared every man should be able "to read the Bible," and actually chained one to the pulpit in most parish churches, that any body might go and practice. But he was ambitious to be pope himself in England, and there is Very lit- tle doubt that Henry's motives were pure hatred to Rome which he rightly thought the Bible would foster rather than any love of popular education. When Wesley appeared on the stage the general opinion was, that educating the common peo- ple was the readiest road to revolution and ruin. The seats of learning, even, were centers of frivolity, idleness, and luxury. The " Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge " had, indeed, come into being, and in the face of popular opinion had set up a " charity-school ; " but the most formidable obstacle it met with was the general objection that " charity-schools bred up children in ignorance and jpride" which it tried, in very delicate terms, to coax rather than reason the public into believing was, perhaps, not quite and wholly true. Wesley's school at Kingswood has a noble history. The higher-class school for preachers' sons, and for the children of such parents as could afford to pay, still exists, but on a differ- ent site ; and there are now hundreds who venerate the memory of the old institution, grateful for the influence it has exerted on their characters and lives. Since the' days of Wesley the eyes of Englishmen have gradually opened to the importance of popular education ; till now we find those who would force it gratis down the throats of both ill and well-to-do people, *at the expense of others whose means are barely sufficient to meet 110 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. their own educational requirements. Zealots are they, who, to gain the suffrages of the ignorant, improvident, and lazy, have run into the extremes of the educational mania, and attempted to bring odium on that which in itself is priceless ! If it is wrong to force the ignorant, extravagant, and thriftless to pay for their own children, it can hardly be right to force the sober, industrious, and thrifty poor who are unable to educate their own to pay for the education of the children of others. The clergy of the day were quite incapable of coping with the low mental condition of the country. If they tried thejf signally failed; and incompetency was intensified by misfor- tune. "Since the Restoration a deplorable reaction had set in against Puritanism, and it reached its climax about the time of Wesley, the major part of the clergy imbibing and encouraging the general feeling. Every thing was done to cover the men and movement of that age with contempt and scorn. It was systematically attempted to invert all that was peculiar to the time of the Puritans. Even Puritanical extremes were an- swered, paid back, with their opposites ; hence ignorance and its consequents, crime and its social impurity, floated like a thick fetid scum on the surface of society. With this, too, the clergy had lost their social standing ; and with this, again, their intel- lectual hold of the people only the natural and inevitable re- sult of their own folly. Every-where they were objects of dislike; and many were drunken, lazy, ignorant, and worse. The lower clergy in good society were treated as menials, and the poor and uneducated were not likely to respect them. Be- sides, though there were many good and clever men among them, yet commonly their education was scanty, and their ignorance so gross that they were not the people to set up as intellectual leaders. In their churches they failed to preserve decent order and decorum. As a rule, fashionable people went to a fashionable church ; but they went, not to be instructed, but to whisper scandal, to use a fan handsomely, appear flashily arrayed in satins and bedecked with diamonds, and to peep at WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. Ill each other through an opera-glass. A ministry that could not mend this was not likely to mend the midnight darkness out of doors. Besides, when the flock loses its respect for the shepherd the shepherd cannot control the flock. But Wesley's chief means of awakening the intellectual life of the nation was the pulpit. ISTo sooner had he discovered his mistake in joining the Moravians than he retired from " Fetter Lane," taking as many as chose to follow to the " old Foundery," where he formed a Society of his own, and drew up a set of rules ffor its direction and government. The Unitas Frat/rum thus thrown off, Wesley had thrown a millstone from about his neck which eventually would have drowned him in that sea of mysti- cism and mud in which the United Brethren were then floun- dering. Unfettered, he was now ready for his great work of awakenment by preaching. He declared he could not do with these "silent" people and their "sublime divinity," "brim- ful," as Charles said, " of proud wrath and fierceness ; " who "love preeminence, and make their proselytes twofold more the children of the devil than they were before ; " who believed that to obtain faith " we must wait for Christ and be still, with- out the use of the means of grace;" not "go to church;" "not take the sacrament;" "not read the Scriptures;" not " use private prayer ; " and not " do temporal," or attempt " to get. spiritual, good." Besides, Wesley saw that Moravianism was not aggressive, and could never convert the world, a work he had set his heart to accomplish. " Stand ye in the way ; ask for the old paths," was his text soon after he got loose from " Fetter Lane." Separated from the Moravians, the London church doors closed against him, and having found "the truth as it is in Jesus," Wesley had the world fairly before him, and began again his preaching career with redoiibled energy. But he seemed thrust outside, and as if his path were blocked. The thought of preaching on " unconsecrated ground " shocked his prejudice. Every inch of him a Churchman, he recoiled from 112 THE "\YESLEY MEMOKIAL VOLUME. the idea of " unauthorized " and " irregular preaching." But the people were " perishing for lack of knowledge," and he could not answer for the stupidity of the Church in turning the key on him, nor wait the slow movements of the Bishops, who might or might not turn the key back. Whitefield, thus early, was preaching to congregated thousands in the fields at Kings- wood; the great Teacher had given his unrivalled "Sermon" out of doors, and even " on the Mount ; " he had also conse- crated fields and lanes by his beautiful parables and miracles, and John Wesley, at once and forever, had done with this " Church scruple." When Whitefield had to return to Amer- ica Wesley stepped into his place at Bristol and Kingswood, where he took to the broad fields as his sanctuary, consecrated, not by a Bishop, but by the example of his great Master. There he stood, amid a huge multitude, assembled round a small mount, scattering the bread of life to inquiring men and women. Here was an " innovation ; " but it was now Wesley's chosen method of awakening the indolent and ignorant of his countrymen. For half a century he continued the "un- authorized " practice with a constant, continuous success hith- erto unknown in the history of Great Britain. The blessed results are now known in all lands. The mental torpor of all classes was roused, the intellect of the masses of the country began to show signs of life, and from that day to the present we have had no popular mental slumber such as that which overshadowed the land in the time of the first and second Georges. A significant fact this ; not a swagger, or an orator- ical flourish, for Wesley not only did his own grand work, but sent life, and energy, and intellectual activity into every pulpit in the three kingdoms. Look at his successors at work to-day in the Methodist world ; not a couple of men as then, but we see them in 21,000 itinerant ministers, and at least 60,000 local preachers nearly 100,000 men training and guiding the intel- lect, and hammering away at the ignorance, of the world, in a spirit which was born of the boy who used to play about WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 113 and was taken from the window of the blazing Epworth parsonage. "Wesley's successful preaching, however, soon led him into another difficulty. He required fellow-laborers, for the fields were ripe for reaping ; but whence were they to come ? The Bishops refused, as before intimated, to " ordain " and set apart men for such a work. The world was " in the arms of the wicked one," and "Wesley, with a word of encouragement from his clear-headed mother, could not wait. Spiritual instruction and guidance, as well as intellectual awakening, were required, and in the face of this pressing need "ordination was a flea-bite." All the help he could obtain from the clergy he appropriated, but this was utterly inadequate. Then he called out the most active, pious, and strong-minded of his converts, and all over the country organized his Societies and his preaching staff. Here was another great work thrown upon his hands the preparation and training of a band of uneducated but earnest, zealous, and devout men for the work of the ministry. Good, robust, hard-headed, wide-awake Englishmen were Wesley's first "helpers," "preachers," or "expounders." A new ma- chine was this, of Wesley's own construction, but when set in motion it worked well. The clever machinist stopped the slight creaking now and again with the hand of a genius, by adjusting an unsteady wheel, changing an ill-adapted piston or crank, or by inserting a new valve. For nearly a century and a half the machine has rolled on, and has not been superseded by any improved mechanism ; and it promises to work with its vast energies against ignorance and vice for centuries yet to come. Wesley, indeed, has been blamed for keeping the man- agement of his ecclesiastical machinery exclusively in his own hands ; but these objectors know not what they say. It was quite new, and John Wesley knew best what to do with his own invention, and did wisely and well in acting as sole en- gineer. He originated it, and while he lived had the right to manage it ; nor was he likely to allow any tinkering of his 114 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. handiwork, because he saw unskillful hands might soon break it to pieces. To make, to manage, to modify, and to mend his own machine was the legitimate work of Wesley, who knew all its strong and weak places ; nor was it reasonable to expect him to transfer it till called upon by that Providence by which he was constituted constructor and governor. In the management of his " Itinerancy," Wesley displayed masterly skill. There was no sentimental delicacy which im- pelled him to overlook serious faults. He knew his men were called to the solemn and serious work, and he resolved to have the work done in an earnest and serious way. And though he could not sharply check important mistakes and shortcomings, he would allow no one to tread on the rights of his " preachers." They were all his brethren, and as such were treated with ten- der regard ; but in a subordinate sense they were his servants and he was their master. Had it not been so, Wesley could never have trained up such an earnest body of successful laborers. He alone was responsible for their selection, and he rightly felt himself responsible for the results. It is idle to speak of his course as arbitrary while the whole weight of the vast movement was on his own shoulders. His tremendous re- sponsibility demanded the display of extraordinary energy and the force of all his authority, and his course finds ample justifi- cation in its triumphant issues. With the skill of a born ruler he ruled his assistants ; and with a rule which won, riot simply their esteem, but their reverence. When his followers multi- plied, and his " helpers " in equal ratio, and when the general awakening of interest and thought followed, Wesley at once saw the necessity of raising the intellectual standard of his men. As this pressed itself on his attention (1746) Dr. Doddridge, the most eminent man among the Dissenters of the day famed far and near as a trainer of young men for the ministry was applied to for advice and direction. Wesley asked him for a list of the best books as a course of study for preachers. A rather formidable programme was supplied, and Wesley set to work. WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 115 We find a number of these recommended books in the form of " extracts " and " abridgments " in his fifty volumes entitled the " Christian Library," printed and published by the energy and enterprise of this one man, without money and without patron- age. It was a common practice with Wesley wnen books were too costly, to go to work and cheapen them by publishing cheap editions, or by abridging and publishing 'them so as to lower their cost. When his men stood in need of intellectual pabulum he was not the man to leave them to starve. But again, John Wesley showed his countrymen, better than ever they had been shown before, the true methods of raising the social and domestic life of the lower classes of the community. To the objector we need only answer, If it had been done be- fore, by whom f where f and when f If we ask the last eighteen hundred years of history, it only re-echoes these questions. It is not down in the annals. It is not even whispered in tra- dition. There is no impress on the old and by-gone societies. There are no traces in the vast relics of the past. There are no music and rhythms of the same thrill and cadence; no deep harmonies of the same spiritual life in the songs, and ballads, and hymns of any of our forefathers ; and all we want is, to know " by whom ? " " where ? " and " when ? " At the opening of Wesley's career the social condition of England was more deplorable even than its intellectual lifeless- ness. The Puritan reaction on the morals of the people was patent every-where, and the hatred of Puritanism was quite lively and fresh, and more earnest and keen, in the reign of George II. than it was at the Restoration. The rule of Puri- tanism was often severe and even rigorous, and it naturally bred up many bitter enemies. This bitterness had lived on for generations, and indulged itself in peculiar modes of thought, and speech, and habits, as well as in extreme and opposite developments of social and political institutions, until it had stamped a very ugly impress on the national features. Where Puritanism had sought to suppress vice by penal laws, the anti- 8 116 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. Puritans had replied to this by substituting unbridled license. Vice and immorality of the coarsest kinds had thus become national and ingrained. This was bewailed, too, by men of all parties, and it was proposed to correct its more hideous feat- ures by act of Parliament. The political plots since Crom- well's time were only too true an index of the condition of the country. Gates, Bedloe, Dugdale, Dangerfield, Judge Jeffreys, and other similar ruffians, truly symbolized the social and moral state of England, and little or nothing was being done to stem the torrent of vice and crime. Addison and the " Essayists " certainly satirized public vices, but it was like shooting squibs at an impregnable fortress, for the vicious simply laughed at and despised them. Hogarth tried to paint them out of coun- tenance by his powerful pictures, but Hogarth might as well have been beating the wind with his paint-brush. There \r as really no virtue in the colors of the painter's palette, nor in the stately moralizing of the " Essayists," to reach the hard heart and feculent morality of that age. The people had diversions, but the most admired and cherished ones were, " bull-baiting," " bear-baiting," " badger-baiting," " cock-fighting," and " cock- throwing." The amusements and the temper of the sight-seers were much after the Dahoman fashion, minus the human vic- tims. To any but a savage ear the coarse jesting, which can- not be repeated, was shocking. If by some sad accident a man lost his life, it became a subject of vulgar joke. Among poor and rich drunkenness was nearly universal ; nearly every body sold gin, till Government imposed a heavy license on its sale, and then numbers of men lived by turning informers. Every-where men sold their votes just as they would sell eggs or shoes. Public immorality was a crying scandal, and Wai- pole declared that an " enemy in the field " might " buy the country," and that every member of the Commons u had his price." Private life was fouled at its fountains, and the upper classes were specially distinguished for their licen- tiousness, the relation of the details of which modern taste WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 117 does not permit. Things of shame or of pride were so in- verted that "fashionable gentlemen" blushed crimson when accused of purity. Petty thieving, shop-lifting, house-break- ing, highway-robbery, and murder, were well represented in the age which managed to capture and hang Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard. But instead of the "whip," the "stocks," and the "wheel," the courts imitated the barbarity of the " Road," and used the rope and the gallows for thefts of a few shillings ; that is, the spirit of the laws had much of the spirit of the lawless. The crowd would gladly stone a culprit in the pillory, not because they respected public rights, or the penal code, but from sheer delight in barbarity. Altogether, social morality stank like a cess-pool, and those sunk deepest in the mass of impurity were the people John Wesley set himself to regenerate. Through a life of over fifty-three years of ceaseless toil Wes- ley pursued his one object, with results that then amazed the civilized world, and which are regarded as among the grandest achievements in history. The secret of his loud and earnest denunciations of vice and crime may be read in the condition of society, which is the amplest justification of his strongest language. To aim at the manners merely of such an age would have been fruitless, and, therefore, John Wesley aimed at the hearts of the people, and in his earnest preaching constantly urged the necessity of an inward spiritual life. To his success his schools much helped, and he provided a very considerable literature, both original and reprint. The Methodist Book Room in England is one of the results, whence issue annually between four and five million publications ; another result is the twenty millions issued by the various sections of Meth- odists in America. Sunday-schools, too, were largely the result of John Wesley's labors, for children were taught by members of his Society years before Raikes collected them in the parish church of Gloucester. These institutions, true safeguards of the country, are strongly redolent of the benevolent scheming 118 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. of "Wesley. All appliances were pressed into the service ; the first " Bible Society," the " London Missionary Society," and the " Church Missionary Society " came of Methodism ; also the first " Tract Society," seventeen years in advance of the present "Beligious Tract Society." Good, wholesome, cheap school- books were then scarce, and Wesley wrote a whole batch for his own schools, while he did the same for his "preachers" and people in his " Christian Library," and other publications. He had at first some difficulty in keeping up the moral tone at Kingswood school, but he drew up rules, too strong, perhaps, but right in principle, which at this day would work wonders in many a limping establishment, where not the teacher but parents and children govern. Some of the bitterest wails of families issue from the follies which Wesley tried to correct. " The children of tender parents, so-called," he writes, " who are indeed offering up their sons and daughters to devils, have no business here, [at Kingswood,] for the rules will not be broken in favor of any person." He also started the first public medical dispensary, and as soon as Franklin discovered that electricity and lightning were identical, he set up an elec- trical machine for the public cure of diseases, even before " wise men " had done laughing at Franklin. The fruits of Wesley's labors on the social and domestic life of the people were immense, though his own domestic rela- tions were most unfortunate. Here was the second of the two mistakes in his long life. Wesley was too much in earnest to understand the philosophy and frivolities of court- ship, or he would not have allowed either silly flirts or fiery vixens to dupe him. His marriage was the great mistake and cloud of his life. No man, however, could have borne it with more meekness and resignation. It was, indeed, a thirty years' gloom, and stands as an impressive warning against ill-considered and ill-assorted marriages. A good congenial wife is an angel in any man's house. But Wesley's wife, though the widow of a most respectable merchant, was a scold and a termagant, who WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 119 did her utmost to make the good and great man miserable ; an ill-bred and worse-disposed virago, who purloined her husband's letters from his pockets, interlined them to give spiritual ex- pressions .a bad meaning, and then gave them to his enemies to publish. She took special care that Wesley had no home ; but he took special care that this did not interfere with the regular progress of his labors. He made the sites and scenes of his spiritual triumphs his home, his carriage his almost constant par- lor, and the chapels, churches, fields and lanes of the three king- doms his temple. On the vices of the times Wesley spoke with no uncertain sound. His pamphlet, "The Manners of the Age," was a sledge-hammer all round. The fashionable, the idle, the drunk- en, the gluttonous, the lewd, the licentious, those addicted to finery in furniture or dress, are all unmercifully battered with the strokes of a giant ; and in the same vigorous spirit he fer- reted out, denounced, and rooted up all traces of immorality in his Societies. No man could hide his vices by union with the Methodists of John Wesley. For opinions he declared he would expel none, so long as they were peaceably held, and here he gave the widest latitude ; but for immoralities he had no tolerance after earnest warning and rebuke. Incorrigible debtors, drunkards, the untruthful, bribers and bribe-takers, the impure, and all who indulged in vicious practices, were allowed no resting-place with him. An age like that we have just glanced at made it impossible to keep the Societies irreproachable, but every visitation was celebrated by a vigilant scrutiny, when it was perfectly understood that he meant what he said^-he " would mend or end them." He thrust out the immoral with a prompt- ness that told observers, Christ's kingdom is not of this world. This, too, was an " innovation " on church usage, and chapel usage too, for discipline had well-nigh ceased to distinguish be- ' tween the virtuous and vicious. This strict scrutiny told a tale on social habits and usages, and on the domestic decencies and comforts of families. Before his death the brutal public games 120 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. had much abated, tens of thousands of householders were raised from the gutters of society to comparative respectability and home happiness, and his societies were known every-where as a renovated and God-fearing race. The theaters, however, failed to be purged of their dirt and impurities, and there was still more than sufficient refuse left to support them ; for only four years before his death Wesley declared them " sinks of all iniq- uity and debauchery." As to business-accommodation-bills he says about the same time : " I expel any one out of Society (in London) who has any thing to do with the execrable bill-trade." To "Sammy" Bradburn he wrote: "You must stop local preachers who are loaded with debt." "Expel all guilty of bribery." " Extirpate smuggling ; " " smuggling is robbery ; " " a smuggler is a thief of the first order, a pickpocket of the worst sort ; " " expel all who will not leave ofi smuggling." But Wesley carried his teaching directly into the homes of the people, though ever scrupulously careful to avoid interfer- ence with private family affairs, and not to place families at variance. " Spiritous liquors," he told the people, " were liq- uid fire." " They drive men to hell like sheep." " A drunk- ard is worse than a beast." At that time almost every other house in some districts was a: gin-shop. Idleness he denounced with all the force of his tongue and pen, and, when that worked no cure, he had recourse to expulsion. Some preachers had be- come "nervous," and contracted the capability of enduring a good deal of rest. He learns " they sometimes sit still a whole day ; this can never consist with health. They are not drunk- ards, nor gluttons, but they take more food than nature re- quires." The best physicians of to-day know all about this now, though they rarely trouble their patients with the knowl- edge; but Wesley knew it one hundred years ago. About certain ridiculous fineries in dress, which were common even among the comparatively indigent, and which he strings to- gether in a few lines, he speaks in strong language, and finishes by the exhortation, " Throw them away ; let them drop with- WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 121 out another word." His love of cleanliness was especially con- spicuous, and could not fail to influence all with whom he had to do. A layman may perhaps be allowed to say that a minis- ter, dressed in unprofessional or slovenly clothes, loses half his due influence. Both Southey and Sir Walter Scott, when boys, appear to have been forcibly struck with Wesley's appearance, and while the former repeated Wesley's anecdotes more than forty years after, the latter declared that he felt as if he had never lost the influence of his blessing, conferred by Wesley as he stroked his hand over his boyish head. Here we have a glimpse of the force of the man's character on people not specially and religiously influenced. And hence the invariable neatness and trimness of Wesley, as a matter of example, must have been in- fluential on his own people. But Wesley did not trust to ex- ample ; he taught constantly, both by voice and pen, the neces- sity of both inward and outward purity. His eyes and ears were open to every source of vice and immorality, which he followed into the homes and haunts of the poor. Besides his influence on general society, which was not small, he changed the whole habits and deportment of his converts. Of all the men of the eighteenth century, there was no mind so generally influential as Wesley's ; and none before or since has been any thing like so successful in raising the social and domestic con- dition of the poor. But further, John Wesley stands pre-eminent in the history of his country for his skill and wisdom in the politics of re- ligion. With the politics of the State he meddled little, over a career of sixty-three busy years, yet sufficient to show that he was thoroughly loyal to the House of Hanover, a genuine and enlightened patriot, and withal a warm friend of the people. But the influence of his name and teachings in this sphere has been scarcely less beneficent and marked on the position and charac- ter of his country. Unlike the Reformers of a previous age, his controversy was not with the State and Government, but with vice and irreligion, because he saw there the source and fount- 122 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. ain of all useful progress. He went in to convert men's souls to that which was virtuous and pure, and never fouled his tongue or his pen with that which was the blotch and bane of some previous reforms the temper and mutterings of incipient treason. Against " the powers that be " Wesley had no ravings and stormings, though he did not close his mouth, or decline to use his pen against oppression and injustice. That passionate virulence, that venomous malice, which paralyzes the head and the heart, withers the affections and destroys all patriotic sym- pathies, found no place in Wesley's breast. He was not to be blinded by other people's political rant and rancor. It is true Wesley and his men were charged with " sedition " and every thing else that was bad at the time, and every crowd that gath- ered to stone and worry the Methodists in their peaceful work was foully laid on their shoulders ; but this was in default of a better cry. They simply went forth to arouse the people to a sense of the importance of spiritual things, and, as Hutton says, they went " among thieves, prostitutes, fools, people of every class, some of distinction, a few of the learned, merchants, and numbers of poor people, who had never entered a place of worship these assembled in crowds and became godly." This was sedition in the eyes of the fierce and envious, and in a printed sermon Dr. Stebbing who was only one among scores of his class declared that Wesley " was gathering tumultuous assemblies," and " setting aside all authority and rule." " There is the closest connection," said Wesley, late in life, "between my religion and my political conduct ; the self -same authority enjoins me to ' fear G.od, and to honor the king, ' " . . . " It is my religion which obliges me to put men in mind to be subject to ( principalities and powers.' Loyalty is, with me, an essential point of religion." But no man could hurry- Wesley into the feuds and turmoils of political parties. Once he joined the great Dr. Johnson ; -and the giant of literature, Tory though he was, the pride and glory of the eighteenth century, was proud of his help. Writing to Wesley he said, WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 123 " That now," with such aid, " I have no reason to be discour- aged ; " and then, with his own inimical classical expertness, he concludes, " The lecturer was surely in the right who, though he saw his audience slinking away, refused to quit the chair while Plato stayed." Dr. Johnson was not the man to bandy compli- ments such as this except where they were well-deserved. Had Wesley devoted himself to politics he must have ranked among the foremost statesmen of the age. Macaulay well knew as every man of sense may learn, if he will take the trouble that Wesley had every element necessary to a distinguished political position and a commanding statesmanship ; but he knew he was called to a higher statesmanship one linked to the skies, and which would last when that of Lord North, Sir Robert Walpole, and William Pitt, had decayed and grown obsolete. And we have only to look round us to see that Wesley was right. The State lost something in losing the man of strong common sense, of quick mental vision, of logical acuteness, of unwonted intellectual activity, of transparent honesty of pur- pose, of manly self-confidence, of iron will, of robust physical stamina, of unrivaled power in disentangling intricate compli- cations, of extraordinary popular talking and seasoning facul- ties, of aptness for minute details and yet keeping a firm grasp of great principles, of persuasive eloquence and masterly dis- cussion, of command of temper and tongue so necessary in im- portant political crises, and of that indefinable and mysterious, almost magnetic influence, which wins over, draws, and rules large masses of people ; but the State gained more, by Wesley's laying deep in the hearts of the people the foundations of good government, and by the social, mental, and moral regeneration he worked among every class of the community. To Wesley's teachings is owing, chiefly, that moderation in the aggregate politics of the English people which has made political anarchy and revolution forever impossible. It put, as between two fiercely contending parties, a moderating and modifying ele- ment which, like a huge fly-wheel, steadied and kept from 124 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. violent friction the whole political engine, and reduced " wear and tear" to a minimum. Since that day, discontented and turbulent extremes on one side and the other have been kept in check. In moments of excitement to this day, the extreme votaries of both political parties in the hour of failure hurl their rebukes and revenge at the Methodists, whose moderation and wisdom have done more than any thing else to keep En- gland firm on her legs, the admiration, sometimes the envy, of civilized governments almost the world over. Of Wesley's religious politics it would be vain to attempt any thing like an analysis or even a sketch. Suffice it to say, that the same practical wisdom distinguished his system of Church gov- ernment as marked his State politics. With slight modification it has stood the test of experience, and as yet shows no traces of decay. In the history of the Church Wesley stands first and foremost as organizer of a Church rule which provides for free- dom without license, discipline without laxity or undue severity, and Christian fellowship without servitude ; a system of gov- ernment which has drawn and bound together multitudes of opposite tastes, habits, and sympathies, and at the same time so effectually excluded all forms of immorality that it has long been a public surprise and shock when a Methodist is punished penally. By Wesley a wide berth was given to liberty as to opinions, and many of his more radical disciples might learn a lesson ; but he had no liberty for sin. To the day of his death Charles Wesley remained a " High "-Churchman, and refused to be buried out of u consecrated ground." John Wesley, too, in, his early years, was a " High "-Churchman in name, but as light came, and as circumstances pressed, he became a Dissenter in fact, and told his friends in his last hours, with his usual simplicity, to wrap his body in woolen and place it in the soil at City Eoad Chapel ; ground now " consecrated " enough in the repose of the bones of the man who accomplished more Christian work than any other laborer in the history of the Church ; and mingling with a soil which deserves a veneration WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 125 not less devout than that which holds the sacred ashes of the great apostle of the Gentiles. But, finally and briefly, John Wesley is the most illustrious example in the history of his country of the certain success which follows an earnest life of honest labor. It is now too late to recount his labors, or even to sketch an outline. Our space is gone before we have touched the finest feature of his character. But if Wesley's life was one of unceasing toil, it was one of unparalleled success. His teachings as to a new spiritual life, and the rules which regulate it, being sown broadcast over the country by an organized system of perpetual preach- ing, were backed by an ever-present example, careful pastoral oversight, kindly, but if necessary, severe discipline, and by the omnipotent power of the printing-press. The benef- icent labors of Whitefield, of Berridge, of Howell Harris in Wales, and of other similar men only snippings from the original Wesley tree and % their results, were fairly Meth- odistic. Before Wesley had been at his work half his time, say within twenty-five years after he started for Savannah, he had planted Methodism in every large town in England and Ireland, and in many a hundred hamlets and villages ; while his teach- ing had ever been followed up by church guidance and private counsel in families. In the very middle of his career he had done, without money, without patronage, and in the face of the most rancorous enemies, what no other man ever did before, nor has ever done since, coupled with his ceaseless traveling and preaching. Thus early, while he had above a quarter of a century to work, he had printed and sent over the country one hundred and thirty vigorously written pamphlets, nine parts of his "Journal," and nearly seventy full sized books, besides twelve volumes and thirty pamphlets produced jointly by him- self and Charles. Lord Holland, Mr. Pitt, Sir E. Walpole, and the whole bench of Bishops in at the bargain, could show noth- ing approaching such results ; and results, too, which were pat- 126 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. ent in the improved social and educational condition, and in the renovated lives, of tens of thousands. And what if we look at the subsequent growth of this Methodist power ? It roused all the slumbering Churches in the land to renewed energy an energy which still clings to them notably in the Establish- ment, where we have seen ever since earnest labor and constant success. But look at the world of Methodism, with its about five millions in Church-fellowship, and over twenty millions under the sway of its religious teaching ; and look again, and see it daily adding to its victories and multiplying its conquests. When Wesley reached the last year of his life, all over the Three Kingdoms he saw the fruit of his labors, and the sight gladdened his 'eyes and heart. His one hundred and fifteen cir- cuits, two hundred and ninety-four preachers, and seventy-one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight Church members, besides seventeen missionaries in foreign lands, and nearly equal results in America, were enough to cheer his great spirit, and make him " thank God .for his mercies." He had not " converted the world," but he had made such a beginning as England had never witnessed before. His old enemies had nearly died out, or had repented and turned friends. One half the kingdom admired, and the other revered him. The nobility now thought it a privilege to hear him talk or preach. Tens of thousands still rushed to his ministrations, and looked upon him as the boast and glory of England ; nd thousands at this day are proud and glad that they have seen and talked with men and women who knew and conversed with the ven- erable apostle of Methodism. The clergy every-where un- locked their church and pulpit doors to him, delighted with his simple eloquence and saintly character. "The tide is turned," he wrote ; " I have now more invitations to preach in churches than I can accept." When Dr. Lowth, Bishop of London, would sit below him at table and Wesley remonstrated, the Bishop expressed a pretty general feeling when he said : "Mr. Wesley, may I be found at your feet in another world." WESLEY'S INFLUENCE. 127 He was, we say, an example unequaled of the certain success which follows an earnest life of honest labor. That is all. Rhetorical ornament or eloquent peroration would only dim the dignity and besmear the beauty of one of the very closest transcripts of the character of Him who "went about doing good." WESLEY AND PERSONAL BELIGIOUS EXPE- EIENCE. GOD'S way of making any truth powerful among men has always been to translate it into the vernacular of this world by incarnating it. He puts it into a human soul, and there fans it into a steady flame whose glow kindles other souls. The unspoken language of profound conviction is the one language which needs no interpreter. There is no danger that Chillingworth's grand postulate will ever be forgotten : " The Bible, the Bible, the religion of Protestants." But it is not merely the Bible written or printed which is mighty for the salvation of the world. Men may and do refuse to read this; and often when they read it they get but the faintest possible conception, or even an utter mis- conception, of its meaning. It is the Bible incarnated, lived, wrought into the fabric of human souls, clearly expounded and brilliantly illustrated by transformed lives, which extends the borders of Christ's kingdom. The epistles of Paul and Peter and John are within easy reach of many a hand that never opens them, and pass under many an eye that never discerns their glories ; but no eye can be utterly blind to the shining characters with which a once pierced hand is now perpetually tracing " living epistles " to be " known and read of all men." This thought is in itself so important, and, moreover, is so essential as the very key to the theme of this dissertation, that I wish at the outset to unfold it with sufficient fullness and par- ticularity to secure a vivid impression of it on the mind of every reader. Of course the supreme illustration of it is to be sought in the method of the incomparable Teacher. And how did he . teach ? Not chiefly by what he said or did, but by PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 129 what he was. I derogate nothing from the splendor of his say- ings, the divineness of his doings, or the magnificence of his miracles, when I declare that his chief teaching was Himself. He spoke, he did, more yet he was, 'the Truth. The eternal Word the revealer of God the one only medium for the manifestation of God to the universe of intelligent creatures "The Word, was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." "With his own lips and by the pens of his amanuenses he completed the system of religious teaching ; and on the last page of the Apocalypse he set this solemn seal : " If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book : and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." Since that time almost eighteen hundred years of anxious, earnest, profound thinking have passed away, and no man singly, nor all men together, have added one iota to the relig- ious teaching of Jesus. And yet religious truth is under- stood better to-day than in the first century, or the tenth, or the eighteenth. How, if there has been no added revelation? There has been the ever-new exposition furnished by many a fresh incarnation of the truth. John Kobinson, of Leyden, in his farewell to the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620, nobly said : " If God should reveal any thing to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth by my ministry ; for I am very confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word." And Bishop Butler, in his immortal " Analogy of Religion," with kindred insight declared: "Nor is it at all incredi- ble that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind should contain many truths as yet undiscovered." " More truth and light ? " Whence ? " To break forth out oi 130 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. his holy word." How ? He will " reveal " it by some " instru- ment of his." " Truths as yet undiscovered ? " Where ? In the book." Such revelations God has been pleased to make in all the Christian centuries. His universal plan for securing any marked and substantial advance of Christianity has been to incarnate in some one man some grand, fundamental, but neg- lected truth. The era of the Protestant Eeformation well illustrates this. The world has gone down into the chill and darkness* of a thousand years' night. God has thoughts of mercy toward it. How will he bring in the day ? No new Bible is given ; there is no new flight of angels ; there are no new tongues of fire. A man is the herald of the dawn ; a man with great faults, (else his example had been of less value for our encouragement,) yet a man whom God taught that " the just shall live by faith," and he taught it to the world. But his great work was incomplete, and his tempest-tossed soul had hardly reached its happy home before the Dark Ages crept back again. Ritualism spread its upas blight ; infidelity and iniquity were rampant, and even in Protestant England, at the close of the seventeenth century, evangelical Christianity had almost perished from the earth. Again God honors his an- cient plan. "Not by angels, not by an added revelation, not by a new Pentecost, does he bring in that revival of evangelical doc- trine and life which has had no serious back-set for more than a century and a third, and which, when fairly considered in its relation to the grand outmarch of modern evangelistic effort, really seems to be the dawn of the Millennium. God intro- duces this transcendent era by a man; a man born of that woman concerning whom Adam Clarke wrote, " Many daugh- ters have done virtuously, but Susannah Wesley has excelled them all." This man was at once a Moses, a Paul, and a John. He led out God's people from a worse than Egyptian bondage ; he preached the Gospel with surpassing power to men of more than Athenian refinement and to the most degraded outcasts ; PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 131 and he was the very apostle of love, for he proclaimed as one of the chief articles of his creed that " perfect love" which "casteth out fear; " and he was enabled so to emphasize God's universal offer of rescue for the ruined, that the world might understand it better than ever before. I soberly believe that since it was first uttered no other man has done so much to simplify and propagate that divinest of all divine utterances, " God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The fullest and most severely dispassionate of Mr. Wesley's biographers, Mr. Tyerman, elaborately justifies his characteriza- tion of Methodism as " the greatest fact in the history of the Church of Christ ; " and says, " Let the reader think of twelve millions of people at present enjoying the benefits of Meth- odist instruction; let him think of Methodism's twenty-one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five ordained ministers, and of its tens of thousands of lay preachers ; let him think of the immense amount of its church property, and of the well-nigh countless number of its church publications ; let him think of the millions of young people in its schools, and of its missionary agents almost all the wide world over ; let him think of its incalculable influence upon other Churches, and of the unsectarian institutions to which it has given rise ; and then let him say whether the bold suggestion already made is not strictly true, namely, that 'Methodism is the greatest fact in the his- tory of the Church of Christ.'' " Now no religious movement ever sprang more directly out of the mind and heart of its founder, and received its mold and inspiration more immediately from him, than Methodism from "Wesley. It cannot be understood apart from him, nor he apart from it. And what is Methodism ? This volume, which presents Wesley in well-nigh every possible phase, abundantly answers that question ; this particular article has to do with but a single characteristic of Methodism, and yet that characteristic 132 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. is its grand formative principle ; its central, uniting, explaining idea, without which it would not have been. What is that idea ? PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. Go into any Methodist church (worthy the name) in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, or any island of the sea, (there are twenty thousand of them in the United States alone,) and listen to the hymns, the readings, the prayers, the sermons. You must perceive that, according to the Methodistic idea, religion is no mere code of ethics or dogmas, no empty parade of cere- monies, no matter for rapt contemplation and antinomian quiet- ism ; but a deep, conscious, all-pervading, triumphant spiritual life. A very simple teaching of the Holy Scriptures, you may say. Yes, but vastly more simple because of John Wesley. When he, a brilliant young tutor in Lincoln College, Oxford, was groping his way to the full light of gospel day, Methodism was germinating. He found the light, and took it into one of the clearest and strongest of intellects, and also into " one of the most marvelous hearts which ever the l^and of the Creator fashioned, or the spirit of the Redeemer warmed." That mas- terful intellect was hungrily striving after more and more of the knowledge of God, through all the years from its first dawn in the pious Epworth rector's home till, after eighty-eight years, the eternal sun-burst flashed upon it. But no such mere intellectual seeking, however successful, could have produced that immense result called Methodism; and so, at the age of thirty-five, that great heart saw God, transmuted doctrine into life, and created Methodism. The question is often asked, What is the secret of the power of Methodism ? That secret I conceive lies partly in its eccle- siastical polity, more in its doctrinal teaching, and most of all in its religious experience. On the last of these every thing turns. This it is which gave birth to the polity of Methodism and molded its belief s. Its doctrinal system is not new, though the manner of its proclamation is. From the beginning until now, the Methodists, we think, have been less inclined than any PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 133 other branch of the Church to forget the inspired apostolic anathema against novelties in doctrine, "Though we, or an angel in heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you than that ye have heard, let him be accursed." In the course of the ages the old doctrines of the Bible had been buried beneath the rubbish of forgetf ulness and sacerdo- talism. Wesley seized them, lifted them up, shook from them the dust of ages which covered 'them, rekindled them at the al- tar of God, and then rushed forth and held them up as blazing torches before the eyes of the people. He taught that sin was not a peccadillo, not merely a misfort- une, but a dark, guilty, damning fact. He taught that salva- tion was not a proposal of help, restricted to a certain part of the human race, to be conferred at some time no man can tell when ; but to every guilty penitent it was a proclamation that he might now be saved fully saved saved to the uttermost, and have the witness of the Holy Ghost to the fact of this sal- vation. No wonder the people listened, for at that time these truths came with the force of a new revelation to the masses of men. I think I shall not be accused of an unjust criticism on our Christian brethren not of our faith if I cite an old-fashioned Methodist's sarcastic representation of the teaching prevailing in the communities in which he moved. It was this : " Re- ligion if you seek it, you wont find it ; if you find it, you wont know it ; if you know it, you haven't got it ; if you get it, you can't lose it ; if you lose it, you never had it." The Methodists reversed every clause of this description, and made it run : Religion if you seek it, you will find it ; if you find it, you will know it; if you know it, you have got it; if you get it, you may lose it ; if you lose it, you must have had it. All the doctrines our fathers asserted were old, but they made them new, fresh, vivid, and powerful. This effect is es- pecially manifest in their teaching of that most experimental doctrine of the witness of the Spirit. God has given Method- 134 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. ism the honor of making millions of men understand it. This doctrine was almost a dead letter in God's holy book when John Wesley arose. Yet the teaching lay plainly on the very surface of the Bible. Enoch "had this testimony, that he pleased God." David had his feet taken < c out of a horrible pit and out of the miry clay," and a new song put into his mouth. Paul and Peter and John told the same blessed story. Yet I doubt if a thousand men in all England, one hundred and fifty years ago, could have said that they knew their sins forgiven. But after fifteen years' such service of God as has rarely been equaled, John Wesley became consciously a son of God. While listening one evening, in a Moravian meeting, to the reading of one of Luther's commentaries, he felt his heart " strangely warmed ; " and then he knew, and was able to teach, the mean- ing of that inspired declaration, " The Spirit itself beareth wit- ness with our spirit that we are the children of God." The glorious doctrine of the witness of the Spirit was incarnated in him, and revealed through him to millions more. In that hour Methodism was born. So manifest and vital is the connection between Wesley's personal experience of saving grace and the success of the re- ligious movement he inaugurated, that we must trace the suc- cessive steps of that marvelous experience. From infancy he was surrounded by the fragrance of a most sincere, if some- what austere, ancestral piety. He was descended from a royal line of God's faithful witnesses. Daily prayers and Scripture readings were warp and woof of his childhood. Like most men who have been both great and good, he had one of the best of mothers, one from whom he manifestly inherited his talent for logic as well as for saintship. Who can tell how much the world owed to that devout and devoted mother-love which breathed out in this concluding sentence of many a let- ter, " Dear Jackey, I beseech Almighty God to bless thee ! " He gave early evidence of sincere piety, and was admitted by his strict father to the communion at the age of eight. Until PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 135 he left home to attend the Charter-house school, in his eleventh year, he seems to have been an unusually thoughtful and con- sistent child-Christian. There, Mr. Tyerman tells us, " he lost the religion which had marked his character from the days of infancy ; " and adds : " Terrible is the danger when a child leaves a pious home for a public school. John Wesley entered the Charter-house a saint and left it a sinner." He supports this startling indictment by citing Wesley's own words: "I was negligent of outward duties, and continually guilty of in- ward sins." But the self -accuser adds that these " sins " were " such as are not scandalous in the eye of the world ; " and sums up this period thus : " However' I still read the Script- ures, and said my prayers morning and evening. And what 1 now hoped to be saved by was : 1. Not being so bad as other people ; 2. Having still a kindness for religion ; and, 3. Read- ing the Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers." So the " saint " of ten had not become so very grievous a " sinner " at seventeen after all; albeit there was a touch of Pharisaism in his piety. Mr. Tyerman paints Wesley's undergraduate life at Oxford in similarly dark colors, thus: "When we say that from the age of eleven to the age of twenty-two Wesley made no pre- tensions to be religious, and, except on rare occasions, habitually lived in the practice of known sin, we only say what is equally true of many of 'the greatest, wisest, and most godly men that have ever lived. The fact is humiliating and ought to be de- plored, but why hide it in one case more than in another? Wesley soon became one of the holiest and most useful men living ; but except the first ten years of his childhood, he was, up to the age of twenty-two, by his own confession, an habitual, if not profane and flagrant sinner." " He thoughtlessly con- tracted debts greater than he had means to pay." " His letters are without religious sentiments, and his life was without a re- ligious aim." " He had need to repent as in dust and ashes." The same biographer adds, however, within a dozen lines, 136 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. "Wesley was far too noble and too high-principled to seek ad- mission into so sacred an office as the Christian ministry merely to secure for himself a crust of bread." Another very able and appreciative student of Mr. Wesley's character, Dr. Bigg, insists that these comments of Mr. Tyerman are " altogether in an exaggerated tone of austerity ; and adds, " He writes as if such letters cast shadows on the character of young Wesley; he declares quite unwarrantably that from the age of eleven to twenty-two, Wesley was 4 by his own confession an habitual, if not profane and flagrant, sinner,' and that he 'thoughtlessly contracted debts greater than he had means to pay ! ' We must say that there is no evidence whatever to justify such language as this. Wesley seems always to have kept at a re- mote distance from any thing like ' profane and flagrant sin ; ' he was 'a sinner' as moral and virtuous youths are sinners, but only so ' y and if he could not make ends meet on forty pounds a year, there is no evidence whatever that he f thoughtlessly contracted debts.' " Mr. Badcock, in the "Westminster Magazine," gives this picture of Wesley after he had taken his degree at the age of twenty-one : " He appeared the very sensible and acute colle- gian ; a young fellow of the finest classical taste, of the most liberal and manly sentiments." Then came one great crisis of his life ; let me rather say, then began the one critical epoch, which lasted thirteen years, and terminated only when the intensely laborious, heroically faith- ful, despairingly weary " servant " became consciously a rejoic- ing " son " of God. He had finished his collegiate course, a thorough and elegant scholar. What should he do ? In those days, when so little was thought about a divine call to the minis- try, it would have been strange if any young man born, bred, and educated as he was, and with such a moral and religious char- acter, had not at least considered the question of entering that sacred office. He had such thoughts, and wrote of them to his parents. They encouraged his incipient plan, and his mother, PEBSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPEEIENCE. 137 especially, gave him excellent advice. He immediately began a most painstaking, conscientious, but blindly ascetic prepara- tion for holy orders. His characteristic account of it runs thus : " When I was about twenty-two my father pressed me to enter into holy orders. At the same time the providence of God direct- ing me to Kempis' ' Christian's Pattern,' I began to see that true religion was seated in the heart, and that God's law ex- tended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, angry at Kempis for being too strict ; though I read him only in Dean Stanhope's translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading him, such as I was an utter stranger to before. Meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement ; 1 commu- nicated every week ; I watched against all sin, whether in word or deed ; I began to aim at, and to pray for, inward holiness ; so that now, doing so much and li ving so good a life, I doubted not that I was a good Christian." It is well for sound doctrine and evangelical religion that the seed of truth thus sown in this eminently honest, earnest, and capacious soul, did not by a miraculous operation of grace burst forth into sudden flower and fruit. The slow germina- tion, growth, unfolding, and maturing of the precious seed in Wesley's heart and life have made the way of salvation easy to millions of men. The divine method is " first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." We are reminded of Israel's forty years' schooling in the wilderness ; of the apostles who needed, (for our sakes no less that for their own,) three years under the Saviour's personal tuition, and ten days' wait- ing for the Pentecost after that ; of Paul's theological course in Arabia, and of Bunyan's thrilling experiences recorded in his " Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." God's great sol- diers are wont to undergo a severe course of drill and discipline before achieving those victories which astonish men and angels. 138 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. In the thirteen years from the age of twenty-two to that of thirty-five Wesley met and vanquished, not in bitter and be- clouding controversy with other men, but on the battle-field of his own soul, all the chief errors concerning the subject of per- sonal religious experience. For years of such devout religious- ness and such strenuous activity in doing good as have never been excelled, he was by turns a legalist, a mystic, an ascetic, and a ritualist, with scarcely a glimmering of that personal, simple, saving, triumphant faith which these Egypt and wil- derness years were preparing him to teach. The downright sincerity and quaintness with which he recorded these experi- ences give his Journal and his letters a romantic charm. The writers whom he providentially fell in with at this period, and whose works had most to do with forming his opinions, partly by their direct teaching and partly by the stern antagonism they provoked, were Thomas a Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, and William Law. They were always too somber for him, and he recoiled from the morbid tinge of their teachings; and yet they taught him. He promptly drew back from Jeremy Taylor's mournful representations as to the necessity of perpet- ual, sorrowful uncertainty on the point of the penitent sinner's pardon and acceptance. As early as 1725 he obtained a clear glimpse, doctrinally, of what he did not fully know experiment- ally until 1738 the feasibility of a conscious salvation. This is manifest in his writing thus to his mother : " If we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us, (which he will not do unless we are regenerate,) certainly we must be sensible of it. If we can never have any certainty of our being in a state of salvation, good reason it is that every moment should be spent, not in joy, but in fear and trembling ; and then, undoubtedly, we are in this life of all men most miserable. God deliver us from such a fearful expectation as this ! " To Thomas a Kempis' " Christian's Pattern " and to Jeremy Taylor's " Holy Living and Dying " he is manifestly indebted, among other things, for some of the clearest early conceptions PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 139 which he afterward formulated in his teaching concerning Christian Perfection. He says, " I saw that simplicity of inten- tion and purity of affection one design in all we speak and do, and one desire ruling all our tempers are indeed the wings of the soul, without which she can never ascend to God. I sought after this from that hour." The " Pattern " taught him this. And after reading the " Holy Living and Dying " devouring, I may rather say, for no words can well set forth the intensity of his hunger for the truth lie wrote, " Instantly I resolved to dedicate my life to God all my thoughts and words and ac- tions being thoroughly convinced there was no medium, but that every part of my life (not some only) must either be a sac- rifice to God or myself, that is, the devil." In September, 1725, Wesley was ordained deacon by Bishop Potter, whom he always held in high esteem, calling him " a great and good man," and recording in a sermon written more than half a century later an advice given him by the "Bishop at the time of his ordination, and for which he had often thanked Almighty God, namely, that " if he wished to be extensively useful, he must not spend his time in contending for or against things of a disputable nature, but in testifying against notori- ous vice, and in promoting real and essential holiness." In March, 1726, he was elected Fellow of Lincoln College; and eight months later he was appointed Lecturer and Moderator of the classes. " Leisure and I have taken leave of one another," he wrote ; " I propose to be busy as long as I live." In his plan of study, which he closely followed, he devoted Mondays and Tuesdays to the Greek and Roman classics ; "Wednesdays to logic and ethics ; Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic ; Fridays to metaphysics and natural philosophy ; Saturdays to oratory and poetry ; and Sundays to divinity ; filling up the interstices of time with French, optics, and mathematics. In order to prosecute such studies and to lead a life of such strenuous re- ligious devotion, he reckoned minutes of time as more precious than rubies. He therefore deliberately resolved to rid himself 140 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. of all unprofitable associates. He says : " When it pleased God to give me a settled resolution to be not a nominal but a real Christian, ... I resolved to have no acquaintance by chance, but by choice ; and to choose such only as would help me on my way to heaven." The influence of William Law upon him at about this time is very manifest. He writes : " I began to see more and more the value of time. I applied myself closer to study. I watched more carefully against actual sins. I advised others to be religious according to that scheme of religion by which I modeled my own life. But meeting now with Mr. Law's 6 Christian Perfection ' and ' Serious Call,' although I was much offended at many parts of both, yet they convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height and breadth and depth of the law of God. The light flowed in so mightily upon my soul that every thing appeared in a new view. I cried to God for help ; resolved, as I had never done before, not to prolong the time of obeying him. And by my continued endeavor to keep his whole law, inward and outward, to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that I should be accepted of him, and that I was even then in a state of salvation." His bondage to legalism is very evident. He must grope in the wilderness for weary years in order that he may be able to point out to hosts of weary pilgrims the short road to Canaan. The austerities, the self-denying charities, and the heroic home- mission work of the " Holy Club," of which he was the head, did not satisfy his ideal nor relieve his perturbed spirit. ~No man on earth studied religion more earnestly, nor practiced it more zealously. And at the time, it seems never to have oc- curred to him that he was wearing a garment of self -righteous- ness. He saw his error later, and said : " In this refined way of trusting to my own works and my own righteousness, (so zealously inculcated by the mystic writers,) I dragged on heav- ily, finding no comfort or help therein, till the time of my leav- ing England." He had not forsaken " this refined way " of try- PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 141 ing to establish a righteousness of his own when he went out to Georgia as a missionary. Before going he wrote a letter stating his reasons, the chief being these : " My chief motive is the hope of saving my own soul. ... I cannot hope to attain the same degree of holiness here which I may there." But be- sides such personal motives, he was moved by the brilliant pict- ure his fancy painted of the native Indians flocking round him and eagerly accepting the Gospel. When he reaches Georgia, how- ever, we find him not the grand Pauline missionary, flying every- where as the flaming herald of an impartial salvation, offered freely to all by a God who is " no respecter of persons." We must confess rather to beholding a strait-laced, exclusive High- Churchman, who did but little good and some manifest harm, and retired from the scene of his humiliating defeat in two years as Mr. Tyerrnan styles him, " in point of fact a Pusey- ite, a hundred years before Dr. Pusey flourished." Dr. Rigg says, "The resemblance of his practices to those of modern High- Anglicans is, in most points, exceedingly striking. He had early, and also forenoon, service every day ; he divided the morn- ing service, taking the litany as a separate service ; he inculcated fasting (real hard fasting, his was) and confession and weekly communion ; he refused the Lord's Supper to all who had not been episcopally baptized ; he insisted on baptism by immer- sion ; he rebaptized the children of Dissenters ; and he refused to bury all who had not received episcopalian baptism." The same author, whose estimate of Wesley is exceedingly high, and who zealously, and, as I think, ably and justly defends him against some of Mr. Tyerman's severe animadversions, is con- strained to characterize him at -this period as an " ascetic Ritual- ist of the strictest and most advanced class." Mr. Wesley's own retrospect of his experiences in Georgia is full of thrilling interest. In all the range of autobiography I know nothing more searching, instructive, and pathetic, than the merciless self -dissection of this great, earnest, honest soul. The full impression of it cannot be felt except by approaching 142 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. it gradually, and then reading it entire in a sympathetic mood. The whole passage is quite too long for insertion here ; but we must solemnly pause over the most impressive paragraphs : " It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the na- ture of Christianity; but what have I learned myself in the meantime ? Why, (what I least of all expected,) that I, who went out to America to convert others, was never myself con- verted to God. f I am not mad,' though I thus speak ; but I speak the words of truth and soberness ; ' if haply some of those who still dream may awake, and see that as I am so are they. . . . " Are they read in philosophy ? So was I. In ancient or modern tongues ? So was I also. Are they versed in the science of divinity ? I, too, have studied it many years. Can they talk fluently upon spiritual things ? The very same could I do. Are they plenteous in alms ? Behold, I gave all my goods to feed the poor. Do they give of their labor as well as of their substance ? I have labored more abundantly than they all. Are they willing to suffer for their brethren ? I have thrown up my friends, reputation, ease, country ; I have put my lif e in my hand, wandering into strange lands ; I have given my body to be devoured by the deep, parched up with heat, consumed by toil and weariness, or whatever God should please to bring upon me. But does all this (be it more or less it matters not) make me acceptable to God ? Does all I ever did or can know, say, give, do, or suffer, justify me in his sight ? Yea, or the constant use of all the means of grace ? (which, nevertheless, is meet, right, and our bounden duty.) Or that I know noth- ing of myself ; that I am, as touching outward moral righteous- ness, blameless ? Or, to come closer yet, the having a rational conviction of all the truths of Christianity ? Does all this give me a claim to the holy, heavenly, divine character of a Chris- tian ? By no means. . . . " This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth, that I PEBSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPEEIENCE. 143 1 am fallen short of the glory of God ; ' that my whole heart is 'altogether corrupt and abominable;' and consequently my whole life. . . . "If it be said that I have faith, (for many such things have I heard from many miserable comforters,) I answer, So have the devils a sort of faith ; but still they are strangers to the covenants of promise. . . . The faith I want is, ' A sure trust and confidence in God that through the merits of Christ my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the favor of God.' . . . " I went to America to convert the Indians ; but O ! who shall convert me ? Who, what, is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief 3 I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well ; nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near ; but let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor can I say, i To die is gain ! ' ' ' I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun My last thread, I shall perish on the shore! " Surely the day of full redemption draweth nigh. Such a spirit cannot much longer pant after God in vain. Six days after he landed in England, on February 7, 1738, he fell in with Bohler. In his Journal he notes this day as " a day much to be remembered." During the three months which elapsed before Bohler's de- parture to America, Wesley lost no opportunity to sit at the feet of this pious Moravian, who was almost ten years his junior. His intercourse with the Moravians on ship-board, and with Spangenburg in Georgia, had impressed his mind with the con- viction that " the secret of the Lord " was with these simple- hearted people. Bohler told him true faith in Christ was in- separably attended by (1) dominion over sin, and (2) constant peace, arising from a sense of forgiveness. Wesley thought this a new gospel, and stoutly disputed it. Bohler said, " Mi /rater, mi fr cuter, excoquenda est ista tua philosophic/,!'' And "purged out" this "philosophy" speedily was. Before 144 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. many days Wesley declared himself " clearly convinced of un- belief of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved." But lest any one should put a meaning into these words such as his maturer experience would not approve, let it be remem- bered that his own note at this place in the revised edition of his early Journals is, " with the full Christian salvation." The legalist is now dead ; the High-Churchman must die also. A month later, having been " more and more amazed " by Boh- ler's " account of the fruits of living faith," and having tested this strange teaching by critically comparing it with the Greek Testament, he writes, "Being at Mr. Fox's Society, my heart was so full that I could not confine myself to the forms of prayer that we were accustomed to use there. Neither do I purpose to be confined to them any more, but to pray indiffer- ently with a form or without, as I may find suitable to partic- ular occasions." Surely, " the new wine " was working might- ily in "the old bottles." Driven from every other refuge, Wesley now doubted about salvation in the present tense. But again his sagacious and God-taught teacher sent him to the Scriptures and to experi- ence. The now thoroughly docile pupil, to his "utter aston- ishment, found scarce any instances there of other than instanta- neous conversions," and was presently confronted by " several living witnesses." " Here ended my disputing," he writes ; " I could now only cry out, 'Lord, help thou my unbelief?' I was now thoroughly convinced ; and, by the grace of God, I resolved to seek this faith unto the end." This diligent search continued another month, and then came the day of all days to this " chosen vessel of the Lord." At the mature age of thirty-five, after thirteen intensely relig- ious but most unsatisfactory years, he entered into the heaven on earth of a conscious salvation. " On May 24, 1738, at five in the morning he opened his Testament on these words : ' There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature.' On PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 145 leaving home he opened on the text, ' Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.' In the afternoon he went to St. Paul's Cathedral, where the anthem was full of comfort. At night he went to a society-meeting in Aldersgate-street, where a person read Luther's " Preface to the Epistle to the Romans," in which Luther teaches what faith is, and also that faith alone justifies. Possessed of it, the heart is " cheered, elevated, ex- cited and transported with sweet affections toward God. Re- ceiving the Holy Ghost, through faith, the man is renewed and made spiritual," and he is impelled to fulfill the law " by the vital energy in himself." While this preface was being read, Wesley experienced an amazing change. He writes, " 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 ; and I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart." I have detailed thus fully the process of experience through which this pioneer mind and heart were divinely led, because I believe the very experience itself of John Wesley is far richer in lessons of permanent value than any didactic statements concerning it can be. Facts are God's great teachers. But this article would be incomplete without a rapid survey of the chief channels through which this hard-won experience of John Wesley has poured itself around the globe, and es- pecially has richly fructified the religious life of the two fore- most of the nations. I need not dwell upon those published works which will ever hold the first place among the standards of Methodist doctrine ; nor on his hymns, which still better en- shrine his very heart; nor on the still more precious sacred lyrics of the David of modern psalmody, his brother Charles. Nor need I now refer to the immense influence of Wesley's ex- perience on his preaching and on the preaching of tens of thousands of his successors, and indeed on very much of the teaching on the subject of experimental religion beyond the 146 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. pale of Methodism. All these topics, so immediately germane to mine, are amply treated elsewhere in this volume. My final office is rather to call attention to the chief of the means of grace by which Methodism has always promoted per- sonal religious experience the love-feast and the class-meeting. It would be very interesting, if the limits assigned me would permit it, fully to trace the rise and progress, the methods and results, of these peculiar institutions of Methodism. These topics are, however, very familiar, and must now be passed with a rapid glance. Methodism, from its very beginning, recognized and largely employed the social principle as an agency of grace. It is true that the chief of its methods for doing this, the class-meeting, was no contrivance of Mr. Wesley's, but a providential fact. He had it before he knew it. He was thinking of " quite an- other thing," viz., paying the debts of the Society at Bristol. The proposition to raise a penny a week from each member was opposed, as being burdensome to the poor. One said, " Then put eleven of tfye poorest with me ; and if they can give any thing, well, I will call on them weekly ; and if they can give nothing, I will give for them as well as for myself ; and each of you call on eleven of your neighbors weekly, re- ceive what they give, and make up what is wanting." It was done ; this purely financial plan could not fail, in the care of godly leaders, speedily to take on a spiritual character also. Wesley's quick discernment saw the jewels God had thrown into his lap while he was looking for pennies, and said, " It struck me immediately, This is the thing, the very thing we have wanted so long. I called together all the leaders of the classes so we used to term them and their companies and desired that each would make a particular inquiry into the behavior of those he saw weekly. They did so. Many disor- derly walkers were detected. Some turned from the evil of their ways. Some were put away from us. Many saw it with fear, and rejoiced unto God with reverence." Soon after he PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. made a similar arrangement in London, and thus concluded his account of it : " This was the origin of our classes, for which I can never sufficiently praise God ; the unspeakable usefulness of the institution having ever since been more and more manifest." But if the class-meeting might almost be termed a happy accident, not so with Wesley's early and careful recognition of its chief underlying principle, the need of Christian fellow- ship. Three years before the first class-meeting was held he had instituted society-meetings, of which he was the leader, and which were very like the modern inquiry meetings. In the same spirit he revived the ancient agape in the quarterly love- feast, admission to which could be secured only by means of a ticket furnished by the pastor. These social means of grace were immensely important to Methodism.- They were the altars on which the sparks of grace were kept alive, and the glowing brands fanned into in- tenser flame. It may well be doubted whether Methodism would have survived fifty years, or traveled a hundred miles be- yond its birth-place, without them. Methodism must "go." Its evangelists felt the burning inspiration of the Great Com- mission in their hearts evermore. But they could not " go " unless there were faithful men to stay and keep the flock to- gether, and gather the lambs into the fold, and go after the stragglers. Unless when they returned they could find that they were doing a work in its nature permanent, they would have no heart to go on. An itinerant ministry must be supple- mented by an abiding local sub-pastorate. Earnest Methodists cannot, therefore, observe the partial de- cay of the distinctively Methodistic means of grace without deep concern. God has highly honored those means. They have led to- the conversion, the reclamation, and the sanctifica- tion of myriads of souls. In times of revivals the attendance on them is much increased. Other denominations have found great advantage in imitations of them in their inquiry meet- 10 148 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. ings, conference meetings, and experience meetings. To all eternity millions of happy spirits will praise God because ou earth, they " spake often one to another " in Methodist love- feasts and class-meetings. Many of the most spiritual ministers and laymen among us feel sure that they discern a close connection between a faith- ful attendance of these means of grace and a distinct, glowing, zealous, personal experience ; and lament the too-prevalent, half- and-half, Church-and-world style of religious profession, as the normal result of vacant class-rooms and infrequent and sparsely attended love-feasts. If a young convert is promptly assigned to a suitable class, in charge of a competent and faithful leader, and will regularly attend it if he finds himself encouraged weekly by glowing experiences, fed by wise counsels, and in- spired by hearty singing there is little probability that he will ever backslide, and great probability that if God whispers into his soul a call to the ministry, or to some grand form of lay ac- tivity, he will hear and heed it. . It is one glory of Methodism that it has always been elastic, and adaptable to varied and varying conditions. It is no re- proach to it that its methods in England and America are dif- ferent. The Methodism of a strong self-supporting Church in China in A.D. 1900 may differ widely in non-essentials from that ne faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all ; " resisted a common temptation, took up a com- 202 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. mon cross, and, in common, renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil. They came together on the ground of identity of character, of desire for mutual discipline and benefit, and of community of feeling and interest. It is obvious to perceive that Wesley did not originate this communion, whether it were for good or evil ; for it was an ordinance of God in its primal institution, and in this particular instance arose out of the very nature of the case. "Wesley could not have prevented it, except by such measures as would have undone all he had done. God's believing people found one another out, and associated by a law as fixed and unalterable as that kali and acid coalesce, or that the needle follows the magnet. But while he did not enact the law which God's people obeyed in this close inter-communion and relationship, he understood and revered it, and furthered and regulated the intercourse of the godly by the various enact- ments and graduated organizations of his system. He set the city upon the hill, and bade it be conspicuous ; the lamp upon the stand, and bade it shine ; the vine upon the soil, and said to it, Be fruitful. He set it apart and trimmed it, and hedged it in ; convinced that such a separation as Scripture enjoins was essential to its growth and welfare a truth the Christian law teaches, and individual experience confirms. Every benefit the institution of a Church might be supposed to secure is forfeited when the Church loses its distinctive character, and becomes identified with the world. But neither to glorify their founder by their closer com- bination, nor for self-complacent admiration, nor to be a gazing- stock for the multitude, nor for the tittle-tattle of mutual gossipry, did John "Wesley segregate his people ; no, but for their good and the good of mankind. The downy bed of indo- lence for the Church, or the obesity that grows of inaction, never once came within his calculations as their lot. To rub the dust from each other, as iron sharpeneth iron, was the first object of their association ; and the second, to weld their forces together in the glowing furnace of communion for the benefit IDEAS WESLEY DEVELOPED. 203 of the world. They were to rejoice in the good grapes of their own garden, and sweeten by inoculation and culture the sour grapes of their neighbors. They were to attract all goodness to themselves ; and where it was wanting create it, after the Arab proverb, " The palm-tree looks upon the palm-tree, and groweth fruitful." It was as the salt of the eatth they were to seek to retain their savor, and not for their own preservation alone. 2sTo one ever more sedulously guarded the inward sub- jective aspect of the Church, its self-denying intent, its exclu- sion of the unholy and unclean, than John Wesley ; and no one ever directed its objective gaze outward and away from itself, " to have compassion on the ignorant and out of the way," with more untiring industry than he. He knew the Church's mis- sion was more than half unfulfilled, while it locked itself up in its ark of security, and left the world without to perish. He was himself the last man in the world to leave the wounded to die, passing by in his superciliousness, and asking, " Who is my neighbor ? " and the last to found a community which should be icy, selfish, and unfeeling. He was a working min- ister, and fathomed the depth and yielded to the full current of the truth, that the Church must be a working Church. Armed at all points with sympathies which brought him into contact with the world without, the Church must resemble him in this. He was an utterly unselfish being. He, if ever any, could say : " I live not in myself, but I become portion of that around me." To work for the benefit of men when he might have taken his ease became a necessity of his nature, molded upon the pattern of his self-sacrificing Master, and the law of his being must be that of the Church's. The Church must " do or die." It must be instant in season, out of season. It must go into the highways and hedges. It must beseech men to be reconciled to God. It must compel them to come in. It must give no sleep to its eyes nor slumber to its eyelids till its work be done. It must stand on the top of high places, by the way in the 204 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. places of the paths, and cry, " O ye simple, understand wisdom ; and ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart ! " It must gather all the might of its energies, and lavish all the wealth of its resources, and exhaust all the influences it can command, and coin all the ingenuity of its devices into schemes for the saving benefit of the world. Thus, not merely conservative of the truth must the Church be for its own edification and nurture, but also diffusive of the truth for the renewal and redemption of all around. And these were grand discoveries a hundred years ago, of which the credit rests very mainly with the Founder of Meth- odism, although mere commonplaces now. It is true they were partially and speculatively held even then, but very par- tially, and in the region of thought rather than of action. Some saw the truth of the matter, but it was in its proverbial dwell- ing, and the well was deep just perceptible at the bottom, but beyond their grasp ; while to the many the waters were muddy, and they saw it not at all. There was no Bible, Tract, or Mis- sionary Society then to employ the Church's powers, and to indicate its path of duty. But Wesley started them all. He wrote and printed and circulated books in thousands upon thou- sands of copies. He set afloat home and foreign missions. The Church and the world were alike asleep ; he sounded the loud trumpet of the Gospel, and awoke the world to tremble and the Church to work. Never was such a scene before in En- gland. The correctness and maturity of his views amid the deep darkness surrounding him is startling, wonderful ; like the idea of a catholic Church springing up amid a sectarian Judaism. It is midday without the antecedent dawn ; it beggars thought ; it defies explanation. A Church in earnest as a want of the times is even now, in these greatly advanced days, strenu- ously demanded, and eloquently enforced by appeal after appeal from the press, the platform, and the pulpit ; but Wesley gave it practical existence from the very birth-hour of his Society. His vigorous bantling rent the swathing bands of quiet self- IDEAS WESLEY DEVELOPED. 205 communing and prevalent custom, and gave itself, a young Hercules, to the struggle with the inertia of the Church and the opposition of the world. Successfully it encountered both. It quickened the one and subdued the other, and attained by the endeavor the muscular development, and manful port, and indomitable energy of its present life. John Wesley's Church is no mummy-chamber of a pyramid, silent, sepulchral, gar- nished with still figures in hieroglyphic coif and cerecloth, but a busy town, a busier hive, himself the informing spirit, the parent energy, the exemplary genius of the whole. Never was the character of the leader more accurately reflected in his troops. Bonaparte made soldiers, Wesley made active Christians. The last principle we shall notice as illustrated by Wesley's career, has relation to the nature and work of the minisfry. A grand discovery, lying very near the root of Methodism, considered as an ecclesiastical system, it was the fortune of John Wesley to light upon not far from the outset of his career. A discovery quite as momentous and influential in the diffusion and perpetuation of his opinions as that with which Luther startled the world in 1525. Luther published the then monstrous heresy that ministers who are married can serve the Lord and his Church as holily, learnedly, and acceptably, as celibate priests and cloistered regulars ; and our hero found out that men unqualified by university education for orders in the Church were the very fittest instruments he could employ in the itinerant work of early Methodism. Hough work requires rough hands. The burly pioneer is as needful in the army as the dapper ensign, and the hewer of wood in the deep forest as the French polisher in the city. Now this was a great discovery up to that period a thing unknown. The Roman Church knew nothing of such a de- vice ; its orders of various kinds bore no approximation to it ; presbyter and bishop were at equal removes from it ; the very Puritans and Non-conformists knew nothing of it, they being in their way as great sticklers for clerical order and their f 206 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. succession as any existing body the more pardonable, as some were living in the early part of Wesley's history who had them- selves officiated in the chnrches of the Establishment. His discovery was, that plain men just able to read and explain with some fluency what they read and felt, might go forth without license from college, or presbytery, or bishop, into any parish in the country the weaver from his loom, the shoemaker from his stall and tell their fellow-sinners of salva- tion and the love of Christ. This was a tremendous innovation upon the established order of things every-where, and was as reluctantly forced upon so starched a precisian as John Wes- ley, as it must have horrified the members of the stereotyped ministries and priesthoods existing around. But as in Luther's case, so here " the present necessity " was the teacher : " the fields were white to the harvest, and the laborers were few." We have ample evidence to show that if he could have pressed into the service a sufficient number of the clerical profession he would have preferred the employment of such agents ex- clusively ; but as they were only few of this rank who lent him their constant aid, he was driven to adopt the measure which was, we think, the salvation of his system and in some respects its glory. The greater part of the clergy would have been unfitted for the work he would have allotted them, even had they not been hampered by the trammels of ecclesiastical usage. This usage properly assigns a fixed portion of clerical labor to one person ; .and to discharge it well is quite enough to tax the powers of most men to the utmost. Few parish ministers, how conscien- tious and diligent soever, will ever have to complain of too little to do. But Wesley had a roving commission, and felt himself called, by his strong sense of the need of some extraor- dinary means, to awaken the sleeping population of the coun- try, to overleap the barriers of clerical courtesy and ecclesias- tical law, invading parish after parish of recusant incumbents without compunction or hesitancy at the overweening impulse of IDEAS WESLEY DEVELOPED. 207 duty. However much, some clergymen may have sympathized with him in religious opinion, it is easy to understand how many natural and respectable scruples might prevent their following such a leader in his Church errantry. They must, in fact, have broken with their own system to give themselves to his, and this they might not be prepared to do. They might value his itinerating plan as supplementary to the localized labors of the parish minister, but at the same time demur to its taking the place of parochial duty, as its tendency was and as its effect has been. Thus was Wesley early thrown upon a species of agency for help which he would doubtless sincerely deplore at first, namely, a very slenderly equipped but zealously ardent and fearless laity; but which, again, his after experience led him to value at its proper worth, and to see in the adaptation of his men to the common mind their highest qualification. " Fire low," is said to have been his frequent charge in after life to young ministers ; a maxim the truth of which was confirmed by the years of an unusually protracted ministry and acquaintance with mankind. A ministry that dealt in perfumed handker- chiefs, and felt most at home in Bond-street and the ball-room- the perfumed popinjays of their profession ; or one that, emu- lous of the fame of Nimrod, that mighty hunter before the Lord, sacrificed clerical duty to the sports of the field, prized the reputation of securing the brush before that of being a good shepherd of the sheep, and deemed the music of the Tally-ho or Hunting Chorus infinitely more melodious than the Psalms of David; or, again, one composed of the fastidious students of over-refined sensibilities, better acquainted with the modes of thought of past generations than with the actual habits of the present, delicate recluses and nervous men, the bats of society, who shrink from the sunshine of busy life into the congenial twilight of their libraries, whose over-edu- cated susceptibilities would prompt the strain ' ' O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed I" 208 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. these would have utterly failed for the work John Wesley wanted them to do. Ministers from the higher walks of life would either to a great degree have wanted those sympathies- that should exist between the shepherd and the flock, or would have yielded before the rough treatment the first Methodist preachers were called to endure. Although the refinement of a century has done much to crush the coarser forms of persecu- tion, it must not be forgotten that the early ministers of Meth- odism were called to encounter physical quite as frequently as logical argumentation. The middle terms of the syllogisms- they, were treated to were commonly the middle of the horse- pond and their sorites the dung-heap. Now the plain men whom Wesley was so fortunate as to enlist in his cause were those whose habits of daily life and undisputing faith in the truth of their system qualified to " endure hardness as good soldiers." They were not over-refined for intercourse with rude, common people ; could put up with the coarsest fare in their mission to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to the poorest of the poor ; and were not to be daunted by the per- spective of rotten eggs and duckings, of brickbats and manda- muses, which threatened to keep effectually in abeyance any temptation to incur the woe when all men should speak well of them. Hence among the first coadjutors of the great leader were John Nelson, a stone-mason ; Thomas Olivers, a shoe- maker; William Hunter, a farmer; Alexander Mather, a baker ; Peter Jaco, a Cornish fisherman ; and Thomas Hanby, a weaver. Thus the ministry that was to fasten upon the people was rightly taken from among the people, a point never to be lost sight of by any religious body aiming at popular influence. In the same proportion as the teachers are selected from the aristocracy or the middle classes, the field of labor will be confined to those classes, and the poor will, by a law that on the broad scale admits of no exceptions, throw themselves into the hands of persons of their own rank. The Church militant IDEAS WESLEY DEVELOPED. 209 must never forget that its highest mission is to the lowest, and that it is then most divine when it can most confidently affirm, after its Master, " To the poor the gospel is preached ! " Any Church that is, to an observable degree, unsuitable to the poor, . disliked by the poor, and deserted by the poor, has failed to the same degree in one main object of its establishment, and fails to the same degree in securing the blessing of the God of the poor. Another point in regard to the ministry to which Wesley gave habitual prominence, was the duty of making that pro- fession a laborious calling. The heart and soul of his system, as of his personal ministry, he made to be WORK. Work was the mainspring of his Methodism activity, energy, progression. From the least to the largest wheel within wheel that necessity created, or his ingenuity set up, all turned, wrought, acted in- cessantly, and intelligently too. It was not mere machinery ; it was full of eyes. To the lowest agent of Methodism be it collector, contributor, exhorter, or distributer of tracts each has, besides the faculty of constant occupation, the ability to render a reason for what he does. Work and wisdom are in happy combination ; at least such was the purpose of the con- triver, and we have reason to believe they have been in a fair proportion secured. And the labor that marks the lower, marks pre-eminently the higher, departments of the system. The ministry, beyond all professions, demands labor. He that seeks a cure that it may be a sinecure, or a benefice which shall be a benefit to himself alone who expects to find the ministry a couch of repose instead of a field for toil a bread-winner rather than a soul-saver by means of painful watchings, fast- ings, toils, and prayers has utterly mistaken its nature, and is unworthy of its honor. It is a stewardship, a husbandry, an edification, a ward, a warfare, demanding the untiring effort of the day and unslumbering vigilance of the night to fulfill its duties and secure its rewards. It is well to remember that the slothful and the wicked servant are conjoined in the denuncia- 210 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. tion of the indignant Master : " Thou wicked and slothful servant!" Where there maybe sufficient lack of principle to prompt to indolence and self-indulgence, there are few communions which will not present the opportunity to the sluggish or sen- sual minister. But the Methodist mode of operations is better calculated than perhaps almost any other for checking human corruption when developing itself in this form. The ordinary amount of official duty required of the traveling preachers is enough to keep both the reluctant and the willing laborer con- stantly employed. And Mr. Wesley exacted no more of others than he cheer- fully and systematically rendered himself, daily labor, even to weariness, being the habit of his life. A glance at his employ- ments at different periods of his career will dispel the mystery attending the marvelous productiveness of his pen, and multi- plicity of his labors, but only to heighten our respect for his industry, perseverance, and conscientiousness. The sketch which he has given of his daily labors is no artist's sketch, hung up in his studio as a specimen of his skill, or poet's por- trait, prefixed to doggerel dithyrambs, with "eye in a fine frenzy rolling," to gratify personal vanity, or lure love-sick misses ; but the grave, unvarnished report of a grave, earnest man, who knew there was little to commend in it, for in doing his utmost he only did what was his duty to do. Yet was he the prince of missionaries, however humble his self-estimate might be ; the prime apostle of Christendom since Luther ; his pre-eminent example too likely to be lost sight of in this mis- sionary age, when the Church, in the bustle of its present activ- ities, has little time to cherish recollections of its past worthies, or to speculate with clearness on the shapes of its future calling and destiny. But in one sense he was more than an apostle. By miracle they were qualified with the gift of tongues for missions to men of strange speech ; but Wesley did not shrink from the toil of acquiring language after language, in order to IDEAS WESLEY DEVELOPED. 211 speak intelligibly on the subject of religion to foreigners. The Italian he acquired that he might minister to a few Yau- dois ; the German, that he might converse with the Moravians ; and the Spanish, for the benefit of some Jews among his parishioners. Such rare parts, and zeal, and perseverance, and learning, are seldom combined in any living man. We have never seen nor heard of any one like Wesley in the capac- ity and liking for labor ; we indulge, therefore, very slender hopes of encountering such a one in the remaining space of our pilgrimage. In our sober judgment it were as san to expect the buried majesty of Denmark to revisit the glimpses of the moon, as hope to find all the conditions presented in John Wesley to show themselves again in England. We may not look upon his like again. Unlike many, unlike most enduring celebrities, Wesley was successful, popular, appreciated during his life-time, nor had to wait for posthumous praise. This was, doubtless, owing in part to the practical bent his genius took, which was calculated to win popular regard, as well as to the unequaled excellence he displayed in the line he had chosen. The man who was known to have traveled more miles, preached more sermons, and pub- lished more books than any traveler, preacher, author, since the days of the apostles, must have had much to claim the admira- tion and respect of his contemporaries. The man who exhib- ited the greatest disinterestedness all his life through, who has exercised the widest influence on the religious world., who has established the most numerous sect, invented the most efficient system of Church polity, who has compiled the best book of sacred song, and who has thus not only chosen eminent walks of usefulness, but in every one of them claims the first place, deserves to be regarded by them, and by posterity, as no com- mon man. A greater poet may arise than Homer or Milton ; a greater theologian than Calvin; a greater philosopher than Bacon or Newton ; a greater dramatist than any of ancient or modern fame; but a more distinguished revivalist of the 14 212 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. Churches, minister of the sanctuary, believer of the truth, and blessing to souls, than John "Wesley never. There was in his consummate nature that exquisite balance of power and will, that perfect blending of the moral, intellectual, and physical, which forms the neplus ultra of ministerial ability and serv- ice. In the firmament in which he was lodged he shone and shines " the bright particular star," beyond comparison, as he is without a rival WESLEYS INFLUENCE ON THE RELIGION OF THE WOELD. They glorified God in me." Gal. i, 24. Tp YERY human being lias some influence on others ; and that J-J influence is good or evil, according to his character ; feeble or powerful, according to his position, his natural talents, or his personal efforts. John Wesley had high principle, genuine piety, and eminent learning, combined with unwearied energy and incessant labors during a long life ; and his influence for good on his contemporaries and on posterity must, in the very nature of things, be proportionately great in its degree and extent so great, indeed, that no human mind can fully estimate it. His influence is mainly spiritual in its nature, and, therefore, eternal in its results; and Like all moral and spiritual causes and operations, its effects stretch into infinity. "We cannot tabulate them; figures and statistics, however carefully and accurately compiled, cannot afford even an ap- proximate estimate of the amount of spiritual good resulting from the life and labors of John "Wesley. Yet we may assert with confidence that blessings so great have resulted from no other life since apostolic times. And these blessings have come without the usual alloy of concomitant or consequent evils. Unlike the awful struggles of the Protestant Reformation, Methodism overthrew no thrones, called forth no armies, and shed no blood, because it evoked no secular power to maintain its authority, to defend its claims, or promote its diffusion. It was purely a spiritual work a mission of love and it depended solely on the God of love for its success. True, it had to encounter fierce opposition; re- proach and scorn, brickbats and blows, were often profusely 214 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. dealt out to the messengers of salvation, and some of them fell martyrs in their holy and benevolent work; but they suffered, like their blessed Lord, with meekness and fortitude, not counting their lives dear unto themselves so that they might finish their course with joy, and the ministry they had received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God. It was not so much the province of John Wesley and his co-workers to recover lost truths, as to vitalize them ; to ex- emplify, enforce, and diffuse them, by their life and ministry. The great doctrines of salvation had been already recovered by the Reformers from the darkness and the putrid corruptions of popery ; and they were asserted in the creeds and formu- laries of Protestant Churches; but they had become buried and fossilized in learned folios, and throughout Christendom they had few living witnesses. Indeed, the experimental doc- trines of justification by faith alone, and the witness of the Holy Spirit, were generally denied in the pulpit, though pro- fessed in the formularies of the Church ; and not only denied, but resisted ; while those who maintained and exemplified these essential truths were branded as visionaries, as deceivers, and rejected as enemies of the Church of God. In the estab- lished Church of England there was orthodoxy in the articles, homilies, and liturgy, but formalism and antichristian heresy in the pulpit. There were, indeed, instances of profound learning and exalted talent, but so equivocally employed as at one and the same time to be defending the evidences of re- ligion and undermining its experimental doctrines ; resisting the arrogant claims of popery, yet rebuilding the Arian hy- pothesis and asserting Pelagian errors. While the doctrines of the Reformation were thus disowned and dishonored in the English Establishment, the Non-conformist Churches had be- come, in numerous instances, corrupt in principle and degener- ate in character. In many Churches predestinarian decrees had engendered Antinomianism, and in others had displaced WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. . 215 the saving doctrines of the cross. Many honorable exceptions there were, as we see in the character of Watts, Doddridge, Seeker, Leighton, Berridge, Adams, Venn, Romaine, Perro- net, Guyse, Hurrion, and other pious contemporaries, who, like the weeping prophet of Judah, sighed over the broken walls of the Church, and prayed and labored for the restoration of truth and holiness ; but their own testimony, also, abun- dantly confirms the gloomy representation we have given of those days. The amiable Archbishop Leighton describes the Church in his day as "a fair carcass without spirit." Burnet, in 1713, complains that " the clergy were under more contempt than those of any Church in Europe ; for they were much the most remiss in their labors and the least severe in their lives ; " and he goes on to deplore the ignorance as well as the immoral lives of the clergy, alleging that the greater part of those who came to be ordained seem " never to have read the Scriptures, and many could not give a tolerable account even of the Cate- chism itself ; " and, further, that the " case was not much better with many who got into orders, as they could not make it appear that they had read the Scriptures, or any good book, since they were ordained." Judge Blackstone, early in the reign of George the Third, impressed with the degenerate condition of the Established Church, had the curiosity to go to hear every clergyman of note in London ; and he states that he " heard not a single ser- mon which had more of the gospel in it than the writings of Cicero ; and that it would have been impossible to know, from what he heard, whether the preacher was a follower of Confu- cius, of Mohammed, or of Christ." " Like priest, like people ; " for it was a natural consequence that ignorance, indifference, and immorality in the clergy should produce ignorance, infi- delity, and profligacy among the people. Archbishop Seeker, in 1738, thus describes the state of the nation : " In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard to 216 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age ; that this evil is grown to a great height in the metropolis of the nation ; is daily spreading through every part of it ; and, bad in itself as any can be, must of necessity bring in all others with it. In- deed, it hath already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such profli- gateness, intemperance, and fearlessness in committing crimes in the lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, be- come absolutely fatal." Similar lamentations over the deadness of the Church and the profligacy, infidelity, and contempt of sacred things in the world, were expressed by Dr. Gruyse, Dr. Watts, and many others ; and this state of things is thus summed up in the " North British Review " for August, 1847 : Never has a century risen on Christian England so void of soul and faith as that which opened with Queen Anne, and which reached its misty noon beneath the second George a dewless night succeeded by a sunless dawn. There was no freshness in the past, and no promise in the future. The memory of Baxter and of Usher possessed no spell, and calls for revival and reform fell dead on the echo. Confessions of sin, and national covenants, and all projects toward a public and visible acknowledgment of the Most High, were voted obsolete, and, in the golden dreams of Westminster, worthies only lived in Hudibras. The Puritans were buried, and the Methodists were not born. . . . The reign of buffoonery was past, but the reign of faith and earnestness had not commenced. During the first forty years of that century, the eye that seeks for spiritual life can hardly find it ; least of all, that hopeful and diffusive life which is the harbinger of more. Bishop Butler observes : "It was taken for granted that Christianity was not so much as a subject for inquiry, but was at length discovered to be fictitious. And men treated it as if this were an agreed point among all people of discern- ment." Had not the providence of God interposed at this crisis, the darkness must have deepened, the depravity gathered strength, and the state and character of the nation have degenerated to the worst degree ; causing it to assume, long ere this, a mixed complexion of heathenism, infidelity, aiid profligacy, such as is revolting to contemplate. Events of a subse- WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. Si 7 quent date would have aggravated existing evils, and given force and activity to the most malignant and pernicious influences. The princi- ples and example of the French nation; the infidel metaphysics of Hume, and the atheistic philosophy of Mirabaud, Diderot, etc. ; the insidious skepticism of Gibbon, couched in elegant diction, and blended with an attractive theme ; the profane wit of Voltaire, and the coarse ribaldry of Paine ; the semi-deism of Priestley, with that of Belsham and Lindsay, and' their coadjutors of the low Socinian school; the numerous equivocal lecturers on scientific subjects, investing nature with self-act- ing and independent powers, to the exclusion of God's presiding and active agency ; and the multitudinous skeptical publications, some elab- orate, and others light and ephemeral, which since that day have con- tinued to swarm from the press, would doubtless, without the counter- acting agency of a powerful revival of experimental and practical religion without such a revival as that exhibited in Methodism have combined to corrupt the principles and deprave the character of the nation, until the measure of its iniquity was full to the very brim, and the land had become reprobate blighted and accursed by .its own enor- mities, and scathed and rejected of God. This awful doom, however, was averted, and that revival of religion denominated Methodism was the principal, though not the only, means at once of saving the country from so great a calamity, and of introducing the brightest era in British history. While these humiliating confessions reveal the degenerate state of the Church in general, and show the need of a refor- mation, they show also, as by a foil, the wonderful influence which the Wesleys, Whitefield, and other holy men must have had in encountering existing evils, and bringing about the great revival which crowned their abundant labors. God had, indeed, been preparing the Church in divers places for the needed reformation just before those eminent men ap- peared actively in the field of labor. It shows the divine ori- gin of this movement, that in the early part of the eighteenth century, and just when the Wesleys and their little band of pious confreres at Oxford were struggling against their sins, and anxiously though ignorantly striving after salvation by penances, mortifications, and good works, gracious revivals had begun almost simultaneously in different and distant parts of 218 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. the world, and that without any connection with or depend- ence upon each other. Thus the Moravian Church at Herrn- hutt, in Lusatia, after enduring severe and protracted suffer- ings in the very spirit of martyrdom, had been visited with power from on high, and become fired with missionary ardor. Jn various parts of New England, under the evangelical minis- try of Jonathan Edwards, hundreds had become converted, and primitive earnestness was excited in the Churches. In the principality of Wales, un'der the powerful preaching of Howell Harris, though a layman, thousands had been brought to God and numerous Churches planted, consisting of converts who had lived previously in the darkest ignorance, and in all man- ner of ungodliness and profanity. Proceeding from the same gracious influence, a remarkable revival was experienced a few years afterward in various parts of Scotland, under the simple but fervent ministry of the Eev. James Robe. These several instances of gracious influence and power in different hemi- spheres at the same time had commenced without any human connection or mutual plan of co-operation. They were sepa- rately originated by that blessed Spirit who worketh as he will, and where he will ; though doubtless in answer to the prayers of his people, and in the use of scriptural means. There had been a few praying people in each place and country, who, unknown to each other, had been sighing and crying over the abominations of the land, and pleading with God for the out- pouring of his Spirit upon the moral deserts around them. And now God was preparing the Wesleys themselves for the great work which he intended them to do. John and Charles Wesley, accompanied by some German ministers, embarked for America October 14, 1Y35, and landed at Savannah February 5, 1736. The two brothers went as mis- sionaries, but failed in .this special work, mainly because they themselves needed a fuller baptism of the Holy Spirit; and doubtless God designed their appointed field of labor to be in another hemisphere. Charles returned to England July 26> WESLEY'S INFLUENCE OK RELIGION. 219 1736, after spending little more than five months in Georgia. John embarked for England December 22, 1737, having spent less than two years in America, and landed at Deal February 1, 1738. The two brothers returned wiser but sadder men ; their experience and their intercourse with the Moravian brethren having taught them that there were blessings of richer enjoy- ment by. which they would be better qualified, as ministers of Christ, for the great work which lay before them. There was now no rest for the souls of these devout men. They read, they prayed, and they inquired after the more perfect way. They received fresh light from the instructions of Peter Bohler, and the testimony and experience of living witnesses, as to the blessing of a full assurance of personal acceptance by simple faith in Christ. They earnestly sought, and they found the blessing : Charles on the 21st of May, 1738, and John on the 24th of the same month. George Whitefield had obtained it before the Wesleys returned from America. These holy men, having received the spirit of adoption, went on their way rejoicing. If a cloud at any time obscured their prospects or damped their joy, it was soon dispelled by faith in Christ, and they grew in grace and in the knowledge of God their Saviour. Having themselves believed, they spoke ; they could not hide the sacred treasure they had found. The love of Christ constrained them ; their souls burned with celestial ardor, and they went forth wherever Providence called them, declaring the grace of Qod to their fellow-men, and offering to them the blessings of a free and present salvation by simple faith in Christ. Soon the doors of the Established Church were closed against them ; but when pent-up walls were forbidden to these messen- gers of mercy, they took to the apostolic method of preaching in the open air. Whitefield began this Christ-like mode of preaching February 17, 1739 ; John Wesley followed April 2, only six weeks after ; the zeal of Charles rose above his Church prejudices, and he proclaimed the Gospel in the open air, May 220 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. 29th of the same year. Now the wide door of the universe was open, and 'gave them boundless scope among the millions of our race, and ready access to the outcasts of men the neg- lected and forgotten of mankind. The colliers assembled at Kingswood and Newcastle-on-Tyne ; and crowds of poor and rich, of high and low, in Moorfields and on Blackheath Com- mon ; and soon in e^ery part of England the long neglected and left to perish had the gospel carried to them by these messengers of mercy, and multitudes were awakened and saved. Masses of men and women amounting to ten thousand, twenty thousand, yea, fifty, and as some have computed, even sixty thousand were drawn together to hear these apostles of mercy, and the word was with power ; Whitefield preaching with the glowing ardor of a seraph, and the Wesleys with the clearness, calmness, and earnestness of the apostles. Mighty signs and wonders fol- lowed, for the hand of the Lord was with them, and the Spirit was poured out from on high. Whitefield traversed England, Scotland, and Ireland, for thirty-four years, and crossed the Atlantic thirteen times, pro- claiming the love of God and his great gift to mankind. A bright and exulting view of the atonement's sufficiency was his theology ; delight in God, and joy in Christ Jesus, were the essence of his religion ; and a compassionate solicitude for the souls of men, often rising to a fearful agony, was his ruling passion : and strong in the oneness of his aim, and the intensity of his feelings, he soon burst the regular bounds, and preached the Saviour on commons and village greens, and even to the rabble at London fairs. He was the prince of English preachers. Many have surpassed him as sermon makers, but none have approached him as a pulpit orator. Many have outshone him in the clearness of their logic, the grandeur of their conceptions, arid the sparkling beauty of single sentences ; but in the power of darting the gospel direct into the conscience he eclipsed them all. With a full and beaming countenance, and the frank and easy port which the English people love for it is the WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 221 symbol of honest purpose and friendly assurance he combined a voice of rich compass, which could equally thrill over Moor- fields in musical thunder, or whisper its terrible secret in every private ear ; and to this gainly aspect and tuneful voice he added a most expressive and eloquent action. But the glory of Whitefield's preaching was its heart-kindled and heart-melt- ing gospel. But for this, all his bold strokes and brilliant sur- prises might have been no better than the rhetorical triumphs of Kir win and other pulpit dramatists. He was an orator, but only sought to be an evangelist. Like a volcano where gold and gems may be darted forth as well as common things, but where gold and molten granite flow all alike in fiery fusion, bright thoughts and splendid images might be projected from his flaming pulpit, but all were merged in the stream which bore along the Gospel and himself in blended fervor. Indeed, so simple was his nature, that glory to God and good-will to man having filled it, there was room for little more. Having no Church to found, no family to enrich, and no memory to immortalize, he was the mere embassador of God ; and, inspired with the genial spirit of his embassy, so full of Heaven recon- ciled and humanity restored, he soon himself became a living gospel. Kadiant with its benignity, and trembling with its tenderness, by a sort of spiritual induction a vast audience would speedily be brought into a frame of mind the transfu- sion of his own ; and the white furrows on their sooty faces told that Kingswood colliers were weeping, or the quivering of an ostrich plume bespoke its elegant wearer's deep emotion. And coming to his work direct from communion with his Master, and in all the strength of accepted prayer, there was an elevation in his mien which often paralyzed hostility, and a self-possession which only made him amid uproar and fury the more sublime. With an electric bolt he would bring the jester in his fools cap from his perch on the tree, or galvanize the brickbat from the skulking miscreant's grasp, or sweep down in crouching submission and shamefaced silence the whole of 222 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. Bartholomew fair ; while a revealing flash of sententious doc- trine or verified Scripture would disclose to awe-struck hun- dreds the forgotten verities of another world, or the unsus- pected arcana of their inner man. " I came to break your head, but through you God has broken my heart," was a sort of confession with which he was familiar. John Wesley, with less of the scathing lightning and alarm- ing thunder in his eloquence, had a lucid precision in his teach- ing, an activity in his movements, and a dexterity in manage- ment, never equaled, perhaps, in the history of man. Both were equally faithful and heart-searching, both abundant in evangelical labors, energetic in character, and steady in their aim to glorify God. Charles Wesley, though from physical debility and tamer spirit less adapted for leading the way in the great movement, was yet an excellent co-worker for a sub- ordinate position, while his admirable genius struck the poetic lyre, and embodied in soft and harmonious numbers the glow- ing spirit of the revival. Such were the master spirits whom God raised up, and so eminently qualified with gifts natural and divine, for that extraordinary work to which they were called, the blessed effects of which we enjoy at this day. Never were sanctified minds more fitted for co-operation : the one was a complement to the other's deficiency, and their united qualities formed an agency of the most perfect combination. Thus, one in object and heart, and so adapted for conjoint usefulness, the Christian mind cannot but deplore that diversity of sentiment on some minor points should have led to separation. But Whitefield embraced the doctrine of absolute predestination, and Mr. John Wesley, fearing its tendency to produce antinomianism, pub- lished a sermon against that doctrine, which gave offense to Mr. Whitefield, and led to separation and temporary estrange- ment. This took place in 1743, about five years after Mr. Wesley's conversion ; but a reconciliation was effected in 1Y50 ; so that although their societies remained distinct, they preached WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 223 in each others' chapels, and their hearts were cemented with true Christian affection. As an evidence of this, WTiitefield added the following codicil to his will : " I also leave a mourn- ing ring to my honored and dear friends, the Revs. John and Charles Wesley, in token of my indissoluble union in heart and Christian affection, notwithstanding our difference in judgment on some particular points of doctrine." Mr. Whitefield died at Newburyport, in New England, U. S. of America, on the 30th of September, 1770. He died in the very midst of his labors, and in a state of utter exhaustion, a martyr to his irrepressible zeal, leaving behind him the im- perishable odor of his saintly character, and tens of thousands of living voices to bless God that ever he was born. Wesley, with equal zeal but less excitement, was spared to continue his apostolic labors until he had attained his eighty- eighth year ; and then the wheels of nature, worn out with incessant and long-continued toil, gently relaxed until they stood still. He preached within nine days of his death. With- out pain and without fear he sang as he neared the eternal world " I'll praise my Maker while I've breath, And when my voice is lost in death, " and on the very night of his exit he repeated, scores of times, the first words of the hymn : " I'll praise, I'll praise." Unable to say more-except the word " farewell," he expired March 2, 1791, and was interred behind City Road Chapel, London. His brother Charles died three years before, on March 29, 1788, and it is a remarkable coincidence that at the very moment when Charles died, his brother John and his congregation in Shropshire were engaged in singing Charles Wesley's hymn, " Come, let us join our friends above That have obtained the prize, " etc. In trying to estimate the influence of Wesley on the Chris- tian world we must first notice his own Church as a part, and 224 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. now no small part, of the Church of Christ. As the result of God's blessing on his genuine Christian experience, the sterling excellence and benevolence of his character, and his abundant labors, many thousands were converted to God, and became inspired with a spirit like his own. Among these were many who, like John Nelson, Thomas J^alsh, and others, were them- selves constrained to preach, and to preach, (with less polish and ability indeed,) but with an earnestness hardly less intense than his own. As the result, thousands more were converted to God. Laborers being raised up as they were needed, the work spread until it prevailed to a wonderful degree, and ex- tended to the regions beyond. In the year 1785, March 24, Wesley records in his journal a brief review of the marvelous work of God in the following sim- ple, but graphic words : "I was now considering how strangely the grain of mustard seed, planted about fifty years ago, has grown up. It has spread through all Great Britain and Ire- land ; the Isle of Wight, and the Isle of Man ; then to America, from the Leeward Islands, through the whole Continent, into Canada and Newfoundland. And the Societies, in all these parts, walk by one rule, knowing religion is holy tempers ; and striving to worship God, not in form only, but likewise 'in spirit and in truth.' ' This gratified review of the progress of God's work was recorded by Wesley six years before his death. But in the meantime "the grain of mustard seed" was still multiplying ; and when his happy spirit was called to its re- ward, the actual number enrolled as members under the organization of Methodism was 140,000 members, supplied by 550 itinerant preachers. Wonderful growth ! But, looking at the wonderful extent of Methodism now, (1878,) eighty-eight years since Wesley's death, what shall we say of the far wider growth, and fructifying power of "the grain of mustard seed ? " It has flourished in every quarter of the world, and its blessings of free salvation are expressed in languages spoken by many nations of the earth, numbering within its com* WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 225 prehensive pale, according to Dr. Tefft's computation, (which gives the latest statistics, and includes the various offshoots of Methodism,) the astounding number of 50,000 preachers, (local and itinerant,) 8,000,000 communicants, and 12,000,000 of hearers. And if we include the Sunday scholars, as we must do in order to arrive at a full and faithful estimate of Methodism, the computation of Dr. Tefft is not an exaggeration. Here, then, taking the world's population at 1,200,000,000, is a ratio of one person to every sixty on the face of the earth either actually enrolled as members of the Methodist Churches or under the influence of the Methodist ministry ! Such a result in one hundred and forty years may well excite wonder, grati- tude, and praise. But, if from earth we lift our eyes to heaven, how many millions of happy glorified spirits are there at this mo- ment, gathered through the agency of Methodism from all parts of the world, around the throne of God, blessing and praising him that they were rescued from eternal perdition and brought to the joys of salvation ! We are overpowered we are lost in wondering contemplation of the vast multitudes that crowd upon our vision ! Not unto us, not unto man, but unto God be all the glory ! He hath done it. " This is the Lord's doing ; at is marvelous in our eyes." " His right hand, and holy arm, hath gotten him the victory." Blessed be his glorious name forever; yea, let all on earth and in heaven praise him for ever and ever. Amen. Yet the vast numbers which constitute the Methodist Churches on earth and in heaven, could we count them all, and place the entire aggregate in figures under our eye, would not adequately nor nearly represent the influence of Methodism. Other Churches have been quickened into new life by the reflex influ- ence of Wesley's piety, and the grand doctrine of a present and full salvation; other Churches have been aroused from lethargic slumbers into activity and enterprise by the example of Wesley's numerous and incessant labors; other Churches have been excit ?d to benevolence by Wesley's self-denying and 226 THE WESLEY MEMOBIAL VOLUME. boundless liberality. It was not possible for a man denying himself, and giving and expending all his income, sometimes to the extent of 1,000 a year in works of beneficence rising at four o'clock, and preaching two, three, or even fonr times a day traveling at a time when railways were not yet thought of, at the rate of four or five thousand miles every year, and amid all these labors writing numerous books, visit- ing prisons and hospitals, managing the affairs of numerous Societies in various parts of the kingdom, and maintaining a correspondence extending over the world I say it was not pos- sible for a man to do these things, and not exert a powerful influence upon thoughtful minds in other Churches. Wesley was, as Robert Hall quaintly said, " The quiescense of turbu- lence ; calm himself while setting in motion all around him." The Churches of Britain and America saw his wonderful activity, and were amazed; they beheld the spiritual results, and became excited ; some to emulation, some to envy, and some to imitation, provoked by his example to love and good works. There was life in Methodism : life in its doctrines, life in its ministry, life in its singing, life in its prayer-meetings, and the spirit of life and power was in all its efforts. Other Churches saw this, and awoke to new life themselves, and thus the reflex influence of Wesley's benevolent and zealous labors ramified and extended in various ways, far beyond the range of his direct and personal efforts. Moreover, in the open air services held by the Wesleys and Whitefield for so many years, great numbers of persons of all ranks in society, and worshipers in all other denominations, were awakened and saved, whose names were never enrolled among the Methodists ; but who, from domestic ties and other influei|ees remained in their own Churches, and there lighted up the.;fires of piety and zeal. Many persons, too, from vari- ous causes, left the Methodist Societies from time to time, and joined other Churches, and helped to leaven them with evan- gelical truth, and inspire them with spiritual life. These in- WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 227 stances were very numerous ; we cannot tabulate them, but they were, and even yet are, of frequent occurrence, and in their aggregate amount To tens of thousands ; and among them hun- dreds of circuit and lay preachers who became settled pastors over Non-conformist congregations, or were ordained as minis- ters in the Established Church. Many, indeed, were driven to this resort by the pressure of want ; for in the early days of Methodism there was little or no provision made for the sup- port of married men and their families, and, therefore, gaunt privation compelled many to seek a sphere of usefulness where a comfortable subsistence could be found. "We mention these facts, not in the spirit of envy or complaint, but to indicate the wide-spread and multifarious ways in which the vital influence of Methodism penetrated other Churches, and extended the kingdom of God. The fact is patent to all, and universally admitted, that with the labors of the Wesleys and their coad- jutors there was a waking up in the Churches which has con- tinued to this day. A sentiment this, sustained by the memor- able verdict of Sir Launcelot Shad well, delivered by him in the exercise of his judicial functions as the vice chancellor of England, and thus expressed : " It is my firm belief that to the Wesleyan body we are indebted for a large portion of the relig- ious feeling which exists among the general body of the com- munity, not only of this country, but throughout a great portion of the civilized world besides." The gracious revival of religion under Wesley, while giving a scriptural prominence to the great doctrine of justification by faith, separated it from the deformity of Antinomianism, and every species of doctrinal fatalism. It divested Christianity from the reproach of a limited atonement, and the -terrors of absolute and unavoidable reprobation. It presented the Gospel in its virgin purity, its celestial benignity and loveliness, as it shone forth on the day of Pentecost and in the apostolic times of refreshing, when thousands in a day were added to the Church. True, it spared not its terrible denunciations against 15 228 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. the impenitent sinner ; it thundered aloud, as from the fiery summit of Sinai, the terrors of the Lord ; but it proclaimed, " in strains as sweet as angels use," the efficacy of a universal atonement, and the boundless mercy of God toward every con- trite soul. It discarded all the " ifs " and " buts " and " special reservation," by which Augustine and Calvin had fettered the promises, restricted the efficacy of grace, and chafed the anx- ious soul in its struggles for mercy. It showed the sinner there was no irresistible decree frowning him from the presence of his Saviour ; that the only obstacle or hinderance was in the sin- ner himself, and that the moment he renounced his hostile weapons, and placed his dependence on Christ as his Saviour, that moment he was justified and accepted of God. These gracious doctrines, with the necessity of personal holiness and obedience as the fruits and evidence of a living faith, were enforced by the ministry and exemplified in the lives of Wesley and his associates in the work of God. Their influence was soon seen in the Churches around, and still continues to be seen. The preaching of the Calvinistic school became greatly modified, and the pulpit generally began to savor more of prac- tical and saving truth than of stale speculations about fore- knowledge and absolute decrees. This change has continued to gain ascendency, and now high Calvinism may be regarded as becoming obsolete and dying out ; and the affectionate offers of mercy and earnest injunctions to personal holiness have happily taken the place of harsh and ascetic dogmas. In this change we heartily rejoice, as an approximation to primitive Christianity, and an auspicious omen to the general interests of religion. Yet while these views of sacred truth were conscientiously held and strenuously maintained by John Wesley, he was no harsh dogmatist, no exclusive bigot. He held the truth in love. His heart, his hand, and his purse were open to men of all creeds and professions; and had he been alive at this day he would have rejoiced in the growing unity of the WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON EELIGION. 229 Churches, as his writings and his life were consecrated to its- promotion. Many useful and invaluable institutions, essential, almost, to the universal diffusion of the gospel and the completion of the triumph over ignorance and sin, date their origin in the re- vival of religion under Wesley and Whitefield ; and some of them may be traced directly to Methodistic agency. SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. It is a common opinion that these heaven- blest institutions owe their origin to Robert Raikes, of Glou- cester. All honor to his name for his pious and philanthropic labors ; but, in truth, he was not the originator of Sabbath- schools. Bishop Stevens, in his " History of Georgia," tells us that John Wesley had a Sabbath-school at Savannah during the time that he was minister there ; and that was about forty- five years before the project was conceived by Robert Raikes. But apart from this, Sabbath-schools in England owe their or- igin to Methodism. The late Rev. Thomas Jackson shows, in his " Memoir of Hannah Ball," a pious Methodist at Wycombe, that this young woman established a Sunday-school in that place in 1769, and was honored as the instrument in training many children there in the knowledge of God's holy word. This good work commenced, therefore, twelve years before the benevolent enterprise of Robert Raikes. This fact was proba- bly unknown to him; but even so, the very idea of the Sab- bath-school was suggested to his mind by Sophia Cooke, another young Methodist the lady who afterward became the wife of the celebrated Samuel Bradburn. When the benevolent citi- zen of Gloucester was lamenting the prevalence of Sabbath desecration by the young savages of that town, and seriously asked what could be done for their reformation, Sophia Cooke meekly but wisely suggested, " Let them be gathered together on the Lord's day and taught to read the Scriptures, and taken to the house of God." This suggestion being approved and adopted, 'the same young lady assisted Raikes in the organization of his school, and walked along with the philanthropist and his 230 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. ragged urchins the first time they attended the church. John Wesley wrote to Robert Raikes a letter encouraging him in his good work ; and by articles in his own magazine, and by letters to his preachers, he promoted the adoption of Sunday-schools in his own denomination, observing at the time, as if prophetic of their future growth and importance, " I find these schools springing up wherever I go ; who knows but some of these schools may be nurseries for Christians." Nurseries, in- deed, they have been, and still are, for the Churches. From v them the Churches have been replenished with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of members ; and among them not a few of her brightest luminaries, her ablest ministers, her most enterprising and useful missionaries and their wives. It is impossible to tabulate the glorious results of these heaven-born institutions ; but I find that several years ago the number of Sunday scholars connected with Methodism was computed by the Rev. Luke Wiseman at " three millions and nearly five hundred thousand," which we have reason to regard as a very moderate estimate at that time ; but since then the number must have increased to four millions as connected with Methodism, while not less than six millions of Sunday scholars are under the care of other Christian denominations. How many of these children and young people are annually brought to the enjoyment of salvation cannot be accurately given ; but from some statistics collected by the Sunday-school Union in England, and published in the report of 1875, we have ground for believing that the aggregate result of the labors of pious Sabbath-school teachers must, indeed, be very great. In that report it is stated that of the schools in the Un- ion eighty-four per cent, of the teachers were formerly Sunday scholars ; that eighty per cent, of the teachers are members of Churches ; and that 13,248 of the scholars had that year be- come united with the respective Churches. But, of course, the report of the Sunday-school Union refers to those schools only which are identified with the Union, and these are but a frac- WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 231 tion of the whole.* Yet these facts may be taken as a fair sample of the results of Sabbath-school instruction generally, certainly not as an exaggeration, especially as the work of the Sunday-school teacher is now become more spiritual in its char- acter, and the aim of the Christian teachers more directly turned to the salvation of the scholars under their care. How many thousands of Sunday scholars may we now hope are con- verted to God in one year in the aggregate number of Sunday- schools throughout the world ? And how many tens of thou- sands, yea, hundreds of thousands, have been converted during the hundred years since Hannah Ball, the young Methodist, opened her school at Wycombe ? And how many have been transplanted from the garden of the Church on earth to flour- ish forever in the paradise of God above ? * Here the pious im- agination may luxuriate ; here may gratitude raise her voice in exultant praise ! SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. Sunday-schools, however, were but one means out of many which "Wesley employed to pro- mote the great work of education. In the very year when he shook off his prejudice against open-air preaching, and betook himself to the great temple of nature, Wesley and Whitefield united in founding the first Methodist seminary; and the very neighborhood, too, where the voice of the revivalist preacher was first heard in the open air was the spot where their first school was erected, Whitefield laying the corner- stone of Kingswood School, and Wesley finding the funds for its erection and maintenance. At the very first Conference which Wesley held, (1744,) the question was formally pro- posed, "Can we have a seminary for laborers?" This shows what was in Wesley's heart for men and ministers as well as youths ; but means were wanting, then, or the claims of other objects were more cogent at the moment. But in subse- * The entire number reported as belonging to the [English] Sunday-school Union in 1875 is thus stated: Schools, 4,145; teachers, 98,904; scholars, 870,638; not one tenth of the whole number in the world. 232 THE WESLEY MEMOKIAL VOLUME. quent Conferences the question was resumed again and again, and though not realized at the time, the thought lived in "Wes- ley and his successors, and was ultimately carried into effect by the establishment of those numerous and important schools and colleges, in England and America, and in their mission Conferences, which are a high honor to the liberality and intellectual culture of the great Methodist family. Thus the revival of religion was the revival of education, and they both advanced together hand in hand. TRACT SOCIETIES. The Religious Tract Society of London is a noble institution ; it is one of the glories of the age. It sows divine truth broadcast over the earth, at the rate of 200,000 religious tracts and books every working day in the week, or 60, 000, 000* every year; and since its origin, in 1799, it has sent forth silent messengers of truth and mercy to the extent of 1,600,000,000 of copies. It may not, however, be generally known that this institu- tion is one of the outgrowths of the wonderful revival and diffusion of earnest religion produced under God by the labors of Wesley, Whitefield, and their zealous coadjutors. Yet so it was. Wesley, indeed, had written, published, and circulated numerous tracts, and even organized a " Tract Society" a number of years before the great society in Paternoster Row was conceived. Only four years after Wesley had experienced the great spiritual change, he began his career as a writer and distributor of -religious tracts ; for in the year 1762 we find he had already written and distributed by thousands, tracts en- titled, " A Word to the Smuggler," "A Word to the Sabbath- breaker," "A Word to the Drunkard," "A Word to the Swearer," " A Word to the Street-walker," "A Word to the Malefactor." And these tracts, he distributed himself, and supplied them to his preachers that they might scatter them broadcast wherever they could do so to the probable good of the recipients. In 1745 we find him rejoicing that his efforts were inducing others to adopt the same mode of usefulness ; WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 233 for he writes, " It pleased God to provoke others to jealousy, insomuch that the Lord Mayor had ordered a large quantity of papers dissuading from cursing and swearing to be printed and distributed to the train-bands. And on this day, " An Earnest Exhortation to Repentance," was given away at every church door in or near London to every person who came out, and one left at the house of every householder who was absent from church. I doubt not God gave a blessing therewith." This was tract distribution by wholesale, the effect, evidently, of Wesley's example. Wesley did more than this. He saw in such a work the im- portance of organization, of general sympathy and co-operation, and, therefore, he issued a prospectus 'and formed "A Religious Tract Society " to distribute tracts among the poor. He laid down only three simple rules, but a list of thirty tracts was proposed, already written or published by himself as a begin- ning, and the proposal concludes with these characteristic words : " I cannot but earnestly recommend this to all those who desire to see scriptural Christianity spread through these nations. Men wholly unawakened will not take pains to read the Bible. They have no relish for it. But a small tract may engage their attention for half an hour ; and may, by the bless- ing of God, prepare them for going forward." Here, then, was the organization of a " Religious Tract So- ciety." designed, as Wesley himself states, for " these nations" and based upon the most broad, catholic principles ; and this Society was in existence and operation seventeen years before the Religious Tract Society of Paternoster Row was organized. Yet, strange to say, in the " Jubilee Yolume of the Religious Tract Society " of Paternoster Row, the efforts of John Wes- ley are not once named ! On reading that official volume some time ago I was amazed to find that though the isolated efforts of some others are made prominent, the extensive labors of John Wesley in this department of usefulness are unnoticed, and the Religious Tract Society he organized is not even 234: THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. named. This strange omission must, we think, have been the result not of design, but of the absence of information. But though unnoticed or unknown by Mr. Jones, the author of the above work, there can be no doubt that great institution which is blessing the world every week with more than a million of religious tracts and books, is the legitimate offspring of Wes- ley's labors and of his influential efforts in the same line of usefulness. It is gratifying to know, that although the Eelig- ious Tract Society established by John "Wesley does not now exist in its original form, its successor lives in vigor alrcKpros- perity at the Wesleyan Book-Boom, in City Eoad, London, having 1,250 distinct and separate publications in 1871, and issuing in one year (1867) not fewer than 1,570,000 tracts, all printed and published by itself. BOOKS AND PERIODICALS. While Wesley was the origin- ator of a Eeligious Tract Society, he was at the same time the active promoter of general knowledge. In 1749 we find evidence that he had previously published volumes as well as tracts, and now he began to issue his " Christian Library," in fifty volumes, embracing all sorts of valuable knowledge, but expurgated from the mixture of all sentiments that might be detrimental to sacred truth. In the year 1777 he began to publish the "Arminian Magazine," which he edited him- self until his death. His preachers were his colporteurs, for every circuit was to be supplied with books by the " assistant," or superintendent preacher; and thus the press was made a powerful auxiliary to the living voice in diffusing knowledge, defending truth, and promoting the spread of religion. All that Wesley did, and all he said, echoed the voice of God, " Let there be light." He was a foe to ignorance, because he was the friend and the messenger of truth ; and to render his wholesome literature accessible to the poor, he sold his publi- cations as cheap as possible, and where means were wanting to purchase he was ever ready to give his publications without charge. WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 235 BIBLE SOCIETIES. The British and Foreign Bible Society, formed in the year 1804, is, without doubt, the grandest institution in the world. Yet it was not the first organiza- tion to dispense the written word. It was preceded by the Naval and Military Bible. Society, formed twenty-five years before. But both these institutions originated in the great religious movement of the age one, indeed, directly from Methodist agency, and the other from Methodistic influ- ence. The venerable Thomas Jackson refers to this fact in his " Centenary of Methodism," and the Rev. Luke Tyer- man in his copious " Life and Times of Wesley," gives us the following interesting account of the origin of the first Bible Society in the world. He says, in voL iii, page 314 : " The first Bible Society founded in Great Britain, and perhaps in the world, was established in 1779, and was the work of Meth- odists. George Cussons and John Davies, after leaving the Leaders' meeting in West-street Chapel, entered into conversa- tion, and when near Soho Square, formed a resolution to endeavor to raise a fund for supplying soldiers with pocket Bibles. They and a dozen of their friends united themselves into a Society for promoting this object. Their meetings were held once a month in the house of Mr. Dobson, of Oxford- street. John Thornton, Esq., of Clapham, became a generous subscriber. The first parcel of Bibles was sent from the vestry of Wesley's West-street Chapel ; and the first sermon on behalf of the Society was preached in the same chapel by the Rev. Mr. Collins, from the appropriate words, ' And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. And they said, Woe unto us, for there hath not been such a thing heretofore.' Thus arose the Naval and Military Bible Society" This institution, which still -exists as a distinct organization, was the precursor by twenty-five years of the great Bible So- ciety for the world ; and both sprang from the same cause that craving for Bible truth which the revival of religion had 236 THE WESLEY MEMOEIAL VOLUME. excited. There is an obvious and providential connection between this and kindred institutions. The gracious revival of experimental religion excited the benevolent principle, and stimulated men and women to do good ; and one form of doing good was, as we have already seen, giving gratuitous religious instruction to the young ; hence the origin of Sunday-schools. Sabbath-schools produced in a few years a generation of readers. To afford wholesome pabulum to hundreds of thousands of newly created readers, religious tracts and books must be sup- plied ; to meet' the narrow means of the poor, the books must be supplied at a cheap rate. Hence, Wesley's tracts, and his Christian Library, of fifty volumes ; and hence, too, his Kelig- ious Tract Society, followed, as it was, seventeen years after by the great organization of the Tract Society in Paternoster Kow. But it was not possible that the religious thirst now excited could be wholly satisfied with human literature. There was the Bible, the Book of God, the fountain of all religious truth, and sole ground of its authority. This must be had. The desire became intense, and equally so the zeal of holy men to meet it. This desire had become so ardent among the people in Wales, where the circulating schools of Howell Harris and his zealous coadjutors had promoted education, that the Rev. Thomas Charles, of Bald, came to London to interest benevo- lent men in supplying the population of Wales with copies of the Holy Scriptures. A meeting of some ministers and brethren was called, and it was proposed to organize a Society for this purpose, " to supply the population of Wales with the Bible." Joseph Hughes, of Battersea, got up, (I fancy I see him now, for I knew that holy man,) and he uttered these words : " Form a society for Wales ! Why not form a society for the world ? " As if inspired by the noble sentiment, it was resolved to widen the basis and purpose of the society, to embrace not only the small principality of Wales, but the whole world. The Bible Society was then inaugurated, and thus we see how naturally WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 237 it grew under the providence of God, from the gracious revival of experimental religion, to the promotion of which the Wes- leys and George Whitefield had devoted their lives. Other holy men, especially the zealous evangelists in Wales, performed a worthy part, but history will ever accord the most prominent place to John Wesley in this great and glorious movement. The Bible Society has existed seventy-four years, and it has accomplished a work unequaled in the annals of our world. It has published the Book of God in nearly three hundred lan- guages or dialects, and, including the issues of its auxiliaries at home and abroad, it has circulated since its commencement, copies of the word of God in whole, or in portions thereof, to the amazing number of one hundred and thirty millions, and is sending them forth at the rate of five millions every year. Behold, what hath God wrought ! In the committee formed at the organization of the British and Foreign Bible Society we see the names of two distin- guished Methodists, Christopher Lundius and Joseph Butter- worth; and in the third year of its existence we find the name of the Rev. Dr. Adam Clarke, then the president of the Wesleyan Conference, who, at the special request of the Bible Society, was appointed by the Conference to London for the third year, his presence being deemed indispensable to the work of providing the Scriptures in foreign languages. These facts show both the direct and indirect influence of Methodism in giving the Bible to the world. MODERN MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. I have before me the rec- i ord of more than forty missionary institutions for spreading the gospel at home and abroad, all of which have risen since 1790, and to these a large number of kindred institutions may be added ; and though some of these have no nominal connec- tion with Methodism, they all, doubtless, originated in that religious awakening which Wesley, Whitefield, and their asso- ciates in labor and prayer, so extensively promoted. For, in- deed, Methodism itself is one great collection of missionary 238 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. organizations. When Wesley found the churches closed against him he said, " The world is my parish ; " and henceforth knew no more ecclesiastical restraints. The great commission to the apostle was " Go ; " here is " itinerancy ; " and Wesley and his preachers went forth; they traveled. The great commission said, " Go into all the world ; " and hence no more parochial limitations for Wesley. The great commission said, " Preach the gospel to every creature ; " and hence the outlying masses must be reached ; and if they will not come to the gospel the gospel must be carried to them ; and hence the open-air aggres- sions, and the ministry exercised in barns, cottages, fairs, mar- ket-squares, and in all places where neglected humanity could be found. Here was missionary life and effort in the very soul and essence of Methodism ! Lay preachers rose up at first in units, then in tens, then in hundreds, and ere long in thou- sands. Here was the revival of an obsolete but a primitive mode of diffusing the gospel. Men speaking for Christ in homely phrase, but in living earnestness, because the love of Christ and the love of souls constrained them. Without ordi- nation and without ecclesiastical authority, except that which Christ himself imparted and inspired ; and here were missiona- ries ready at once for the work required. This formed no part of Wesley's plan ; for, indeed, he had no plan but that of fol- lowing wherever God's providence and Spirit might lead. It led him to this in spite of his former prejudices; for it grew out of the spiritual life of Methodism as naturally and sponta- neously as the tree grows from the vitality and energy of the root. Hence the missions of Methodism to distant lands and for- eign climes rose without any organization,* for, indeed, the organization came not until the mission work had gained a * January, 1784 eight years before the Baptist Missionary Society, twelve years before the London Missionary Society, and sixteen years before the Church Missionary Society Dr. Thomas Coke and Thomas Parker organized a Foreign Missionary Society, and published " A Plan of the Society for the Establishment of Missions among the Heathens." EDITOR. WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 239 footing in various parts of the world. Thus, twenty-six years before Dr. Coke went to the West Indies, a negress and her master, Nathaniel Gilbert, had introduced Methodism into Antigua, (West Indies.) This beginning, followed up by the labors of John Baxter, a ship carpenter, had resulted in a Soci- ety of 1,569 members, and the converted negroes themselves had built a chapel from their own earnings. Hence it was the work of Dr. Coke not to originate but to extend the mission, which had spontaneously grown up from lay agency in the West Indies. It was the same in the United States of America. Philip Embury, an Irish emigrant, excited to his duty by the zeal of Barbara Heck, had commenced preaching in his own house, and formed a Methodist Society in New York in 1Y66 ; and soon after Captain Webb, arriving in New York, preached to the people in his uniform ; and when, three years after, in 1769, the Conference in England sent Richard Board- man and Joseph Pilmoor, they found already a Society of 100 members and a place of worship that contained 1,YOO people ; but as only one third of the hearers could get in, the other two thirds had to listen outside the building as well as they could. Here, again, the work of missions had sprung up without human organization, just as the primitive missions sprang up in Cesarea, in Cyprus, in Antioch, etc., in apostolic times. It was to assist this infant mission Church in New York that the first missionary collection was made at the Conference of 1Y69. It was much the same in Canada, Nova Scotia, and many other parts of America. We cannot, for want of space, narrate the facts, though they are of thrilling interest, showing the vital power, the spontaneous development, of Methodism. Suffice it to say that Methodism, thus planted in America, continued to spread in every part of the great republic under the apostolic labors of Francis Asbury, whose incessant activity emulated the enterprise of Wesley, and the burning fervor of John Nel- son and Thomas Walsh. No labors could exhaust, no difficul- 240 THE WESLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME. ties could conquer, the energy of that devoted man. He forded rivers, he penetrated forests, he tracked the footsteps of the hardy emigrant to the uttermost settlement, and carried the gospel to the remotest bounds of civilization. He was, in- deed, a bishop of the primitive type, in labors abundant, in perils oft : and amid his incessant and arduous toils, by night as well as by day, carrying with him the care of all the Churches of his ever-widening episcopate. His contempora- ries labored with corresponding zeal and self-denial. His suc- cessors have carried on the great work transmitted to their hands, and copious showers of blessings have been poured upon their Churches. Methodism, taken in the aggregate, occupies no small space on the surface of the globe. Born of missionary zeal, all the sections of Methodism are actuated by the missionary spirit, and employ their wealth, their influence, and some of their best men as missionaries in spreading the gospel both at home and in various parts of the heathen world. Looking at the facts before us, we cannot but regard Methodism as a great missionary institution, putting forth its own energies for the conversion of the world, and by its spirit, its efforts, and its example, kindling the fire in other Churches, and becoming by moral influence, the main cause, under God, of the wonderful revival of missionary zeal in the several denominations which have, within the last sixty years, waked up to the duty of doing their part in evangelizing the nations of the earth. " Methodism," said the eloquent Dr. Chalmers, " is Christianity in earnest." Yes, and one part of its mission was and is to arouse other Churches to earnestness. As the Rev. Dr. Dobbin, though a Churchman, and of the Dublin University, writes, when referring to the origin of Methodism and its powerful influence on Christendom : " Never was there such a scene before in the British Islands; there were no Bible, tract, or missionary societies before to employ the Church's powers, and indicate its path of duty; but Wesley WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON KELIGION. 241 started them all. The Church and the world were alike asleep ; he sounded the trumpet and awoke the Church to work." The venerable Perronet had the same feeling in his day, while Wesley was alive ; for when looking around on the wonderful effects of Methodism, he wrote these remark- able words : "I make no doubt that Methodism is designed by Providence to introduce the approaching millennium." A sentiment which the subsequent development and influence of Methodism has served to illustrate and confirm. LAY-PKEACHING. To lay-preaching, to which we have re- ferred, we must be allowed to give a more extended notice. When introduced by Wesley it was viewed by a slumbering Church as " a startling novelty" and pronounced " an astound- ing irregularity ;" but soon as she awoke, and rubbed her eyes, she saw that instead of being "a startling novelty," it was the revival of a practice as old as Christianity itself ; and instead of being "an astounding irregularity," it had primitive example for its precedent and apostolic sanction for its authority. When the disciples "were scattered abroad," they " went every-where preaching the word " in " Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch ; " and instead of this effort of spontaneous zeal being rebuked, "the hand of the Lord was with them : and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord." And while the Church retained her vital en- ergy and aggressive power, the practice of lay-preaching was continued ; for we find in the early part of the third century, Origen, while unordained, went from Egypt to Pal- estine to preach in the churches ; and Alexander, the Bishop of Jerusalem, and the Bishop of Cesarea, in a joint letter to the Bishop of Alexandria, justify the practice, saying, " Wher- ever any are found who are fit to profit the brethren, the holy bishops of their own accord ask them to preach unto the people." Hence, "the astounding irregularity" lay not in adopting, but in so long neglecting, the primitive and di- vinely sanctioned practice of lay-preaching. It was divinely 242 THE WESLEY MEMOKLAL VOLUME. sanctioned now in the abundant blessing which rested upon "Wesley's humble workers, and through their agency the gospel was carried to hundreds of benighted villages and towns which the regularly ordained ministers could not reach; and thus was created a rich and abundant source from which, ever since, the regular itinerant ministry has been supplied. Other Churches saw the practice and the blessing resting upon it, and it seemed like a new revelation dawning upon them. Henceforth a lay agency was adopted, and this augmented power imparted new energy and efficiency to the Christian world. Many Churches, once stiffened with ecclesiastical starch, and muffled with sacerdotal vestments, have been given to see that Christianity, to fulfill her mission, must awake and put oil strength ; must shake herself from the dust, and loose the bands from her neck, and go forth untrammeled and work with elastic freedom, employing all the resources of her power and her people to save mankind. Thus Methodism not only awoke religion from her tomb, but burst the bandages by which she had been trammeled and restrained, and bade her go free to bless the nations of the earth. We have not space to do justice to a subject so copious, so diversified, so rich in facts of interest, and facts increasing in number as years roll on. SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE-TKADE. Slavery is now become extinct not only in the British dominions but also in America ; but who knows how much the well-known sentiments of Wes- ley have influenced public opinion on this subject? At the time when Whitefield was the advocate of slavery and the owner of fifty slaves, and when John Newton afterward rector of St. Mary's, Woolnoth, London was engaged in the African slave-trade, John Wesley was denouncing slavery, and in 1774 he published a tract of fifty-three octavo pages against it. In the very year that Wesley's utterance was pronounced, Granville Sharpe began to advocate in public the cause of freedom. Fifteen years after the society was formed for " The Suppression of the Slave-trade," Wesley's tract was re- WESLEY'S INFLUENCE ON RELIGION. 243 published in Philadelphia, and the agitation was continued until England paid down the sum of 20,000,000 sterling for the freedom of the slave. The same feeling grew in Amer- ica until slavery was abolished, and Churches for a time alien- ated met and embraced each other in fraternal sympathy and love. SACKED LYRIC POETKY. In noticing the influence of Meth- odism on the Churches it would be inexcusable not to advert to its poetry. The Holy Spirit which actuated John Wes- ley to revive true experimental religion inspired Charles Wesley to give it expression in poetic numbers. Methodism required just such hymns as Charles and John Wesley com- posed. Its psalmody must harmonize with its earnest spirit and give it vocal utterance. Its doctrines of free grace, uni- versal redemption, justifying faith, the Holy Spirit's witness, and entire sanctification ; its intimate and holy fellowship; its clear apprehensions of duty ; its sublime morality, and its intense missionary ardor, required to be embodied in sacred song for the purpose of public worship, and of family and closet devotion. But where was poetry to be found to ex- press the