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 From Hurst's History 
 of Methodism. 
 
 PAINTED BY J. JACKSON, H.A. 
 
 The Rev. John Wesley, M.A. 
 
 By permission 
 ot Euon J: .Mains.
 
 17O3. 19O3. 
 
 THE 
 
 BI-CENTENARY 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 IN 
 
 SAVANNAH, GA. 
 
 "Wesley's" Only .American. 
 Home. 
 
 June 25-29, 19O3. 
 
 SAVANNAH, GA. : 
 
 THE SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS PRINT 
 1903.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In this volume is presented in permanent form the ex- 
 ercises in Savannah, Ga., of the celebration of the 2OOth an- 
 niversary of the birth of John Wesley. 
 
 This celebration is of peculiar interest as Savannah was 
 the only home of Wesley on the American continent. 
 
 The following is the calendar of his movements in America. 
 
 Tuesday, Oct. I4th, 1735, embarks for Georgia accom- 
 panied with Mr. Benjamin Ingham, Mr. Charles Delamotte 
 and Mr. Charles Wesley. 
 
 Thursday, Feb. 5th, 1736, anchors in Savannah River near 
 Tybee. 
 
 Friday, Feb. 6th, 1736, landed on Cockspur Island, on 
 which Fort Pulaski is located, and conducted divine services. 
 
 Thursday Feb. I9th, 1736. Pays first visit to Yamacraw 
 and Savannah. 
 
 Sunday, March 7th, 1736, preached first sermon in a rude 
 hut, used for Court House, which stood in the northeast 
 corner of Bull street, and Bay street lane. Text, I Cor., xiii. 
 
 Monday, March I5th, 1736, moved into the ministers' 
 house, which stood on the parsonage lot between Drayton 
 and Congress streets. Here he fixes 2nd rise of Methodism. 
 
 Tuesday, March 3Oth, 1736. Makes first visit to Frede- 
 rica. 
 
 Sunday, May 9th, 1736, moved his services into the new- 
 ly erected Court House ; a large and convenient place, where 
 the new marble Court House now stands. 
 
 Monday, July 26th, 1736, begins his first journey to 
 Charleston, S. C. 
 
 Monday, Aug. ist, 1737. Visits New Ebenezer, Saltz- 
 berger's church and village. 
 
 Friday, Dec. 2nd, 1737. Left Savannah on his way back 
 to England. 
 
 Thursday, Dec. 22, 1737. Embarked from Charleston for 
 England. 
 
 Wednesday, Feb. ist, 1738, landed at Deal, Eng., on the 
 anniversary of the landing of Oglethorpe in Savannah, hav- 
 ing spent two years and almost five month = way from his 
 native land.
 
 METHODISM IN SAVANNAH. 
 
 In 1790 the name of "Savannah Town" appears for the 
 first time in the minutes of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 and Hope Hull is assigned as preacher. Ten years before 
 this the conference had taken strong anti-slavery grounds, 
 declaring it "contrary to the laws of God, man and nature, 
 and contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure religion." 
 
 Owing to these sentiments and a lingering prejudice 
 against Mr. Wesley, Hope Hull met violent opposition upon 
 his arrival here. Mobs were formed and the violence be- 
 came such that he left the city. 
 
 In 1791 Hezekiah Arnold, 1792, John Bonner, and 1793 
 Hope Hull, were appointed to "Savannah Circuit," cover- 
 ing a large territory, but there is no proof that any of these 
 men preached in Savannah during that time. 
 
 The name, "Savannah Circuit," then disappears from the 
 minutes until 1796, when it appears as "Burke and Savan- 
 nah," with Jonathan Jackson, and Josiah Randall as the 
 preachers, but it is doubtful if they ever tried to preach 
 here. 
 
 The appointment disappears from the minutes until the 
 year 1800, (when Savannah and St. Mary's are coupled to- 
 gether, and John Garwin sent as preacher. At the end of 
 that year Garwin reported fourteen members at St: Mary's, 
 but none for Savannah, so it was again dropped from the list 
 of appointments as an unpromising field. 
 
 In 1806, at the session of the South Carolina conference, 
 of which Georgia formed a part, Bishop Asbury called for 
 a volunteer from among the preachers to take charge of 
 this appointment. Samuel Dunwoody, a young and ardent 
 man responded to the call and was assigned to this place 
 for the year 1807. He taught school for a support, and 
 preached at the alms house, and the hospital, the immates 
 being able neither to persecute nor to run from him, he held 
 his ground and his congregation. He tried to preach to 
 others, but his ministry was confined almost exclusively to 
 his pupils and the family where he boarded. 
 
 This year he had a visit from Jesse Lee, who planted 
 Methodism in the New England states, and carried it over 
 the line, into Canada, but who was now on the Sparta Cir- 
 cuit. In his journal of April 19, 1807, Lee says "at night,
 
 8 WFSLEY SI-CENTENARY, 
 
 at Mr. Myers', I preached. I had a crowded house and 
 many were forced to remain out of doors. It was a good 
 time to many souls." A class of three was formed from 
 those who had been Methodists elsewhere, and at conference 
 five whites and seven negroes were reported as members. 
 Whether the other two whites and the negroes were con- 
 verts here, or seed corn borrowed from elsewhere, I have 
 no means of ascertaining. 
 
 In the northwest corner of Colonial Park, about sixty 
 yards from Oglethorpe avenue, and half that distance from 
 Abercorn street, is the grave of Mrs. Jane Dennis Wilson, 
 who died in 1847. On it is inscribed "One of the three that 
 constituted the first-class meeting in 1812." This date is 
 evidently wrong, doubtless being confused with the date of 
 the erection of the first church. It should be 1807. Mrs. 
 Wilson was the grandmother of Mrs. W. A. Jaudon of this 
 city. 
 
 In 1808 James H. Millard was the preacher. He lost one 
 member and gained none. In 1809 Savannah was joined 
 to the Augusta and Louisville Circuit, with John McVean 
 as preacher. In 1810 McVean was sent to Savannah, and 
 reported that year nine white and seven colored members, 
 which looked like some advancement; but in 1811 Urban 
 Cooper came as preacher, and at the end of the year re- 
 ported but three white and two negroes, a total of five mem- 
 bers, alter nearly twenty years' work a poorer result than 
 is obtained from the mission fields of China. A fact that 
 some might note with profit. 
 
 During these years there is no evidence as to where the 
 services were held, further than an occasional reference in 
 some private journal about preaching in a private house. 
 
 On Dec. 31, 1799, the City Council gave deeds to lots to 
 several denominations, among them the lot east of Haber- 
 sham street and between State and President streets, was 
 granted to some of Hammett's followers, known as Primitive 
 Methodists. They built a church on it, but soon afterward 
 disbanding, the trustees sought to vest it in their preacher, 
 Rev. Adam Cloud, who built a residence on a portion of 
 the lot. 
 
 The Methodist Episcopal Church having been organized 
 in 1807, on April 13 of that year, the members petitioned 
 Council to require Cloud to turn the property over to them. 
 The council decided that as the Primitive Methodist Church 
 here was dead that Cloud had no title and so ordered him 
 to turn the property over to the trustees of the Methodist
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 Episcopal Church. As Cloud resisted this, the Council, to 
 save the congregation further trouble, recognized their trus- 
 tees, John Millen, George Harrel and Ebenezer Starke, as 
 the lawful owners, and gave them a deed to the lot on the 
 northeast corner of Lincoln street and Oglethorpe avenue, 
 in exchange for a deed to lot on which Cloud lived. After 
 much trouble Council succeeded in ejecting Cloud, and re- 
 gaining the property. 
 
 In 1812 James Russell came as preacher, and having gqt- 
 ten aid from abroad began the erection of a house of wor- 
 ship. He was returned in 1813, when the building was 
 completed, and dedicated by Bishop Asbury, on Sunday, 
 Nov. 21, 1813. This church was called Wesley Chapel. As- 
 bury, in his journal, says : "I preached twice in the Wesley 
 Chapel. This is a good, neat house, sixty feet by forty. 
 Our chapel cost $5,000; others would have made it cost 
 twice as much perhaps. We are indebted to Myers and 
 Russell for much of this saving." At the end of this year 
 there were thirty white and thirty-five negro members. 
 
 The Myers mentioned above was Rev. Lewis Myers, who 
 was presiding elder and one of the leading men of the 
 South Carolina Conference. Of James Russell, Bishop An- 
 drew says : "He possessed the power of persuasion beyond 
 any preacher I ever heard. Thousands were converted 
 under his ministry. He was a very extraordinary man. He 
 was stationed in Savannah, where the flock was unable to 
 support him and he threw himself upon his own exer- 
 tions for support. This was the first step of entanglement 
 in worldly traffic that resulted in his ruin. He failed to 
 meet his engagements, and received the severity of a judg- 
 ment without charity." Because of this he located. Of his 
 death, Andrew says : "His sun shone clear at its setting, and 
 went down without a remaining cloud. His name has come 
 down to the present as one of the most remarkable men 
 of his time." 
 
 In 1818 Solomon Bryan was the preacher, and in 1819-20 
 William Capers, afterwards elected Bishop. He was the 
 father of Bishop Capers of the Episcopal Church. During 
 these years the membership averaged about forty whites 
 and perhaps twice as many negroes. 
 
 In 1821 under John Howard, the great grandfather of 
 Dr. J. G. Jarrell of this city, there was a revival that raised 
 the membership of the church to 143 whites and 174 negroes. 
 
 In 1822-23 the preacher was James O. Andrew, after- 
 ward elected bishop of whom there is now one son and two
 
 10 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 grandsons in the ministry. During his first year George 
 White was his assistant and during the second E. J. Fitzger- 
 ald. In 1824 Thomas L.Wynn was in charge of the church. 
 He was the father of Rev. A. M. Wynn and the grandfather 
 of Mrs. S. B. Adams of Savannah. 
 
 In 1825 came George Hill, and in 1826 Charles Hardy. 
 At the end of this year the church had only ninety-two 
 white members. 
 
 Elijah Sinclair was' in charge of affairs in 1827-28. During 
 his ministry there was another revival that raised the mem- 
 bership to 183 whites and 270 negroes. In 1829 came Bond 
 English, 1830 Benjamin Pope and in 1831 I. A. Few, the 
 first president of Emory College. In 1832 Elijah Sinclair 
 came again, and with him another revival that raised the 
 membership, which had fallen off, to 305 whites and an al- 
 most equal number of negroes. 
 
 In 1833 came George F. Pierce, afterward a bishop and 
 at the time the greatest orator in the Southern pulpit. Geor- 
 gia has never produced a greater orator than he. 
 
 William Capers came again in 1834, and in 1835 came 
 Alexander Speer, father of Rev. E. W. Speer and grandfather 
 of Judge Emory Speer. Alexander Speer had been Secretary 
 of State in South Carolina before entering the ministry. 
 
 In 1836-37 James E. Evans was the minister, 1838-39 
 James Sewel, and 1840 I. A. Few again. H. M. White was 
 his assistant. In 1841 came J. E. Evans and E. H. Myers, 
 father of Rev. H. P. Myers of the South Georgia Conference, 
 and in 1842 J. E. Evans and J. B. Jackson. In 1843 Daniel 
 Curry was preacher, and in 1844 Josiah Lewis, father of Rev. 
 Walker Lewis. In 1845-46 came Caleb W. Key, father of 
 Bishop Key. 
 
 Alford T. Mann, under whose ministry was begun the 
 building of a new church, came in 1847-48. The congrega- 
 tion had outgrown its old home, although twenty feet had 
 been added to it, and a Sunday-school room had been built, 
 fronting on Oglethorpe avenue, in the block west of the 
 church, better and more convenient quarters were needed. 
 Therefore Asa Holt, Mordecai Sheftall, Seaborn Goodall 
 and Robert D. Walker, trustees of Wesley Chapel, bought 
 the site on which Trinity Church now stands, and the cor- 
 nerstone was laid Feb. I4th 1848. 
 
 1849-50, J. E. Evans came for the third time as pastor. 
 In the latter year the church was completed and called 
 Trinity. Wesley Chapel was closed and the entire mem-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENABY. 11 
 
 bership moved into the new building, which was dedicated 
 by Rev. A. T. Mann, Feb. 23, 1850. 
 
 The minister for 1851 was W. R. Branham; for 1852, 
 Lovick Pierce, "old man eloquent," and 1853-54, W. M. 
 Crumley, the father of Rev. Howard Crumley. In 1853 there 
 was a great revival and the congregation became too large 
 for one church, hence Wesley Chapel was reopened in '54 
 with J. G. Paine as preacher. He died of yellow fever that 
 summer. The appointment was continued until '60, when 
 it was dropped and the property afterward sold. The fol- 
 lowing preachers served it one year each after '54 in the 
 order given : W. M. Crumley, T. H. Jordan, David Hol- 
 mes, L. G. R. Wiggins, H. J. Adams and John T. Norris. 
 
 In 1860 the minister was E. W. Speer. In '61-62 J. H. 
 Caldwell, and in '63, '64, '65 and '66 A. M. Wynn. In '67 R. J. 
 Corley was sent to Trinity and A. M. Wynn to Isle of Hope. 
 This was merely nominal, as Rev. Wynn was really pastor 
 of Trinity, and Rev. Corley, a young man then, was as- 
 sistant. 
 
 About this time all the negro members having left the M. 
 E. Church, South, and joined the A. M. E. Church, old An- 
 drew Chapel, on New street, which had been run for years 
 as a mission for the negroes, was closed up. 
 
 In i868-'69, Geo. G. G. N. MacDonell, who has given two 
 sons to the mission field, was at Trinity, with D. D. Cox 
 as city missionary. A Sunday-school had been run in Chat- 
 ham Academy for some years, and with this as a basis, 
 Brother Cox began his work, and on the 25th day of Jan- 
 uary, '68, organized a church with 71 members. At the quar- 
 terly conference, two days after, R. D. Walker moved that it 
 be called "Wesley Chapel," and thus was born "Wesley 
 Monumental Church." The change of name was due to A. 
 M. Wynn, who conceived the idea of building a church as 
 a monument to John Wesley, Robert Mclntyre and C. D. 
 Rogers were appointed a building committee to fit up the 
 old German Lutheran Church, which stood on the present 
 site of Wesley Monumental Church. 
 
 In '75 when the cornerstone of her present magnificent 
 building was laid, the building committee consisted of R. 
 D. Walker, R. B. Reppard, Robert Mclntyre and C. D. 
 Rogers, from Trinity, and C. H. Carson and W. H. Burrell 
 from Wesley. 
 
 In '77 while J. W. Simmons was citv missionary, the trus- 
 tees of Trinity bought the lot on which Grace Church and 
 parsonage now stands, and built a frame house for the small
 
 12 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 congregation, and set it up as New Houston Street Church. 
 In 1890 the congregation began the erection of the present 
 edifice, and with the aid of Mr. Robert Mclntyre and the 
 Methodism of the city, brought it to a completion. 
 
 In i88i-'82-'83, J. O. Branch, who has two sons in the 
 ministry, came to Trinity, while in i884-'85-'86-'87 came 
 T. T. Christian, who also has two sons in the ministry. In 
 1886 the trustees of Trinity Church bought a lot and built 
 Marvin Church in Robertsville. In May, '91, it was moved 
 to the corner of West Broad and Charles streets. In Jan- 
 uary, '97, that building was sold and a new church and par- 
 sonage was built on the corner of Jefferson and Thirty- 
 Seventh streets. 
 
 In 1888 Robt. Mvlntyre, whose liberality abounded so 
 towards Wesley Monumental and Grace churches, built the 
 Sunday-school room in rear of Trinity Church and presented 
 it to the congregation. 
 
 Savannah now has four well established, self-supporting 
 churches with over 1,800 members. 
 
 As a result a well equipped city missionary was provided 
 for and a forward movement begun.
 
 WESLE\ BI-CKNTENAKY. 13 
 
 OPENING EXERCISES THURSDAY, JUNE 25th, 
 5:30 A. M. 
 
 The opening of the celebration was most auspicious. At 
 the hour appointed Wesley Monumental Church was filled 
 with interested people, and on the platform was seen Bishop 
 Candler of Georgia; Hon. Samuel B. Adams, Rev. J. W. 
 Heidt, D. D. ; Rev. A. M. Williams, Rev. H. C. Christian, 
 Rabbi Mencles, D. D., of the Mickva Israel; Rev. Chas. H. 
 Strong, D. D., of St. John's P. E. Church; Rev. W. C. 
 Schaeffer, D. D., Lutheran Church of the Ascension ; Rev. 
 W. A. Nisbet, Westminster Presbyterian Church ; Rev. John 
 D. Jordon, D. D., First Baptist Church; Rev. R. Vande- 
 venter, of the Duffy Street Baptist Church ; Rev. \V. P. Mc- 
 Corkle, D. D., of the First Presbyterian Church, and other 
 ministers. 
 
 Hymn sheets had been distributed and the service was 
 begun by the singing of hymn No. 171, "Come, Holy Ghost, 
 Our Hearts Inspire," by Charles Wesley. The entire con- 
 gregation joined in the singing and it was very effective. 
 
 Rev. Dr. J. W. Heidt of Oxford district, read a portion of 
 Scriptures, from I3th Chapter First Corinthians, and lead 
 in prayer. 
 
 Hymn No. 207, "O, Might My Lot Be Cast With These." 
 Charles Wesley, was sung. 
 
 The offertory, Dudley Buck's arrangement of "Rock of 
 Ages," sung by the choir, was prettily rendered. 
 
 THE BISHOP'S REMARKS. 
 
 Bishop Candler before introducing Judge Adams, took oc- 
 casion to speak briefly on the general subject of Wesley and 
 his work. It was very pleasant to note such an assemblage, 
 he said, on the occasion of the opening of the celebration. 
 Wesley was unquestionably the most remarkable man of the 
 eighteenth century, and one of the most remarkable of any 
 century. 
 
 The Bishop alluded to the fact that celebrations similar 
 to this were being conducted in all parts of the world, and 
 that the newspapers and magazines were filled with articles
 
 14 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 on the life and works of John Wesley. The world owed 
 much to Wesley and the observance of his natal day was 
 very right and proper. In Savannah, where Wesley had 
 lived and labored while in this country, it was especially ap- 
 propriate that great attention be paid to the celebration, 
 Savannah had no doubt called many of her citizens famous, 
 but Wesley might easily be said to be Savannah's renowned 
 citizen. 
 
 Bishop Candler then introduced Judge Adams, and at the 
 close of his address, Hymn No. 486 was sung, and the ben- 
 ediction was pronounced.
 
 Hon Samuel B. Adams.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 17 
 
 "JOHN WESLEV, THE POUNDER OP METHODISM.' 
 
 An Address Delivered the Evening of June 25, 1903, by 
 Samuel B. Adams 
 
 
 
 Fellow Methodists, Ladies and Gentlemen: This even- 
 ing's exercises usher in a notable occasion, the assemblage 
 of Methodists in Savannah, at the Bi-centenary of his birth, 
 to do honor to John Wesley, their "Father in Israel," to 
 whom, under God, is peculiarly due the Methodist move- 
 ment and the great Church which resulted from that move- 
 ment. It is fitting that the celebration be held in this city, 
 his only American home, the scene of his labors for twenty- 
 two months, the place which witnessed, to use his words, 
 "the second rise of Methodism." I welcome this large 
 gathering. 1 trust that the celebration will mean more than 
 a mere Methodist jubilee, and that its inspiration will be in- 
 corporated in the lives of his followers to the end that they 
 exhibit increased steadfastness and zeal in the good work 
 started by our founder. 
 
 I use the word "founder" deliberately, and yet I realize 
 that the question as to who is responsible for a particular 
 Church is vastly less important than the question as to 
 what that Church is doing for God and humanity. An in- 
 dividual who boasts often of his pedigree is not, usually, 
 the person to whom his descendants will refer with pride. 
 Unless we are walking worthily of the founder, we publish 
 our unworthiness when we stress the fact that he is our 
 spiritual head. That Church is the. best Church which best 
 illustrates the teachings and spirit of Christ, the great Head 
 of the Church, which does the best service in His name and 
 best helps its members to be what they ought to be, whether 
 the Church knows its earthly founder or not. 
 
 I appreciate, too, the fact that the word "founder," when 
 applied to a true scriptural Church, is not felicitous, or en- 
 tirely accurate. When we use it we speak after the manner 
 of men. I recognize, using the language of another, <( that 
 no man nor set of men can create a Christian Church. Its 
 underlying principles and sacraments are of God. Its ends, 
 its sanctions, its authority and its power are all divine. God
 
 18 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 made the Church ; it is His !" But, under God, the organiza- 
 tion of the Methodist Church was due chiefly to John Wes- 
 ley and to the principles revived and stressed by him. It 
 was the inevitable and by him the anticipated result of the 
 movement commonly known as the "Methodist movement," 
 started, sustained and developed by him. 
 
 I discuss the theme assigned me in no controversial 
 spirit. I do not object to any Church honoring him. He 
 was too big a man to be the exclusive property of any de- 
 nomination. He was np mere sectarian. Because, here in 
 Savannah, he was a priest of the Church of England, intense- 
 ly devoted to its rubrics and never, technically, withdrew 
 from the National Church of England, there may be 
 special reason for that Church, or one of her daughters, do- 
 ing him honor. We all ought to be glad to have him honor- 
 ed by any Church, or by any people, and of the reflex bless- 
 ings resulting to those honoring him. The Church of Eng- 
 land was wonderfully helped in its spirituality by the Metho- 
 dist movement, a fact which some of its greatest men 
 have, in late years, gladly recognized. The recognition of 
 the obligation, while in the main tardy, is now complete. 
 The Church of England ought to build him a towering 
 monument, not as a Churchman, in that capacity his title 
 to it cannot be established, but as a Prince in Israel, who 
 put the Church under the highest possible obligation, be- 
 cause he stirred the dying embers of its spiritual life and 
 helped to save it from utter spiritual death. 
 
 By Methodism we mean "the doctrines and polity of the 
 Methodist Church." This definition, taken from the Cen- 
 tury Dictionary, is sufficient for our purpose. This same 
 authority defines a founder as follows : "An originator ; 
 one from whom anything derives its beginning; an author, 
 as the founder of a sect of philosophers ; the founder of a 
 family." This definition does not ignore the fact that the 
 principles of every true philosophy existed before the founder 
 was born, just as the principles of every true Church must 
 have been taught of God and must be based upon His revela- 
 tion. But John Wesley revived, stressed and fixed the doc- 
 trines of the Methodist Church. He originated its polity. 
 Those doctrines and that polity to-day are essentially Wes- 
 leyan. His sermons, known as "The Four Volumes," and 
 his "Notes on the New Testament," furnish the body of 
 our divinity. If he were living to-day he would be a repre- 
 sentative Methodist.
 
 WESLEY BI-CKNTENAUY. 19 
 
 Stress is sometimes laid upon the fact, by those who 
 would challenge our right to Wesley, that he never, tech- 
 nically, seceded from the National Church known as the 
 Church of England. I submit that this insistence simply 
 "sticks in the bark." As suggested by another, it is an ef- 
 fort to claim the "corpse" rather than the real man. He 
 was substantially out of the Church of England for many 
 years before his death, and his only real religious affilia- 
 tions were with the people called Methodists. The leaders 
 of the Church certainly did not, with one or two isolated 
 exceptions, regard him as a member. They repudiated and 
 scorned him. Their consensus of opinion, manifested by acts 
 as well as by words, as to his ecclesiastical status is rather 
 more valuable than the occasional views of modern Church- 
 men, who confine themselves to the surface fact mentioned 
 without looking more deeply into the real question. From 
 the date of what he calls his conversion, he ceased to be a 
 ritualist and became Wesley, the evangelist, Wesley the 
 spiritual father of the Methodists. In his sermon delivered 
 in April, 1777, on laying the foundation of the new Metho- 
 dist Chapel near the City Road, London, he refers to 
 the formation in Savannah "of the rudiments of a Metho- 
 dist Society;" to this then 'Vehement attachment" to the 
 Church and its rubrics ; to the fact that, at the time, he 
 would never admit a dissenter to the Lord's Supper unless 
 he would be re-baptised, and, after these words, he signifi- 
 cantly says "Nay, when the Lutheran minister of the Saltz- 
 burghers at Ebenezer, being at Savannah, desired to receive 
 it, I told him I did not dare to administer it to him, be- 
 cause I looked upon him as unbaptised ; as I judged baptism 
 by laymen to be invalid, and such I counted all that were 
 not episcopally ordained. Full of these sentiments, if this 
 zeal of the Church (from which I bless God he has now de- 
 livered me) I returned to England in the beginning of Feb- 
 ruary, 1738." After stating how his preaching was unac- 
 ceptable to the Churches, he adds: "In a short time, partly 
 because of those unwieldly crowds, partly because of my 
 unfashionable doctrine, I was excluded from one and another 
 and at length shut out of all." As far back as 1739, to the 
 scandal of good Churchmen, he preached in the open air to 
 immense crowds and had that hearing which was denied him 
 in the Church buildings. At this time he established a meet- 
 ing house at the foundry in Moofields, and soon thereafter 
 Bristol and Kingswood followed, and these were places for 
 public preaching and religious meetings. Other preaching
 
 20 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 houses were erected, and, for fifty years, these places were 
 settled upon Wesley himself. They never at any time be- 
 longed to the Church of England, or were subject thereto. 
 They came into the Methodist connection through Wesley. 
 The general and systematic exclusion of himself and his fol- 
 lowers from the Lord's Supper led to his administration of 
 the sacrament to his Societies at Bristol as early as 1740. 
 This right was soon demanded and secured by other So- 
 cieties, and was another important step towards the estab- 
 lishment of a separate Church. As early as 1741 he set 
 apart lay preachers for the preaching of the Word, and, 
 long before his death, a number of these preachers adminis- 
 tered the sacraments in Methodist Churches. He had his 
 first conference in 1744 and early thereafter until his death, 
 the latter part of the century. Mr. Watson justly says, 
 concerning these first-appointed lay preachers, : "It has 
 been generally supposed that Mr. Wesley did not consider 
 his appointment of preachers as an ordination to the minis- 
 try but only as an irregular appointment of laymen in the 
 spiritual office of merely expounding the scriptures in a 
 case of moral necessity. This is not correct. They were 
 not appointed to expound or preach merely but were solemn- 
 ly set apart to the pastoral office ; nor were they regarded by 
 him as laymen, except when, in common parlance, they were 
 distinguished from the Clergy of the Church." It has also 
 been well-said and it is true, that "it was not until nearly 
 forty years after this that he began to use the imposition of 
 hands; but that was a mere circumstance; not the essence 
 of ministerial ordination." From the time that he read and 
 accepted, in 1746, the views of Lord King, he always main- 
 tained that the "uninterrupted succession was a fable which 
 no man ever did or could prove" and that the office of Bishop 
 was originally one and the same with that of Presbyter, and 
 it resulted in his claiming the same right to ordain as any 
 Bishop in the Church. Naturally, he was denounced by pul- 
 pit and press as a dissenter and a schismatic, with no part 
 or right with the Church, and was as completely and sub- 
 stantially out of its pale as if he had enrolled himself as a 
 dissenter. He was not actually tried and expelled by any 
 technical judgment of expulsion. This may be, because of 
 the reason assigned by his brother, Samuel Wesley, in a 
 letter written to their mother in 1739, J ust before the death 
 of Samuel, in which this earnest Churchman denounces, with 
 great warmth and freedom, the irregularities and schism of 
 "Jack" and his followers, saying, among other things "they
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 21 
 
 designed separation. They are already forbidden all the 
 pulpits in London, and to preach in that diocese is actual 
 schism. In all likelihood, it will come to ^,ie same all over 
 England, if the Bishops have courage enough. They leave 
 off the liturgy in the fields * * As I told Jack, I am not 
 afraid the Church should excommunicate him (discipline is 
 at too low an ebb) but that he should excommunicate the 
 Church. It is pretty near it." 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that these Methodist Societies, 
 which existed for fifty years under Wesley's guidance and 
 control, supplied by Methodist preachers, were ever organi- 
 zations within the established Church. They were entirely 
 independent of that Church. They and their members were 
 never at any time under the control of any Bishop or other 
 representative of the Church of England. A considerable 
 per cent, of them had never been members of the Church 
 of England, were technical and avowed dissenters and their 
 dissent was no bar to their admission or obstacle in the 
 way of their full fellowship. It is true that a few clergymen 
 of the Church of England were connected with these So- 
 cieties, but they were not members by virtue of their orders. 
 As clergymen of the Church, they had no authority over 
 the Societies. Wesley encouraged them to go to the Parish 
 Church, when they were allowed to do so, but he did not 
 assume to require this, or make their attendance a test of 
 their loyalty to the Societies. An increasingly large propor- 
 tion of them abstained from going year by year. Many 
 years before Wesley's death Methodism was completely 
 organized in England as well as in America and Wesley 
 was its acknowledged father and head. Before he had sent 
 Coke to America,, there was as completely a Methodist 
 Church in England as there is to-day. Wesley generally, 
 but not always, called the organizations Societies. The 
 mere name, however, cannot be significant. He more than 
 once referred to them as a Church. At the time of his 
 death there were in Great Britain, the Isle of Man and the 
 Channel Islands, nineteen circuits, two hundred and twenty- 
 seven preachers and 57,562 members. In Ireland there 
 were 29 circuits, 67 preachers and 14,006 members. There 
 were also n mission circuits in the West Indies and British 
 America, 19 preachers and 5,300 members. The number in 
 the United States was supposed to be 43,265. These consti- 
 tuted no inconsiderable Church, and, with absolute unanimi- 
 ty, Wesley was regarded as their leader, their Father in 
 Israel and their founder. The Church of England had no
 
 22 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 more jurisdiction or authority over them than the Church 
 of Rome. 
 
 A superficial view of the case might convict Wesley of be- 
 ing unstable and inconsistent because of his expression of 
 variant and irreconcilable views in his Journal. This is true, 
 not because he was insincere or inconstant, but because his 
 mind was for years in a formative state and he was strug- 
 gling (unwittingly) against the logical results of his convic- 
 tions and changes of opinion. Let it be always borne in 
 mind that he was born and bred an intense Churchman and 
 Tory. He clung to a National Church persistently, even 
 stubbornly. Anything that bore the name of "dissent" 
 caused his prejudices to revolt, and yet he ceased to be a 
 Churchman in the Church of England sense of the word 
 soon after his return to England from America, although 
 still calling himself a Churchman. I do not attach much im- 
 portance to a mere name. A man born and bred a Demo- 
 crat and intensely devoted to the party name would cease 
 to be a Democrat if he held and professed distinctively Re- 
 publican and anti-Democratic principles, although he might 
 insist upon the name. . 
 
 Wesley himself realized that his position of opposition to 
 a technical separation, notwithstanding the substantial 
 separation which had taken place as to the necessary re- 
 sult of his course, was not logical. Hear his notable words, 
 contained in a letter to bis brother Charles written as far 
 back as 1755 : "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 'es- 
 sence of the Church of England, considered as such, con- 
 sists of 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." While this is true, it is also true that even 
 in England where the jurisdiction of the Established 
 Church existed that, (using the words of another,) "Wesley 
 not only pointed but paved the way to all that has since been 
 done, and that the utmost divergence of Methodism from 
 the Church of England at this day is but the prolongation of 
 a line the beginning of which was traced by Wesley's own 
 hand." 
 
 A careful study of his utterances from time to time on 
 this subject will show that when he advised against a separa-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 23 
 
 tion he had in mind a formal and collective act by the Con- 
 ference, or by the authoritative action of the Methodists 
 a body. He did not expect, certainly for years before his 
 death, that the bulk of his people, or any considerable num- 
 ber, would remain in the communion of the Established 
 Church or be subject to its discipline, even in England. On 
 the contrary, he distinctly anticipated another result and 
 prepared for it, although to the last, expressions may be 
 found advising against this formal step in England. In 1755 
 he wrote a letter to the Rector of the Church of England 
 in which appear these words : "At present I apprehend those 
 and those only to separate from the Church who either re- 
 nounce her fundamental doctrines, or refuse to join in her 
 public worship. As yet we have done neither." In a letter 
 to the Dublin Chronicle, published in 1789, he says : "The 
 Rev. Edward Smythe earnestly advised me to leave the 
 Church; meaning thereby (as all sensible men do) to re- 
 nounce all connection with it, to attend the services of it 
 no more and to advise all our Societies to take the same 
 steps. His reasons were severally considered and answer- 
 ed and we all determined not to leave the Church." The 
 minutes of the Conference of 1766 show that the formal ques- 
 tion "Are we not dissenters?" was proposed and Wesley 
 replied to it as follows : "We are irregular ; one, by calling 
 sinners to repentance in all places of God's dominion, two, 
 by frequently using extempore prayer. Yet we are not dis- 
 senters in the only sense which our law acknowledges, 
 namely, persons who believe it is sinful to attend the service 
 of the Church." In a sermon preached in 1789, he thus 
 declares himself, "Many warm men say, you do separate 
 from the Church ; others are equally warm because they 
 say, I do not. I will show nakedly the thing as it is. I hold 
 all the doctrines of the Church of England. I love her 
 liturgy; I approve her plan of discipline, and only wish it 
 could be put in execution. I do not knowingly vary from 
 any rule of the Church, unless in those few instances where 
 I judge, and far as I judge, there is an absolute necessity." 
 (He instances preaching abroad, praying extempore, or- 
 ganizing his Societies in classes, holding Conferences and, 
 in those Conferences, stationing the preachers). "But all 
 this is not separating from the Church. So far from it, 
 that, whenever I have opportunity, I attend the Church 
 services myself and advise all our Societies so to do." In 
 a letter to his brother Charles, written in 1785, he states 
 that "the Church of England" means "all the believers in
 
 24 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 England, except Papists and Dissenters, who have the word 
 of God and the sacraments administered among them." He, 
 of course,, used the word "Dissenters" in the technical and 
 legal sense. He referred only to those who were so legally,, 
 and had claimed the privileges belonging to the sects 
 known as Dissenters under the Toleration Act. Under this 
 broad definition, all of his members, except Dissenters, be- 
 longed to the Established Church, whether they ever went 
 to church or not, or in any way recognized their connec- 
 tion with it. We quote the following significant language 
 from his "Thoughts on Separation from the Church" writ- 
 ten in 1788: "The question properly refers (when we speak 
 of a separation from the Church) to a total and immediate 
 separation. Such was that of Mr. Ingham's people first, and 
 afterwards that of Lady Huntingdon's, who all agreed to 
 form themselves into a separate body without delay and to- 
 have no more connection with the Church of England than 
 with the Church of Rome. Such a separation I have always 
 declared against ; and certainly it will not take place, if ever 
 it does, while I live. But a kind of separation has already 
 taken place and will inevitably spread, though by slow de- 
 grees." It continued to spread, and, as the result, the peo- 
 ple called Methodists as completely ceased even in England 
 to attend the Churches of the Establishment as those of the 
 Baptist or Presbyterian or any other separate organization,, 
 but, in Wesley's sense of the term, British Methodism has 
 never separated from the Church of England. Even so 
 formal and solemn an instrument as this deed poll, executed 
 in 1784, constituting and defining the Conference, and fix- 
 ing the title to all the property, did not make this complete 
 separation in Wesley's understanding of the term. It even 
 made provision for clergymen of the Church of England to 
 be among his preachers and exempted such clergymen from 
 his law of itinerancy. It has been correctly stated by an 
 eminent authority that "the key by which we are to unlock 
 all the seeming inconsistencies in Wesley's course and re- 
 solve them into instances of real consistency with the Mas- 
 ter-principle of his life is simply this : Wesley was, first of 
 all, an evangelist called of God to preach the gospel, whether 
 with or without ecclesiastical direction or consent, and after 
 that next after, but still at a great interval he was a 
 Churchman." As far back as 1744 the minutes of the Con- 
 ference for that year show an express discussion of the 
 probabilities of secession, and Wesley then asserts, accord- 
 ing to these minutes, "but we cannot, with a good con-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 25 
 
 science, neglect the opportunity of saving souls while we 
 live for fear of consequences which may possibly or proba- 
 bly happen after we are dead." In 1785 he writes to his 
 brother, "Indeed I love the Church as sincerely as ever I 
 did, and I tell our Societies everywhere, the Methodists will 
 not leave the Church, at least while I live." In his journal 
 of August 26, 1789, he makes the following record: "I met 
 the Society at Red Ruth and explained at large the rise and 
 nature of Methodism and stiH aver I have never read or heard 
 of, either in ancient or modern history, any other Church 
 which builds on so broad a foundation as the Methodists do, 
 which requires of its members no conformity, either in opin- 
 ions or modes of worship, but purely the one thing to fear 
 God and work righteousness." Let it be borne in mind that 
 he was writing in England and of English Methodists. The 
 case as to American Methodism is clear beyond reasonable 
 doubt. After the meeting of the Conference in Baltimore 
 which organized the Methodist Episcopal Church of Ameri- 
 ca no expression of his against separation could possibly 
 have referred to this distinct Church. 
 
 Lord Mansfield (who may be almost as good an authority 
 as some of our modern churchmen) gave it as his opinion 
 that "ordination is separation." Under this opinion (one 
 quoted to John Wesley by his brother Charles as conclu- 
 sive in a letter written in 1786) just as soon as he ordained 
 this was ipso facto separation, whether he so designed or 
 not. Dr. Ryle, the Bishop of Liverpool, is quoted as saying, 
 in an address delivered not many years back, "There are 
 many things the people ought to know about Wesley that 
 are not generally known, and, among them, this, that he 
 loved the Church of England from the earliest days of his 
 life; that he never formally left the Church of England, but 
 that the Church of England obliged him to go outside." 
 Miss Wedgewood, a member of the Church of England, 
 whose evidence on this subject ought to be worth some- 
 thing, writes, in her work on "John Wesley and the Evan- 
 gelical Reaction of the i8th Century," as follows: "It was 
 not in their (the Church of England's) power to crush the 
 new order, but the strange anomalies of the English law 
 had left it in their power to force it to become a sect. If it 
 was possible that the Church of England should sanction 
 an itinerant order preaching her doctrines, and with few ad- 
 ditions necessary to secure existence in enforcing her rules, 
 the clergy of the i8th century determined to make it possi- 
 ble. They excommunicated the Methodists; they set on a
 
 26 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 mob to stone them; they diverted all the energy which had 
 been spent on Deists and Arians to attack the men who 
 preached the gospel to heathens. Thus forced into a camp 
 of their own, organization and discipline became a necessity 
 to the order. They would gladly have attended the Parish 
 churches ; they did for very long continue to repair to them 
 for the sacred rights which formed their pledges of church 
 membership, but even this had to be given up at last, and, 
 at the close of Wesley's long life, the time arrived for this 
 last stage in Methodist organization, a separation from the 
 Church." 
 
 But the Methodist Church in America, in a special sense, 
 can call John Wesley its organizer and founder. How any 
 one can question the title of American Methodism to him is 
 incomprehensible. Such a denial is as untenable as the 
 claim that he ever belonged to the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church of this country. This Church and the Methodist 
 Church of America may be both daughters of the Church 
 of England, but John Wesley was never a member of the ec- 
 clesiastical organization known as the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church. There are two principles of universal law and of 
 common sense which should not be overlooked. One is 
 that what a man does through another he does himself, and 
 another is, that the ratification of an unauthorized act by 
 an agent makes the act that of the principal, as completely 
 so as if the agent had been originally and specially instructed 
 to do the act by the principal. 
 
 Nothing that he ever did or said can have the evidential 
 value so far as this question is concerned, as the ordination 
 of Coke and of Whatcoat and Vasey and his letter of Sep- 
 tember 10, 1784, addressed "To Dr. Coke, Mr. Asbury and 
 our brethren in North America." Wesley was then 81 years 
 of age. The course adopted by him was with the utmost 
 deliberation. It was not ascribable to the indiscretion of 
 youth. It cannot be explained upon the theory of the ap- 
 proach of senility. His mind was clear and vigorous to the 
 last days of his life. It was not a new idea with him, this 
 right to ordain. He had believed in it for nearly 40 years, 
 perhaps longer. This letter is formal and authoritative. It- 
 may be called "ex cathedra." Unless assured that he was 
 the acknowledged head of the brethren addressed, and of 
 their organizations, it would be the veriest and most trans- 
 parent assumption and audacity. There was no thought at
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 27 
 
 * 
 
 the time in the mind of any one that he was taking the 
 slightest liberty. On the contrary the communication was 
 received and heeded by the Methodists of American as loyal- 
 ly as any intense Churchman would listen to a pastoral let- 
 ter from his Bishop. I quote the letter in full : 
 
 "By a very uncommon train of providences, many of the 
 provinces of North America are totally disjoined from the 
 mother country, and erected into independent states. The 
 English government has no authority over them, either civil 
 or eccelsiastical, any mor~ than over the states df Holland. 
 A civil authority is exercised over them, partly by the con- 
 gress, partly by the provincial assemblies. But no one 
 either exercises or claims any ecclesiastical authority at all. 
 In this peculiar situation, some thousands of the inhabi- 
 tants of these states desire my advice, and in compliance 
 with their desire, I have drawn up a little sketch. 
 
 "Lord King's account of the primitive church convinced 
 me, many years ago, that bishops and presbyters are the 
 s?.ir,e order, and consequently have the same right to ordain. 
 For many years, I have been importuned, from time to time, 
 to exercise this right, by ordaining part of our travelling 
 pn?achers. But I have still refused ; not only for peace sake, 
 but because I was determined, as little as possible, to vio- 
 late the established order of the national church to which I 
 belonged. 
 
 "But the case is widely different between England and 
 North America. Here there are bishops, who have a legal 
 jurisdiction ; in America there are none, neither any parish 
 ministers ; so that, for some hundreds of miles together, 
 there is none either to baptize, or to administer the Lord's 
 supper. Here, therefore, my scruples are at an end ; and I 
 conceive myself at full liberty, as I violate no order, and in- 
 vade no man's rights, by appointing and sending laborers 
 into the harvest. 
 
 "I have accordingly appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis 
 Asbury to be joint superintendents over our brethren in 
 North America ; as also Richard Whatcoat and Thomas 
 Vasey, to act as elders among them, by baptising and ad- 
 ministering the Lord's supper. And I have prepared a litur- 
 gy, little differing from that of the Church of England, (I 
 think the best constituted National church in the world,) 
 which I advise all the travelling preachers to use on the 
 Lord's day, in all the congregations, reading the litany only 
 on Wednesdays and Fridays, and praying extempore on all
 
 28 >WESLEY BI-CENTENAEY. 
 
 other days. I also advise the elders to administer the supper 
 of the Lord, on every Lord's day. 
 
 "If any one will point out a more rational and scriptural 
 way of feeding and guiding these poor sheep in the wilder- 
 ness, I will gladly embrace it. At present, I cannot see any 
 better method than that I have taken. 
 
 "It has, indeed, been proposed to desire the English 
 bishops to ordain part of our preachers for America. But 
 to this I object: (i) I desired the Bishop of London to or- 
 dain one, but could not prevail. (2) If they consented, we 
 know the slowness of their proceedings ; but the matter ad- 
 mits of no delay. (3) If they would ordain them now, they 
 would expect to govern them; and how grievously would 
 this entangle us ! (4) As our American brethren are now to- 
 tally disentangled from the state and the English hierarchy, 
 we dare not entangle them again, either with the one or the 
 other. They are now at full liberty, simply to follow the 
 scriptures and the primitive church. And we judge it best 
 that they should stand fast in that liberty, wherewith God 
 has so strangely set them free." 
 
 Note the reasons given for not exercising the right to 
 ordain in England, not only "for peace sake" but because 
 "I was determined as little as possible to violate the estab- 
 lished order of the National Church to which I belonged." 
 Loyalty to the Government, to which the Church was a 
 part, there being a union of Church and State, was involved 
 in a separation from the National Church, and this union 
 and this principle had no bearing upon the situation in 
 America. "Loyalty with me is an essential branch of re- 
 ligion," he said upon another occasion. He expresses in this 
 letter, as clearly as language can, the fact that the Church 
 of England had no jurisdiction over the American Church, 
 that the American brethren were totally separate from the 
 English Church and must take their place as a separate 
 church, working out their own destiny. The step was taken 
 too in compliance with a request of the American Metho- 
 dists. Most of the clergy of the Church of England had 
 gone to England during the struggle for American Inde- 
 pendence. The Methodists demanded that they should have 
 their own ministers and that the sacraments should be ad- 
 ministered by them in their own churches. With Coke and 
 this letter Wesley sent a printed liturgy containing prayers, 
 forms for ordaining superintendents, elders and deacons, 
 the articles of religion, and a collection of pslams and 
 hymns; and all this was necessarily for the permanent use
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 29 
 
 of a separate and distinct church. The Methodist preach- 
 ers of America had a formal conference at Baltimore to 
 receive Coke and the instructions from Wesley. At this 
 conference, which terminated on the first day of January, 
 1785, the American Methodist Church was organized as a 
 distinct and Separate Church. The name given to it on 
 a motion unanimously passed was that of the "Methodist 
 Episcopal Church." The minutes were published with the 
 title, "General Minutes of the Conference of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church in America." Its members from that 
 date owed no more allegiance to the Church of England, 
 or any daughter thereof, if daughter there then was, than 
 they did to the Baptist or Presbyterian Church. The 
 minutes of this Conference state, among other things, 
 "Following the counsel of John Wesley, who recommend- 
 ed the episcopal form of church government, we thought it 
 best to become an Episcopal Church." These minutes were 
 in Mr. Wesley's hands some months afterwards and were 
 published in England. Not a word of repudiation or dis- 
 afrlrmance is heard from him as to what was done or said, 
 save only that in a letter, written by him several years after- 
 wards, he showed that he objected to Asbury calling him- 
 self Bishop. Some expressions from him may be cited 
 which indicate that he continued to be opposed to the Metho- 
 dists of England separating from the Established Church, 
 or the National Church, (as he understood separation), but 
 nothing can be found from him which shows or suggests 
 that he, for a moment, questioned the fact that American 
 Methodism was a separate Church, or indulged the expecta- 
 tion that these Methodists would come back to the Church 
 of England. Unless he had lost his mind, he could not have 
 thought that they remained a part of the Church of Eng- 
 land and had to separate again in order to become a dis- 
 tinct organization. Advice to American Methodists, after 
 this Conference, against separation would have been as idle 
 and meaningless as similar advice to Baptists or Presby- 
 terians. He took Asbury sharply to task several years 
 afterwards for calling himself a Bishop. He thought Sup- 
 erintendent was the proper term (Our Bishops are now 
 known as our General Superintendents). But the name is 
 not important. The truth is that for years previous to this 
 formal organization as a Church", it had existed in America 
 as Episcopal Church with the complete approval of Wes- 
 ley. When Coke was attacked in a newspaper for what he 
 had done, his reply declared, through the press, that he had 
 "done nothing but under the direction of Mr. Wesley." The
 
 30 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 correctness of this public statement was never challenged 
 or denied. So that even if Coke had gone beyond his au- 
 thority in establishing the Methodist Church in America (of 
 which there is not a syllable of evidence) Mr. Wesley fully 
 ratified what he did. Indeed, he, in terms, declared, after 
 full knowledge of the facts. "I believe Dr. Coke as free 
 from ambition as from covetousness. He has done nothing 
 rashly that I know." (I ought to state, in all candor, that I 
 fear that Dr. Coke did not deserve the commendation as to 
 a freedom from ambition, but this personal weakness in his 
 character does not affect the purpose of Wesley or what 
 he did in pursuance of his instructions). Certain it is that 
 Mr. Wesley intended that a separate Church be established 
 in America, and it was established at his instance and under 
 his direction, and this fact was thoroughly known and recog- 
 nized by all parties concerned at the time. 
 
 In a .letter written February 25, 1785, to John Stretton, 
 then a resident of Newfoundland, before he had received a 
 report from Dr. Coke, he writes "Last Autumn Dr. Coke 
 sailed from England and is now visiting the flock in the mid- 
 land provinces of America and settling them on the New 
 Testament plan, to which they all willingly and joyfully con- 
 form, being all united as by one spirit, so in one body." It 
 was in this letter that he assured Stretton that his preacher 
 will be ordained. 
 
 In his letter addressed by him to the "Rev. Freeborn Gar- 
 rettson, of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America," 
 dated June 16, 1785, Garrettson's name being the first in the 
 minutes as an elder ordained by Coke at Baltimore, he sup- 
 posed he was writing to a minister of a regular Church, and, 
 in this letter, he tells him "you want nothing which he can 
 give," referring to the Episcopal Bishop and the orders from 
 that source. This letter to Asbury, written September 20, 
 1788, wherein he takes him sharply to task for calling him- 
 self a Bishop instead of a Superintendent, is sometimes 
 quoted to indicate that Coke went farther than Wesley in- 
 tended, but there is nothing in the letter to suggest this, and 
 it appears that all he objected to was that Asbury called him- 
 self a Bishop. This very letter shows that he was then 
 aiding Coke in collecting supplies for the American Metho- 
 dists, the very people who had, in terms, formed themselves 
 into a separate and distincf Church. In this letter he thus 
 writes: "There is indeed a wide difference between the -re- 
 lation wherein you stand to the Americans, and the rela- 
 tion wherein I stand to all the Methodists. You are the 
 elder brother of the American Methodists ; I am, under God,
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 81 
 
 the father of the whole family. Therefore, I, naturally care 
 for you all in a manner no other person can do." Evidently 
 Mif, Wesley was under the impression that he was the father 
 or founder of the Methodists. Of course, he may not have 
 known what he was talking about. The Methodists of his 
 day and time may have been under strange hallucination. 
 The present day Churchmen are much better informed than 
 Wesley and all of his followers could have been. Their posi- 
 tion for accurate information is obviously more advan- 
 tageous. The fact, too, that all histories, religious and secu- 
 lar, which deal with Methodism or Wesley, all encyclopedias 
 and all biographies refer to him as the founder of 'Metho- 
 dism, counts for naught. A few Daniels, who occasionally 
 "come to judgment" brush all this flimsy evidence aside and 
 calmly and modestly inform us that we have no right or 
 title to Wesley. Among the many blunderers on this ques- 
 tion, I may refer to Bishop Stevens, the author of the 
 History of Georgia, the Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, 
 who, in an address delivered in Christ Church, in this city, 
 in 1873, devoted to the early history of the Church in Geor- 
 gia, has thus expressed himself, "John Wesley, in his writ- 
 ings distinguished the origin of Methodism into three 
 periods. The first rise of Methodism he says was in 1729, 
 when four of us met together in Oxford, the second was in 
 Savannah in 1736, when 20 or 30 persons met at my house. 
 The last was at London on this day, May I, 1738, when 40 
 or 50 of us agreed to meet together every Wednesday even- 
 ing. Thus this city and this Church is connected with the 
 most marked religious event of the i8th century. This his- 
 torical relationship, the founder of Methpdism himself as- 
 serts, and we must accept his decision." Bishop Stevens 
 is generally regarded as a most excellent authority not only 
 as a historian but as a theologian. It is barely possible that 
 he knew what he was talking about when he spoke of Wes- 
 ley as the founder of Methodism and when he thought that 
 Wesley's decision as to a matter of this kind was entitled to 
 weight. 
 
 The year after the organization of the American Church, 
 Wesley ordained ministers for Scotland, giving them all the 
 power of ordained ministers. He gives, as a reason, that 
 the position in Scotland was substantially such as it was in 
 America, and he says in terms that "whatever then is done, 
 either in America or Scotland, is no separation from the 
 Church of England" (meaning, of course, separation by Wes- 
 ley himself). "I have no thought of this. I have many ob- 
 jections against it. It is a totally different case." In this
 
 32 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 he recognizes his responsibility for what had been done in 
 America, but denies that this meant that he (John Wesley) 
 had separated from the National Church. He appointed 
 these ministers to administer the sacraments North of the 
 Tweed. In 1788 he went a step farther and ordained a 
 number of preachers (Tyerman says seven) to assist him 
 in administering the sacraments even in England itself. Dr. 
 Rigg, the greatest authority on this subject, so recognized 
 in England and in this country by scholars, selected to 
 write an article on Methodism, which appears in the En- 
 cyclopedia Brittanica, says : "Before Wesley's death in 1791 
 it would seem that there were more than a dozen of his 
 preachers who had at different times in Scotland, or in Eng- 
 land, been ordained to administer the sacraments." 
 
 It .would seem to be a waste of time to prove our right, 
 particularly the right of American Methodists, to call John 
 Wesley our founder. I insist, however, that this is not, 
 after all, the important question upon this or any other occa- 
 sion. If he was taught of God, the question of questions 
 with us ought to be are we following him to the extent that 
 he followed Christ? Are we true to the spirit of the teach- 
 ings of that pure, broad and spiritual faith of which Wesley 
 and all true Methodists are exponents? Do we hate perse- 
 cution as he did Do we, by percept and example, dis- 
 courage and denounce injustice to men because of their race, 
 religion, or color. Listen to his earnest words: "I set out 
 early in life with an utter abhorrence of persecution in every 
 form. Reading this morning a tract written by a poor Afri- 
 can. I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a 
 man who has a black skin being wronged or outraged by a 
 white man can have no redress. This is the scandal of re- 
 ligion, of England and of human nature." Are these words 
 out of date to-day? Is the evil suggested and reprobated 
 entirely a thing of the past? Without meaning to say, or 
 to intimate, that they apply with full force to the present 
 day. I do mean to sound them in your hearing and to in- 
 sist that the followers of John Wesley should have, and, if 
 they be true followers, will have an utter abhorrence of per- 
 secution in every form. Are we possessed of his catholicity 
 of spirit, his freedom from narrow r ness and bigotry. "I de- 
 sire," said Wesley, "to have a league offensive and defensive 
 with every soldier of Christ." 
 
 Study his great, his marvelous, life. Catch his spirit of 
 self-sacrifice, his uncompromising devotion to duty. Be 
 genuine men and real Christians. Then and then only will 
 you be real members of his spiritual household, of the great 
 Church founded bv him.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 35 
 
 BETHESDA DAY. 
 
 As Wesley and Whitefield were original Methodists, and 
 as Whitefield followed Wesley as minister in Savannah, it 
 was very appropriate to note the interesting facts in a 
 special service. Bethesda, Whitefield's great monument in 
 America, was the appropriate place Bishop D. A. Good- 
 sell, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the appropriate ora- 
 tor of the occasion. A severe and accute attack of rheuma- 
 tism prevented the presence of the Bishop, so his place had 
 to be filled and the Committee was fortunate in securing Dr. 
 W. W. Pinson of Columbus, Ga. The following interesting 
 story from the News gives a full account of the occasion 
 as will be seen resolutions were adopted of sympathy for 
 Bishop Goodsell with a request for his address. We are 
 under many obligations for the courtesy of the Bishop in 
 furnishing us a copy of the able address which here ap- 
 pears-. 
 
 The exercises of the afternoon, as it happened, were two, 
 instead of one, and this was all the more interesting for 
 those who braved the weather. The two celebrations held 
 happened because of the delay experienced by the regular 
 speakers, and served to. keep the attention and interest of 
 those who were early on the grounds. All remained until 
 the principal speakers arrived, and the programme was 
 properly carried through, under the shade of the great oaks 
 and in the prettily decorated stand, which bore at the front 
 the legend "Welcome," made in laurel leaves, upon a white 
 field. 
 
 UNDER THE OAKS. 
 
 It was during a temporary lull in the rain that the regular 
 exercises appointed for the afternoon were held. The rain 
 had made the benches under the trees rather unpleasant, but 
 the Bethesda boys are not particular about small matters 
 and ranged themselves in bright rows along the front. 
 
 About the stand were many visitors and all gave the full- 
 est attention to the proceedings. The speakers had been 
 delayed by the storm, having started to Bethesda in a buck- 
 board, and the exercises in the grounds were following an 
 impromptu service that had been held indoors.
 
 36 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 COL. ESTILL'S REMARKS. 
 
 When the attention of the people on the grounds was ob- 
 tained Col. Estill came to the front of the platform, and 
 after explaining the cause of the delay, said : 
 
 "It may be true as the great poet said that 'The evil that 
 men do lives after them' and that 'The good is oft interred 
 with their bones/ but we have the evidence all around us 
 here to-day that the good that George Whitefield did, lives, 
 and this evidence has been accumulating ever since his 
 death. 
 
 "The record is not at hand, but it is estimated that this 
 institution, and the Union Society have cared for at least 
 5,000 boys. They represent generations of men and women 
 scattered over a large part of the world. But few of them 
 may have become known to fame, but from what we know 
 of those of later years we do not hesitate to say that the 
 great majority of them played their part well in life's 
 drama. From one act of Whitefield, the founding of this in- 
 stitution, has resulted a great amount of good. Whitefield's 
 life was full of good deeds, and vast indeed must have been 
 the volume of good that lived after him, and still lives. 
 
 "It was on Dec. 21, 1737, that a license was issued to 
 Whitefield in London by the trustees of the colony to per- 
 form ecclesiastical duties in Georgia, as a deacon of the 
 Church of England, and it was on May 30, 1739, that the 
 land on which we stand was granted to him in trust for the 
 orphans of Georgia. Thereafter, though far away in other 
 colonies, or in distant England, the heart of this man of God, 
 one of the greatest of His servants, was always here at 
 Bethesda. 
 
 "It was his preaching and that of the Wesleys, that gave 
 new life to English Protestantism, and though the hard- 
 worked preacher of to-day may be at times discouraged by 
 the results of his work, the mighty religious movement 
 Whitefield and the Wesleys set in motion, is growing in 
 volume and strength, and men and women in all parts of the 
 world are becoming better in consequence of it. The world 
 is better to-day than it was yesterday, and will be better 
 to-morrow than it is to-day ; that this is true is shown by 
 this institution. It is growing steadily and is being carried on 
 as Whitefield planned. The means to support it are forth- 
 coming, notwithstanding the fact that the amount of money 
 necessary for that purpose is all the time increasing. If the
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 37 
 
 world were not growing better this institution would have 
 been abandoned long ago. 
 
 "Although it was Whitefield, who founded Bethesda, and 
 although it is his name that will always be associated with 
 it, we have his authority for the statement that it was 
 Charles Wesley who suggested the orphan house. White- 
 field and the Wesleys differed on some theological ques- 
 tions, but they were in harmony in their efforts to make man- 
 kind better. 
 
 "It would give me pleasure to say much more in honor 
 and praise of the founder of Bethesda, but that will be done 
 much more, satisfactorily and eloquently by the one 
 chosen to address you on this occasion. I have the 
 pleasure and honor to introduce to you the Rev. 
 Dr. W. W. Pinson of Columbus, Ga." 
 
 WESLEY AND WHITEFIELD. 
 
 Dr. W. W. Pinson came forward and began his address 
 by telling that he was a substitute, and therefore a great 
 deal should not be expected of him. His address was replete 
 with excellent thought, and carried a lesson that found place 
 in the hearts of all of his hearers. 
 
 Thoughts similar to those suggested when standing near 
 the Alamo, in San Antonio, the speaker said, came when 
 looking upon the splendid monument to the work of White- 
 field at Bethesda. When God had a particularly choice gift 
 for man He selected a man such as Whitefield through whom 
 to send it. 
 
 Having been asked, in the absence of Bishop Goodsell, to 
 speak at Bethesda on the relations of Wesley and White- 
 field, Dr. Pinson briefly compared the men, one the ecclesias- 
 tical statesman, the other the great and eloquent preacher. 
 From history it was shown that the men were widely dif- 
 ferent in habits, in the college life and work and studies. And 
 yet they were the greatest friends and the largest help to each 
 other. 
 
 They were both evangelists and had the same ideas of the 
 fundamental doctrines of salvation. These men were not 
 reformers. They did more than try to reform men, they 
 wanted to save them. The theology of Whitefield and Wes- 
 ley were different, but they had many points in common and 
 did much for each other. They both believed that the Gos- 
 pel was for the poor as well as the rich, and they nobly 
 worked for the uplifting of the humble. Wesley and White- 
 field each considered the orphans and founded orphanages.
 
 38 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 'The idea of starting an orphanage came to Whitefield 
 after seeing the children who were left fatherless and help- 
 less in Savannah, perhaps by the death of a parent at the 
 hands of the Indians. He became enthused with the idea, 
 and went to England, returning with money enough to 
 build the orphan house. "It was aptly called Bethesda," as 
 Wesley said. 
 
 Bethesda was the one monument that remained to tell 
 of Whitefield's work, for while he had converted thousands 
 in his meetings, he left the congregations that were formed 
 and they went back into their sins. Discipline is necessary in 
 such organization, and without their leader and left to them- 
 selves, they drifted away from the truth an'd from their 
 former head. 
 
 Dr. Pinson alluded to the practice of building monuments 
 to heroes of tented fields and of pioneers in industry and 
 trade, and said that it was a good thing but the man who 
 preaches to the multitudes and impresses upon the minds of 
 men the principles that lead to heroism he who teaches 
 them why the life is worth the living and how to die, is as 
 deserving of a monument as the soldier, or stateman, or 
 financier. 
 
 "Talking with a little child on the streets of Savannah," 
 said the speaker, "I asked her about one of the beautiful 
 monuments on the squares. They were memorials to men 
 who had fought the enemies of the country. 'And about 
 the Wesley Monumental Church,' I said, 'who did Wesley 
 fight?' The little girl thought a moment and then said 'the 
 devil.' ' These men, Wesley and Whitefield, both fought 
 the devil and well deserved monuments. 
 
 Addressing himself particularly to the boys, who 
 were seated in front, Dr. Pinson spoke of the dif- 
 ference that was now evident in the life of the 
 average boy. The tendency to move into the cities 
 had changed the lives of the boys from the meadows 
 and lanes to the dust and noise of the cities, and the 
 thousands of pitfalls and temptations that infest a city. 
 The danger to an orphan was particularly great. In Be- 
 thesda the most faithful attention was given, and the boys 
 should feel and remember that each kindly look and each 
 pleasant word of correction or advice, praise or encourage- 
 ment, was an indication of the fact that someone was taking 
 an interest in them. The fact that "somebody cares" should 
 make them live pure and be upright and strive to be a credit 
 to the institution and the noble men whose labors for hu-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 39 
 
 manity are ended, after accomplishing a work that few under- 
 take. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS OF REGRET. 
 
 At the close of Bishop Candler's remarks Dr. Fullwood 
 spoke briefly of the unavoidable absence of Bishop Goodsell 
 of Tennessee, who had been invited to deliver the address 
 at Bethesda, but was detained at home by illness. Reso- 
 lutions of regret were adopted and it was the wish of the 
 assemblage that the address prepared by Bishop Goodsell 
 be secured for publication in the reports of the Wesley Bi- 
 Centenary. 
 
 The exercises then closed with the benediction pronounced 
 by Bishop Candler. 
 
 IMPROMPTU EXERCISES. 
 
 The exercises just chronicled were not the first held at 
 Bethesda yesterday afternoon, although including the regu- 
 lar speakers as announced in the programme. It happened 
 that Dr. Pinson, Col. Estill and others had started for Be- 
 thesda in an open vehicle and were held up at a wayside 
 house several miles from their destination. A considerable 
 number of people having gathered in the Bethesda building 
 and becoming convinced that the rain would continue ana 
 the speakers expected would not arrive, decided that an in- 
 formal celebration would be in order. 
 
 Rev. A. M. Williams invited the people to assemble in 
 the west dormitory, which had been prepared with seats, 
 and in a few words told the reason of the gathering. He 
 then read a portion of a letter from Bishop Goodsell in 
 which he expressed the greatest regret at not being able to 
 attend the celebration and deliver the address promised. 
 
 This was followed by the singing of a hymn, the music be- 
 ing led by a piano and cornet. Prayer was offered by Rev. 
 J. O. A. Cook and then Rev. W. A. Huckabee, was intro- 
 duced and made a short talk. This was largely directed to 
 the boys, who were all seated in the room and gave full at- 
 tention. Mr. Huckabee said that John Wesley was one of 
 three great men, and combined in his personality the talents 
 and powers of Moses, the greatest of lawmakers and Paul, 
 the world's greatest theologian. 
 
 Bishop Gallaway was then introduced and made a very in- 
 teresting address. It was entirely without preparation, and 
 was perhaps more of Wesley than on the subject which had
 
 40 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 been expected, "Wesley and Whitefield." The life and 
 character of Wesley was dilated upon and the speaker con- 
 tended that he was carefully guarded by Providence through 
 many trials and afflictions and preserved to a ripe old age 
 that he might continue his work, which when viewed as a 
 whole was nothing short of marvelous. Even in his friends 
 Wesley was favored, and the friendship of George White- 
 field was argued to have been of the greatest value. 
 
 In conclusion, Bishop Gallaway spoke of his visit to the 
 spot where had stood Pilate's hall, and then going down be- 
 neath the building thereon he had pressed the stones that 
 were believed to have formed the floor upon which Christ 
 had passed, the "via doloroso." Standing in Bethesda he 
 felt that here also he was upon sacred soil, and would fain 
 touch some tree or stone that had felt the hands of White- 
 field. 
 
 These exercises were concluded with the benediction by 
 Rev. Dr. Fullwood of Jacksonville, Fla.
 
 Bishop Goodsell.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 ADDRESS OF BISHOP GOODSELL. 
 
 I count it among the chief honors of a long ministry that 
 I am invited by my brethren of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church South to speak at this spot. Toward it my heart 
 and eyes have turned for many years. To-day my feet touch 
 .it and under the shadow of these trees my heart rejoices in 
 the life of Whitefield ; in that amazing record of sermons, 
 journeys, benevolences, of which this Bethesda is but a 
 single record. This institution was so much upon his heart 
 that all cities, towns and countries where he preached may 
 be said to have aided in its foundation and early support. 
 Money flew from unwilling pockets to this spot, drawn 
 from entranced and overwhelmed hearers of all grades of in- 
 telligence. 
 
 The theme on which I have been asked to speak is "The 
 Relation between Wesley and Whitefield ;" relations be- 
 ginning in the aspirations of the Holy Club at Oxford ; con- 
 tinuing with mutual advantage for many years ; shrivelled for 
 a time by the heat of the Calvinistic controversy; coming 
 into full life again under the sweet compulsion of Christian 
 love and ending only with the death of Whitefield, whose 
 fame was secure as the most eloquent evangelist of his 
 age. 
 
 This great genius looked upon Charles Wesley, rather, 
 than upon John, as his spiritual father. The name of Metho- 
 dist, by no means new in the religious world, had been ap- 
 plied to Charles Wesley and the group which gathered 
 about him while John was absent from Oxford at Wroote. 
 
 John Wesley was older ; more logical ; more learned, and 
 had earlier felt the "agonizing" which opens the door to 
 the Kingdom of God. I fancy also that John's aauiline nose, 
 sauare chin and somewhat thin lips, were the physical signs 
 of a certain inborn masterfulness, which, had it not been 
 restrained by grace, could easily have become wilfulness 
 and tyranny. Indeed, I believe all leadership has a certain 
 physical basis. I know no man with an incurving or re- 
 trousse nose and retreating chin who has ever been able to 
 lead others. 
 
 This may be as good a place as any to compare and con- 
 trast John Wesley and Whitefield as to their physical ap-
 
 44 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 pearance. Wesley, below medium height, with clean cut 
 features ; with no roundness or corpulency, showed in his 
 extreme neatness and almost dapper appearance, the influ- 
 ence of several generations of cultivated gentlemanly ; not 
 to say aristocratic lineage. 
 
 Whitefield was taller ; stouter ; with less refined features. 
 Unless his portraits and contemporary squibs belie him he 
 had a cast in his eye. But there is the square and project- 
 ing chin, dominating his somewhat pudgy nose and prophe- 
 sying the indomitable energy with which he fought for Be- 
 thesda and attempted at the same time the evangelization of 
 the English speaking world. Whitefield came from the 
 family of a wine merchant, afterwards a hotel keeper, and 
 was employed in the humblest office of the hotel at a time 
 when John Wesley was at school and ready to enter Ox- 
 ford. 
 
 This was no disadvantage to Whitefield for the work to 
 which God was calling him. John Wesley's self-will and 
 reliance on his logical faculty lead him until mellowed by 
 grace, to that severity of speech and administration which 
 made his mission to Georgia so largely a failure. I can not 
 help sympathizing a little with the anger of Miss Hopkey, 
 afterward Mrs. Williamson and her friends over his dicta- 
 torial proceedings as to her communion. I fear had I been 
 in Savannah then I should have felt that this rigorous ascetic 
 and masterful rector had a little personal spite in him, per- 
 haps unconscious, toward the lady who married another 
 rather than himself. Surely we must all feel that the ele- 
 ment of tenderness and compassion seems absent from Wes- 
 ley's ministry until that "strange warming of his heart" 
 which followed the instructions of Peter Bohler. Wesley by 
 inheritance, taste, education, was originally better fitted for 
 the pulpit of St. Mary's at Oxford than for preaching to 
 the swart faced miners of Cornwell. Until his conversion, he 
 seems as much interested in the lowly, the prisoner, and the 
 convict for his own salvation as for their's. There is duty, 
 obedience but no filial joy in his service of humanity in the 
 earlier period of his ministry. Commenting on this in his 
 later years, he says, "My service was that of a servant, then, 
 now it is that of a son." 
 
 From the very beginning of his ministry the sympathies of 
 Whitefield were naturally and graciously with the common 
 people. While working in his father's hotel in the humblest 
 offices, he came to know how the plainer folk think and feel. 
 'This experience gjave him his marvellous aptitude for ad-
 
 WESLEY SI-CENTENARY. 45 
 
 dressing the multitudes. He knew their mental attitude; the 
 play of their emotions and their coarse vigor of expres- 
 sion. He knew the kind of anecdote which would touch 
 them and had a fine dramatic quality in his narrations. He 
 could thunder; he could whisper. The whole gamut of ex- 
 pression was his by instinctive knowledge. His people ran 
 after him as much when he was a boy of one and twenty 
 as when in the fullness of his years and powers. He was a 
 born preacher. 
 
 What a comment on the religious conditions of the Eng- 
 lish Clergy that they shut one after another their churches 
 against him on account of "enthusiasm !" Lacking this the 
 English Church was dying of dry rot. 
 
 The churches being closed Whitefield is forced to con- 
 sider, seeing a thousand people trying to listen outside Ber- 
 mondsey Church, whether he would not preach to them from 
 a toombstone. He was up to this time so bound by pre- 
 scription and precedent, that he dared not do it at once ; 
 some friends advising him that preaching out of doors was 
 a mad notion. 
 
 The churchless, ungodly colliers of Kingswood first heard 
 him preach in the open air. Saturday, Feb. 17, 1739, he 
 stood on a mound at Rose Green and preached to tw r o 
 hundred, later to several hundred, and soon to twenty 
 thousand. How picturesque Whitefield's account of the be- 
 ginning of God's work among the colliers. "The first dis- 
 covery of their being affected was to see the white gutters 
 made on their black faces by their tears." 
 
 To Whitefield, Wesley owed his introduction to open air 
 preaching. Like Whitefield he was practically shut out 
 from the Churches and for the same reasons. Whitefield 
 desiring to raise money for this orphanage, on whose site 
 we are, sent for Wesley .to carry on the work he had begun, 
 that he might be left free to go elsewhere and raise money 
 for his beloved Bethesda. Wesley came, shuddered at the im- 
 propriety of field preaching, but ventured and soon seemed 
 as masterful of great audiences as Whitefield himself. . Of 
 this beginning of outdoor preaching at Whitefield's invi- 
 tation, Wesley says, "I could scarce reconcile myself at 
 first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, having 
 been all my life, till very lately, tenacious of every point re- 
 lating to decency and order that I should have thought the 
 saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a 
 church." The outdoor preaching thus begun Wesley con- 
 tinued for between fifty and sixty years.
 
 46 WESLEY Bl-CENTENARY. 
 
 If we desire to see what was the almost universal feeling 
 of the clergy with regard to this innovation we have but to 
 read from a magazine of date 1739. "The Wesleys are 
 more guilty than Whitefield because they are men of more 
 learning, better judgment and cooler heads. Let them go 
 over to their proper companies, to their favorites, the Dis- 
 senters, and utter their extempore effusions in a conventi- 
 cle, but not be suffered in our churches to use our forms 
 which they despise. Let them carry the spirit of delusion 
 among their brethren, the Quakers. * * Let not such bold 
 movers of sedition and ringleaders of the rabble, to the dis- 
 grace of their order be regularly admitted into those pul- 
 pits which they have taken with multitude, and tumult or, 
 as ignominously by stealth." 
 
 So, forever, the names of Whitefield and Wesley, are en- 
 rolled among those who have broken through hindering 
 walls of prejudice if so be they might better reach souls ; 
 so forever they enter history together as martyrs for years 
 to exposure, to blows on the body and to the harder blows 
 of calumny and misrepresentation. 
 
 Think of it! In sermons from St. Mary's and other pul- 
 pits, Wesley and Whitefield are called "deceivers, babblers, 
 insolent pretenders, men of capricious humors, spiritual 
 sleight, canting craftiness, novices in divinity ; new fangled 
 teachers setting up their spiritual conceits," one sermon de- 
 clares that "Whitefield is an enthusiast and blasphemer and 
 blends in his sermons a spice of the Papist and the Moham- 
 medan." 
 
 Up to the year of Whitefield's visit to America in 1740, 
 Whitefield and Wesley were not only harmonious in labor 
 but in doctrine. While in America influential and learned 
 Calvinistic divines put Whitefield in the way of reading 
 the chief Puritan authors. This was followed by a full ac- 
 ceptance of their doctrinal teachings ; not only full but en- 
 thusiastic as was Whitefield's way. Wesley was promptly 
 informed of his change of view in a letter truly warm- 
 hearted and fraternal. Wesley had inherited from his father 
 and mother strong convictions against the doctrines of elec- 
 tion and reprobation and writes Whitefield opposing them 
 and announcing his faith in the privilege of Christians to be 
 saved not from sin of infirmity but from voluntary and in- 
 tentional breaking of God's commandments." Agreeing with 
 these great men or not, we can not fail to admire the spirit 
 of their correspondence, their anxiety to avoid collision and 
 their evident determination to stand by their conscientious
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENABY. 47 
 
 convictions. Wesley puts the case both kindly and precisely 
 when he writes Whitefield "There are bigots, both for pre- 
 destination and against it. God is sending a message to 
 those on either side. But neither will receive it unless from 
 one who is of their own opinion. Therefore, for a time you 
 are suffered to be off one opinion and I of another. But 
 when His time is come God will do what man can not, name- 
 ly, make us both of one mind." 
 
 The publication of Wesley's sermon on Free Grace 
 brought about the division which both deprecated, resulting 
 in the organization of Lady Huntingdon's connection and 
 other sympathetic bodies. It was followed by a long, and on 
 the part of some, bitter controversy in which language was 
 used which seems impossible to Christians. The two great 
 leaders, Wesley and Whitefield, seem mostly to keep within 
 the bounds of intense but Christian feeling. But I can not 
 say so much for some others. In an anonymous pamphlet 
 Whitefield is spoken of as "a man of heated imagination and 
 full of himself." "Very hot, very self-sufficient and impatient 
 of contradiction." 
 
 As the controversy continues it gets hotter and hotter. It 
 troubles Whitefield greatly, not only in his heart but his 
 finances. He had on this spot a family of nearly one hundred 
 to maintain ; over a thousand pounds in their behalf, was 
 threatened with arrest for a bill of $300 drawn in favor of 
 the orphan house by William Seward, but not met by him. 
 Those who sympathized with the Wesleys refused longer to 
 aid Whitefield. 
 
 Yet as early as 1742, these two great men, in whom love 
 abounded, became friends again without change of opinion 
 and so I believe remained to the end. Their creed, not their 
 hearts, alone separated them. 
 
 It is singular that* the genius of Wesley for organization 
 should be regarded as one of the chief causes of the per- 
 manence of his work and the lack of organization be quoted 
 as the cause of the decay of Whitefield's influence. The 
 fact is, that Whitefield and his coadjutors. Harris, Hum- 
 phreys and Cennick began to organize before Wesley did. 
 The most tuccessful and permanent result seems to have 
 been secured in Wales. But it is also true that in evange- 
 lizing, especially in America, it was not possible for White- 
 field to organize his work as his labors were in connection 
 with the pastors of the colonial churches, and with their co- 
 operation. Wesley's evangelizing led not only to his own ex- 
 clusion from the churches, but to the exclusion of
 
 48 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 his followers as well. What could be done by threats, blows 
 and excommunication to break up the Methodist societies, 
 whether of Whitefield or Wesley was, in many places, done, 
 no doubt honestly, for the glory of God. Wesley and White- 
 field were partners in the honors of misrepresentation, ridi- 
 cule, as well as of blows. 
 
 Yet it is evident later on that Whitefield deliberately 
 abandoned the idea of organizing his work, for he says in 
 a letter to Wesley : "If I should form societies I have not 
 proper assistants to take care of them. You, I suppose, are 
 for settling societies everywhere." 
 
 Our hearts may well be touched by finding John and 
 Charles Wesley, notwithstanding the old differences, secur- 
 ing a hearing for Whitefield in the Societies under their 
 care at a time when Whitefield's friends fell off, and his au- 
 diences were numbered by scores, instead of thousands. 
 Mrs. Charles Wesley meets Whitefield at Newcastle, and 
 opens the pulpit there to him. This added to Whitefield's 
 consolation as at Leeds he had something like his old au- 
 diences. 
 
 Whitefield's essential nobility is nowhere better seen than 
 when some of Wesley's dissatisfied helpers write to him, 
 complaining of Wesley's discipline and expecting encourage- 
 ment in their discontent. Whitefield cuts such short at 
 once by saying: "I am utterly unconcerned in the dis- 
 cipline of Mr. Wesley's Societies ; I can be no competent 
 judge of their affairs. If you and the preachers were to meet 
 together more frequently and tell each other your grievances 
 and opinions, it might be of service." 
 
 Again, how noble is Whitefield! When Charles Wesley 
 breaks up John's marriage to Grace Murray, inflicting upon 
 John the greatest sorrow of his life, it is Whitefield who 
 sends for Wesley communicates the marriage, com- 
 forts the broken hearted John, and when Charles breaks out 
 on John with unchristian violence it is Whitefield and John 
 Nelson who meet and pray over the alienation and bring the 
 brothers at last to fall upon each others neck; and when 
 John Bennet, who had captured Grace Murray, comes in, 
 John Wesley does not upbraid him, but kisse* him. He 
 had grown in grace since Savannah days. 
 
 Now appear beautiful harmonies and co-operations. One 
 Sunday Wesley preaches and Whitefield reads the prayers, 
 and the next Sunday Wesley reads and Whitefield preaches. 
 Wesley is large enough to see that Whitefield can reach some 
 he can not reach ; for he writes : "Even Mr. Whitefield's
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENAKY. 49 
 
 little improprieties, both of language and manner, were a 
 means of profiting many who would not have been touched 
 by a more correct discourse, or a more calm and regular 
 manner of speaking." 
 
 With regard to the introduction of slavery and of spirit- 
 uous liquors into this colony of Georgia, it is well known 
 that Whitefield and Wesley held divergent views. 
 
 Once again, do all who love the memory of these great 
 men note with gladness courtesies between them. When 
 Whitefield was building his tabernacle in 1753, Wesley al- 
 lowed him the use of his London Chapels. 
 
 Wesley's illness, in 1/53, gave Whitefield an opportunity 
 to write one of the tenderest letters of sympathy and con- 
 fidence in Wesley's character and spiritual prospects that 
 any man ever wrote to another, but Wesley long survived 
 the man who wrote it. 
 
 When it became evident that many followers of W T esley 
 felt that separation from the Church of England was inevi- 
 table and forced its consideration on Mr. Wesley, White- 
 field is brave enough to speak and write against the move- 
 ment as the "work of that devil of devils self love." Nor 
 could Whitefield sympathize with the doctrine of sanctifica- 
 tion or perfect love as he understood it to be taught by Wes- 
 ley. As in the writings of Romanic so also in Whitefield's; 
 it would appear that Wesley's views were not understood 
 by either. Thus Romaine accuses Wesley of a teaching 
 perfection out of Christ, whereas there is not a syllable 
 from Wesley's pen or voice which does not make a per- 
 fected love the gift, and proof of Christ's power and presence. 
 
 Yet lack of sympathy on this point does not break lov- 
 ing relations. Wesley hears of Whitefield's illness and 
 visits him to find him at 50, an old man worn out in his 
 master's service, and wonders that he himself at 63 is with- 
 out disorder or weakness. "Whitefield," Wesley says, 
 "breathes nothing but peace and love. Bigotry can not 
 stand before him." 
 
 It was, no doubt, due to Whitefield's influence that the 
 Countess of Huntingdon opened the doors of her chapel to 
 John Wesley. They had been for years closed and barred 
 against him. Now, Lady Huntingdon wished to ally her- 
 self with John and Charles Wesley and George White- 
 field in a quartette of holy toil. Death soon took White- 
 field from the alliance and then bigotry broke it up. 
 
 Death also is soon to break up the friendship and the 
 mutually helpful relations of the two great souls. Matters
 
 50 WESLEY BI-CENTEXARY. 
 
 at Trevecca College shadow their public unity. But the 
 old unity of heart abides. In Feb., 1769, Wesley writes: "I 
 had one more agreeable conversation with my old friend 
 and fellow laborer, George Whitefield. His tone appeared 
 to be vigorous still, but his body was sinking apace, and un- 
 less God interposes by His mighty hand he must soon 
 finish his labors." Whitefield had six months more of 
 preaching to give England. He complains that he can 
 preach only four or fiv i times a week ! Whitefield, on part- 
 ing with him, pours out his great love in a noble farewell 
 letter and sails for America. 
 
 It was in this final visit that he endeavored to extend this 
 orphanage into a college, and failed because he could not 
 accept certain denominational limitations. But he built 
 two additional wings for a public academy and opened the 
 new building, preaching before the Governor, a month be- 
 fore John Wesley's letter reached him warning him against 
 any change from the original design of an orphanage. 
 Whitefield passed northward, preaching a two hours ser- 
 mon at Exeter, and is next morning dead, leaving as his 
 latest utterance, one of the noblest Christian sentences : 
 "Lord, I am weary in thy work ; not of thy work." Which- 
 ever of the two friends survived was to preach the funeral 
 sermon of the other. So Wesley, to an audience which filled 
 the chapel at three for a service at four, summed up his great 
 friend in these words : "His was unparalleled zeal, indefatiga- 
 ble activity, tender heartedness to the afflicted ; charita- 
 bleness toward the poor, the most generous friendship, nice 
 and unblemished modesty, frankness and openness of con- 
 versation, unflinching courage and steadfastness in what- 
 ever he undertook for the Master's sake." 
 
 Worthy of this is a passage in Whitefield's will: "I also 
 leave a mourning ring to my honored and dear friends, John 
 and Charles Wesley in token of my indissoluble union with 
 them in heart and Christian affection notwithstanding our 
 differences in judgment about some particular points of doc- 
 trine." 
 
 In the presence of this great love between the two 
 greatest evangelist sand existing in a century when contro- 
 versy was to the last degree irreligious in spirit, though 
 religious in name, our hearts are melted, and over denomi- 
 national barriers the tide of love flows, hiding, and we 
 hope wasting them, "until we all come into the unity of the 
 spirit and the bond of peace."
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 51 
 
 Whitefield's body lies in one continent and Wesley's in 
 another, but their souls have met in paradise. The paths 
 of all Christians come together at the gate of the City of 
 God. 
 
 The modern writers on Wesley and Whitefield declare 
 that their greatness is demonstrated by this that no one 
 of their sons in the gospel has ever equalled them in labor 
 and evangelistic success. As to Wesley considering his 
 learning, his executive ability, his preaching power and his 
 65 years of toil the statement must be accepted as true. But 
 Francis Asbury, though the same years were not granted 
 him and though not his equal in scholarship, seems to me 
 fully Wesley's equal in ceaseless evangelistic and pastoral 
 activity. The conditions under which he labored were in 
 some respects more difficult than those of Wesley. Fewer 
 mobs attacked him but the hardships of a new country were 
 equally wearing. In tact, knowledge of men, and in grac- 
 ious submission to the growth of the spirit of self-govern- 
 ment and discipline, he seems to me to have been a stronger 
 man than Wesley. He seems also to have done his work 
 so wisely in relation to all fellow laborers, male and female, 
 that few found occasion for criticism. 
 
 So we may feel that Dwight L,. Moody had a public hear- 
 ing and success in evangelistic work in both hemispheres, 
 approaching, if not surpassing, those of Whitefield. No 
 one can compare the two men in oratory or in education. 
 But there is a singular resemblance in the outcome of their 
 careers. The work of Whitefield and of Moody has been 
 absorbed in the life of the churches and is chiefly unrecorded. 
 Some few properties of Whitefield in operation and gather- 
 ing remain as his monuments. Bethesda is the oldest, and 
 is likely through the care ond cooperation of Savannah citi- 
 zens, to be among the most permanent. Northfield stands 
 as the chief visible monument of Moody's labors. 
 
 But Wesley's organization of his forces and his habit of 
 securing for them a local habitation and a name has led to 
 property foundations in churches, schools and benevolent 
 institutions which must approach in total two hundred and 
 twenty millions of dollars. And the impulse for the conse- 
 crating of property among his followers is having its largest 
 results to-day. 
 
 But the most of the sons of the two great souls whose 
 relations we have been considering, must admit the great 
 distance between them and us as to abundance of labors 
 and proportion of results.
 
 52 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 Yet, may i': not be that while we recognize this, "the spirit 
 of power" may fall upon us and give to those who are proud 
 to enroll themselves as their sons in the gospel, the same 
 hunger for souls, the same undaunted courage, the same 
 ceaseless activity and similar success in turning men to God. 
 God grant it for Christ's sake.
 
 Charles Wesley.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 55 
 
 CHARLES WESLEY. 
 
 When John Wesley came to America he was accompanied 
 by his brother Charles. While John Wesley was to be a 
 missionary to the Indians and minister of the congregation 
 at Savannah, Charles Wesley was to act as private secretary 
 to Mr. Oglethorpe and to conduct the services at Frederica. 
 The two brothers worked together in the establishment of 
 Methodism and the promotion of the great revival. In con- 
 nection with the celebration in Savannah it was fortunate 
 that Charles Wesley's .work should find such a competent 
 eulogist as Bishop Galloway. 
 
 CHARLES WESLEV, THE HYMNIST OF THE AGES. 
 
 By Bishop Charles B. Galloway, 
 
 Charles Wesley, the poet of Methodism and the hymnist 
 of the ages, was the eighteenth in a family of nineteen child- 
 ren, born to Samuel and Susanna Wesley. For several weeks 
 he laid wrapped up in wool, more dead than alive, and never 
 uttered a cry until the time when he should have been born. 
 This was rather an unpromising beginning for one who was 
 to be a chief actor in a spiritual revolution that was to save 
 the Church from deadness and the nation from anarchy, and 
 was to rank in importance the career of the Elder Pitt and 
 the "most dazzling episodes in the reign of George II." 
 
 Out of one of the most remarkable homes known to Eng- 
 lish history this gifted singer of the centuries came. It was 
 not a mansion of wealth and worldly power, but a cottage 
 of culture and piety a home of high thinking and humble 
 living. It was a simple ivy-covered rectory in a far-away 
 obscure northern village, but its fame has gone out through 
 all the earth and its influence will be felt to the end of time. 
 In all England, no castle of king, or hall of noble or palace of 
 lord, either temporal or spiritual, ever gave shelter to such 
 a family of sons and daughters as did the rectory at Ep- 
 worth. His honored father, the earnest, toilsome rector, was 
 as learned as he was devout, and as industrious as he was
 
 56 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 heavenly-minded. His mother, the real matriarch of Metho- 
 dism, was brilliant in intellect, remarkably cultured, as 
 strong-willed as John Knox, and one of the most perfectly 
 poised characters in history. From such a parentage came 
 the two remarkable .brothers who were to be the great 
 apostles of the eighteenth century. The best blood of Eng- 
 land flowed in their noble veins, and from both paternal and 
 maternal ancestry they inherited the most fearless and intrep- 
 id spiritual knighthood of the generations. 
 
 No wonder Providence marked this young man for con- 
 spicuous service in a great forward movement. He was 
 born to high place and enduring influence and undying fame. 
 Himself not the wisest leader, he ensured the successful lead- 
 ership of his brother. Though not the ablest commander, 
 he was an expert chief of staff. He might not plan a cam- 
 paign as wisely or lead his forces to battle as skillfully as 
 did his apostle brother, but he could and did beat the sacred 
 reveille and sing the divine Marseilles that stirred the heroic 
 blood of the legions and made them march to victory with 
 its dactyl notes upon their lips. 
 
 The names of these two wonderful brothers will ever 
 be linked in immortal wedlock. They wore double stars some- 
 what different in size and brilliancy, but whose arms were 
 filled with light from the same law of righteousness, and are 
 shining upon the world with an ever increasing splendor. 
 The history of one cannot be written without the story of 
 the other being told. They walked and wrought and suf- 
 fered together, sustained by the same spirit, inspired by 
 the same holy purpose and inflamed by the same quenchless 
 zeal. Their interdependence was beautiful and providential. 
 They often differed widely in opinion, but were never sepa- 
 rated in heart ; and their very differences seemed to broad- 
 en the charity of the brothers and heighten their admiration 
 for the honesty and fidelity of each other. Though their 
 opinions often differed, their affections never failed. In his 
 last loving letter to his honored brother, Charles reiterated 
 this statement, "stand to your own proposal ; let us agree 
 to differ." 
 
 And he would never brook the slightest suggestion from 
 any one, who sought to underrate his brother or aleniate 
 their affection. On the back of a letter received from the 
 Countess of Huntington he made this endorsement, "un- 
 answered by John Wesley's brother." He declined to write 
 an epitaph for Hervey's tomb, because he thought the de- 
 ceased had done a "great wrong to John Wesley's name."
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 57 
 
 At the age of eighteen he entered Christ Church College, 
 at Oxford, "a sprightly, rollicking young man, with more 
 genius than grace." The account of his first years at that 
 ancient and historic seat of learning must be given by him- 
 self : "My first year at college I lost in diversions ; the next 
 I set myself to study. Diligence led me into serious think- 
 ing. I went to the weekly sacrament, and persuaded two 
 or three young students to accompany mt, and to observe 
 the method of study prescribed by the statutes of the universi- 
 ty. This gave me the harmless name of Methodist. In half 
 a year (after this) my brother left his curacy at Epworth and 
 came to our assistance. We then proceeded regularly in 
 our studies, and in doing what good we could to the bodies 
 and souls of men." 
 
 Writing to his brother John, before he returned to take 
 up his residence as fellow of Lincoln College, he says : "It 
 is owing, in a great measure, to somebody's prayers my 
 mother's most likely that I am come to think as I do." 
 
 Charles Wesley was an accurate scholar and a learned 
 man. His genius for acquiring language was phenomenal. 
 Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French he learned readily. He 
 spoke Latin fluently and with force. With rare histrionic 
 power he would, at times, quote the most sublime passages of 
 Homer and Virgil, and recite with unrivaled taste and spirit 
 the noble Odes of Horace. It is said that "when Indevine, 
 the drunken captain with whom he sailed from Charleston 
 treated him insultingly. Charles Wesley defended him- 
 self by repeating Virgil. And in the same way he cooled 
 the rage or quelled the spirit of his virago sister-in-law, 
 Mrs. John Wesley. 
 
 When he became a college tutor, his father wrote him a 
 playful letter, indicating the range of his studies and scholar- 
 ship, from which are these sentences: "As for yourself, be- 
 tween logic, grammar, and mathematics, be idle if you can. 
 I give my blessing to the Bishop for having tied you a little 
 faster, by obliging you to rub up your Arabic. * * * 
 You are now launched fairly, Charles. Hold up your head 
 and swim like a man, and when you cuff the man beneath 
 you, say to it, much as another hero did, 
 
 "Carolum relis, et Caroli fortunam." * 
 But always keep your eye fixed above the pole-star, and 
 so God send you a good voyage through the troublesome 
 sea of life, which is the hearty prayer of your loving father." 
 
 *"Thou carriest Charles and Charles's fortune."
 
 58 WESLEY BF-CENTENARY. 
 
 By a special and gracious providence Charles Wesley was 
 saved from the calamity of great wealth. While yet a hand- 
 some and sprightly boy, a student in Westminster School, 
 Mr. Garrett Wesley, of Dougan Castle, Ireland, a man of 
 immense fortune, set his heart upon making him the son 
 of his home, and heir of his vast estates. By strong argu- 
 ment with the father and earnest entreaty with the bril- 
 liant son, he sought to make him the noble lord of his Irish 
 castle. But after several month's respectful consideration, 
 the thoughtful boy declined the generous offer, and deter- 
 mined to share the humbler fortunes of the Epworth rectory. 
 That was a wise conclusion, and a providential escape. Had 
 the offer been accepted, riches and worldly splendor might 
 have come to the Wesley family, but the glory of his genius 
 would probably never have been known, and his inspired 
 measures would not still be making music down the genera- 
 tions. 
 
 And in after years, when his fame had filled the continent, 
 he declined a similar, tempting offer. A lady of large for- 
 tune, who had for some reason become alienated from her 
 family, desired to make him the inheritor of her vast treasure. 
 With most persuasive eloquence did she try to prevail upon 
 him to accept, but all to no purpose. When advised by 
 friends to accept the fortune and then distribute it to the 
 natural heirs, he said with vigor : "That is a trick of the 
 devil, but it won't do. I know what I am now ; but I do not 
 know what I should be if I were thus made rich." And 
 throughout life he was an unselfish, unworldly singularly 
 consecrated Christian minister. He declined a living of 500 
 pounds a year, choosing rather to live without a fixed in- 
 come and remain with the people called Methodists. 
 
 Of his coming to Georgia, as the private secretary of Gov. 
 Oglethorpe, and the months spent here, mostly at Frederica, 
 but little need be said. That was a valuable, but unhappy 
 chapter, in the life of the laureate of Methodism. It was 
 little more than "one continued course of vexation and sor- 
 row." His severe discipline and spiritual rigidness excited 
 opposition, and for awhile he suffered the disfavor and per- 
 secution of the Governor himself. But never for a moment 
 did he waver in his line of conduct or conceptions of duty. 
 His biography tells us that "he conducted four religious 
 services every day, for the benefit of those who chose and 
 had leisure to attend, and he was in the habit of giving an 
 extemporary exposition of the daily lessons at the morning 
 and evening prayer. These services were conducted in the
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 59 
 
 open air when the weather would permit ; and as the people 
 had no public clock to guide them, (for as yet they dwelt 
 in tents, having no houses) nor any 'church-going bell' to 
 summon them to their devotions, they were apprized of the 
 hour of prayer by the sounding of the drum." 
 
 In his journal there is this entry : ''July 26. The words 
 which concluded the lesson and my stay in Georgia, were, 
 'Arise, let us go hence.' Accordingly at twelve I took my 
 final leave of Savannah. When the boat put off I was sur- 
 prised that I felt no more joy in leaving such a scene of 
 sorrows." 
 
 The great event in Charles Wesley's life was his glorious 
 conversion under the spiritual tutelage of a simple-hearted 
 Moravian named Bray, whom he gratefully refers to as "a 
 poor ignorant mechanic who knows nothing but Christ ; yet 
 in knowing him knows and discerns all things," He graspe: 
 the great doctrine of justification by faith only, and it be- 
 came his own conscious, joyous, rapturous experience. This 
 was the true starting point of his wonderful heroic history. 
 Now he began to preach like an apostle and sing like a 
 seraph. His marvellous eloquence attracted eager thousands 
 of every rank and age, and he sang in strains almost divine 
 of the uttermost power of redeeming grace. So completely 
 was he filled with the spirit of his Lord so entirely under 
 the imperial constraint of His love so eagerly bent on his 
 one work of seeking and saving the lost that nothing so en- 
 raptured his great heart as the redemption of a soul. On 
 witnessing the joyful conversion of his friend Edward Perro- 
 net, he exultantly exclaimed, "A soul triumphing in its first 
 love is a spectacle for men and angels ! It makes me for- 
 get my own sorrows and carry the cross of life without 
 feeling it." And by the way, that young man, became the 
 author of Coronation, 
 
 "All hail the power of Jesus' name." 
 
 One of the grandest hymns in any language or written by 
 any inspired laureate of the ages. 
 
 Charles Wesley was an extraordinary preacher, magnetic 
 and attractive, often soaring into the realm of genuine elo- 
 quence, and always exhibiting the splendid qualities of a 
 real master of assemblies. He excelled in the power of con- 
 densed and- luminous statement. Vast multitudes crowded 
 to his ministry and were entranced by the charm and elo- 
 quence of his graceful periods. On one occasion he wrote : 
 "My congregation was less by a thousand or two through 
 George Whitefield's preaching to-day at Haworth. Between
 
 60 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 four and five thousand were left to receive my warning." 
 When asked what were the distinctive characteristics of the 
 two remarkable brothers, as preachers, the Rev. Henry 
 Moore, biographer and literary legatee of John Wesley, re- 
 plied : "John's preaching was all principles ; Charles's was 
 all aphorism." He had not the magnificent oratorial gifts 
 of George Whitefield or the striking expository genius of 
 his brother John, but he excelled them both in the directness 
 and deadly aim of his appeals and warnings. One biographer 
 says that at times, under the spell of his resistless eloquence, 
 almost the entire congregation would fall on their knees or 
 lay prostrate on their faces, with the prayer of a divine agony 
 upon their mourning lips. While preaching in the open air 
 on one occasion, at Bristol, a man in the vast congregation 
 whose conscience was pierced by the resistless power of the 
 truth, cried with a loud voice, "What do you mean by look- 
 ing at me? and directing yourself to me? and telling me I 
 shall be damned?" 
 
 His was an ardent and impulsive nature, easily impressed 
 and capable of intense feeling. This led him at times into 
 strange contradictions, but there was never the slightest 
 impeachment of his perfect honesty and sincerity. For in- 
 stance in his earlier religious inquiries he was strenuously 
 opposed to the doctrine of instantaneous conversion, but 
 soon afterwards became its impassioned advocate. Refer- 
 ring to a certain meeting he said : "We sang and fell into 
 a dispute whether conversion was gradual or instantaneous. 
 My brother was very positive for the latter, and very shock- 
 ing, I was much offended at his worse than unedifying dis- 
 course. I insisted a man need not know when he first had 
 faith. His obstinacy in favoring the contrary opinion, drove 
 me from the room." Within three weeks after that "re- 
 ligious fracas," Charles Wesley changed his opinions entire- 
 ly and began to pity and upbraid those who held his former 
 views. 
 
 He was a man of wonderful and unawed courage. In 
 the discharge of his apostolic duties he seemed to have no 
 sense of fear. He was often jubilant in the presence of dan- 
 ger, and when the mob howled loudest he seemed calmest 
 and most unconcerned. The promise of a prison could not 
 restrain him, *1;" threat of 'knth did not dct rt r him, and when 
 blood was flowing freely from wounds received at the hands 
 of the mob, he led the congregation that refused to disperse, 
 in joyously singing the praise of God. No more heroic spirit 
 ever led the legions of his Lord to battle and to victory.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 61 
 
 The fierceness of the persecutions he suffered make us 
 wonder at the bitterness of the human heart when set on 
 fire by passion and prejudice. Government officers and 
 worldly clergymen, joined with wicked ruffians in cruel as- 
 sault upon the Lord's anointed. Rioters at his meetings 
 were once arraigned in court. Instead of just and swift 
 punishment, all were dismissed, and the grand jury made 
 this deliverance : " We find and present Charles Wesley to 
 be a person of ill-fame, a vagabond, and a disturber of His 
 Majesty's peace ; and we pray he may be transported." 
 
 Charles Wesley married Miss Sarah Gwynne, who lived 
 at Garth, Wales. It is an interesting fact that when Mr. 
 Gwynne, the father of this fair young woman, first met the 
 talented famous Methodist, he had a warrant ready in his 
 pocket to send him to jail. He concluded, however, to hear 
 him first. The eloquent preacher was never more powerful 
 and persuasive ; the message was sealed to his redemption, 
 and instead of committing the fearless young evangelist to 
 prison, he invited him to his palatial home, had him preach 
 in the parish Church, and after a time gave him his beauti- 
 ful daughter's hand in holy matrimony. When the unique 
 marriage contract was arranged, Miss Gwynne agreed, 
 among other things, that Charles Wesley should continue his 
 vegetable diet and his traveling. 
 
 That certainly was one of the most extraordinary mar- 
 riage scenes in all history. The joyful hymn sung on the oc- 
 casion was written by Charles Wesley himself. The happy 
 bridegroom and ecstatic poet, gives this pious and character- 
 istic account of the interesting event : 
 
 "Not a cloud was to be seen from morning till night. I 
 rose at four ; spent three and a half hours in prayer, or 
 singing with my brother. At eight I led my Sally to Church. 
 My brother joined our hands. It was a most solemn sea- 
 son of love. I never had more of the divine presence at the 
 sacrament. My brother gave out the following hymn : 
 "Come, thou everlasting Lord." 
 
 "He then prayed over us in strong faith. We walked back 
 to the house and joined again in prayer. Prayer and 
 thanksgiving was our whole employment. We were cheer- 
 ful, without mirth, serious without sadness." 
 
 What a unique wedding occasion that must have been ! 
 Not many men are married to the music of their own me- 
 lodious measures. And their whole after life was a song. No 
 two hearts ever walked through life together in more rythmic 
 harmony. For forty eventful years they joyfully shared to-
 
 62 WESLEY B [-CENTENARY. 
 
 gether the vicissitudes of earth, animated by the same high 
 purpose, and dominated by the same divine inspiration. 
 
 Charles Wesley had more rigid and straightened views of 
 ecclesiastical order than his brother, and doubtless a more 
 ardent attachment to the Church of England. He inveighed 
 rigorously against certain acts that logically meant an event- 
 ual separation from the Church, and sought by every means 
 in his power to arrest any tendency to independent organiza- 
 tion. At the same time, he was the first and mightiest of 
 field preachers, did not hesitate to preach in Methodist 
 Chapels during church hours, was among the bravest to en- 
 counter persecution and threatened death, was tireless and 
 fearless in his flaming evangelism. 
 
 Charles was an ardent churchman, but not an ecclesiastical 
 statesman. He dreaded schism scarcely less than mortal 
 sin. As another expressed it, he feared that Methodism 
 would become "a seminary for Dissenters." He said patheti- 
 cally, "My soul abhors the thought of separating from the 
 Church of England." He closed a letter to John Nelson, on 
 one occasion, with these ominous words : "John, I love thee 
 from my heart ; yet rather than see thee a Dissenting minis- 
 ter, I wish to see thee smiling in thy coffin." He passion- 
 ately opposed any tendency toward separation from the 
 Church cf Eneland, was shocked at his brother exercising 
 the right of ordination, and would not tolerate the idea of 
 Methodist preachers administering the sacraments. And at 
 last, greatly to the grief of his brother, crave direction that 
 he should not be buried at City Road Chapel, because the 
 ground had not been consecrated. He made the Church 
 paramount. He would have abolished the Methodist So- 
 cieties rather than see them separate from the Establish- 
 ment. John, on the other hand, said : "Church or no 
 Church we must attend to the work of saving souls." 
 
 Of John Wesley's ordinations, which so distressed his im- 
 pulsive brother, we had best take his own clear and strong 
 statement. Certainly he never entertained the slightest 
 doubt as to the authority and propriety of the course pur- 
 sued. He said himself, "I firmly believe I am a scriptural 
 episcopos as much as any man in England, for the uninter- 
 rupted succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever 
 did or can prove." And again he said, "The plea of divine 
 right for diocesan Episcopacy was never heard of in the 
 primitive Church." 
 
 So John Wesley, in response to the urgent appeal from 
 America, ordained Thomas Coke superintendent or Bishop.
 
 WESLEY BI-CKNTENARY. 63 
 
 on the 2nd of Sept., 1784, and Richard Whatcoat and Thomas 
 Vasey elders. 
 
 Against this extraordinary exercise of ecclesiastical pre- 
 rogative Charles Wesley rigorously protested. He denounc- 
 ed the ordinations as schism, and tragically predicted that 
 Coke would return from his Methodist Episcopal Church 
 in Baltimore to "make us all Dissenters here." Writing to 
 his brother, he uttered this pathetic lamentation : "Alas ! 
 What trouble are you preparing for yourself, as well as for 
 me, and for your oldest, truest friends ! Before you have 
 quite broken down the bridge, stop and consider! If your 
 sons have no regard for you, have some for yourself. Go 
 to your grave in peace ; at least suffer me to go first, before 
 this ruin is under your hand." 
 
 He anathematized this act of his brother is these lines : 
 
 "Since Bishops are so easy made, 
 
 By man's or woman's whim, 
 Wesley his hands on Coke has laid ; 
 
 But who laid hands on him." 
 
 In his denunciation of the fable of tactual succession, Wes- 
 ley had the support of many distinguished churchmen. 
 Chillingworth said, "I am fully persuaded there hath been 
 no such succession." Bishop Stillingfleet declares that 
 "this succession is as muddy as the Tiber itself." Archbishop 
 Whatley says, "There is not a minister in all Christendom 
 who is able to trace up, with approach to certainty, his 
 spiritual pedigree." 
 
 Charles Wesley had no great gifts for leadership and was 
 endowed with but few qualities for broad statesmanship. 
 Had his counsels prevailed on certain critical occasions, no 
 doubt the history of the great Methodist movement would 
 have been very differently written. His ardent tempera- 
 ment made him at times irascible and his poetic moods often 
 amounted to eccentricity. 
 
 But Providence designed this peerless genius for other 
 service and a higher sphere. He was to be the David of our 
 later Israel the inspired singer of the centuries. Had he 
 been more of a statesman, he would have been less of a 
 poet. Had he been wiser as an ecclesiastical leader, there 
 would have, been less melody in the limped measures that 
 flowed from the living fountains of his enraptured soul. 
 
 All great spiritual revolutions have been accompanied, 
 and made possible, by the power of sacred song. Not only 
 so, but the depth and strength of these movements, have
 
 64 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 been measured and determined by the character of their 
 psalmody. The doctrines a people sing are ot equal impor- 
 tance with the gospel they preach and the theology they 
 embrace. The hymns that make melody in the heart and 
 give wings to faith, lift the soul nearer to the invisible than 
 all the doctrines, however clearly defined, that make up our 
 systems of metaphysical theology. The soul of religion is 
 best expressed in its songs. And the sanctified genius who, 
 in noblest measures, can give highest expressions to this 
 inner divine spirit of religion, has the clearest title to be the 
 chosen and anointed legate of heaven and laureate of the 
 skies. 
 
 Dr. Stevens, the accomplished historian, referring to the 
 many volumes of hymns issued by the Wesley's, said that 
 "The achievement accomplished by Methodism in this re- 
 spect is alone one of the most extraordinary historical facts 
 of the eighteenth century. Its influence on the popular taste, 
 intellectual as well as moral, could not fail to be incalculably 
 great." Indeed Methodism could never have swept with 
 such majestic speed over the United Kingdom and across 
 the seas, but for its rich and inspiring psalmody. 
 
 Surely there was need for the divine afflatus to fall upon 
 some chosen lyrical genius in order to elevate the tone of 
 public worship and give nobler voice to the aspirations of the 
 soul. As yet there were no worthy translations of the state- 
 ly Latin hymns and the hymnology of the English Churches 
 scarcely rose above the dignity of the ditties crooned by the 
 untutored negroes on our Southern plantations. Sternhold 
 and Hopkins, in 1562, issued a metrical version of the Psalms, 
 which could only rob the service of the sanctuary of its 
 solemnity and spiritual helpfulness. Some specimens as 
 they were "deaconed off," can but provoke a smile. Here is 
 one : 
 
 "'Tis like the precious ointment 
 
 Down Aaron's beard did go ; 
 Down Aaron's beard it downward went, 
 
 His garment skirts unto." 
 
 And here is another choice stanza, which was in more or 
 less popular use: 
 
 "Ye monsters of the bubbling deep, 
 
 Your master's praises spout ; 
 Up from -the sands ye coddlings peep, 
 
 And wag your tails about."
 
 Bishop Galloway.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENAEY. 67 
 
 On the scripture text, "The race is not to the swift, nor 
 the battle to the strong," this bit of puerile paraphrase was 
 sung: 
 
 "The race is not forever got 
 
 By him who fastest runs ; 
 Nor the battle by those people, 
 
 Who shoot the longest guns." 
 
 Such was the hymnology of the church when Watts and 
 Wesley began to sing. 
 
 While he generously contributed to form the aggressive, 
 enthusiastic type of Methodism, his lyric measures were in 
 turn largely affected by that great spiritual movement. His 
 muse soared on loftier, swifter wing because of the moun- 
 tain air he breathed and the jubilant spirit of the people with 
 whom he held high fellowship. Charles Wesley's hymns 
 were the rhythmic embodiment of the joyous, hopeful spirit 
 of the great revival. Probably as much, if not even more 
 than the sermons of John Wesley, do these hymns express 
 the very soul of early Methodism. On this subject the 
 scholarly and discriminating Isaac Taylor has thus critical- 
 ly spoken : "These very hymns, if the writer had not been 
 connected with Methodism, would have shown a very dif- 
 ferent phase ; for while the depth and richness of them are the 
 writers', the epigrammatic intensity, and the pressure which 
 marks them, belongs to Methodism. They may be regarded 
 as the representatives of a modern devotional style which 
 has prevailed quite as much beyond the boundaries of the 
 Wesleyan community as within it. Charles Wesley's hymns 
 on the one hand, and those of Toplady, Cowper and Newton 
 on the other, mark that great change in religious sentiment 
 which distinguished the times of Methodism from the staid, 
 non-comforming era of Watts and Doddridge." 
 
 The richness and variety of his measure are truly mar- 
 velous. The rhythmic flow of his genius took every form 
 known to the poetic art. 
 
 There are not less than twenty-six different metres in the 
 Wesleyan hymn book, and yet these did not exhaust the 
 variety of his tuneful numbers. He touched and thrilled 
 every chord of the human heart and give joyful or mourn- 
 ful note to every passion of the human soul. Wonderful 
 hymns! "They march, at times, like lengthened processions 
 with solemn grandeur; they sweep at other times like 
 chariots of fire throueh the heavens ; they are broken like 
 the sobs of grief at the graveside, play like the joyful af-
 
 68 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 factions of childhood at the hearth, or shout like victors in 
 the fray of the battle-field. No man ever surpassed Charles 
 Wesley in the harmonies of language. To him it was a 
 diapason." 
 
 Their poetical publications followed each other in rapid 
 succession, sometimes two a year, until forty-nine were 
 enumerated among the literary productions of those won- 
 derful brothers. Charles Wesley alone, wrote not less than 
 six thousand hymns, and many of them among the noblest 
 lyrics of the Christian Church. 
 
 Few men ever wrote with such affluence of diction and 
 such ease and grace of style. Like the fabled fountains that 
 began to flow at the touch of an angel's foot, the rhythmic 
 numbers were awakened from the faintest finger tip upon his 
 well strung lyre. He sang with no more effort than 
 a lark cleaves the air on soaring wing or a streamlet chimes 
 its liquid bells to the sea. He sang because his soul was 
 full of music. While doing the almost superhuman work 
 of a flaming evangelist, preaching from three to four times 
 a day, he employed the intervals in writing hymns. His 
 thoughts flowed with melody. Journeying from Bristol to 
 Newcastle oh one occasion, he met with a painful accident. 
 "Near Ripley," said he, "my horse threw and fell upon me. 
 My companion thought I had broken my neck ; but my leg 
 only was bruised, my hand sprained and my head stunned 
 which spoiled my making hymns or thinking at all, till the 
 next 'day." 
 
 In old age he rode every day ("clothed for winter even in 
 summer") a little white horse. When he mounted, if a sub- 
 ject struck him, he proceeded to elaborate it in order. He 
 sometimes wrote a hymn on a card, kept for that purpose, 
 with pencil in shorthand. Or he would ride up to the house 
 in City Road, and having left his pony in the front garden, 
 rush in and cry out "Pen and ink ! Pen and ink !" When 
 these were supplied and the hymn was speedily written out, 
 he would greet pleasantly all present and enter into delight- 
 ful conversation. 
 
 The eloquent Dr. William Morley Punshon, who had him- 
 self the divine afflatus in liberal measure, thus refers to the 
 matchless hymns of the poet of Methodism : 
 
 "Entering into the heart's deep secrets ; striking every 
 chord of subtlest and holiest feeling ; giving forth, not echoes 
 from old harp songs, but melodies of the present, poured from 
 a soul which enacts all the melodies that it sings; now 
 plaintive as the breath of evening, now with a grand roll like
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 69 
 
 that of the thunder of God; expressing every variation in 
 the changing music of life, and moreover piercing the invisi- 
 ble and standing like a seraph in the full vision of the throne 
 seldom has the sacred lyre been swept by a more skillful 
 hand * * His words abide in the memory of multitudes, 
 second only to the words of inspiration in their charm and 
 power. They have chased away trouble from the sorrow- 
 ing, as David from the melancholy Saul. They have in- 
 spired the Christian warrior as the 'Marseillaise' the pas- 
 sions of France, or the 'Rang dis Vaches,' the patriotism 
 of the brave Swiss peasantry, and greatest triumph in cases 
 without number they have been the Hallelujahs of the dying, 
 who have lingered upon the notes of the song until they 
 caught the notes of the trumpet which was sounding for 
 them upon the other side." 
 
 And most generous have been the critical estimates of 
 Wesleyan hymnologv by those outside the Methodist com- 
 munion. Robert Southey, the distinguished scholar and poet- 
 laureate of England, said that "no poems have been so much 
 treasured in the memory, or so frequently quoted on a 
 death-bed." And not less appreciative are the eloquent 
 words of the scholarly Isaac Taylor, who said, "It may be 
 affirmed that there is no principal element of Christianity, 
 no main article of belief, as professed by Protestant 
 Churches ; that there is no moral or ethical sentiment pecu- 
 liarly characteristic of the gospel ; no height or depth of 
 feeling proper to the spiritual life, that does not find itself 
 emphatically and pointedly and clearly conveyed in some 
 stanzas of Charles Wesley's hymns." 
 
 Dr. Watts, the great hymn writer, in acknowledging the 
 imperial genius of the psalmist of Methodism, said: "I 
 would give all I have ever written for the credit of being 
 the author of Charles Wesley's unrivaled hymn 'Wrestling 
 Jacob.' : 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, one of the greatest of modern nas- 
 tors and pulpit orators, said : "I would rather have written 
 that hymn of Wesley's, 'Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me 
 to thy bosom fly,' than to have the fame of all the Kings 
 that ever sat on the earth. It is more glorious. It has more 
 power in it. I would rather have written such a hymn than 
 to have heaoed uo all the treasures of the richest man on 
 the globe. He will die. His money will go to his h^irs. and 
 they will divide it. But that hvmn will P^O on singinqf until 
 the last trump brines forth the angel band; and then, I
 
 70 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 think, it will mount up on some lips to the verv presence of 
 God." 
 
 The biographer of Dr. Watts, while claiming for him 
 preeminence as a sacred poet, admitted the splendid and 
 sanctified genius of Charles Wesley. He says : "In estimat- 
 ing the merits of these two great hymnists the greatest, 
 unquestionably, that our country can boast I should not 
 hesitate to ascribe to the former greater skill in design, to 
 the latter in execution ; to the former more originality, to 
 the latter more polish. Many of Wesley's flights are bold, 
 daring and magnificent." 
 
 His wonderful hymns were born of his own rich and 
 joyous experience. Out of a redeemed soul he sang because 
 he couldn't hold the melody. 
 
 Charles Wesley could never have tuned his harp to sing 
 so sublimely of the joys of salvation if he had simply heard 
 or read of them. He must feel them and then express 
 them. One writer aptly says : "When his heart-strings 
 quiver with the melody of heaven his harp-strings must 
 sound responsively. He sings because he must sing. He 
 sings as the bird sings for very joy. No saint can climb 
 so high as not to be able to sing his joys in the hymns of 
 Charles Wesley. 
 
 And herein may be found the marked difference between 
 the hymns of Charles Wesley and Dr. Watts, his only rival 
 as a singer in Israel. A competent critic has thus stated 
 their distinguishing characteristics : "Watts describes 
 Christian virtues and sentiments as a looker-on; Wesley 
 expresses them as from the depth of his own being. Watts 
 hymns his aspirations ; Wesley does this and more for he 
 expresses his fruition of the gladdening grace of the gos- 
 pel." 
 
 Wesley goes as far as Watts up the "mount of redeem- 
 ing love," and then goes on and up till he ceases to climb, 
 and soars away to the skies. Watts sings sweetly as the 
 caged bird; Wesley sings as the bird free, and winging his 
 flight heavenward. Watts was more of a general poet ; 
 Wesley was more of a lyric poet for the Church. Watts 
 was more of a poet of nature ; Wesley was more of a poet 
 of grace. Watts was a poet of the old prophetic dispensa- 
 tion; Wesley was a poet of the new pentecostal dispensa- 
 tion. Watts was the poet of aspiration ; Wesley was the 
 poet of inspiration. Watts was the poet of hope ; Wesley 
 was the poet of fruition."
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 71 
 
 And as an illustration of this striking contrast a single 
 stanza from each is aptly quoted. Watts gazing aspiringly 
 at the summit of Mount Pisgah, bravely sings: 
 
 "Could we but climb where Moses stood, 
 
 And view the landscape o'er, 
 Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood, 
 
 Could fright us from the shore." 
 
 But Wesley has already climbed the mountain top, and 
 viewing the enrapturing landscape, exultingly shouts : 
 
 "The promised land, from Pisgah's top, 
 
 I now exult to see ; 
 My hope is full, O glorious hope! 
 
 Of immortality." 
 
 And a further apt illustration of the different characteris- 
 tics of these great hymnists of the modern Church may be 
 seen in the use of the metaphysician's favorite terms ; Dr. 
 Watts was fond of the objective, while Charles Wesley 
 dwelt in the subjective. Dr. Watts reveled in the disclosures 
 of God in nature and on the pages of revelation; Charles 
 Wesley's hymns were the evolutions of his own deep and 
 joyous experience. Dr. Watts sings : 
 
 "Before Jehovah's awful throne 
 Ye nations bow with sacred awe." 
 
 Charles Wesley plaintively cries : 
 
 "Jesus, lover of my soul, 
 Let me to thy bosom fly 
 While the nearer waters roll, 
 While the tempest still is high." 
 
 Dr. Watts, looking up at the heavens bespangled with 
 stars and then upon the pages of God's holy book, ex- 
 claims : 
 
 "The heavens declare thy glory, Lord, 
 
 In every star thy wisdom shines ; 
 But when our eyes behold thy word 
 
 We read thy name in fairer lines." 
 
 Charles Wesley, celebrating the anniversary of his happy 
 conversion the bridal hour of his soul and feeling that 
 one tongue was not enough to express what his heart felt
 
 72 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 of God's infinite grace and love, in tones of the loftiest 
 spiritual rhapsody, cries out : 
 
 "O for a thousand tongues to sing 
 My great Redeemer's praise ! 
 
 The glories of my God and King 
 The triumphs of his grace!" 
 
 Wesley's poetic skill and taste were also strangely dis- 
 played in his emendations of some of the finest hymns of Dr. 
 Watts. For example, one of the most popular lyrics of 
 Watts, as written and published by himself, began with these 
 lines : 
 
 "Nations attend before His throne 
 With solemn fear, with sacred joy." 
 
 Charles Wesley changed them so as to read, 
 
 "Before Jehovah's awful throne 
 Ye nations bow with sacred joy." 
 
 How much more majestic when edited by the skillful hand 
 of the poet laureate of Methodism. 
 
 Charles Wesley's masterpiece, as a work of art, is said 
 by the critics, to be his "Wrestling Jacob," beginning with 
 the line, 
 
 "Come, O thou Traveller unknown. 
 
 This is a lyrical drama, in which with consummate skill, 
 the action is carried on with strange and increasing interest, 
 to the final triumph. The splendid conflict with the mysterious 
 being is magnificently sustained, every turn graphically de- 
 scribed ; till after the long night's desperate struggle, the 
 rapturous discovery is made, faith triumphs and exclaims, 
 
 "I know Thee, Savior, who Thou art." 
 
 And what could be more majestic than these magnificent 
 lines on faith faith which is the victory that overcometh 
 the world.: 
 
 "Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, 
 
 Relies on that alone, 
 Laughs at impossibilities, 
 
 And says, 'It must be done.'
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 73 
 
 Faith lends her realizing light, 
 
 The clouds disperse, the shadows fly, 
 
 The Invisible appears in sight, 
 And God is seen by mortal eye." 
 
 There is the quiver of power in every line, that wakes a 
 divine courage in every faint heart, makes an armed and ar- 
 mored soldier of every eager energy in the body, and 
 shames the very suggestion of possible defeat. No wonder 
 the ardent, redeemed souls in Kingswood, Bristol and 
 elsewhere, who sang such triumphant measures, were able to 
 face the fury of mobs and follow their Lord without the 
 camp bearing His reproach. 
 
 A few days before his death, after some hours of per- 
 fect silence, Mrs. Wesley wrote the following lines, at his 
 dictation : 
 
 "In age and feebleness extreme, 
 Who shall a sinful worm redeem? 
 Jesus, my only hope thou art, 
 Strength of my failing flesh and heart ; 
 O ! Could I catch a smile from thee, 
 And drop into eternity!" 
 
 On the morning of March 29th, 1788, in the eightieth year 
 of his age, the sweet singer of Methodism peacefully fell 
 asleep. It is a curious coincidence that John Wesley was at 
 that time preaching in Shropshire, and at the very moment 
 of his brother's triumphant ascension was, 'with the con- 
 gregation, singing Charles's matchless hymn : 
 
 "Come let us join our friends above, 
 
 That have obtained the prize, 
 And, on the eagle wings of love. 
 
 To joys celestial rise : 
 
 One family, we dwell in Him, 
 One Church, above, beneath, 
 
 Though now divided by the stream, 
 The narrow stream of death ; 
 
 One army of the living God, 
 
 To His command we bow, 
 Part of his host have crossed the flood, 
 
 And part are crossing now."
 
 74 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 At his own request he was buried in Marylebone church- 
 yard, and not with his Methodist comrades at City Road. 
 
 This was a genuine grief to his great and noble bro- 
 ther. In a private letter he made this pathetic reference : 
 "It is a pity but the remains of my brother had been deposi- 
 ted with mine. Certainly that ground is holy as any in 
 England ; and it contains a large quantity of 'bonny' dead." 
 
 On his modest tomb are the beautiful lines written by him- 
 self, on occasion of the death of one of his friends. As his 
 biographer has well said, they could not be more aptly ap- 
 plied to any person than to their distinguished author, the 
 poet-laureate of Methodism : 
 
 "With poverty of spirit bless'd, 
 
 Rest, happy saint, in Jesus rest ; 
 A sinner saved, through grace forgiven, 
 Redeemed from earth to reign in heaven ! 
 Thy labors of unwearied love, 
 By thee forgot, are crowned above ; 
 Crowned, through the mercy of thy Lord, 
 With a full, free, immense reward !"
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 75 
 
 HISTORIC GROUND. 
 
 The skies were dark and showers the rule all during yes- 
 terday, but this did not deter a large number of visitors and 
 citizens from going down to the wharf at the foot of Whita- 
 ker street and getting on board the steamer Clifton that had 
 been chartered for the excursion down the river. 
 
 The Clifton with over three hundred and fifty on board 
 was headed down the river at 3 :3O o'clock and the passen- 
 gers took the greatest interest, because it was over the 
 route where Wesley's little fleet had sailed many years ago. 
 
 A brief stop was made in front of Cockspur Island, the 
 ground made historic because Wesley landed there when 
 arriving in America. It was not desired by the travelers 
 that they be put on shore, and after a careful and interested 
 survey of the little island the Clifton started off again. 
 
 The voyage was then resumed and the Clifton made her 
 way out to the bell buoy and then to the open sea. The 
 weather had been changeable all of the way, and the excur- 
 sionists had first a chance to promenade the decks and next 
 a sudden call to take shelter under the awnings and in- 
 doors. 
 
 The excursion was under the management of a committee 
 and Rev. J. A. Smith, as general chairman of the Wesley 
 bi-centenary committees, was on board and assisted in 
 making everybody comfortable and happy. The points of 
 historic interest were marked in passing by those familiar 
 with the matter. 
 
 During the voyage refreshments were served and all were 
 well pleased with this feature of the trip. The day could 
 have perhaps been more pleasant if the weather had been 
 fine, but it was thoroughly enjoyed, nevertheless. The 
 management had nothing to do with the showers and after 
 the first one or two everybody got used to the dampness 
 and the remainder of the trip was enjoyed very much. 
 
 The Clifton returned to the city at about 7 o'clock and 
 all who had taken the trip expressed their great pleasure 
 and said that despite the rain, they were very glad they had 
 braved the elements and gone for the voyage.
 
 Rev. W. P. Thirkield, D. D.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 79 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF METHODISM ON AMERICA. 
 
 An Address by the Rev. Wilber P. Thirkield, D. D., Corresponding 
 
 Secretary freedmen's Aid and Southern Education 
 
 Society,, Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 On the platform were seated Bishop Candler, Dr. Thir- 
 kield, Rev. A. M. Williams, Rev. H. C. Christian and other 
 ministers. The Bishop presided. 
 
 The services were begun with the singing of "God of My 
 Life, Whose Gracious Power." Hymns No. 209 and 220 
 were sung later, all written by Charles Wesley. 
 
 Rev. G. G. N. McDonell led in prayer and read the lesson 
 for the day. 
 
 Bishop Candler in a few well chosen remarks introduced 
 the speaker of the evening. Quoting the words of Frank- 
 lin at Philadelphia that the God who notes the fall of a spar- 
 row must be sought if a nation is to rise, the Bishop said 
 that the rise of Methodism had exerted a wonderful power 
 upon the world, and especially was this true of the influence 
 of Wesley upon American civilization. 
 
 It was a pleasant duty, he said, to introduce a man who 
 had lived and labored in Georgia, but who was called away. 
 He presented Dr. Thirkield, to speak upon the influences of 
 Methodism upon the American civilization. 
 
 "As he was sailing away from these Savannah shores on 
 Thursday, January 22, 1738, John Wesley wrote in his jour- 
 nal. "I took my leave of America, though if it please God, 
 not forever." 
 
 No, "not forever." For though thou shalt never again 
 set foot in America, thou shalt come again ; thy spirit and 
 life incarnate, through Christ, in the mightiest evangelical 
 religious movement of the centuries ; a movement that is 
 to touch with Christ's hand the expanding, tumultous life of 
 peoples who are to become mighty states and empires ; a 
 movement that is to shape the life and uplift the civilization 
 of millions then unborn ; a movement that through Church 
 and school and press, is to raise up and inspire a ministry 
 and people so aggressive, so pentecostal, of such zeal and 
 sacrifice and power, as has not been seen since the Apostolic 
 age ; a movement that, touching every fifth man in America, 
 is to so lift our civilization into the light and life of God, as
 
 80 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 to make it a beacon to the world, and to fairly fulfill in 
 her that words of the prophet : "I will make thee for a light 
 to lighten the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation un- 
 to the ends of the earth." 
 
 The theme assigned me by your Committee is "The In- 
 fluence of Methodism on American Civilization." 
 
 Civilization has to do with political and social organiza- 
 tion and order, progress in knowledge and in the refine- 
 ments and moralities of peoples ; with their entire life as it 
 relates itself to mental, moral and social advancement. We 
 are therefore to hold in view, in the enlargement of our 
 theme, not merely the bearing of the Methodist movement 
 on the religious life of the Nation, but its influence as it 
 effects the whole life, civil, political, intellectual, social. 
 
 CIVILIZATION AND RELIGION. 
 
 When we come to inquire as to the influence of religion 
 on civilization, we find that the scientist and social philoso- 
 pher for ages ignored or scouted the facts of religion. Ear- 
 ly historians of civilization gave it scant notice. Now, how- 
 ever, it has come to be recognized as furnishing the most 
 striking and persistent phenomena in the shaping of civiliza- 
 tion. It touches man's deepest being ; it most deeply af- 
 fects his life ; it furnishes the supreme note in his character ; 
 the entire outline of his social development and civilization 
 is profoundly influenced by religion. 
 
 This is preeminently true of Christianity. The Christian 
 religion is the most characteristic and pervasive fact of our 
 Western civilization. As Kidd suggests, though a large 
 proportion of the population may be quite unconscious of it, 
 their conception of their mutual relationships, of their rights 
 and duties, of their ideas of liberty, of government and of 
 the fundamental principles of society, have been largely 
 shaped by the teachings of religion. In fact, history would 
 seem to show that the only civilization is Christian civiliza- 
 tion any other has in it the seeds of its own dissolution. 
 
 This is especially true in America. Here the Christian 
 religion has had free scope. It has been untrammeled by 
 statecraft. Ecclesiasticism has not drawn its straight-jacket 
 over it. The Church has exacted no taxes or tithes. The 
 masses have been reached by the Gospel.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 81 
 
 METHODISM AND AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Referring to America, we may ask, how does it come that 
 this civilization by general consent of men leads the world? 
 That Herbert Spencer prophesied that the forces that are 
 moulding our national life would produce civilization grand- 
 er than any the world has ever known ! And that that most 
 astute and comprehensive student of our civilization since De 
 Touqueville has testified that American civilization marks 
 the highest level to which the race has ever yet attained! 
 What better answer can be given than in that word of one 
 of the foremost of the secular journals of our civilization, 
 which has affirmed that "no candid observer will deny that 
 whatever of good there may be in our American civilization, 
 is the product of Christianity. The motives and powers 
 working for the cleansing and uplifting of our social life are 
 Christian." 
 
 Coming now to our specific theme we may inquire, is there 
 any individual religious movement which above all others 
 has produced this profound and abiding influence on Ameri- 
 can life and character? 
 
 In answer, lest on this occasion we ourselves would seem 
 to be given to boasting, let us go to the leading authority 
 on the moral aspects of our civilization, Dr. Baird, a Pres- 
 byterian, who recognizes in the Methodist economy as well 
 as in the zeal, devoted piety and efficiency of its ministry, 
 "the most powerful element in the religious prosperity of 
 the United States, as well as one of the firmest pillars of 
 our civil and religious institutions." This influence on 
 American civilization is not found in creed or cathedral, but 
 in life. McCarthy bears witness that Wesley's "monument 
 lives to-day in the living history of England and America," 
 and even George William Curtis witnesses to the higher, 
 freer, individual and national life to which Methodism 
 leads. 
 
 Methodism, by general consent, through its doctrines and 
 polity, the peculiar genius of its organization and life, has 
 done more to mould and uplift the civilization of America 
 than any other one organized force. 
 
 Both by its doctrines and methods, Methodism was prov- 
 identially equipped for the task of saving a civilization. The 
 doctrines of the Methodist movement were Scriptural, sim- 
 ple, preachable. The message of the preacher was three- 
 fold and set forth, first, salvation from sin, free and for all, 
 on simple faith ; second, a salvation you can know, here and 
 now; third, a salvation to which you can testify.
 
 82 WESLEY SI-CENTENARY. 
 
 Of these doctrines were born and inspired the men for 
 the moral and spiritual conquest of a Nation. They were 
 saved, often from the depths of despair from which Galvan- 
 ism was powerless to lift them. They knew they were saved. 
 And they testified to it. It was the Apostolic method, wit- 
 ness to Jesus and the power of his resurrection. And this 
 doctrine of assurance they sung: 
 
 "That which we have seen and felt 
 
 With confidence we tell, 
 And publish to the sons of men, 
 
 The signs infallible." 
 
 The story of their evangelism reads like a chapter out of 
 the book of Acts. 
 
 METHODISM'S APPEAL TO THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 The special adaptation of the Methodist movement to 
 American civilization was in its appeal to the individual. 
 The unit of civilization is the individual. This fact is em- 
 phasized in a democracy. Not bound by set forms, not given 
 to ecclesiasticism, Methodism struck out for man. Its preach- 
 ing emphasized the worth of the individual soul. 
 
 Any great social and religious movement draws its power 
 from reverence for humanity ; from its capacity to create 
 men ; and all this through its power to get God into touch 
 with man ; to draw man up out of the depths into the larger 
 and Divine relations for which he was created. Methodism 
 got hold of men by gripping the individual man. It acted 
 on the truth stated by Emerson, that God hath not created 
 souls in bundles, but to every man He puts the question, 
 "How is it with thee?" The Methodist preacher got from 
 Wesley himself, the secret of preaching to the individual. 
 And how did Wesley preach? Hear him in one of his ap- 
 peals : "Who art thou that now seest and feelest both thine 
 inward and outward ungodliness Thou art the man. I 
 want thee for my Lord ; I challenge thee for a child of 
 God by faith. . The Lord hath need of thee. Thou who feel- 
 est thou art just fit for hell, art just fit to advance His 
 glory, the glory of His free grace, justifying the ungodly and 
 him that worketh not. Oh, come quickly ! Believe in the 
 Lord God; and thou, even thou, are reconciled to God." Is 
 it any wonder that John Nelson, who heard him, said : "I 
 thought he fixed his eyes on me, and his whole discourse 
 was aimed at me." Such Methodist preaching broke hard-
 
 WESLEY SI-CENTENARY. s 83 
 
 ened hearts until men in anguish cried out : "The arrows of 
 the Almighty stick fast within me, and the terrors of God 
 do set themselves up in array against me." 
 
 ADAPTATION TO A DEMOCRACY. 
 
 The very genius and spirit of Methodism thus gave it 
 special adaptation to a democracy. John Wesley showed 
 great wisdom in leaving, at the earliest moment American 
 Methodism to the control and direction of Americans. It 
 has been well said that while he gave advice, he did not dic- 
 tate as to the spirit and method of the movement in this 
 country. Thus fortunately it broke away from the hard, 
 set lines of the Angelican establishment and was left to a 
 free and spontaneous development in this new empire. It 
 has thus become, in a peculiar sense, the church of the 
 American people. 
 
 Methodism, thus freed, worked towards the Democratic 
 ideal. It was a great leveler, not by leveling down but by 
 leveling up. It put hope and divine strength under the feet 
 of men. It was a lifter up of downcast people. Who can 
 estimate the influence of the numerous churches in isolated 
 communities ; the preaching in houses, the free, active ex- 
 ercise of the talent for public speaking in the class meet- 
 ings, the raising up of an army of lay preachers and workers. 
 Think of the influence of all this in popular education and 
 on the civilization of a new democracy. 
 
 In the ministry of this sparsely peopled continent the 
 Methodist churches have for four generations, been "creat- 
 ing a nervous system for our nascent commonwealth." The 
 itinerant was the popular educator. With his saddle-bags 
 filled with books, carrying with him a larger outlook upon 
 life, he constantly kept "the out-posts of civilization in 
 touch with each other and has linked them on to the body 
 of the more highly advanced community." They scattered 
 cheap literature of a high grade. They taught the people to 
 sing. The Methodist hymn book has been called the liturgy 
 of the revival, and the revival itself a real democratic col- 
 lege of music. 
 
 And who can measure the power of the hymns of Metho- 
 dism? What a tribute that of Dr. Austin Phelps ! "For 
 the planting of great Christian truths deep in the heart of 
 an awakened people, let us have John Wesley's tongue of 
 fire, seconded by Charles Wesley's hymns, floating heaven- 
 ward on the twilight air from ten thousand Methodist
 
 84 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 voices. Under such conditions Methodism is inspired. To 
 know what Methodist voices are under inspiration, one 
 must hear them. Mobs, bellowing with infuriated bloodthirst, 
 which neither John Wesley's coal-black eye nor Whitefield's 
 imperial voice could quell, have been known to turn and 
 slink away when the truth was sung at them in Charles 
 Wesley's hymns. Their ringleaders, more than once, broke 
 down in tears and groans of remorse. They took the preacher 
 by the hand, and went his way with him, arm in arm, 
 swearing by all that is holy that not a hair of his hair should 
 be touched. Thus was Luther's saying verified anew: "The 
 devil can stand anything but good music, and that makes 
 him roar." 
 
 How can we ever estimate the importance of the itinerant 
 ministry in creating a spirit of unity in the widely scattered 
 republic. Like shuttles of light they flew backward 
 and forward in the national loom "weaving together in one 
 organic whole the isolated and widely scattered communi- 
 ties, weaving closer and closer the many colored strands of 
 our national life." The class meeting became a school of 
 government. Stead even insists that in developing habits of 
 association and self-government Methodism rendered modern 
 democracy possible. 
 
 EQUIPPED TO SAVE A CIVILIZATION. 
 
 The Methodism of John Wesley was not only fitted for a 
 democracy, but was providentially equipped to save a civili- 
 zation. 
 
 Guizot has somewhere said that prevision and exact cal- 
 culation do not count for so much in governments. "It is 
 unexpected events, the imperious necessities of successive 
 epochs which are decisive." Methodism did not create an 
 epoch in our civilization. But Methodism, at the opening of 
 the last century, did meet the imperious demands of an 
 epoch which amounted to a crisis in the moral life of a na- 
 tion. Methodism's greatest service to America was in sav- 
 ing the civilization of the great West. 
 
 While the opportunity for Methodism was broader in the 
 West, yet let us not forget that in the South were its largest 
 conquests at the opening of the last century. Let us not 
 forget that every spot pressed by the feet of John Wesley, 
 (sometimes bare feet in order to win boys who had no shoes), 
 are on these Southern shores. Here in 1736 began the in- 
 fluence of John Wesley on our American civilization. John
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. &5 
 
 Wesley was in Georgia with Oglethorpe at the founding of 
 this colony. Thus through him he early touched the civili- 
 zation of America. He called himself a "Georgia missioner." 
 Of his service Whitefield testifies : 
 
 "The good Mr. John Wesley has done in America is inex- 
 pressible. His name is very precious among the people, and 
 he has laid a foundation that I hope neither men nor devils 
 will ever be able to shake. Oh, that I may follow him as 
 he followed Christ!" 
 
 Here Wesley and Whitefield were intent, not merely on 
 touching the religious life of the people, but started move- 
 ments for social betterment. They labored for the poor. 
 Here Whitefield founded his orphan house. Here in the 
 South Methodism took early and firm root. It is true it 
 had a hard task in Savannah. Who could have prophesied 
 from these untoward beginnings that in this Commonwealth 
 every sixth man, woman and child would to-day be a Metho- 
 dist ! 
 
 The early field of Methodist triumphs was in the South. 
 After crossing the mountain ranges near the eastern coast, 
 Francis Asbury once spoke of his diocese as reaching from 
 Boston to Savannah, and being several hundred miles in 
 width. While in 1784 there were 1,607 Methodists in the 
 North, in the South 13,381 were marshalled under the ban- 
 ner of Methodism. In Virginia, Francis Asbury established 
 the first sunday-school on the American continent. Giving 
 aid to Mark Moore in planting Methodism in New Orleans, 
 led to the formation of the first Missionary Society in Ameri- 
 can Methodism. 
 
 The South was the early training school for many of the 
 preachers of the Methodist movements. Here many of its 
 leaders were born. Here in the seaboard . states they had 
 their first triumphs, gaining that discipline of mind and cour- 
 age of spirit needed for the larger field in the border states 
 of the South, and the opening empire of the wild and unset- 
 tled West. For this supreme task the South furnished many 
 of the strongest ministers. 
 
 PERIL OF THE NEW WEST. 
 
 What a prophetic scene was that in the life of Henry Clay 
 when on a jutting crag on the heights of the Alleghenies, 
 looking out toward the silent and empty prairie of the great 
 West, he inclined his head as if listening to far away sounds. 
 Said his friend, "What hearest thou?" "Hear? I hear the
 
 86 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 thundering tread of the coming millions that will ascend 
 these mountains, descend into these valleys, and hold these 
 prairies away to the setting sun." A true prophecy, and in 
 its fulfillment lay the peril of a new civilization. 
 
 It is a truth emphasized by history, that emigration or a 
 new settlement of the social state involves a tendency to 
 social decline. American civilization faced just this danger. 
 Here were the multitudes rolling on into the West plunging 
 into the 'wilderness, clambering over mountains, fighting 
 the Indian ; men passionate for land, "adventure, , gold and 
 gain. Together with the elements of better peoples, there 
 rushed on headlong into the West, rude, wicked men, out- 
 laws, adventurers, together with hoards of foreigners ; all 
 pouring in a promiscuous flood into these wild and unsettled 
 regions. 
 
 CIVILIZATION HAS ROOTS. 
 
 Now civilization has roots. These roots strike deep and 
 hold men with the strong and vital grip of local institutions 
 and ideals. An emigrant race cannot carry these roots with 
 it. It snaps off this vital connection with old environments. 
 Herein was America's peril. Away from the standards of 
 civilized life ; away from the restraints of law and order ; away 
 from the constraining influence of home and the enlighten- 
 ing influence of the Church ; separated from the ideals of the 
 family and higher social life, there was positive danger of 
 the emigrant masses in our great unsettled West degenerat- 
 ing into barbarism, a low, coarse, unmoral civilization ; 
 danger of permanent decline in morals and religion among 
 emigrant peoples who were the makers of new states and 
 shapers of a new civilization. 
 
 "BARBARISM THE FIRST DANGER." 
 
 Lest we may seem to exaggerate let us turn to Horace 
 Bushnell, who in his great Home Missionary sermon on 
 "Barbarism The First Danger," drew a vivid picture of this 
 region of passion and of disorder in the West, "spreading, 
 onward across the vast regions yet unoccupied, growing yet 
 more violent as it is deeper in ignorance, and wilder still as 
 it is more remote from the haunts of Christian civilization." 
 He sees in his vision the possibility of masses of "a partially 
 new race of men such as cannot any longer be properly in- 
 cluded in the term of civilization, rolling on like a prairie 
 fire caused by the advance of regular emigration," with no
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTEXARY. 87 
 
 fixed habits or care for civilization, education or religion. 
 These "semi-barbarians too are continually multiplying in 
 numbers and becoming more distinct in their habits. Ere 
 long there is reason to fear they will be scouring in populous 
 bands over the vast territories of Oregon and California 
 (then standing for the greater West) to be known as the 
 pasturing tribes, the wild and robber clans of the Western 
 hemisphere, American Moabites, Arabs and Edomites." He 
 sounds the alarm of one emigrant family of the Saxbn race al- 
 ready sunk into barbarism since our history began, the 
 Dutch Boers of South Africa. 
 
 AN ALARMING PICTURE. 
 
 That this alarming picture is borne out by contemporary 
 reports of actual conditions earlier in the century, is shown 
 by the Massachusetts Bible Society. Mills and Shermer- 
 horne, agents in the West and South, report finding entire 
 populations utterly ignorant of divine things ; with no 
 schools, no Bibles, no religious institutions. 
 
 Their account of the wickedness in the new settlements 
 is appalling. Through emigration, they were constantly 
 growing worse. After going over the field the second time, 
 Mills gave it as his calm and deliberate opinion, that there 
 were in 1815 "between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mis- 
 sissippi River 76,000 families destitute of trie Bible," and 
 the number was yearly increasing. 
 
 Everywhere, but especially in the Ohio River towns, he 
 found the Sabbath was polluted by hunting, feasting, fishing 
 and by a gross neglect of religious duties. The people were 
 demoralized by drunkenness and profane swearing. Across 
 the river in Kentucky, the towns are described as sinks of in- 
 iquity and the mass of the inhabitants as ignorant and vic- 
 ious, and utterly destitute of the Bible and religious books. 
 
 The West was in a state of spiritual darkness. The re- 
 ports record "great tracts of country inhabited with some 
 20 to 50,000 people in which there was not a preacher of any 
 sort. Where there were any, they were almost invariably 
 Methodists." The note of alarm was sounded that "some 
 mighty efforts must be made if the West was not to become 
 as ignorant of God's word as the heart of Africa." 
 
 This downward pressure of emigrant masses grasping, 
 rude, ignorant, free from restraint of law, home ties, the 
 Church, religion, furnished the crisis of a Nation. Our civi- 
 lization was in peril. The problem was, shall this great em-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 pire of the West that is to hold the balance of power in a 
 democratic civilization, be redeemed into order, morality 
 and religion, or will this downward force carry it beyond 
 the capacity to rise. The great empire of the West must 
 be won from threatened barbarism to God. 
 
 THE CHURCH UNEQUAL TO THE TASK. 
 
 The Church is the only hope. But is the Church equal to 
 this tremendous task?' There is no question that at the 
 close of the eighteenth century the Church was in a state 
 of weakness and spiritual decline because of the turmoil and 
 distractions succeeding the Revolution. English deism and 
 French infidelity were doing their deadly work. The infideli- 
 ty of the French Revolution was popular. Students in 
 Christian Colleges were organized into infidel clubs. Yale 
 had only four Christian students. Unitarianism, with its 
 pale negations, soon began to dominate New England. And 
 I may here state it as my conviction that Methodism 
 through its evangelical doctrine and the appeal to a liv- 
 ing experience proved the strongest breakwater against the 
 spread of Unitarianism. 
 
 The Church had been disestablished. McMaster says that 
 in Virginia the Episcopal clergy had fallen into disrepute 
 and even in the large towns the buildings were given over 
 to vermin and decay. Such was the condition of the 
 Churches. 
 
 The clergy was not aggressive. Revivals had largely 
 ceased. There was a settled clergy with unbending ideals 
 in religious methods ; a stiff, standing order to work and 
 worship adapted to the settled civilization of the East and 
 seaboard regions. Neither church nor clergy was equal 
 to the emergency in the West. How was this crisis to be 
 met? 
 
 Here was a new empire spreading out toward the setting 
 sun, and, as was suggested, some agency like the angel of 
 the Apocalypse was needed to fly through the midst of the 
 heavens having the everlasting Gospel to preach to the mil- 
 lions, who were rushing away from Church and civilization 
 into these unsettled regions. A ministry of evangelizing 
 gifts and power was needed that could go out into the high- 
 ways and could follow with swift and eager feet the ever 
 advancing borders of the emigrants and compel men to the 
 Kingdom of God.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 89 
 
 METHODISM'S ADAPATION TO THE WILDER- 
 NESS. 
 
 Methodism, alone in its doctrines, spirit and movement 
 was providentially adapted to this aggressive and rapidly 
 moving civilization of the West. As Roosevelt bears wit- 
 ness in his "Winning of the West :" "Galvanism, though 
 more congenial than Episcopacy and infinitely more so than 
 Catholicism, was too cold for the fiery hearts of the borders ; 
 they were not stirred to the depths of their natures till 
 other creeds, and above all Methodism, worked their way 
 to the wilderness." 
 
 That is a fine tribute of Horace Bushnell in which the 
 providential adaptation of the Methodist ministry for this 
 crisis is set forth: "A ministry admirably adapted as re- 
 gards their mode of action to the new West ; a kind of light 
 artillery that God has organized to pursue, to overtake the 
 fugitives that flee into the wilderness from His presence. 
 They are firm and effective in action ready for all service and 
 omnipresent as it were in the field. The new settler reaches 
 the ground to be occupied and by the next week he is like- 
 ly to find the circuit crossing by his door, and to hear the 
 voice of one crying in the wilderness : 'The kingdom of 
 God is come nigh unto you.' ; 
 
 This ubiquity of the Methodist circuit rider is strikingly 
 illustrated by this incident of early Methodism in Georgia, 
 which is given in several histories : "Richard Nolley, a na- 
 tive of South Carolina, and a noted evangelist, after camp- 
 ing in the woods among wild beasts eleven nights in suc- 
 cession, while exploring his new circuit, at last struck the 
 Tombigbee River ; and, noticing a fresh wagontrack, was 
 inspired with the hope that he soon might find a soul saved 
 or that needed salvation. He soon came upon an emigrant 
 family, which had just selected the spot where they were 
 to make their future home. The man was feeding his 
 horses and his wife arranging the supper. As Nolley rode 
 up, the astonished emigrant exclaimed : "What ! are you 
 here?' ''I am here, sir; but I have not the happiness of 
 your acquaintance, I am sorry to say. Where, sir, have you 
 known me?' 
 
 "I have never seen you before, but I know you are a 
 Methodist preacher, and I am amazed that you have found 
 me so soon. It is only two years ago that I left Virginia 
 and settled in Georgia to get away from Methodist preach-
 
 90 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 ers ; but you hunted me out, and in Georgia got my wife 
 and daughter into your Church. Then I left Georgia for 
 this place, sure that I would be rid of you forever ; but here 
 you are before I have had one night's peace.' 'My friend,' 
 said Nolley, 'go where you may, earth, heaven, and per- 
 haps elsewhere, you will find Methodist preachers, and you 
 had better be at peace with them.' Of course he capitulated 
 on the spot." 
 
 PASSION TO REACH MEN. 
 
 Thus Methodism went after men where they were ; went 
 into the fields and shops ; went into the wilderness and in 
 slums ; set up its pulpit in kitchen, barn and loft ; went into 
 the woods and camped with the multitudes ; made the groves 
 temples of God, and vocal with such song as moved men to 
 pentitence and tears. 
 
 Methodism showed a supreme passion to reach all men ; 
 never shut itself in with classes, but went for the masses ; 
 reached them one by one, through trials and labors almost 
 beyond belief. Where in religious history can the achieve- 
 ments of these itinerants find a parallel? Wonders of grace 
 and transforming power over hardened men, redeeming them 
 from a low, coarse, ignorant, unmoral civilization to the 
 higher life. 
 
 Methodism brought men in close touch with the living, 
 saving power of Christ, with the gospel of the pierced hands, 
 able to lift men out of vilest sin and shame, and to heal 
 them. Who can estimate the influence of the great re- 
 vivals in rude communities, among coarse and unrestrained 
 men, away from civilization, cut off from all appeals to the 
 higher life. 
 
 The Methodist preacher came with his appeal to con- 
 science. With his hope of a real heaven; with his warning 
 to flee from the wrath to come. He made his high appeal 
 to the consciousness of immortality in every man. In the 
 great revivals, coarse, hardened men to whom the appeal to 
 the intellect was vain ; who would not hear the argument 
 for miracles, saw before them living miracles of penitence, 
 miracles of grace, miracles of transformation through a 
 strange, supernatural power. Hardened men, with natures 
 burned to a crisp in the heat of devilish passion, they saw 
 before their very eyes, subdued, purified, touched with the 
 power of an unearthly life, bearing witness to an experience 
 in which "the spirit answers to the blood and tells me I am 
 born of God."
 
 WESLKY BI-CENTENARY. 91 
 
 Men in the midst of the earthy were brought face to face 
 with God ; the power of the world to come were brought to 
 bear upon them ; the reality of heaven and hell sounded 
 forth in sermons burning with conviction, blazing with livid 
 rhetoric and Scriptural power. Men heard and heeded the 
 call to flee from the wrath to come. 
 
 These itinerant preachers threw their very lives into the 
 task ; men who "labored as if the judgment fires were about 
 to break out on the world and time end with their day." 
 They counted not their lives dear unto them. And r.t what 
 cost these wide, rude, sparsely settled regions were saved 
 to civilization and religion may be realized when we are told 
 that in these hard years of conquest, one-third of the Metho- 
 dist preachers died before they reached thirty years of age, 
 and fully two-thirds before twelve years of this trying itine- 
 rant life had passed. They sacrificed their lives, but they, 
 in a large measure, saved a civilization. 
 
 A FORCE IN SHAPING AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 The Methodism of John Wesley not only saved a civiliza- 
 tion, but by its loyalty and patriotism, its educational ideals 
 and achievements ; through the influence of its press, and 
 its leadership in moral reform movements, has been the 
 most potent organized force in shaping the civilization of 
 America. 
 
 The inspiring influence of Methodism on our civilization 
 has been felt, through its patriotism and its loyalty to 
 American institutions. In the very founding of the Nation, 
 the followers of John Wesley, the first organized Episcopal 
 Church in America, were the first Christian delegation to 
 wait on George Washington with assurances of devotion to 
 the new Republic. As Bancroft says: "At peace with the 
 institutions of the country in which they prospered, they 
 v~-- +he ready friends of the Union." 
 
 /^'l in the next great crisis, Abraham L : n~oln. -\s v-u- 
 own Henry Grady has called him, the typical American, 
 mingling in his veins the blood of Puritan and Cavalier; 
 Abraham Lincoln, the savior of our Nation, bore grateful 
 witness to the influence of Methodist numbers and prayers 
 in giving us back a united country, to which the followers 
 of John Wesley in Georgia, as I can testify by over sixteen 
 years of citizenship here, are as loyal as our Methodists in 
 Ohio.
 
 92 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 It was Buckle who styled Wesley the first theological 
 statesman. His American followers caught his spirit of 
 statesmanship. Methodist preachers have ever been broad 
 and practical students of national affairs, and in every moral 
 movement active and influential as citizens. The organized 
 Conference covering by stations and circuits, every corner 
 of the land ; the methods of our itinerancy ; the Nation-wide 
 diocese of our Bishops, passing like flying shuttles through 
 the land, have not only served to make the warp and woof 
 of public sentiment, but through their wide knowledge of 
 conditions have fitted Methodist leaders to become the wise 
 advisers of Presidents and statesmen. 
 
 AS AN EDUCATIONAL POWER. 
 
 The debt of American civilization to the educational 
 agencies of Methodism need not be more strongly stated 
 than in that tribute of Edward Everett, "No Church in this 
 country has so successfully engaged in education, as the 
 Methodist Church." 
 
 Our American Methodism early caught the spirit of Wes- 
 ley who, as Farrar testifies, gave a great impulse both to 
 national education and to technical education. In 1784 the 
 very year of the formal organization of the Church, Coke 
 and Asbury projected, and, the next year, laid the founda- 
 tion of Cokesbury College. And Methodists have been at 
 it ever since, until now they have in America many Institu- 
 tions of learning with grounds and buildings and endow- 
 ments valued at many millions with a large army of teachers 
 and scholars. 
 
 Methodism was a pioneer in education in the vast prarie 
 wilderness of the West. McKendree College was founded in 
 Illinois in 1834, the first college in all that immense domain, 
 with John Wesley Merrill as President. The first Chris- 
 tian college in the great republic of Texas was established 
 by Martin Ruter. Although Asbury's ambition to found a 
 school in every Conference for the training of preachers and 
 people has hardly been realized, yet scores of such schools 
 have been organized, and though often meagerly equipped, 
 they have 'given opportunity to tens of thousands of stu- 
 dents who otherwise would have had no chance for educa- 
 tion. They have thus been a strong factor in giving en- 
 lightenment and leadership to our civilization.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 93 
 
 PIONEERS OF A CHEAP PRESS. 
 
 Books are the great civilizers. Methodism has shaped 
 the thought and spirit of America's civilization through the 
 multiplied millions of books and periodicals, sent out like 
 leaves of healing into every corner of the Nation. In this 
 Methodism has simply wrought in the spirit of Wesley, who 
 was the pioneer of the cheap press. Farrar gives John Wes- 
 ley the credit of inaugurating this spread of religious in- 
 struction by weekly periodicals and the cheap press, with all 
 its stupendous consequences. Wesley went at it in a prac- 
 tical way. To all his preachers he said, "See th^it every So- 
 ciety is supplied with books, some of which ought to be in 
 every house." Methodists heeded this wise word of their 
 founder. 
 
 The itinerant was the first book canvasser. He was a 
 traveling book store. Into the wilderness he brought the 
 torch of knowledge ; awakened the minds of youth ; saved 
 from ignorance and sottishness, a generation in the wilder- 
 ness. He was thus a herald of civilization. 
 
 Here along this same shore in Charleston, John Wesley 
 published the first of his long list of 200 volumes. His 
 American followers took up the work of publishing in 1789. 
 Beginning with a borrowed capital of $600, the net value of 
 the publishing plants of American Methodism is now nearly 
 five millions of dollars. 
 
 Not only has it the greatest publishing house in the 
 world, but it is a significant fact to be named in this con- 
 nection, that two of the greatest American publishing houses 
 of the last century in New York and in Boston had Metho- 
 dists as their heads. All these publications have been on a 
 high moral plane inculcating morality, temperance and loyal- 
 ty to high ideals. Who can estimate the influence of such 
 a press on civilization? 
 
 SAVING TO CIVILIZATION MILLIONS OF 
 NEGROES. 
 
 When the influence of Methodism on American civilization 
 is recorded, one of its most significant triumphs must be 
 found in its christianizing of millions of American Negroes, 
 and in the restraining, uplifting, redeeming influence of 
 Methodism in fitting these millions for the duties of free- 
 dom and civilization that were suddenly thrust upon them. 
 
 No greater strain on the civilization of a democracy could 
 be conceived. Think of four millions of blacks suddenly re-
 
 94 WESLEY HI-CENTENARY. 
 
 leased from bondage. Four million slaves, given without 
 preparation, the fearful boon of freedom ; four millions un- 
 tutored and irresponsible, suddenly clothed with citizenship ; 
 old ties that held them broken ; old masters who controlled 
 and guided, now without direction, over them and their 
 children ; a race in its childhood, undeveloped, left to its own 
 free will and direction, and during Reconstruction led often 
 by scheming politicians and designing men. 
 
 What possibilities here in a warm heaited, inflammable 
 race for insurrection, revenge, blood-shed ; yea, as Bishop 
 Haygood suggested, what possibilities in certain sections of 
 the horrors of San Domingo. Was ever such a strain put 
 upon a civilization? Was ever an untried race sub- 
 jected to such a test? 
 
 After living face to face with this problem for a score of 
 years, more than sixteen years as a citizen of Georgia, I 
 affirm that the Christian religion was the one supreme in- 
 fluence that restrained, controlled and guided into channels 
 of order and peace and the lives of these millions, in the 
 order of Providence set free. The Church became the center 
 of their entire life, civil, political, educational, social, as well 
 religious. And Methodism through its missionary zeal un- 
 der slavery, by its educational and religious work follow- 
 ing Emancipation, as well as by its very organization, polity 
 and evangelical spirit, was above all other Churches provi- 
 dentially fitted for the task of saving to civilization millions 
 of a race threatened with relapse into barbarism. By its 
 Conference organization, by the careful oversight of Pre- 
 siding Elders, by the class meeting for the people, and a 
 rigid Episcopal oversight, a higher type of religious charac- 
 ter in preachers and people his been been possible than in 
 independent churches, where the government was loose and 
 without the careful leadership and oversight of officers in 
 authority. 
 
 Whence came these Negro preachers and class leaders, 
 who in this critical period at the close of the war, effectively 
 reached and held the multitudes of roving freedmen, and 
 who through the troublous reconstruction davs gave Chris- 
 tian restraint and direction to their lives, laying broad and 
 deep the foundations for colored Methodism throughout 
 the South ; men who knew God, men with minds richly stored 
 with God's word ; men who prayed with power and fervor, 
 who preached the word with grace and saving power. 
 
 Whence came the Cordozas, the Bulkleys, the Revels, the 
 Lanes, the Holseys, the Gaines, the Clintons ; preachers just
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 95 
 
 out from slavery, who with strange power subdued king- 
 doms, wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions, 
 out of weakness were made strong? Whence these thou- 
 sands of preachers and class leaders ready for the task of 
 laying the foundations and building up an Episcopal Metho- 
 dism among Negroes now numbering in its several 
 branches, 1,729,597 members with 1,248,000 children in the 
 Sunday Schools ; an army of three millions of black Metho- 
 dists, singing : 
 
 "We are the sons of Wesley, 
 W r e are the sons of God." 
 
 Whence came at the close of the war these hundreds of 
 Methodist preachers and teachers of the Negro race, men 
 who knew the Bible, men who, with pathos and power, could 
 sing the hymns of Charles Wesley, men who could testify 
 to a rich and genuine experience of the saving grace and the 
 comforting joy of the Lord Jesus? Whence came they? 
 
 With reverant heart and uncovered head, I. have stood 
 before that plain slab in the churchyard at Columbia, S. C., 
 which bears on its face the simple inscription : 
 
 "William Capers, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church South, founder of Mission to the Slaves." To the 
 heroic missionary zeal of this man of God, Methodism and 
 American civilization owe an unspeakable debt of gratitude ; 
 for through his leadership Methodism began in a larger way 
 her Christian work among the blacks of the South. 
 
 Would you catch the spirit of this missionary and prophet 
 of God, then hear his impassioned appeal before the last 
 General Conference of our united Methodism : "When we tell 
 you that we preach to one hundred thousand slaves in our 
 missionary field, we only announce the beginning of our 
 work when we add that there are now two hundred thousand 
 within our reach who have no Gospel unless we give it to 
 them, it is still but the same announcement of the opening of 
 that wide and effectual door, which was so long closed, and so 
 lately has begun to be opened for the preaching of the Gos- 
 pel by our ministry to a numerous and destitute portion of 
 the people. Oh, close not this door ! Life or death we will 
 never desert that work to which we know that God called 
 us." The outcome of such a zeal and devotion was that in 
 1861 Southern Methodism had over 200,000 colored mem- 
 bers and 180,000 children in Sunday Schools. Such was 
 the estimate of the Church upon this work, that in their ad- 
 dress to the General Conference, the Bishops said : "We
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 regard these missions as the crowning glory of the 
 Church." And the General Conference in its address to 
 pastors responded : "The salvation of the colored people in 
 our midst is the primary duty of the Church." 
 
 I ask you to consider this work of American Methodism 
 among the black people, not primarily, from the point of 
 view of the kingdom of God, but to estimate the effect on 
 our civilization, of the educative and redemptive influence 
 of this missionary work on the millions of American Ne- 
 groes. 
 
 Black and white worshipped in the same churcli together. 
 They met in communion at the same sacramental table. 
 They listened to the same preaching. They breathed forth 
 their spirit in the same noble hymns of Wesley. Their minds 
 were stored with Scripture. They wove Psalm and prophecy 
 into mortal melodies. Fortunate indeed for this race and 
 for the civilization of America, when there came upon it the 
 strain of these millions fresh from slavery, without prepara- 
 tion for citizenship, that a quarter of a million had been 
 trained, even though crudely, in Methodist discipline, doc- 
 trines and moral ideals. The record of the Negro race, under 
 the circumstances, is one of the miracles of history. And of 
 all the single contributions of Methodism to the civiliza- 
 tion of America, the gathering of three millions of these black 
 people into well ordered church life and Sunday School train- 
 ing, within a little more than a generation after Emancipa- 
 tion, must take important rank among the largest and most 
 far reaching achievements of our American Metho- 
 dism. 
 
 A REFORM MOVEMENT. 
 
 The influence of American Methodism in the moral re- 
 form movements that have shaped our civilization is be- 
 yond estimate. In this form of leadership the Church was 
 simply fulfilling the spirit of John Wesley, who declared the 
 purpose of God in raising up Methodism was "not to form 
 a new sect, but to reform the Nation, particularly the 
 Church." 
 
 It is not my province to show how the English Wesleyan 
 movement gave birth to moral reformations that according 
 to historian Green "recreated England." Austin Phelps has 
 even said that the rise of Methodism was the birth of a 
 spiritual reform. It has been what new blood is to fallen 
 dvnasties and clecadent races.
 
 WESLEY B[-CENTENARY. 97 
 
 The moral condition of the people of this Nation at the 
 opening of the last century needed just such a church and 
 ministry, which, along with revived spiritual life, carried with 
 them the forces of moral reformation and cleans- 
 ing. 
 
 The very people and preachers who first gave Methodism 
 to America were the products and witnesses of such a moral 
 reform. They were emigrants from Ireland. They were 
 not, however, native Celts. Their fathers had been driven 
 from the Palatine on the Rhine by Papal troops. They took 
 refuge in Ireland. A Teutonic population, speaking their 
 own language, for half a century they lived without pastors. 
 They became demoralized and were noted for drunkeness, 
 profanity and utter neglect of religion. Methodism wrought 
 a transformation among them. And they became a serious, 
 sober people, showing a diligence that turned their land into 
 a garden. 
 
 Such were the antecedents of the men who founded the 
 Methodist movement in America. They had seen what God 
 was able to do in the moral reformation of peoples, and s'o 
 Methodism started out here, not as a doctrinal movement 
 merely or a formal religion, but as a power that touches the 
 whole life of man in the interests of real civilization. 
 
 Methodism therefore touched our civilization on its moral 
 side. It was not given merely to other worldliness. It had 
 to do with the life that now is, the whole man in his variou? 
 relations. And so it follows that the testimony of Green is 
 especially true of the Methodists of America : 
 
 "The Methodists themselves were the least result of the 
 Methodist revival. The noblest result of the religious re- 
 vival was the steady attempt which has never ceased from 
 that day to this to remedy the guilt, the ignorance, the phy- 
 sical suffering, the social degradation of the profligate and 
 the poor." 
 
 This was the outcome of Wesley's teaching "Do all the 
 good you can to the bodies and souls of men." The fact is, 
 Methodism through its classes was an organized philan- 
 thropy. Methodists came to sympathize, not merely with 
 human conditions, but, through these close relations, they 
 sympathized with human nature. 
 
 LEADERSHIP IN TEMPERANCE REFORM. 
 
 Most marked has been the influence oh our civilization 
 of the doctrine and practice of temperance among American 
 Methodists. Wesley began this great reform, when in 1743
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 he prepared the general rule for the guidance of the com- 
 ing millions of Methodists, warning them against "drunken- 
 ness, buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them 
 except in cases of extreme necessity." 
 
 As early as April, 1780, at the Preachers' Conference in 
 Baltimore, the 23rd Minute reads: "Do we disapprove of 
 the practice of distilling grain into liquor? Shall we disown 
 our friends who will not renounce the practice?" Answer, 
 "Yes." 
 
 By 1783 Methodism had made advance against rum and 
 Question 2 reads : "Should our friends be permitted to make 
 spirituous liquors, sell or drink them in drams?" Answer 
 "By no means. We think it wrong in its nature and conse- 
 quences ; and we desire all our preachers to teach the peo- 
 ple by precept and example to put away this evil." 
 
 At the North Methodists have set up the standard of to- 
 tal abstinence as the rule for the individual, and complete 
 legal prohibition as the duty of civil government. And what 
 stronger expression against the rum traffic could be uttered 
 than that of the General Conference of the Church, South : 
 
 "We are opposed to all forms of license of this iniquity 
 whether the same be 'high' or Mow'. It cannot be put so 
 'high' that the prayers of God's people for its suppression 
 will not rise above it, nor so low', though it makes its bed 
 in hell, that the shrieks of the souls lost through its accursed 
 agency will not descend beneath it." Largely through the 
 influence of Methodist leadership, 'more than one Southern 
 State has become, through local option, pratically through- 
 out its borders, prohibition territory. . 
 
 Methodism in the sweep and breadth of her reform move- 
 ments has liberated woman, and what a crowning glory to 
 Methodism that she has given to American civilization the 
 founder, the prophetess and the reigning queen in the most 
 potent organized crusade movement against rum. The gift 
 of the South to Ohio, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, was the 
 founder of the Ohio crusade movement, that swept like a 
 prairie fire over the land and awakened the Nation to the 
 possibilities of woman in her warfare against the saloon. 
 This developed into the mightiest organization against rum. 
 The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, through which 
 the voice of Frances Williard sounded over the Nation like 
 that of a prophetess of God. And in the White Hous^. 
 Methodism gave'to the Nation the uncrowned queen, Lucy 
 Webb Hayes, who dared from the official table to banish the
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 90 
 
 wine cup, and thus set the example of Temperance to the na- 
 tions of the earth. 
 
 The saloon is the greatest organized menace to our civili- 
 zation. American Methodism stands solid against rum. By 
 its aggressive and uncompromising standards ; by its num- 
 bers and balance of power and influence in thousands of com- 
 munities ; by the fearless leadership of its preachers, Metho- 
 dism is the most feared and the worst hated foe of the liquor 
 traffic. 
 
 It is fitting on this Bi-centenary that we have gathered here 
 at the scene of Wesley's labors in America to celebrate the 
 signal achievements of Wesley's followers in doing their part 
 in the saving and shaping of American civilization. But our 
 chief duty is to address ourselves on this day, with a fresh 
 sense of consecration, to the opportunities and demands of 
 the future. 
 
 A great historian of Wesley long ago wrote : "John Wes- 
 ley will exercise more influence, centuries, and perhaps, mil- 
 leniums hence, than any other man of his age." 
 
 Shall this prophecy be realized ? To this the sons of Wes- 
 ley must make answer. Upon you the ends of the world have 
 come. What answer will you make for the civilization of 
 the twentieth century. 
 
 To all human vision Anglo-American civilization is to 
 dominate the future. The center of the wealth, the power 
 and dominance of 'he English-spe.ik n / peoples is in Amer- 
 ica. Serious and of far-reaching significance the word of that 
 ecclesiastical statesman : "Principles of strategic wisdom 
 should lead us to look on these United States as, first and 
 foremost, the chosen seat of enterprise for the world's con- 
 version. Forecasting the future of Christianity, as states- 
 men forecast the destiny of nations, we must believe that it 
 will be what the future of this century is to be. 
 As goes America, so goes the world,- in all that is vital 
 to its moral welfare." There is no stronger organizer! evan- 
 gelical force in shaping that civilization than the followers 
 of John Wesley. Representing a membership of six and one- 
 half millions in America alone, and adherents to the number 
 of twenty-two and one-half millions; touching every fourth 
 man, your influence is dominant, unmeasured your responsi- 
 bility. "
 
 WESLE\ BI-CENTENARY. 101 
 
 SUNDAY, THE BIRTHDAY OF WESLEY. 
 
 Love feast in Wesley's Honor Celebrated After Stvle Instituted 
 
 in 1739. 
 
 In the Sunday-school room of Wesley Monumental 
 Church yesterday morning a band of probably 200 ministers 
 and laymen joined in what is known to all Methodists as 
 a love feast. This service, instituted by John Wesley in 1739, 
 has been a great source of strength to the denomination and 
 has served to bring more closely together the men and wom- 
 en who are united under the banner of Methodism. 
 
 The love feast began at 9 o'clock and was led by Rev. 
 G. G. N. McDonell and participated in by nearly every per- 
 son present. There is no set order for conducting such a 
 service and beginning with prayer the hour was passed in 
 singing and personal talks, the assemblage being one big 
 Methodist family, with no secrets from each other. 
 
 During the service the communion, bread and water, was 
 then taken by all and the significance of the act was fully 
 and clearly appreciated. The service will be remembered 
 by all who took part in it, as an event of importance and 
 great interest in the Wesley bi-centenary celebration. 
 
 Among the sermons delivered in the different churches 
 we give the one delivered in Grace Church by Rev. John F. 
 Goucher, D. D. 
 
 THE PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATION OF WESLEY. 
 
 "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward 
 receive me to glory." Psalm 73-24. 
 
 ^ The truth of God's Word has continual demonstration. 
 Every life bears testimony to its. verity. Most men con- 
 firm the statement of Christ, "\\ithout me ye can do noth- 
 ing," a few justify the confidence expressed by the psalmist 
 in our text. This wide divergence is not because God dis- 
 criminates against some and in favor of others. It is deter- 
 mined by man's personal attitude to God, for success r ap- 
 portioned to cooperation. But few attain succ~ss became 
 the many will not bide His discipline and profit by His coun-
 
 102 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 sel. God includes all men in His plan and gives a personal 
 commission to each when He calls him into life. Prepara- 
 tion, efficiency and reward are included in the Divine provis- 
 ion. "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward 
 receive me to glory." 
 
 To "guide" implies progressive adjustment to an objec- 
 tive. "Counsel" is instruction or aid given to direct the 
 judgment or conduct of another. The providenc-a of God 
 is so administered as to instruct and aid those who "follow 
 on to know the Lord." Obedience is the organ of spiritual 
 perception, as occupancy is the law of possession. 
 
 As illustrating our text and appropriate to this occasion, 
 we invite you to meditate with us upon the providential pre- 
 paration of John Wesley to be the leader in spreading scrip- 
 tural holiness throughout the world. 
 
 The phrase "scriptural holiness" conveys to us a definite 
 idea, a rational description of the Christian life. It was not 
 so in England when Wesley was young. The leader required 
 special, varied and extensive preparation before he could 
 perceive the ideal, receive the experience or be qualified to 
 spread the doctrine. The mass of the people were ignorant, 
 brutalized by drink and sensuality, practical Atheists, whose 
 conduct knew no restraint, but the absence of opportunity. 
 The more intelligent and self-respecting were churchmen 
 rather than Christians. The' could repeat prayers, creed and 
 catechism, but had no adequate perception of their spiritual 
 import. They were ignorant of the vital significance, the 
 transforming power of salvation. The cathedral was to them 
 the symbol of Christianity and ceremony was their substi- 
 tute for piety. The most devout were legalists without spirit- 
 ual insight, trusting to works of mercy, fasting and vigils as 
 the basis of present peace and the ground of future 
 hope. 
 
 The Holy Club, ridiculed, maligned, persecuted for their 
 austerities and ministries, knew nothing of salvation by faith. 
 Seventeen centuries had lapsed since Christ and His apostles 
 had delineated and reiterated, embodied and exemplified 
 scriptural holiness, yet so called Christian England was de- 
 void of the experience and ignorant of the doctrine. 
 
 It is difficult for us to understand the opposition of the 
 clergy, the persecution of the ignorant, the hatred, contume- 
 ly and abuse which developed almost everywhere the doc- 
 trine was preached. These at least suggest the divergence 
 between the times and its requirements. The knowl-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 103 
 
 edge and experience of the doctrine must precede its 
 spread. 
 
 Scriptural holiness, sanctification, the spiritual life, what- 
 ever you may be pleased to term it, is a distinct work of 
 grace, differing from justification which always precedes or 
 accompanies it. Justification is the work of God done for 
 us. It has to do with the legal aspect of the life we have 
 lived, pardoning its offences, canceling its demerit. Sancti- 
 fication is the work of God done in us. It has to do with 
 the practical character of the life we are living, making pos- 
 sible its conformity to the divine requirements. The former 
 is judicial, substituting or attributing a legal righteousness. 
 The latter is creative, beginning with regeneration and con- 
 tinuing in spiritual living. In both the love of God is the 
 source, the atonement of Christ the efficient cause, personal 
 faith in Him as Lord and Saviour the sole condition and the 
 Holy Spirit the divine agent. God never justifies a soul He 
 does not regenerate. 
 
 Justification is a centrifugal or individualizing force by 
 which each one is differentiated from all others, and held re- 
 sponsible for and adjudged according to his personal record 
 and relation to Christ. It develops personality and makes 
 class-government, or the merging of the individual in the 
 mass, impossible. Sanctification, through which we conform 
 to and cooperate with God, is a centripetal or coordinating 
 force. It establishes reciprocal relations, develops solidarity, 
 conserves government and destroys anarchy. The two hold 
 a man in his true orbit, and make possible the development 
 of his richest personality through his fullest ministry. 
 
 In order that Wesley should be brought to a clear per- 
 ception and acceptance, to the knowledge and experience of 
 scriptural holiness, it was essential that he should possess 
 in large measure three characteristics. 
 
 i. Discrimination. 
 
 II. Hospitality to truth. 
 
 III. Thorough and comprehensive scholarship. 
 
 I. Discrimination or appreciation of relations, is essen- 
 tial to accuracy of adjustment. The more intricate the re- 
 lations the greater the need for it. Exactness of thought, 
 clearness of perception, reverence for God and consideration 
 for one's fellows are impossible without it. More persons 
 <"rr in discrimination than in desire, in application than in 
 intention. Matthew Arnold says, "Of discrimination the 
 world is impatient ; it chafes against it, rails at it, insults it, 
 hates it ; it ends by receiving its influence and by undergoing
 
 104 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 its law. This quality at last inexorably corrects the world's 
 blunders and focuses the world's ideals." 
 
 The environment and training of John Wesley's childhood 
 were peculiarly adapted to develop in him this power of dis- 
 crimination and regard for relations. His was a Christian 
 home, where God was revered, conscience exalted, the rela- 
 tions of parents and children defined and mutually respected. 
 There love, the great discriminator, abounding in judgment, 
 served with conscience, ever ready and seldom at a loss for 
 right counsel and wise ministry. His father was a man of 
 varied learning, much culture, great devotion and an ardent 
 churchman. His mother was a woman of remarkable judg- 
 ment, exceptional penetration and clearness of thought, and 
 great executive ability. She was the more forceful character, 
 but such was her discrimination that she never disregarded 
 her husband's official superiority in the church, his dignity 
 in the community, or his headship in the family. The con- 
 ditions of the large family at the Epworth Rectory were oft- 
 times straightened, for while the rector's stipend was limi- 
 ted, he cared for his aged mother and was generous to the 
 poor. Mutual concessions and self-denial made frequent, 
 varied, persistent and imperative demands for discriminative 
 skill in appreciating relations. Respectful to his seniors, 
 careful of his juniors, loved by and loving all, "Jackey," as 
 his family affectionately called him, developed that keen dis- 
 crimination and high appreciation of facts, things, persons 
 and relations which were so essential to his great commis- 
 sion. He became a skillful logician, perceiving the finest 
 discriminations and subtlest relations in thought. In his 
 practical relations to life he was remarkable for his reverence, 
 consideration and influence over men. He never ignored nor 
 shirked the humblest or most arduous service by which he 
 might honor God or serve his fellows. With more than in- 
 tuitive accuracy in "seeing where the right doth lie," authori- 
 ty and command were accorded him wherever he was known. 
 Mr. Gambold, an intimate acquaintance, wrote concerning 
 him, "What supported this uniform vigor. was the care he 
 took to consider well every affair before he engaged in it, 
 making all his decisions in the fear of God, without passion, 
 hurry or self confidence, for though he had naturally a very 
 clear apprehension, yet his exact prudence depended more 
 upon his humility and singleness of heart. He had, I think, 
 something of authority in his countenance, yet he never as- 
 sumed anything to himself above his companions, any of
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY 105 
 
 them might speak their mind and their words were, as 
 strictly regarded by him as his words were by them." 
 
 John Wesley shared the responsibilities and sacrifices in- 
 cident to his large family where he was the fifteenth of nine- 
 teen children. Circumscribed and unified by common limi- 
 tations and inspired by common desires, the children of the 
 rector suffered together and rejoiced together with their 
 loving mother and devoted father. "They had the common 
 fame of being the most loving family in the county of Lin- 
 coln." It was as natural for him within these conditions to 
 enthrone a centripetal force and develop responsive to some 
 coordinating principle, which would make for solidarity, as 
 it was for Luther a member of a small family, with the aus- 
 tere virtue and harsh treatment of his hard working parents, 
 the cruelty of his brutal teachers, making his way alone 
 in the world at fourteen bv begging or singing, immured in 
 a monastary, or segregated by the persecution which focused 
 upon him, to enthrone a centrifugal force and develop re- 
 sponsive to some individualizing principle, which would reg- 
 ister itself in intense personalitv. Wesley was' being provi- 
 dentially prepared to become the apostle of scriptural holi- 
 ness or sanctification bv the Spirit, as Luther had been to 
 become the apostle of justification by faith. 
 
 IT. Hospitality to truth, that is cordial acceptance of 
 truth and loyalty to it, was essential to him if he were to 
 come to the knowledge of scriptural holiness and soread it 
 throughout the land. As we have seen, scriptural holiness 
 was not understood. It contradicted the teachings and be- 
 lief of contemporary ecclesiastics. It condemned the almost 
 universal habits of even the devout. It was mysterious and 
 perplexing, being a spiritual condition realized through faith, 
 and manifested in grace, but opposed by ridicule, abuse, 
 ostracism and even death. The knowledge of it must come, 
 if at all, as a discoverv or revelation to one who was hospi- 
 table to and would loyally entertain truth for its own 
 sake. 
 
 Weslev's ancestors were such as to secure to him, so far 
 PS it might be derived from inheritance, a trend towards 
 hospitality and loyalty to truth. His great-grandfather, 
 Bartholomew Weslev, after serving the Established Church 
 in several parishes under Charles I, joined the Puritan partv. 
 TVrause he would not "conform" he was ejected from his 
 livino- as rector of Charmouth in 1662. Thereafter he lived 
 bv the practice of medicine which h" had studied at the 
 University. A persecuted outcast, not allowed by "the five
 
 106 WESLEY Bf-CENTENARY. 
 
 mile act" to approach within five miles of any of his former 
 parishes- or any borough town, but preaching meanwhile as 
 he had opportunity, he died about 1670, "as tender hearte:! 
 and affectionate as he had been pious and prudent." 
 
 John Wesley, the grand-father, was a graduate of Ox- 
 ford, and especially efficient in oriential languages. He was 
 conscientious in all his conduct, a zealous promoter of gen- 
 uine piety both in himself and others. He was a lay preach- 
 er and a travelling evangelist who showed all possible pru- 
 dence, yet was often disturbed, several times apprehended 
 and four times imprisoned. He discovered great firmness of 
 mind and an unbroken attachment to his principles in per- 
 secution, accumulated evils and great suffering. Clark, 
 speaking of him, says, "It cannot escape the reflection of 
 the reader that Methodism in its grand principles of eco- 
 nomy and the means by which they have been brought into 
 action, had its specific healthy, though slowly vegitating 
 seeds in the original members of the Wesleyan family." 
 
 His maternal grandfather, Samuel Annesley, nephew of 
 the Early of Anglesey, graduated from Oxford and received 
 his LL. D. degree from the sanie university before he was 
 twenty-eight. He was lecturer at St. Paul's and vicar of St. 
 Giles, Cripplegate, the largest congregation in London, but 
 was ejected by the act of uniformity. He lived in great se- 
 renity of mind, "his piety, diligence and zeal causing him 
 to be highly respected by all who knew him." He accorded 
 to others the freedom of thought and independence of ac- 
 tion which characterized himself. His daughter, Susanna, 
 "while under the parental roof and before she was thirteen 
 years of age, examined the who!e controversy between the 
 Established Church and the Dissenters, the issue of whic'i 
 was, she renounced her religious fellowship with the latter 
 and adopted the creed and forms of the Church of Eng- 
 land." 
 
 So with Samuel Weslev, whom she afterward married. 
 He was educated and designed for the ministry, among tlrj 
 Non-conformists. Some severe invectives being writtn 
 against the Dissenters, he was asked to answer them. This 
 set him on a course of reading through which he thought he 
 saw reasons to change his opinions. Without acquainting 
 any one with his purpose he set out on foot for Oxford, en- 
 tered Exeter College with only two pounds and six shillings 
 in his possession and maintained himself until he took his 
 Bachelor of Arts degree, after which he took orders in the 
 Church of England. He and his wife Susanna both differed
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 107 
 
 from their parents in the choice of their church, but like 
 them they conquered the bias of their education, hospitably 
 accepted what they believed to be truth, and loyally adhered 
 to it though it was a keen sorrow to their friends. 
 
 "Among all the generations of the Wesleys, as far back 
 as they can be traced, there was not one ignorant or illbe- 
 haved person among them. They were either divines, with 
 university training, or gentlemen of liberal culture." Force- 
 ful and conscientious they strenuously sought and main- 
 tained the truth as they understood it, even though it ex- 
 posed them to the severest hardships and persecutions. If 
 there is anything in heredity, how could John Wesley have 
 been otherwise than hospitable to truth? 
 
 The liome life of Wesley's childhood was exceptionally 
 adapted to secure the same characteristic so far as it could 
 be produced or communicated by environment. The theory 
 that children usually inherit their physical qualities from 
 their father and their moral qualities from their mother is 
 being supplanted by the theory that imitation is the chief 
 characteristic of childhood and through imitation they re- 
 produce the moral qualities of those whom they most ad- 
 mire. Be this as it may, no greater blessing is given to hu- 
 manity than mothers. When Napoleon in the latter years 
 of his eventful life, when he had leisure to meditate upon 
 the philosophy of the French civilization, was asked, "What 
 is the great need of France?" replied promptly and with 
 great emphasis, "Mother." President Diaz said when 
 talking with me of his efforts for the education of the young 
 women of Mexico, "I believe in preparing well-educated 
 mothers for my people, I am doing them a greater service 
 than giving them trained soldiers." Every child, no matter 
 what else it has, is poor indeed and to be pitied if invalidism, 
 domestic care, bread-winning, society, incompetence or in- 
 difference, robs it of its mother. A wise mother 
 is a sure prophesy of efficient and honorable pos- 
 terity. 
 
 John Wesley had an extraordinary mother, well educated, 
 with great sanity of judgment and practical piety. Her dis- 
 criminative love required from her children reverence, the 
 student attitude, truthfulness, the essential of strength, and 
 thoroughness in every thing they undertook. Devotion and 
 method secured order and leisure. "The Epworth Rectory 
 presents a picture of a domestic church, a family school ind 
 a genuine old English household," where the mother was 
 priestess, teacher, example and inspiration. She gave her
 
 108 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 son this rule, which deserves perpetual and universal re- 
 membrance: "Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the 
 tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of good, 
 or takes off the relish of spiritual things, in short whatever 
 increases the strength and authority of your body over your 
 mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in 
 itself." 
 
 Eleven of Susanna Wesley's nineteen children grew to ma- 
 turity. Some of them were remarkable for beauty, others 
 for wit and intelligence and all for scholarship, but each 
 had a marked personality and all became active Christians. 
 The foundations and trend towards holiness and scholar- 
 ship, or the reverse, are usually fixed early in life, most fre- 
 quently before or during adolescence. 
 
 John Wesley, placed by the providence of God in line with 
 such ancestors and in the environment of that consecrated 
 home, developed the trend towards hospitality and loyalty to 
 truth essential to his subsequent career. With occasional 
 exceptions when a child at the Charter-house School, he 
 never dulled his perceptions nor deadened his appreciation 
 of truth by discounting his convictions or knowingly advo- 
 cating error. He writes while at Oxford, "It has been my 
 first care for many years to see that my cause was good and 
 never either in jest or earnest to defend the wrong side of 
 a question." He quadrated his life with his conscience and 
 advocated his beliefs. 
 
 III. How was he to secure the third essential, thorough 
 and comprehensive scholarship? That requires time, leisure 
 and many accessories. It is never delivered on a rush order. 
 It cannot be acquired at home or in isolation. It demands 
 energy and is expensive. He was the son of a rector in a 
 poor and remote parish, a member of a large family, where 
 money was the thing of which they had the least. How 
 could it become possible for him to command a score of years 
 for study with capable teachers, kindred spirits, libraries 
 and other necessary appliances? The providence of God 
 makes possible everything necessarv to those who are "call- 
 ed according to His purpose." "No good thing will He 
 with-hold from them that walk uprightly." John Wesley 
 was not. responsible for his ancestors, nor for the environ- 
 ment into which he was born. They were furnished him of 
 God, so also God provided the possibilities for education 
 on the one invariable condition of cooperation. 
 Alfred the Great whose highest glory is that he did so 
 much for the moral and intellectual improvement of his peo-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 109 
 
 pie, founded the ''Oxford Schools" in the latter part of the 
 ninth century. In 1427 Lincoln College was founded by 
 Richard Fleming, whose zeal in opposing Wyclif was re- 
 warded by the Pope with the Arch-bishopric of York. Cardi- 
 nal Wolsey, the brilliant, meteoric, capable but unscruplous 
 prelate and aspirant for the papacy, did his most beneficient 
 service for England in founding Christ Church College in 
 1525. These latter wrought better than they intended, for 
 they prepared the seed-plot of the most constructive Protes- 
 tantism. Others broadened and strengthened their begin- 
 nings and multiplied influences and opportunities for educa- 
 tion. When Wesley needed them they had been in process of 
 preparation for centuries. 
 
 The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Chamberlain to King 
 James I, arranged for Wesley's admission, as "gown boy" 
 or free scholar, to the Charter-house School in 1714, at 
 the age of ten and a half years, just one hundred years 
 after it was founded by the munificence of Thomas Sutton. 
 By his energetic character, his unconquerable patience, his 
 assiduity and his progress in learning, John acquired a high 
 position and in 1720 was elected to a scholarship in Christ 
 Church College, Oxford. As Charter-House scholar he had 
 forty pounds per annum until he took his Bachelor of Arts 
 degree in 1725, just two hundred years after Christ Church 
 College was founded. 
 
 In March, 1726, he was elected Fellow in Lincoln Col- 
 lege. November of the same year, though he had not yet 
 taken his Master's degree, he was elected Greek lecturer and 
 moderator of the classes. He took his M. A. Degree in 
 1727, just three hundred years after Lincoln College was 
 founded. For nine years, till he sailed for Georgia, he had 
 the rare benefits of Lincoln College. God had made it the 
 duty of others, long since dead, to found, develop and en- 
 dow these facilities for education. The excellence of Wes- 
 ley's own work made them successively available to him for 
 twenty-one years. Have you ever thought what an irrepar- 
 able loss the world would have suffered if the money neces- 
 sary for those endowments had been withheld? 
 
 The three essentials were largely realized and were being 
 strengthened along converging lines, but Wesley had not yet 
 received his commission. In every normal evolution or de- 
 velopment some suggestion or hint of the subsequent condi- 
 tion may be seen in previous ones. His objective was fore- 
 shadowed during his university life where he was the recog- 
 nized leader among his friends of the Holy Club, in their
 
 110 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 practical benevolence, systematic study of the Greek Testa- 
 ment, and earnest seeking after holiness, though they did 
 not know its character, its manifestations, the secrets of its 
 attainment, or its power. 
 
 Wesley's intentions were sincere and pure beyond ques- 
 tion, but his ideals of holiness were confused, misty and er- 
 roneous. He needed the knowledge of the ideal and the per- 
 sonal experience of its unfolded beauty. These had not 
 come to him as yet for he was not ready to receive them. 
 Quite the reverse. Apparently he had been developing in 
 the opposite direction. He was a rigid churchman, and "ad- 
 mired the mystic writers." He was a legalist and desired 
 to become a recluse. God is never in a hurry, but will per- 
 fect His work in His own good way. 
 
 The providence of God had provided for Wesley his an- 
 cestors, his inheritance, his childhood environment and his 
 subsequent opportunities. By the free exercise of his will 
 Wesley supplied appreciation, responsiveness and persistence. 
 Thus he had become a superior classical scholar, a thought- 
 ful and polished writer, a skilful logician, hospitable and 
 loyal to truth, disciplined to endurance, unshrinking from 
 responsibility and devoted to ministries for his fellows. God 
 had been developing in him the material out of which leaders 
 are made and continued to guide him by his counsel to the 
 qualification for his commission. Wesley only need to fol- 
 low on and he shall know of the doctrine. "The important 
 question is not how late or how early we come to life's du- 
 ties, but how well prepared." 
 
 Wesley was cautious in reaching conclusions. Because 
 they were accepted only upon the approval of his judgment, 
 he held tenaciously to them, until they were proven false. 
 He' could not abandon the theory of righteousness by which 
 he was living, and for which he had suffered, until the inade- 
 quacy of his theory was demonstrated and he had realized 
 the expulsive power of a fuller revelation. 
 
 His trip to America furnished both of these. Like the 
 forty days our Lord spent in the wilderness and like Paul's 
 three years in Arabia, the twenty-seven months and eigh- 
 teen days Wesley was absent from England were an im- 
 portant part of his preparation. He says, "On shipboard I 
 was again active in outward works when it pleased God of 
 His free mercy to give to me twenty-six of the Moravian bre- 
 thren for companions, who endeavored to show me a more 
 excellent way." After they had been at sea several days 
 they encountered a severe storm. The perfect trust and
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. Ill 
 
 great peace of the Moravians men, women and children, 
 profoundly impressed him, contrasted with his own exper- 
 ience and set him to close self-examination. He wrote, "I 
 went to America to convert the Indians, but, oh ! who shall 
 convert me? Who, what is he that will deliver me from 
 this evil heart of unbelief ? I have a fair summer religion ; 
 I can talk well, nay, I believe myself while no danger is 
 near ; but let death look me in the face and my spirit is 
 troubled, nor can I say to die is gain." 
 
 It is not necessary to' assume that God especially created 
 that storm for just that purpose. A providence general in 
 character becomes special in application. It was an easy 
 matter for the all-wise God to influence Wesley to take pas- 
 sage on a ship where he would have those fellow passengers 
 and when they would run into a great storm. A storm like 
 other things may have natural causation, but supernatural 
 results. The thunder bolt which fell at Luther's feet when 
 he was returning from Mansfield to Erfurth brought him to 
 his knees and he rose with a hunger for holiness, superior to 
 his thirst for knowledge. As the servant of Abraham testi- 
 fied when seeking a wife for Isaac, "Being in the way the 
 Lord led me," so with Wesley, and so with every loyal ser- 
 vant of God, he guides them by His counsel. 
 
 Wesley's experience here in Savannah, as Chaplain to 
 General Oglethorpe's colony, both in relation to the colo- 
 nists and to the Indians was disappointing to him and to his 
 friends, but demonstrated the impracticability of the theory 
 which he was trying to embody and promulgate. Defeated? 
 No. But "Let hitherto," because he was trying to develop 
 and apply a false theory of holiness, he was as Paul had been 
 in his premature planning to go to Rome. Prevention, as 
 well as accomplishment, is included in God's counsel. 
 
 This Georgia episode was a bitter one but vitally related 
 to Wesley's preparation. He writes, "These two years hum- 
 bled me and proved what was in my heart. This then have 
 I learned in the ends of the earth, that I am fallen short of 
 the glory of God, that my whole heart is altogether corrupt 
 and abominable and consequently my whole life, that my own 
 works, my own sufferings, mv own righteousness are so far 
 from reconciling me to an offended God, so far from making 
 an atonement for the least of these sins which are more in 
 number than the hairs of my head, that the most specious of 
 them need an atonement themselves, or they cannot abide 
 his righteous judgment. I have no hope but that of being
 
 112 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 justified fully through the redemption which is in 
 Jesus." 
 
 Holiness through faith in Christ, revealing itself in sus- 
 tained peace and good works, as manifested in stressful cir- 
 cumstances in the experience of humble men, women and 
 children, had a persuasiveness and authority with his hospi- 
 table mind far exceeding the theories and voluminous writ- 
 ings of ecclesiastics. He had been arrested by the unans- 
 werable demonstration of personal experience, though as 
 yet he did not possess it. Having accepted the demonstra- 
 tion of the inadequacy of his theories and realized the ex- 
 pulsive power of a fuller revelation, Wesley returned to 
 England. 
 
 After his return he worshipped with the Moravians, 
 studied their teachings and conversed with their leaders. In 
 that memorable argument with Peter Bohler, whom Wesley 
 says "God prepared for me as soon as I came to London," 
 Wesley became thoroughly convinced by proofs drawn whol- 
 ly from the scriptures and experience that dominion over sin 
 and constant peace from a sense of forgiveness are insepara- 
 ble from true faith in Christ. From that time he sought 
 earnestly the experience of holiness and the witness of the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 May 24th, 1738, he writes, "In the evening I went very 
 unwillingly to a Society in Aldergate St., where one was 
 reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. 
 About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the 
 change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, 
 I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in 
 Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was 
 given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and 
 saved me from the law of sin and death." The unanswerable 
 demonstration of personal experience was given to him in 
 his own soul. 
 
 The second stage in his qualification was realized and 
 with it came his commission. God never regenerates a soul 
 without commissioning it. His commission was not to re- 
 vive the ecclesiastical questions over which Churchmen and 
 Puritans had fought and exhausted each other,' nor even to 
 appeal to the Reformation with its incomplete correction 
 of papacy, but it was to recall the masses to their Bibles 
 which say so little about these questions but which dechre 
 that "the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but right- 
 eousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." While he ac- 
 knowledged the importance of sound doctrine, nevertheless
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 113 
 
 his teachings thereafter dwelt mostly on the theology which 
 relates to the spiritual life, faith, justification, sanctifica- 
 tion and the witness of the Spirit. 
 
 Wesley justified his commission. Green says, "He pos- 
 sessed an indefatigable industry, a cool judgment, a com- 
 mand over others, the faculty of organization." Macaulay 
 says, "Wesley's genius for government was not inferior to 
 Richelieu's," Matthew Arnold says, "He had genius for 
 Godliness." 
 
 He had received a personal experience of purity and of 
 assurance through faith in Christ, the two characteristics of 
 scriptural holiness which he was commissioned to spread 
 throughout the land. But how could scriptural holiness be 
 spread? There is nothing more beautiful nor more exact 
 than the divine adjustment of means to ends. The method 
 for spreading it was as much a providential development as 
 the preparation of the agent. 
 
 The doctrine was at once confronted with preoccupation, 
 prejudice, intrenched hatred and bitter antagonism on every 
 hand. The people would not go to the churches, which had 
 come to be almost no factor at all in influencing the thought 
 of the masses. If the people were to be reached by the mes- 
 sage it must be taken to them, but it was a violation of all 
 ecclesiastical proprieties for a clergyman to preach outside 
 of a consecrated place or separated from ecclesiastical ac- 
 cessories. Wesley had no desire to do otherwise, but so 
 searching, so radical, and so exacting of personal righteous- 
 ness through faith, was the preaching of scriptural holiness 
 that it was exceptional for any of the Established Churches 
 to be opened for a second sermon. Its heralds were literal- 
 ly thrust out of the churches if they would raise up a holy 
 people. 
 
 The crowds demanded the message and responded to it 
 wherever preached. From his father's tomb-stone, on com- 
 mons, in fields, anywhere as occasion offered, he and his fol- 
 lowers were led, reluctantly at first, to proclaim the message 
 by what were considered irregular methods, but it proved to 
 be with the power and demonstration of the Spirit unto sal- 
 vation. The experience was its own demonstration. Wit- 
 nessing to it was the burden of its proclamation. It was a 
 heralding. Those who had the experience were constrained 
 to expound it. The increasing demand of the people and 
 the small number of preachers compelled them to move from 
 place to place and so developed the itineracy, and the agency 
 of local preachers. Converted clergymen and local or as-
 
 114 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 sistant but unordained preachers were soon traveling well 
 planned circuits, covering vast areas, systematically and 
 effectively. 
 
 As one and another came to the experience of the new 
 life, conditions for growth were as earnestly demanded as 
 the proclamation of the message. They sought instruction 
 as did others who desired the experience. They needed 
 counsel and opportunities for conference. Their numbers 
 increased steadily and in every direction till it was neces- 
 sary to divide them into small companies under the direc- 
 tion of chosen leaders. So without premeditating it, de- 
 veloped the system of class-leaders or lay-pastors. 
 
 Want of time prevents us pursuing this development fur- 
 ther. The message of Methodism, scriptural holiness, is 
 divine. The manner of stating it and the methods of pro- 
 mulgating it are human and adjustable to the ever varying 
 conditions of humanity. The guidance of Jehovah's 
 counsel has been, is and always must be the secret of its 
 success. 
 
 Two hundred years have passed since Wesley was born. 
 He had divine guiding, preparation and commission. He 
 served his day and generation and is crowned. "His tra- 
 ducers have passed away and are almost forgotten, but 
 Wesley lives. Philosophers, statesmen and historians honor 
 his name. His tablet is among the men of might in West- 
 minster Abbey and his spiritual children in all parts of the 
 world rise up to call him blessed." (Simpson.) Even his 
 persecutors are clamorous in their contention that he is and 
 nlways has been their special Saint and patron. 
 
 God guided him by His counsel till his earthly mission 
 was accomplished and afterward received him into that glory 
 which merges in the effulgence of Him whose right it is to 
 reign for ever and for ever.
 
 Hon. J. C. C. Black.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTEXARY. 117 
 
 WESLEY OUTSIDE OP METHODISM. 
 
 The subject of the address in the afternoon was "Wesley 
 Outside of Methodism," and the speaker, Hon. J. C. C. Black, 
 was heard with the fullest attention and interest by an im- 
 mense assemblage. 
 
 The afternoon service began promptly at 5 o'clock, 
 Bishop Candler presiding. Rev. Bascom Anthony led in 
 prayer and was followed by Rev. Thomas F. Pierce of Au- 
 gusta, who read the lesson, the Psalm beginning: "It is a 
 good thing for brethren to dwell together in unity." In in- 
 troducing Mr. Pierce, Bishop Candler took occasion to say 
 that Bishop Asbury, sent out by Wesley, had ordained Lo- 
 vick Pierce, and that this was his son. 
 
 As has been done at each of the services, Charles Wes- 
 ley's hymns were sung. 
 
 Bishop Candler then introduced Hon. J. C. C. Black, 
 pointing with pleasure to the names of distinguished laymen 
 in Georgia who had for years worked side by side with the 
 clergy for the advancement of Christianity; he mentioned 
 the family names of Jackson, Lawton, Black, Lumpkin, La- 
 mar, Gordon and others. Quoting from Mr. Wesley he said : 
 
 "I desire to have a league offensive and defensive with ^ 
 every soldier of Christ. * * * I beseech you, brethren, 
 by the mercies of God, that we be in no wise divided among 
 ourselves. Is thy heart right as my heart is with thine ; I 
 ask no further question. If it be, give me thy hand ; for opin- 
 ions or terms let us not destroy the work of God. It is 
 enough ; I give thee the right hand of fellowship." 
 
 ADDRESS BY HON. J. C. C. BLACK, 
 OF AUGUSTA. GA. 
 
 I hold no commission from the great denomination to 
 which I belong, but I am sure I express the common feel- 
 ing and sentiment of our Baptist Brotherhood, when I sa- 
 lute you with fraternal greeting and join you in thanksgiv- 
 ing for the life and labors of the illustrious man whose Bi- 
 centenary you this day celebrate. 
 
 No word of mine could add to the renown that gathers 
 'around his name and works, that is alike beyond the power
 
 118 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 of detraction to diminish or panegyric to augment. It is like 
 the sun in full-orbed glory covering the earth with light and 
 splendor. It is imperishable, for it rests on character, the im- 
 press of which the tides of time cannot efface and deeds which 
 have enriched not only his own country, and church, but all 
 countries and the cause of Christianity at large. 
 
 Buckle called him "the first of theological statesmen;" 
 Macauley said "he had a genius for government, not inferior 
 to that of Richelieu ;" Mr. Gladstone said "he gave the 
 main impulse out of which sprang the evangelical move- 
 ment ;" Dean Stanley said, "he was the chief revivor of re- 
 ligious fervor in the Protestant churches, both in the old and 
 new world ;" Charles Hadden Spurgeon, the greatest 
 preacher of our times, and who it is of interest to note, 
 was converted under the preaching of a poor Methodist in 
 a country chapel, has left on record his great veneration 
 for him. 
 
 Historians, poets, authors, philosophers, statesmen, 
 preachers, priests, deans and bishops have acknowledged the 
 worth and eminence of his character, the extent and value 
 of his labors to mankind, and paid tribute to him. 
 
 Some one has called the spirit of Wesley's movement, "the 
 Enthusiasm of Humanity." Chalmers has called it "Chris- 
 tianity in earnest." I would rather call it "Christianity at 
 Work." 
 
 There were other great and good men in church and 
 State in the day in which he lived, but in the extent, variety 
 and permanence of his labors, and the far reaching results 
 which followed them, he excelled them all. , 
 
 While the period of his life has furnished some of the most 
 distinguished named in English history, it was the day of 
 moral and spiritual degeneracy. Montesquie said : "If one 
 speaks of religion in England, everybody laughs." Every 
 form of vice was prevalent. Political corruption sat in high 
 places in the State ; the blight of ignorance and social de- 
 gradation had fallen upon thousands and thousands of the 
 masses. The government was powerless ; the church was 
 indifferent, if not callous. Amidst such conditions Wesley 
 laid his hand not indirectly, but directly and potentially on 
 the whole framework of society, and lifted it up, and began a 
 religious movement, which bless God has not yet ceased to 
 bless the world. 
 
 It was his dominating desire that men should be redeemed 
 from sin, and inspired with higher and still higher spiritual 
 life. This desire burned in his great soul with a flame that
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 119 
 
 neither men nor devils could quench. "Church or no 
 church," he wrote, "we must attend to the work of saving 
 souls." 
 
 When convinced of error he was ready to surrender opin- 
 ions in which he had been firmly established. This is a 
 mark of intellectual and moral greatness. He was liberal 
 and Catholic in his sympathy. He loved the truth in sim- 
 plicity. He esteemed a Christian more than a nobleman. 
 His aim was deeper than the mere manners of his age. He 
 sought to reach the minds and hearts of the people. He 
 waged a vigorous war on vice and corruption and sin. 
 Wherever found, these were the same to him whether clad 
 in the garb of fashion, or the rags and tatters of the street, 
 in high official station or the felon's cell ; revelling in wealth 
 or pining in want, strutting in haughty pride, or lost to all 
 sense of self-respect, wallowing in degradation, wearing the 
 livery of heaven in pretended meekness, or openly and 
 shamelessly defying God, sitting in the Bishop's chair, or the 
 lowest place in the church. He was the great religious tri- 
 bune of the centuries. His labors were especially directed 
 to improving the condition of the common people. Some of 
 his most efficient coadjutors were wisely chosen from them ; 
 John Nelson, a stone mason, Thomas Oliver, a shoemaker, 
 Alexander Mather, a baker, Peter Jaco, a Cornish Fisher- 
 man and Thomas Hanby, a weaver. 
 
 He was patient under trials the most severe, tireless in 
 labors the most arduous, courageous in the face of perils the 
 most appalling. He withstood the contempt of the aristo- 
 cracy, the jeers of the rabble, the turbulence of the mob, the 
 ridicule of the satirist, and the opposition of the church. The 
 low might hoot at him, the mob might assault him, society 
 might ostracize him, the church might shut its doors against 
 him, ignorance, prejudice, jealousy, envy, malice and slander 
 might do their worst, but none of these things moved him. 
 Brave as Elijah before Ahab, as John the Baptist before 
 Herod, as Paul before the Sanhedrim, as Luther who would 
 go to Worms though every tije on the housetops was a devil, 
 he pursued his mission. He answered the fierceness of the 
 mob with the story of God's redeeming love ; he denounced 
 the sins and crimes of society ; he rebuked the inactivity and 
 indifference of the church which had bound itself so tight- 
 ly in formalism, that the life had been pressed out of it, and 
 it lay prostrate, shorn of its glory, stripped of its strength, 
 a by-word among its enemies, a shame among its friends, 
 and an offence to God. Any man bent on such a mission
 
 120 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 and animated by such a spirit, sooner or later will be heard. 
 And he was heard. 
 
 The vicious who at one time would have killed him, glad- 
 ly received the message he proclaimed ; the home? of the 
 lowly who once debarred his presence, welcomed his com- 
 ing, and the contempt of the proud was changed into re- 
 spect, if not veneration. 
 
 His style was simple and direct. He never preached over 
 the heads of the people nor under their feet. He preached 
 directly to them, their hearts and consciences and with a 
 power that secured entrance to the truth which enlightened 
 and gave life. 
 
 At Moorfields, Kennington Common, Kingswood, Bristol, 
 New Castle, in Cornwall, Staffordshire and Yorkshire, all 
 over the kingdom great multitudes listened to him for a 
 series of years, and with undiminished interest. Every 
 agency employed by the church to-day, with all its activi- 
 ties, moved by the mighty impulses of the times in which 
 we live, Tract societies, bible and publication societies, Sun- 
 day-schools, organizations among the laity find inspiration 
 in his life and labors. 
 
 If not the crowning one, one and not the smallest of the 
 evidences of his divinity, furnished by Christ himself to the 
 doubting John, was that the gospel was preached to the 
 poor In this respect perhaps his life was without a parallel 
 certainly it has not been surpassed. He who might have 
 stood among princes, whose learning and attainments made 
 him fit companion for the scholars of his day, who might 
 have acquired riches, spent his life in poverty among the 
 poor of the streets, the highways, the laborers of the mines, 
 ministering to the sick, comforting the distressed, relieving 
 the suffering, and preaching the glorious gospel of the bless- 
 ed God to all. 
 
 He was as great a philanthropist as John Howard, who 
 acknowledged he had been an inspiration to him, but he was 
 more than a philanthropist, he was as great a lover of liberty 
 as Wilberforce, to whom the lat letter he ever wrote was ad- 
 dressed, but he was more than this. Without sword or purse 
 he unfurled a banner under which has been martialled a 
 greater army than Napoleon or Caesar ever enlisted ; or- 
 ganized a government greater than which never sprang 
 from the genius of statesmanship, and put in operation moral 
 and religious energies that have gone around the globe, to 
 bless humanity and glorify God.
 
 WESLEY BF-CENTENARY. 121 
 
 As writer and author, as teacher and preacher and evan- 
 gelist, as organizer and worker and leader, the history of 
 the church does not furnish his equal. He touched life in 
 every sphere, and left it better. Under his influence cleanli- 
 ness, sobriety, respect for things moral and religious were 
 promoted. He softened the severeties of a -:ruel and bar- 
 barous Penal Code, he improved the material conditions of 
 those who were slaves of the severest labor, he purified the 
 homes of the people, inspiring them with .a desire for educa- 
 tion and religion. He quickened and vitalized with new life 
 and power the moribund church of his day. He was a bene- 
 factor of every race, and all the world is his debtor. Eng- 
 land has acknowledged her debt, by admitting a tablet to 
 his memory in Westminster Abbey, where are gathered me- 
 morials of those who for centuries have made her poetry, 
 her literature, her science, her statesmanship, her oratory, 
 her military and naval glory, her civilization. Better than 
 this, all over the world schools and asylums and hospitals 
 and churches, stand as his memorials. 
 
 He taught the necessity of a personal religious expe- 
 rience, that takes hold of the heart and controls the life, its 
 desires, its plans, and purposes, its aspirations, its outward 
 conduct and inward character, always and everywhere seek- 
 ing to bring itself into perfect conformity to the will of God. 
 Its insistence on this essential doctrine has been the glory 
 of the Methodist Church, and has contributed very much, 
 if not more than anything else, to the power it to-day wields 
 in the world. May that glory never be dimmed, nor that 
 power lessened by its abandonment ! 
 
 He believed in the necessitv for, and the all sufficiency of 
 the grace of God ; that John Wesley sometime fellow of Ox- 
 ford College was lost without it, and John Smith sometime 
 fellow of Newgate prison might be saved by it. 
 
 His missionary spirit burned with a flame not kindled on 
 earth. It was akin to the spirit of the angel of the Apo- 
 calypse, whom John saw flying in the midst of heaven, hav- 
 ing the everlasting gospel to preach upto them, that dwell 
 on the earth, and to everv nation and kindred and tongue 
 and people saying with a loud voice, "Fear God and give 
 glory to Him !" It was, adopting the terms we commonly 
 employ, and the employment of which has brought confus- 
 ion and hurt to this great work of the church, both home 
 and foreign. In reality it is one spirit, the spirit that impels 
 and comoels the carrying of the gospel to those who have 
 it not, whether geographically near or remote. This spirit
 
 122 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 brought him to these shores, to the very place where we thi? 
 day honor his memory. 
 
 After his return to England, it carried him to the ne- 
 glected, the poor, the ignorant, the despised and the crimi- 
 nal. I think his theology may be summed up in the doc- 
 trines of repentance, faith and holy living. The repentance 
 which is far more than mere reformation or change of habit, 
 but deep godly sorrow that sees sin as God sees it, in its 
 heinuousness, its abomination ; that sees in it an offence to 
 his holiness, the basest ingratitutde toward his love and mer- 
 cy, rebellion against his authority and treason against his 
 government. The repentance that thus seeing sin abhors 
 and abandons it, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his di- 
 vinity. 
 
 The faith that sees in him the son, all the fullness of the 
 father, the divine Logos who in the beginning was with God, 
 who was God ; the faith that sees in him humanity as he grew 
 in wisdom and stature, as he was weary on the highway, as 
 he rested by the well and retired apart to the mountain side ; 
 as he was thirsty and hungry, as he felt the need of prayer as 
 he wept over the doomed city he would have saved and the 
 grave of his dead friend at Bethany, as he mingled with men 
 and women at the marriage in Cana in Gallilee, as he with- 
 stood the tempter in the wilderness. The repentance 
 and faith that find their expression in holy living. 
 
 The fires he kindled in England could not be confined. 
 They were soon lit on this side of the Ocean, where they burn 
 to-day with steady and beneficent glow in the hearts and 
 lives of millions. The work he inaugurated has been carried 
 on in our own country by the wisdom and consecrated ef- 
 forts of men and women, inspired by his example, and keep- 
 ing pace with our national growth, in city and town, and 
 village and rural districts, in the mountains, on the prairies, 
 on our frontiers and everywhere it has been a blessing to 
 society, to the state, to the church and the world. 
 
 It may be well to ask how Wesley accomplished so much. 
 He saw and was profoundly impressed by the social and re- 
 ligious conditions that surrounded him. His heart was filled 
 with love for humanity. He realized that the only remedy 
 for these conditions was the glorious gospel of the blessed 
 God. This he determined to carry to the people, and in the 
 home, the highwav, the field, the street, he went with its 
 blessed evangel. This erospel he would preach. If the doors 
 "of the church at Epworth were closed against him, he 
 would rehallow the ground where the dust of his father re-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 123 
 
 posed, by making a pulpit of his tomb. When he did not 
 have a great congregation he would preach to a single in- 
 dividual, as Christ did to Nicodemus who came by night, or 
 the woman at Jacob's well. He preached the same gospel 
 in the street and in the pulpit of the University of Oxford. 
 It was the same gospel preached by the great apostle at 
 Damascus, at Antioch, to Jews and Gentiles, before Felix 
 and Festus and Agrippa, on the stair-way that led to the fort- 
 ress of Antonia, or at Mars Hill, before a rough Roman 
 soldiery or a cultured Athenian audience. Mr. Glad- 
 stone said : "The aim of Wesley was to bring back the 
 cross, and all that the cross essentially implies." By this 
 sign the church has achieved its conquests in the past, and 
 must in the future. As long as the church lifts this 
 up, it shall be invincible, when this is lowered its banner 
 will go down in inglorious defeat. 
 
 There is among us to-day a feeling that our preaching 
 and worship must attract the curious, and catch the crowd. 
 Not all we have from the pulpit is preaching the gospel, and 
 therefore it has not the power of the gospel to edify the 
 church and convict the world. While there is a strong ten- 
 dency to give up the worship of God in song by the people, 
 to mere musical performance by a few, and they hired for 
 the purpose. 
 
 He was a deeply earnest man. Therefore the power of 
 the world to come was upon him. Much of our effort in the 
 work of the church of to-day is half-hearted. If the pulpit 
 preached and the pew lived as if the things which are un- 
 seen and eternal were verities and realities, felt and known, 
 the church would enjoy a perpetual revival. 
 
 In physical power he was marvelously endowed. It is es- 
 timated that in the fifty years of his itineracy, he preached 
 more than 40,000 times, and travelled more than 200,000 
 miles. 
 
 We may believe that the hand of the unseen and the 
 eternal was in the rescue from the burning rectory at Ep- 
 wqrth, that this hand shielded him in perils on sea and land, 
 and sustained him with needed strength. And more than his 
 physical and mental endowments for the great work of his 
 life, the Spirit of the Lord was noon him, anointing him to 
 preach the gospel to the poor, sending him to heal the broken 
 hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recover- 
 ing of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty they that were 
 bruised.
 
 124 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 After a life of more than four score years filled with the 
 most arduous labor, he approached his end. On the 23rd of 
 February, preceding the second day of March, when he died, 
 in the house of a friend in distress, to whom he had gone 
 to minister, he preached his last sermon from the text "Seek 
 the Lord while he may be found." When time, as he ex- 
 pressed it, had told him Good Bye, sights from the other 
 world greeted his vision. His last hours were spent in pray- 
 er and praise and singing, and with his dying lips he uttered 
 the words which are inscribed on his memorial tablet in the 
 Abbey, "The best of all, God is with us." Thus fell this 
 mighty warrior in the cause of truth and righteousness, with 
 his armor on, thus the majestic soul of this great and good 
 man, redeemed by the gospel he had preached to thousands, 
 passed from the toils and sacrifices of earth, where his last 
 word was "Farewell," to the rest and rewards of heaven, 
 where he was greeted by angel and archangel, and the whole 
 Company of the glorified with "Hail and Welcome." 
 
 For long years, as we count time, his dust has moulded 
 in the church yard at the City Road chapel, but his life and 
 services remain, the richest legacy ever bequeathed to the 
 church of which he was the founder, and a blessing not only 
 to it, but to the Christian world at large. 
 
 We constantly hear prophecies of a day near by, when in- 
 dustrial and commercial prosperity shall come to us of the 
 South, when our waste places shall blossom as a garden. 
 The devil does not confine himself to the waste places of 
 earth. His work of destruction began in the garden planted 
 by the Lord himself. What will this incoming tide of pros- 
 perity bring to us? Riches are dangerous they may 
 drown men in destruction and perdition, they may beget 
 self indulgence and licentiousness, corrupt our political life, 
 destroy domestic and social purity, bring desecration of the 
 Sabbath and irreverence toward God, make the church proud 
 and godless. Let the church take its stand immovably by 
 the old land marks, let it reassert with emphasis the authori- 
 ty of the decalogue, let it hold fast with unwavering grasp 
 to the old truths of the old gospel, by which alone it shall 
 triumph and the world be redeemed. 
 
 Evangelical Christendon owes much to the Methodist 
 Church of the past. For its ministers with tongues of fire, 
 for the simplicity of its worship, for its religion in the home, 
 for its missionary spirit and enterprise, for its defense of the 
 truth and its good works, for the fervor of its prayers and 
 praises, for the power of its songs that have uttered every
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 125 
 
 experience of the human heart, the cry of the penitent strick- 
 en by conviction of sin, the shout of the redeemed rejoicing 
 in the forgiveness of sin. Songs that have brought comfort 
 to the sorrowing, hope to the disconsolate, strength to the 
 living, triumph to the dying. Songs that have been the bat- 
 tle cry of the church in ages past, and will inspire it with the 
 endurance and courage that shall achieve greater victories 
 in the ages to come. , 
 
 For the future, God grant tongues of flame as on Pente- 
 cost, and holy consecration to its ministers, lives of right- 
 eousness and good works to its members, that its worship 
 may never be corrupted by vain display, that the fires on its 
 family altars may never go out, that it may be valiant in the 
 defense of the truth, and bold and aggressive in its propaga- 
 tion, that pruie may never silence its hallelujahs and amens, 
 and that against any and every demand its songs shall be 
 preserved and sung by all the people in the true 
 worship of God, and not to minister to the taste and pride 
 of man !
 
 Bishop Candler
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 129 
 
 "THE MAN WESLEY." 
 
 Address by Bishop W. A. Candler. 
 
 Last night, in the Park Tabernacle, in the presence of 
 probably 4,000 people, Bishop Candler delivered a forcible 
 and eloquent address on the subject, "The Man Wesley.'' It 
 was the first time during the celebration that the weather 
 had permitted the use of the tabernacle, and the people 
 came out in great numbers and made the occasion memor- 
 able. 
 
 During the evening a subscription was raised, to aid in 
 placing an assistant pastor to work under the direction of 
 Trinity, and to act as missionary in the lower part of the 
 city. This movement was started in the Methodist churches 
 at the morning services, and about $1,500 was pledged, to be 
 paid yearly for three years. The subscription raised in the 
 tabernacle amounted to about $500. 
 
 The services last night were opened with prayer, at 8 130 
 o'clock, by Rev. E. F. Cook. Hymn No. 354 "Jesus Lover 
 of My Soul," by Charles Wesley. 
 
 BISHOP CANDLER'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Bishop Warren A. Candler of Georgia, was then intro- 
 duced by Bishop Galloway of Mississippi, and addressed the 
 assemblage, speaking as follows : 
 
 "There was a man sent from God whose name was John." 
 If the discourse appointed for this hour were cast in ser- 
 monic form it would not be irreverent or inapt to use these 
 words as the text. 
 
 John the Baptist was not more perfectly described by them 
 than is John Wesley. Both were divinely commissioned men, 
 sent to do different parts of the same great work the es- 
 tablishment of the Kingdom of God upon the earth. Both 
 sprang from a priestly line and both lost their sacerdotal 
 functions by absorption in the loftier labors of the prophetic 
 office. To both multitudes went out into the open air, to 
 hear under God's clear sky the messenger of heaven ; turn- 
 ing away from altars upon which the fires were burning low, 
 to heed the call to repentance preached with the power of 
 the Holv Ghost sent down from heaven. Both revived faith
 
 130 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 in a faithless generation, brought new life to a parched re- 
 ligious era and wrought a national reformation. The career 
 of one was brief, the revival he brought to pass was of a 
 short duration, and his ministry ushered in the long-expected 
 Messiah. The other lived above four-score years, produced 
 under God a revival which has continued for more than a 
 century, and which promises to continue until the Lord 
 comes again without sin unto salvation, fulfilling the ar- 
 dent hopes of Perronet the devout Vicar of Shoreham, who 
 said "I make no doubt that Methodism, notwithstanding all 
 the wiles of Satan, is designed by divine providence to intro- 
 duce the approaching millenium." 
 
 Wesley, the man was a God-sent man. 
 
 This is true in a sense of every man. Every life is a plan of 
 God, alas i to often a marred and frustrated plan ! 
 
 But there are epochal lives of which it is specially and sign- 
 ally true that they are God-sent. They fall into their places 
 like the stones in the temple of Solomon, hewn aforehand 
 with reference to the space they are to fill and the super- 
 structure they are % to support. They are so loyal to the 
 divine will, so sensitive to the divine influence, so respon- 
 sive to the divine Providence, and so charged with the divine 
 power that they make plain to the dullest vision the design 
 of God in themselves, and shed a light behind and before 
 which reveals the holy succession to which they belong. The 
 odor of their anointing fills their lives with a heavenly 
 perfume and sweetens all their days. 
 
 These epochal lives are the visible links of an unbroken 
 chain of spiritual forces which holds together in one con- 
 tinuous movement, the unhastening, unwearying and un- 
 failing purpose of God which through the ages runs. 
 
 Such a life was that of Enoch, walking with God three 
 hundred years, carrying in his holy heart memories of Eden 
 received from Adam and transmitted to Noah ; and entering 
 not his heavenly home until he had delivered to his succes- 
 sors the sacred deposit committed to his charge by pa- 
 triarchal sires and seers. 
 
 Such was Noah navigating the unknown currents of a 
 turbid and overwhelming flood, in a chartless vessel built 
 by plans of divine designing and guided by an invisible 
 steersman to a heaven-appointed resting place, at which a 
 new race might begin again to repeople the world and wor- 
 ship with purer faith and holier lives the God of earth and 
 skv.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 131 
 
 Such was Abraham the father of the faithful, at the call 
 of God, going out he knew not whither, sojourning in the 
 land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tents 
 with Isaac and Jacob and looking for a city, which hath 
 foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 
 
 Such was Joseph, the dreamer, victim of fraternal hate, 
 exiled in childhood, -passing through obloquy and prison 
 that he might appear at the right moment the vanquisher of 
 famine and the preserver of Israel's hope; with'the magnan- 
 imity of faith declaring to his brethren in the hour of their 
 extremity "It was not you that sent me hither but God who 
 did send me before you to preserve life and hath made me a 
 father of Pharoah and lord of all his house and a ruler 
 throughout all the land of Egypt." 
 
 Such was Moses, the man of God, escaping the fierce de- 
 cree of fhe King and the fiercer beasts of the Nile ; with 
 the helpless cries of his infancy, opening the springs of royal 
 compassion for his preservation and the treasures of Egyp- 
 tian wisdom for his instruction ; fleeing under a heaven-given 
 impulse to the indispensable tuition of Midian's mountain 
 with its burning bush, and returning at length with his 
 wonder-working rod, that he might deliver Israel from bond- 
 age and save from failure the promise upon which the faith 
 of Abraham had been stayed, and from which the rapturous 
 hopes of the dying Jacob in prophetic strains had sprung. 
 
 Such were Joshua and Gideon and Samuel and David, 
 who through faith, wrought righteousness, siibdued king- 
 doms, and turned to flight armies of aliens who withstood 
 the cause of God. 
 
 Such was John the Baptist reaching back to the Tishbite 
 behind him, as in duplicated personality he echoed in the 
 wilderness the fiery invectives of Ahab's reprover ; and reach- 
 ing forward to the Messiah before, as in tones sweet as an- 
 gelic strains, he exclaimed : "Behold the lamb of God, which 
 taketh away the sin of the world." 
 
 Such was Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles, filling up in 
 his flesh that which was behind of the afflictions of Christ ; 
 by an apostolic mediation breaking down the middle wall 
 of partition between Judaism and Gentilism, and bringing 
 into every part of the world of the first century that glorious 
 faith in which "there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian 
 nor Scythian, bond nor free ; but Christ is all and in all." 
 
 Such was Martin Luther catching inspiration from the 
 Pauline letters to the Galatian and Roman churches, and re-
 
 132 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 storing the ancient Gospel of the apostolic age, unawed by 
 Popes and unterrified by princes. 
 
 Such was John Wesley, finding his "heart strangely warm- 
 ed" while one in Aldersgate Street read from the preface of 
 Luther's commentary on the Romans and going forth to 
 bring back heaven's glad spring time to his own and other 
 lands, upon which the gloom of doubt and the chill of faith- 
 lessness had rested like an Arctic winter all too long. He 
 belongs to the high order of heaven-sent men, who in a holy 
 line stretch from Abie's altar at the gate of Paradise to our 
 own times, and who rule the spirits of men not by the power 
 of the hierarchs of a prelatical succession but by the priestly 
 authority of lofty souls whom God has anointed with fresh 
 oil. 
 
 That this elevation of him to a seat among these heroes 
 of faith in all the ages may be justified let us consider some 
 of the salient features of his life in connection with those 
 characteristics by which the great Providential leaders of 
 men are always certified to the recognition of mankind. 
 
 And first let it be premised that the purpose of God is al- 
 ways a moral purpose, and that therefore the chiefs of the 
 race who most deeply and enduringly affect it are religious 
 leaders. Abraham is the best remembered man of his gene- 
 ration, and such of his contemporaries as are remembered 
 at all derive their renown from their contact with him. 
 Joseph outranks the Pharaoh whom he served, and Moses 
 resting in the unmarked grave where the hand of God laid 
 him down to sleep on Moab's lofty peak, influences mankind 
 as do not all the embalmed Pharaohs who slumber in royal 
 tombs. Daniel is more to men than Nebuchadnezzar, Bel- 
 shazzar and Darius. Nero ceased to rule when he ceased to 
 live ; but the prisoner who wrote letters from the camp of 
 the Pretorian guard, hard by Nero's palace, lords it over the 
 souls of men by that most absolute tyranny the tyranny of 
 love and faith. Charles V fills no such space in the thoughts 
 of men as does Martin Luther and Wesley, as Southey pre- 
 dicted, is better known than Frederick the Great or Cather- 
 ine of Russia. "The Four Georges" are not to be mentioned 
 in the same breath with the son of Samuel and Susannah 
 Wesley. 
 
 Again the leaders of mankind are always men of single 
 purpose entirely devoted to God. Their motto always and 
 everywhere is "this one thing I do." 
 
 Growing out of this singleness of purpose and devoted- 
 ness to duty they work by faith, as well as walk by faith.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 133 
 
 They give themselves to no hard and fast programmes, but 
 they exalt daily duty to the first place in life, and without 
 any dreamy presentiments of future greatness come to their 
 high estate, transfigured by that unconscious greatness 
 which builds always wiser than it knows, because it builds 
 under divine direction, coupling its work with that of its 
 fellow servants who have gone before it, and producing 
 work to Avhich its heaven-appointed successors can build af- 
 terwards. Out of its deep communings with God it comes 
 forth from the secret place of the Most High like Moses 
 bearing in its hands laws of life for the ages, but wisting 
 not that its face shines with the reflected glory of God. 
 
 It is always magnanimous, generous and serene, careless 
 of earth's gains or glories, neither elated to unsteadiness by 
 success nor dejected to despondency by apparent defeat. 
 Knowing that it comes from God and goes to God, con- 
 scious of the power committed to its hands, like its divine 
 Master it can in the same night stoop to wash the feet of 
 peasants, dare the agonies of Gethsemane or endure the in- 
 dignities of Pilate's judgment hall, without humiliation, fear 
 or despair. 
 
 It comes to its end at last in a straight betwixt two lov- 
 ing its work and lingering fondly over it, while the tired 
 heart longs for its heavenly home and exults in its Lords' 
 presence. 
 
 Now all these features conspire to make up the true pic- 
 ture of John Wesley. 
 
 With talents of the highest order, with learning the most 
 extensive, with prominent and promising position in the 
 scholastic and ecclesiastical world, he deliberately, intention- 
 ally turned away from every earthly good that men of the 
 world hold dear, and devoted himself wholely to God and 
 religion. Dr. Samuel Johnson did but state the simple 
 truth when he said "Wesley thought of religion only." Mat- 
 thew Arnold states the same truth in different phrase when 
 he affirms that "Wesley had a genius for godliness." 
 
 Wesley's devotion to the cause of religion, and to that 
 only, explains why we are here to-night, and why Savan- 
 nah is able to claim him as the greatest man who has ever 
 lived in this good city. Religion brought him here. He 
 says in his journal of his coming, "Our end in leaving our 
 native country was not to avoid want (God having given us 
 plenty of temporal blessings) nor to gain riches or honor ; 
 but sine'lv this to save our souls ; to live wholly to the 
 glory of God."
 
 134 WESLEY B [-CENTENARY. 
 
 And again in a letter dated October 10, 1735, he says of 
 his Georgia mission : "My chief motive is the hope of sav- 
 ing my own soul. I hope to learn the true sense of the 
 Gospel of Christ by preaching it to the heathen." 
 
 The historian Bancroft describes him while resident in 
 Georgia as "strolling the natural avenues of palmettos and 
 ever-green hollies, and woods sombre with hanging moss, 
 his heart gushing forth in addresses to God, 
 
 "Is there a thing beneath the sun 
 
 That strives with thee my heart to share 
 
 Ah tear it thence and reign alone 
 The Lord of every motion there." 
 
 Indeed these lines, which Mr. Bancroft quotes, so felici- 
 tously, are from the hymn translated by John Wesley from 
 the German while he lived in Savannah. They are the exact 
 expression of his spirit and purpose and do but repeat in 
 verse the lofty profession of St. Paul in prose. "I count aH 
 but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus 
 my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things 
 and do count them but, refuse that I may win Christ." 
 
 This singleness of purpose became deeper and more fixed 
 with added years. He was wont to say "This one thing I 
 do, spread scriptural holiness." 
 
 His time and talents were thus wholly given to God 
 and God's grace was wholly given to him, imparting to him 
 power to influence his own and later generations beyond all 
 the power of statesmen or soldiers, or the princes of trade 
 and commerce, wherefore the skeptical historian Lecky is 
 constrained to say : "Although the career of the elder Pitt, 
 and the splendid victories by land and sea, that were won 
 during his ministry, form unquestionably the most dazzling 
 episodes in the reign of George II., they must yield, I think, 
 in real importance to that religious revolution which short- 
 ly before had been begun in England by the preaching of 
 the Wesleys and Whitefield. The creation of a large, power- 
 ful and active sect, extending over both hemispheres, and 
 numbering many millions of souls, was but one of its con- 
 sequences. It also exercised a profound and lasting influ- 
 ence upon the spirit of the Established Church, upon the 
 amount and distribution of the moral forces of the nation 
 and even upon the course of its political history." 
 
 Aiming only at serving God and saving souls, John Wes- 
 ley did thereby save his age and nation, and set in motion
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 135 
 
 saving influences which have penetrated to every part of the 
 world. 
 
 The Wesleyan revival checked, and then overcame the in- 
 fluence of Voltaire's infidel philosophizing, and arrested its 
 tendency to destructive revolution before it could spread be- 
 yond the borders of France. Hereby Wesley saved England 
 from the damnation of doubt, and America from social de- 
 struction and political despair. It is impossible to exaggerate 
 the dreadful consequences of evil which would have accrued 
 to the American colonies and the rising republic formed by 
 them, if Wesleyanism had not prevented Voltairism from se- 
 curing a foothold in England in the eighteenth century, 
 when the sturdy stocks from which the citizenship of America 
 was first made were being transported to and transplanted 
 in the new world. Moreover the Wesleyan revival chastened 
 the fierce selfishness of the newly-dawned era of industrial- 
 ism, bound all classes together in bonds of the most sacred 
 sympathies, and unified, as nothing else could have done, 
 the English speaking peoples of the world. It tamed the wild 
 passion of greed and postponed, if it has not utterly pre- 
 vented, the social revolution in Great Britain and America, 
 which the most optomistic feared, and which still haunts 
 with apprehensions the dreams of many thoughtful men. And 
 it may be remarked in passing that the dangers which beset 
 us to-day in the matter of labor and capital can only be 
 averted by a revival of the Wesleyan revival in our own day 
 among all classes, and these dangers will hasten to their 
 culmination by just so much as we delay to return to Wes- 
 ley's God by the experience of whose saving grace the divine 
 fatherhood and human brotherhood are made so real to the 
 souls of men, as that it brings peace on earth as well as glory 
 in the highest. The antagonisms of classes are cleansed and 
 cured when the wise and the wealthy come with peasants and 
 shepherds to open their treasure and adore their God at the 
 Child of Bethlehem's feet. It was thus England and Amer- 
 ica were saved by the Wesleyan revival and it is thus they 
 must be saved again if saved at all. 
 
 But Wesley planned for none of these great things. 
 
 The extent of the work surprised him as much as it grati- 
 fied him. He said "This revival of religion has spread to 
 such a degree as neither we nor our fathers had known. How 
 extensive has it been? There is scarce a considerable town 
 in the kingdom, where some have not been witnesses of it. 
 It has spread to every age and sex, to most orders and de- 
 grees of men ; and even to abundance of those who, in time
 
 136 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 past, were accounted monsters of wickedness.* * * When 
 has true religion, I will not say since the reformation, but 
 since the time of Constantine, the Great, made so large a 
 progress in any nation, within so small a space. I believe 
 hardly can ancient or modern history afford a parellel in- 
 stance." While thus clearly perceiving the greatness of 
 the results achieved he finds the cause of all not in the 
 wisdom with which he had planned nor the skill with which 
 he had executed the work, but in the purpose and power 
 of God, saying "But if these things are so, may we not well 
 say 'What hath God wrought'?" 
 
 His spirit is that of the Psalmist : "Not unto us O Lord, 
 not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. For thy mercy 
 and for thy truth's sake." 
 
 When his followers w,ere only about thirty thousand souls, 
 with devout wonder he exults : 
 
 "O the fathomless love, that hath deigned to approve 
 
 And prosper the work of my hands f 
 With my pastoral crook I went over the brook, 
 
 And behold I am spread into bands. 
 
 Who, I ask in amaze, hath gotten me these 
 And inquire from what quarter they came ; 
 
 My full heart it replies, they are born from the skies 
 And gives glory to God and the Lamb." 
 
 Nor was he more surprised by the extensiveness and swift- 
 ness of the work, than by the methods which at last he was 
 led to adopt for its accomplishment. Most of the characteris- 
 tic instrumentalities which he employed were not the inven- 
 tions of far-seeing wisdom but the tools forced into his 
 hands by an over-ruling providence to which he held himself 
 always responsive. So came the class-meeting, field preach- 
 ing, lay preaching, and his exercise of the power of ordina- 
 tion. 
 
 Defending field-preaching he savs expressly: "Be pleased 
 to observe (i) That I was forbidden as by a general con- 
 sent, to preach in any church (though not by any judicial 
 sentence) 'for preaching such doctrine.' This was the open 
 avowed cause ; there was at that time no other, either real or 
 pretended, except that the people crowded so. (2.) That 
 I had no desire or desien to preach in the open air, till after 
 this prohibition. (3.) That when I did, as it was no matter 
 of choice, so neither of premeditation. There was no scheme 
 at all previously formed which was to be supported thereby,
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 137 
 
 nor had I any other end in view than this to save as many 
 souls as I could." Of the strength of the conviction by 
 which he was constrained he declares : "It were better for 
 me to die than not to preach the gospel ; yea in the fields 
 when I may not preach in the church, or when the church 
 will not contain the congregation." 
 
 He was opposed to lay-preaching, and when during his 
 absence from London, Thomas Maxfield, whom he had left 
 at the Foundry Society to pray with and advise the mem- 
 bers, was insensibly led from praying to preaching, he hur- 
 ried back to London for the purpose of stopping the irregu- 
 larity. But when he came and heard Maxfield for himself, 
 and saw the fruits of his preaching, like the good Barnabas 
 when he saw the grace of God at Antioch, he was "glad" 
 and said, "It is of the Lord; let Him do what seemeth him 
 good." 
 
 He ordained Coke and Whatcoat and Vasey, and provided 
 for the ordination of Asbury and the other American preach- 
 ers, under the compulsion of what he described as "an un- 
 common train of providences," and said of the act, "If any 
 one will point out a more rational and scriptural way of 
 feeding and guiding those poor sheep in the wilderness, I 
 will gladly embrace it. At present I can not see any other 
 method than that I have taken." 
 
 From his conduct in these matters of field-preaching, lay- 
 preaching and the ordination of his preachers, and from the 
 whole course of his life, it is clear that he moved not under 
 the intention of fulfilling any preconceived programme of his 
 own ; but with ready submission to the divine plan he was 
 earnestly seeking to serve his own generation by the will of 
 God, without regard to policies or consequences. With 
 Paul he might justly, and without boasting have said 
 "neither count my life dear unto myself so that I might 
 finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have re- 
 ceived of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace 
 of God." 
 
 Feeling hims"elf thus bound to a particular course, within 
 the purposes of the God who is from everlasting to ever- 
 lasting, and who had been working hitherto and would work, 
 Wesley thought only of present dutv, not dreaming of any 
 innovation upon the gospel which in the hands of mighty 
 men before him had been the power of God unto salvation 
 nor disquieting himself about the future effects of his own 
 toil. He was no innovator with regard to the past nor dic- 
 tator with reference to the future. Hear him : "Methodism so
 
 138 WESLEY BI-CENTENABY. 
 
 called is the old religion, the religion of the Bible, the re- 
 ligion of the primitive church, the religion of the Church 
 of England." That is not the language of a pert innovator 
 but of a reverent renovator, not of a revolutionist but of a 
 revivalist. 
 
 Concerning the future, his spirit is best expressed by a 
 favorite saying of his brother Charles often on his own 
 lips "God buries his workmen but carries on his work." 
 
 Conscious of living a divinely ordered life he was the 
 embodiment of magnaminity and the incarnation of unworld- 
 liness. Toiling for neither earthly treasure nor worldly 
 fame his spirit was elevated to a plane too lofty for personal 
 controversy and too serene for disquietude concerning any 
 personal interest. He could and did sing with perfect sin- 
 cerity and hMy fervor: 
 
 "The things eternal I pursue 
 
 A happiness beyond the view 
 
 Of those who basely pant 
 
 For things by nature felt and seen, 
 
 Their honors, wealth and pleasure mean, 
 I neither have nor want." 
 
 Abounding in labors and filled with peace, his health of 
 soul seemed to promote health of body. He lived to be 
 eighty-eight years of age and*preached above sixty years, al- 
 though at fifty-one years of age all supposed him fatally dis- 
 eased with pulmonary consumption and that his end was near. 
 At the age of eighty-one he preached at Kingswood under 
 the shadow of trees which he himself had planted, and to the 
 children's children of men and women who by his ministry 
 had been brought to God. 
 
 Of the surpassing beauty of his old age we catch a 
 glimpse from George Eliot in "Adam Bede" when Dinah 
 Morris says: "I remember his face well. He was a very 
 old man, and had very long white hair; his voice was very 
 soft and beautiful, not like any voice I have ever heard be- 
 fore. I was a little girl, and scarcely knew anything, and this 
 old man seemed to me such a different sort of man from any- 
 body I had ever seen before, that I thought he had perhaps 
 come down from the sky to preach to us. I said, 'Aunt will 
 he go back to the sky to-night like the picture in the Bible?' 
 That man of God was Mr. Wesley, who spent his whole life 
 in doing what our blessed Lord did preaching the gospel 
 to the poor."
 
 WESLEY BI-CKNTENARY. 139 
 
 Well, that "Man of God" did at last go back to the God 
 who sent him forth. For three months before his departure 
 he sang almost daily at family worship the hymn in which 
 are found the lines: 
 
 "O that without a lingering groan 
 
 I may the welcome word receive, 
 My body with my charge lay down 
 
 And cease at once to work and live." 
 
 The day before he died he sang: 
 
 "I'll praise my Maker while I've breath 
 
 And when my voice is lost in death 
 Praise shall employ my nobler powers; 
 
 My days of praise shall ne'er be past 
 While life and thought and being last 
 
 Or immortality endures." 
 
 On the next morning Wednesday, March 2, 1791 he 
 passed away. Among his last audible words was the triump- 
 ant exclamation "The best of all is, God is with us !" 
 
 So ended the earthly life of this divinely sent man. this 
 prophet of the eighteenth century, given of God to the world 
 to carry forward His ancient Kingdom and to hasten the 
 coming of that glorious day when the Kingdoms of this 
 world shall have become the Kingdoms of our Lord and his 
 Christ. 
 
 We do well to celebrate the day of his birth in this city 
 which in its infancy was consecrated by his ministry the 
 only place in the New World in which he ever lived. He was 
 the greatest citizen Savannah has ever had nor will it ever 
 have a greater. His brief ministry here places the name 
 of this beautiful city by the sea with the names of Antioch 
 and Wittenburg where Paul lived and Luther preached the 
 unsearchable riches of Christ. 
 
 We do well in this place to honor his memory and recall 
 his virtues, we do still better to learn and lay to heart the 
 lessons of his life. 
 
 Let us learn that in this world which God made for re- 
 ligious ends only religious efforts shall at last prevail and 
 religious influences shall alone endure. "The world passeth 
 away and the lust thereof ; but he that doeth the will of God 
 abideth forever." "They that be wise shall shine as the 
 brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to 
 righteousness as the stars forever and ever."
 
 140 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 And if we would turn many to righteousness we must in- 
 tend to do it and aim at nothing else. That will endow our 
 efforts with a wisdom more prescient than any human fore- 
 sight, for the Omniscient will direct our toil, carrying for- 
 ward our work by the momentum of the divine movement in 
 all the ages past and assuring it with the glowing prophecies 
 by which the future is illumined. 
 
 The consciousness of a divine commission and a single- 
 minded effort to fulfill it, will elevate our souls, purge us of 
 greed and cure us of ambition, restrain our impatience 
 and inspire our courage, rebuke our despondency and make 
 sure our hopes, give us peace and power and in the end vic- 
 tory through Jesus Christ our Lord. Best of all God 
 will be with us and bless us and make us a blessing.
 
 Rev. John Franklin Goucher
 
 WESLKY BI-CENTENARY. 143 
 
 TABLETS UNVEILED. 
 
 Closing Features of Bi-Centenarv Celebration. 
 
 ADDRESS BY DR. J. F. GOUCHER. 
 
 The services in Trinity began at II o'clock. At that hour 
 the church was filled with interested people, and upon the 
 platform, and in the chancel were noted, Bishop W. A. 
 Candler, Bishop Galloway, Rev. Thos. D. Ellis, Rev. Dr. 
 A. M. Williams, Rev. H. C. Christian, Judge S. B. Adams, 
 Hon. J. C. C. Black. Hon DuPont Guerry, Rev. Dr. John 
 D. Jordan. Rev. Dr. McCorkle. Rev. Dr. J. Y. Fair, Rev. 
 Dr. W. C. Schaeffer, Rev. J. A. Smith, Rev. G. G. N. 
 McDonell, Rev. Dr. J. W. Heidt, Col. J. R. Saus- 
 sy, Rev. Dr. Fullwood, Rev. C. A. Jackson, Hon. A. O. 
 Bacon. Hon. R. E. Lester and others. 
 
 Bishop Candler announced that the service would open 
 with the singing of hymn No. 435. This was one of the 
 hymns by John Wesley. Rev. Dr. Fullwood then led in pray- 
 er, and Bishop Galloway read a portion of the Scriptures 
 from the first chapter of St. John. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Goucher was then introduced by Bishop Candler 
 and delivered his address. 
 
 The Coetaneous Rise of Methodism and Anglo- 
 Saxon Supremacy. 
 
 Greatness of character, personal or national, is to be de- 
 termined by its contribution to human well-being. Large- 
 ness is not necessarily greatness. Judged by this standard 
 the greatest race of modern times is the Anglo-Saxon. I 
 use the term "Anglo Saxon" to designate not only those who 
 trace their descent back directly to the Angle and the Saxon, 
 but those also who having descended collaterally, or, asso- 
 ciated with them, have helped develop and perpetuate their 
 characteristics. 
 
 They were not always a maritime, commercial, industrial, 
 world governing people. Though of Teutonic origin, they 
 had gradually withdrawn from the continent of Europe and 
 for a thousand years till the close of the sixteenth century, 
 their activities were insular and England was their home. 
 They had undertaken some voyages, adventures and polar
 
 144 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 exploration which yielded considerable return in personal de- 
 velopment of seamanship and audacity, but the first genera- 
 tion of great European discoverers had passed before the 
 Anglo-Saxons made any valuable contribution to world 
 knowledge. Three quarters of a century had elapsed since the 
 epoch-making achievements of Columbus and Vasco da 
 Game, transferring the center of human interest from the 
 Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, before Chancellor 
 explored the White Sea, Drake circumnavigated the globe or 
 Frobisher sought for the "northwest passage." But these 
 men had their preparation in time to defy and help destroy 
 the Spanish Armada. When the sixteenth century closed 
 the Anglo-Saxons were without a single possession out- 
 side of Europe and had dominion over only half their Island 
 and a part of Ireland. 
 
 In the seventeenth century there was an almost continuous 
 ferment with periods of apparent reaction, but there was a 
 steady development of larger ideals and preparation for a 
 larger mission. England established the internal union of 
 the three kingdoms and improved her governmental organi- 
 zation. Vane organized and Blake wielded her navy in such 
 manner as to lay the beginnings for her maritime supremacy, 
 which was preliminary to her commercial and industrial de- 
 velopment. She set her face definitely and resolutely to- 
 wards the Ocean and entered upon a Colonial policy, which 
 though narrow and selfish, was of immense significance. 
 Commencing more than a century after Spain and follow- 
 ing a long way in the wake of Portugal, France and Hol- 
 land, England possessed herself of a part of this western 
 world. For obvious reasons, Portugal and Holland were 
 forced out of the struggle and Spain, concentrating her op- 
 pressions upon Central and South America, left France and 
 England as the great competitors for this North American 
 continent. 
 
 From 1688 to 1815 England was engaged in seven great 
 wars. Five of these started with France, one started with 
 Spain and the other with England's colonies, but both ended 
 with France. "It was more than an inveterate jealousy. It 
 was not because of their proximity." -It was an irrepressible 
 struggle which could not cease until fought to the finish, 
 for it was to determine whether a Latin or the Anglo-Saxon 
 civilization, whether personal subservience to priestcraft or 
 intellectual and spiritual freedom, whether slavery or man- 
 hood should have the mastery, not in Europe only, it was 
 for world supremacy, and for all the future.
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 145 
 
 Though France preceded England in colonizing enterprise, 
 she laid her chief stress upon European expansion and was 
 always entangled with the nations about her. England, with 
 her personal initiative rapidly developing, sought with her 
 characteristic persistence the new fields, America, Asia, Aus- 
 tralia and Africa. She had a few colonies along the Atlantic 
 Coast, but France had possessed herself of the two great 
 rivers, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and was in posi- 
 tion to dominate the continent. 
 
 When "the Great Commoner" said he "would conquer 
 America in Germany," he disclosed the weakness in the policy 
 of France. Subsidizing Frederick he caused France to 
 divide her forces and exhaust herself in Europe while her 
 possessions in America passed defenceless into the hands of 
 the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 In the three wars between 1740 and 1783 the struggle as 
 between England and France was entirely for the New 
 World. In the second, the seven years war, France was de- 
 feated. In the third she sought for vengeance. We as a 
 nation should be grateful to France for the recognition of 
 our young and untried republic and for the material support 
 which she gave us, yet we cannot forget her motive was re- 
 venge rather than love. So later, Napoleon, conscious that 
 with her inferior naval strength France could not protect 
 Louisiana from the British, preferred to have it pass into 
 the hands of the United States rather than have England 
 seize it. France's jealousy of England enabled us, without 
 firing a gun, to double our area at a price equivalent to less 
 than three cents per acre. It was another victory in the 
 same campaign, the Anglo-Saxon displacing the Latin. We 
 continued at Manilla and Santiago what England had so 
 gloriously began at Aix la Chappel, Quebec and Arcot. 
 Spain, Portugal and France, all Latin nations and all world 
 powers at the beginning of the eighteenth century are in 
 their reminiscent stage to-day. No one of them has any em- 
 pire in the western world. 
 
 When the eighteenth century closed it left England with- 
 out one of her original American colonies and a war debt of 
 $4,200,000,000. But a sister Anglo-Saxon nation was well 
 established on this side of the Atlantic, Canada had beco.me 
 an English possession, the Latin civilization had been started 
 at a double-quick upon its evacuation of North America, the 
 Britain was more manly, the Anglo-Saxon was more Chris- 
 tian, and the foundations of the empire of manhood had been 
 laid in everv continent.
 
 146 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 The race for supremacy upon which England fairly started 
 when she defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 was awarded 
 her by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which secured the Pro- 
 testant succession in England, the separation of the French 
 and Spanish Crowns and the enlargement of the British 
 colonies and plantations in America. This caused her to be 
 considered the first State in Europe. But "her success had 
 secularized and materialized her as nothing had ever done 
 before. Cynicism and corruption had set in. Never were 
 sordid motives so supreme, never was religion and every high 
 influence so much discredited as in the thirty years which fol- 
 lowed." (J. R. Seely). The infection from the reign of Charles 
 II, of whom Macaulay says, "honor and shame to him were 
 scarcely more than light and darkness to the blind," gave 
 virulence to every debasing influence. Stevens says, "The 
 court became a royal brothel, the playhouse became the tem- 
 ple of England where 'the loose wit of Congreve,' Dryden 
 declares, 'was its only prop.' The works of Smollett and 
 Fielding and similar authors, dedicated to the first ladies 
 of the court, were the parlor-table books of the age. The 
 skeptical books of Hobbs, Collins, Shaftbury, Bolingbroke, 
 Hume and Gibbon were in free circulation. Voltaire and 
 Rousseau had decked the corrupt doctrines of the day with 
 the attractions of eloquence and poetry, humor and satire, 
 until they swept over France like a sirrocco, withering not 
 only the sentiments of religion, but the instincts of human- 
 ity, and subverting at last in common ruin the altar, the 
 throne and the moral protections of domestic life. The con- 
 tagion of French opinion, both in religion and politics, ser- 
 iously infected England. The continental infidelity had in 
 fact sprung from English deism and naturally reacted upon 
 it." 
 
 The scoffing and scurrilous infidelity of France was more 
 menacing and dangerous to England than her armies, navy 
 and Catholicism combined. The ribald literature, the for- 
 mality of religion, the licentiousness of the Court, the pro- 
 fligacy of the cultured and the gross sensuality of the masses 
 were destroying the moral fiber of England and threatening 
 n scandalous dissipation of all she had acquired. Bishop 
 Burnet says, "The clergy were under more contempt than 
 those of any other church in Europe ; for they were much 
 more remiss in their labors and less severe in their lives. I 
 cannot look on without the deepest concern, when I see im- 
 minent ruin hanging over the Church and, by consequence,
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 147 
 
 over the Reformation." "Never was religion at a lower 
 ebb." 
 
 Arch-Bishop Seeker says, "Such are the dissoluteness and 
 contempt of principle in the higher part of the world and 
 the profligacy, intemperance and fearlessness of committing 
 crime in the lower as must, if this torrent of impiety stop 
 not, become absolutely fatal." 
 
 Bishop Butler writes, "It has come to be taken for granted 
 that Christianity is no longer a subject of enquiry, and noth- 
 ing remained but to set it up as the principal subject for 
 mirth and ridicule." 
 
 Isaac Taylor says, "The people of England had lapsed in- 
 to heathenism, or a state hardlyto be distinguished from it, 
 when Wesley appeared." 
 
 A writer in the North American Review says, "Never has 
 a century risen in Christian England so void of soul and 
 faith, it rose a sunless dawn followed by a dewless night. 
 The Puritans were buried and the Methodists were not born." 
 But as Saul when "breathing out threatening and slaughter 
 against the disciples of the Lord" was arrested and trans- 
 formed into the anostle to the Gentiles, by the incoming of 
 the Divine life, so there came to the Anglo-Saxon on both 
 sides of the Atlantic a spiritual awakening which recon- 
 structed, conserved and energized their moral life and made 
 possible their greater mission. 
 
 In the middle third of the eighteenth century occurred 
 "the great spiritual awakening" in England and "the seven 
 years war," two epoch-making events which are still unfold- 
 ing their constructive influence throughout the world. 
 These relegated the Latin civilization to the background and 
 determined Anglo-Saxon supremacy. When the religious 
 and social life of England were most deplorable and before 
 she entered upon her great decisive struggle with France, 
 John Wesley returned from America with one passion pos- 
 sessing him. He desired and purposed above all things to 
 prove the conditions, extent and power of a knowable salva- 
 tion. Nearly four months afterward, on May 24th, 1738, he 
 writes, "About a quarter before nine, (in. the evening), I 
 felt my heart strangely warmed, I felt I did trust in Christ, 
 Christ alone for salvation ; and assurance was given me, that 
 He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from 
 the law of sin and death." That was his Penial. There he 
 entered into the experience of personal acceptance with God 
 through Christ, of personal purity through the indwelling 
 of the Holy Spirit, and of personal abnegation in the service
 
 148 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 of others. This was the power of the new life. He and his 
 followers, "for their number increased daily," believed them- 
 selves thrust out to raise up a holy people and their devo- 
 tion, industry and efficiency fully justified their belief. In 
 the latter part of 1739 the first Methodist Societies were or- 
 ganized, and the old Foundry in London was consecrated 
 and opened for regular public worship. 
 
 Thus the great revival of the eighteenth century was 
 launched. It was no local, spasmodic or superficial matter. 
 It was not a re-formation within the Established Church. 
 John Wesley and his associates, both ordained clergymen 
 and local preachers, itinerated through England and Ireland. 
 ''Their voice was soon heard in the wildest and most bar- 
 barous corners of the land, among the bleak Moors of 
 Northumberland, in the dens of London, in the long galleries 
 where in the pauses of his labor the Cornish miners listens to 
 the surfing of the Sea," and from the green knoll at Kings- 
 wood, where twenty thousand colliers, grimy from the Bris- 
 tol coal pits, with penitential tears "making white channels 
 down their blackened cheeks," testified their response to the 
 message. "Their lives were often in danger, they were mob- 
 bed, they were ducked, they were stoned, they were smother- 
 ed with filth" as they witnessed by public statement, by priv- 
 ate virtue, by personal sacrifice and patient endurance of 
 hardships and persecution, witnessing with their blood if 
 need be, to that which they had experienced and knew of 
 the power of God to save from sin. 
 
 Signs and wonders attended their preaching in the awaken- 
 ing of the obdurate, the conversion of penitents and the 
 sanctification of believers. This was not an exceptional oc- 
 currence, nor confined to some one class of society. Con- 
 gregations numbering many thousands waited upon their 
 preaching. The most brutal denizens of the slums and col- 
 lieries, as well as clergymen, scholars and members of the 
 nobility realized the experience and testified, by their lives, 
 to its saving power. So far as the converts were willing to 
 identify themselves with the movement, they were organized 
 into bands or classes and placed under the watchful care of 
 local pastors or class leaders who counseled them in spiritual 
 things and conserved their spiritual guwth. 
 
 The revival spread in all directions. It penetrated all 
 churches. All philanthropies and all conditions of life felt 
 its impulse. Isaac Taylor says, it "preserved from extinct- 
 tion and reanimated the languishing non-conformity of the 
 last century, which just at the time of the Methodist revival,
 
 WESLEY SI-CENTENARY. 149 
 
 was rapidly in course to be found nowhere but in books.'' 
 Lecky says, "It infused into the Established Church a new 
 fire and passion of devotion, kindled a spirit of fervent philan- 
 thropy, raised the standard of clerical duty, and completely 
 altered the whole tone and tendency of the preaching of its 
 ministers." It was common talk at the clubs and discussed 
 through the Press. No class escaped its direct or indirect 
 influence. It wrought a political revolution and a moral re- 
 surrection. It inaugurated, as Green says, "the steady at- 
 tempt, which has never ceased from that day to this, to 
 remedy the guilt, the ignorance, the physical sufferings, th-: 
 social degredation of the profligate and the poor." 
 
 It made no attemot to conserve spirituality by undue em- 
 phasis of orthodoxy, but orthodoxy was conserved by main- 
 taining a living experience of fellowship with God. It re- 
 united in holy wedlock religion and morality which had been 
 a long time divorced. It brought hope to sullen despair, 
 gave joy for the sorrows of poverty, an intellectual uplift and 
 spiritual impulse where there had been ignorance and gross 
 immorality and moral rectitude and peace unutterable to th? 
 penitent and believer. The cynical and sordid tendency of 
 the times gave way to practical sympathy and organized be- 
 nevolence. The tidal wave of French infidelity was turned 
 back and England saved from the blight of its foul immoral- 
 ities, its destructive tenets and the horrors of an anarchical 
 revolution by this quickening of her conscience and develop- 
 ment of moral earnestness. 
 
 The enthronement of high ideals, the development of mor- 
 ality, the impulse for education, the quickening of industrial 
 activities and the awakening of lovalty throughout Great 
 Britain were incidentals, or bye-products, of the revival, but 
 they made possible the success of the elder Pitt's colonial 
 and continental policy of coordinating Europe and America 
 with the Anglo-Saxon ideals, an-1 contributed largely to th" 
 work of Clive, who turned a trading company into a political 
 power and inaugurated a hundred v~ars of continuous con- 
 quest of India. Wherever the Anglo-Saxon has entrenched 
 himself the influences of that revival have helped to make his 
 home.
 
 150 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 IT FOUND ITS WAY TO AMERICA. 
 
 About 1762 Robert Strawbridge was preaching in the 
 colony of Maryland and a few years later Philip Embury 
 commenced to preach in New York. The Conference at 
 Bristol in 1771 sent to America, Francis Asbury whose in- 
 defatigable and apostolic labors have rarely been exceeded. 
 He crossed the Alleghenies on horseback sixty times, 
 threading the forests, swimming the rivers, penetrating the 
 savannahs, preaching, exhorting, counseling in season and 
 out of season. He soon developed a heroic band of conse- 
 crated, spiritually minded men and the marvelous results of 
 the great spiritual awakening in England were duplicated in 
 her American colonies. The Classes were organized into 
 Conferences in 1773. In less than a month after war had 
 been declared with England, the Methodist Conference or- 
 dered a fast to pray for the peace of America and the pros- 
 perity of the Church, and the Methodist Church was the 
 first to express approval of the Federal Constitution and to 
 give President Washington assurance of loyal sympathy and 
 support. 
 
 The spirit of Methodism is the spirit of liberty. Though 
 organized under a monarchy it has especially flourished in 
 this Republic. In fact Methodism and the Republic have 
 developed together and the progress of the one has be.n the 
 measure of the other. 
 
 The United States is the great colonizing nation of mod- 
 ern times. To possess unoccupied land or to defeat par- 
 tially organized tribes is one thing, to develop civilization 
 and national life is quite another. We multiplied our popu- 
 lation by sixteen in the nineteenth century, founded more 
 than thirty flourishing colonies, saw them develop into sover- 
 eign states and accepted them as full members of the Union 
 While the foundations of these Empires were being laid and 
 their constitutions elaborated the forces and ideals which 
 dominated were Anglo-Saxon, for rarely, if ever, in any of 
 the early years of the century, did the emigrants to the 
 United States exceed six thousand. The work of the pioneer 
 in taking possession of the middle and far west, commenc- 
 ing 1 at the close of the Revolution and still in the full sweep 
 of its activitv, has been more than occupancy or reconstruc- 
 tion, it has been creative and constructive. 
 
 A determininer factor in this creative and constructive 
 work has been the Methodist itinerant preacher. No isola- 
 tion could elude him, no hardship daunt him. He was re-
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 151 
 
 sourceful, pervasive and persuasive. By his persistent pre- 
 sentation of the unalterable requirements, eternal motives 
 and infinite resources of God as the essentials of human 
 character he laid deep and built wisely the foundations of 
 society. The itinerant system, the doctrines of free will, free 
 grace, personal accountability and personal experience of a 
 full, knowable salvation, peculiarly suited the pioneer spirit 
 of the people. 
 
 During the past century Methodism multiplied its com- 
 municants in America by ninety-nine. At the opening of 
 the nineteenth century all Protestantism in the United 
 States had one communicant to fourteen, and Methodism 
 but one to eighty-one of the entire population.* At the 
 close of the nineteenth century Methodism had 6,437,461 
 communicants, or one to twelve of the entire population. 
 One branch of Methodism in this country during the past 
 three years has laid upon the altar of God, for its ordinary 
 expenses, stated benevolences and as a special thank offer- 
 ing, Ninety-five Millions of Dollars. 
 
 The followers of Wesley commenced work in India in 1817. 
 They were reenforced by the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 just before the great Sepoy Mutiny, and entered upon the 
 work of construction as soon as the Union Jack conquered 
 the right of way for the heralds of the Gospel of Peace. 
 Their aggressive work and manifest results far exceed those 
 of any other church in the Empire. 
 
 The Methodist Revival in England commenced before "the 
 seven years war ;" in America it commenced before "the 
 Revolution ;" in India its agents were on the ground before 
 the British authoritv was fimlly established. In each case, 
 as elsewhere, the rise of Methodism was coetaneous with 
 Anglo-Saxon supremacy. At the dawn of the twentieth cen- 
 tury Methodism included in its various branches 48,350 min- 
 isters, 104,836 local preachers, 89,189 churches, 7,267,511 
 Sundav Schopl scholars and 7,659,285 communicants and 
 the Methodist population numbered about Thirtv Millions, 
 which is more than twice as many as there were Ancdo-Six- 
 ons in the whole world, of all creeds when John Wesley went 
 to Oxford. 
 
 The Ano-lo Saxons, and they only, have kept in the van 
 of the world's progress during the recent centuries. Their 
 supremacy is manifest in that more than one-quarter of the 
 
 * In the U. S. In the World. 
 
 1800- Methodist Communicants 65.000 116,000 
 
 1900 Methodist Communicants 6,437,461 7,659,006
 
 152 WESLEY EX-CENTENARY. 
 
 land surface of the globe is controlled by them, one-third of 
 the entire population of the earth is under their authority 
 and more than one-third of the resources and capitalized 
 wealth of the world belongs to them. They have colonized 
 in every continent, they occupy the strategic points of the 
 earth, they command the high-ways of the oceans, they domi- 
 nate the world's commerce, they transmit the world's news, 
 they are teaching all men their language and institutions, 
 and they make every land they touch the realm of the Bible 
 and the Sunday School. 
 
 They are the governmental force of the world, not only 
 in controlling savages and directing the semi-civilized, but 
 among the most advanced nations their policies are respect- 
 ed, they give direction to councils and determine restrictions. 
 Fiske says, "the working out of the skilfully elaborated 
 American system of federation the specific principle of un- 
 ion joined with independence in our national constitution 
 by Hamilton and Madison and their associates, was the finest 
 specimen of constructive statesmanship that the world has 
 ever seen." 
 
 The most remarkable fact in the century just passed is the 
 extent to which the world has become in thought, habit and 
 ideal, as well as governmentally, Anglo-Saxon. But the 
 marvel of all centuries is the evolution of the Anglo-Saxon 
 himself. His present trend is a long call from his earlier 
 characteristics. He who in an earlier stage was exclusive 
 and predacious, cruel, indolent and disregardful of domestic 
 vn'tue, has come to stand for personal initiative, construc- 
 tive intelligence, civic righteousness and domestic probity. 
 
 All movements must be judged by their tendency as all 
 ideals" must be judged by that which inheres. While Anglo- 
 Saxon expansion has been secured ofttimes by cruelty and 
 rapacity and cannot be justified even when compared with 
 others of their age, yet the tendency, never more manifest 
 than in public sentiment to-day, is towards justice tempered 
 with mercy. "War and peace, conquest, trade and coloniza- 
 tion have each had a share in the extension of the dominion 
 of the race. But in the final balance the enterprise of private 
 individuals will be reckoned more effective than those of the 
 state." These enterprises were constructive and their suc- 
 cess had its rootage in solidarity. 
 
 Of the five states, and as between the three races which 
 competed for the New World, and indeed for the world su- 
 premacy, success has not fallen to that one which showed 
 at the outset the strongest vocation for colonization, nor to
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 153 
 
 the one which surpassed all others in daring, invention, 
 energy, or the ability to marshal and command great armies, 
 but to that one which responded to the transforming im- 
 pulse of the Divine life, and exceeded in moral earnestness. 
 While there are marked and many individual exceptions, as 
 a race, in ideal, tradition and trend, the Anglo-Saxon has 
 been Christianized and more than any other stands for puri- 
 ty, progress and peace. 
 
 If the coetaneous rise of Methodism and Anglo-Saxon 
 supremacy were simply a coincidence, only a fact passed 
 and expended, still it would be worthy of our study. But 
 if the past is prophetic of the future, if history is not only a 
 narration of facts but the suggestion of problems, if "when 
 you study English history you study not the past of England 
 only, but her future," and if the coetaneous rise of Metho- 
 dism and Anglo-Saxon supremacy were consequential, it is 
 a fact of supreme importance, challenging most careful con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Methodism is individualizing, coordinating, altruistic. It 
 deals with the unit and correlates him with the whole. It 
 has promoted the development of individuality, personal 
 initiative and organized effort by coordinating the soul with 
 God. It has raised the standard and fostered personal puri- 
 ty, civic righteousness, official justice by proclaiming the law 
 of the Lord. It has safe-guarded and elevated the sanctity 
 of the home and everything pertaining to childhood, woman- 
 hood and manhood in their mutual relations by keeping 
 Christ in the midst. The awakening and development of the 
 chief Anglo-Saxon characteristics, the prime elements of 
 their strength, is concentric with the propaganda and quick- 
 ening which Methodism brought to the race. 
 
 But let others speak concerning the constructive and de- 
 termining influence of the Methodist movement of the eigh- 
 teenth century upon Anglo-Saxon development. 
 
 Southey, poet laureate of England, and one of the most 
 severely critical of his biographers, says, "I consider Wes- 
 ley as the most influential mind of the last century, the man 
 who will have produced the greatest effects centuries or 
 milleniums hence, if the present race of men shall continue 
 so long. There may come a time when the name of Wes- 
 ley will be more generally known and to remoter regions of 
 the globe than that of Frederick or Catherine his contempo- 
 raries, for the work of such men survive them and continue 
 to operate when nothing remains of worldly ambition but 
 the memory of its vanity and its guilt."
 
 154 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 The English editor writes in the "Review of Reviews," 
 "Wesleyanism has acted as a cement of the English speak- 
 ing race and thereby contributed materially towards the solu- 
 tion of the supreme political problem of our times. Ths 
 Wesley brothers who founded the Methodist polity are a 
 more living force to-day constraining the minds of the Eng- 
 lish speaking men to brotherly feeling and a sense of national 
 unity, than the Wellesleys, although the Wellesleys reared 
 the Indian Empire ind crushed the Empire of Napolean." 
 
 Green, an English clergyman, says, in his discriminative 
 "History of the English people," "The Methodists them- 
 selves were the least result of the Methodist Revival. Its 
 action upon the Church broke the lethargy of the clergy and 
 made the fox-hunting parson and absentee rector at last im- 
 possible. In the nation at large appeared a new moral en- 
 thusiasm, healthy in its social tone, and whose power was 
 seen in the disappearance of the profligacy which had dis- 
 graced the upper classes and the foulness which had infest- 
 ed literature ever since the Revolution. A new philanthropy 
 reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our 
 penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave the first im- 
 pulse to popular education." Again, "By this movement 
 the Church was restored to life and activity. Religion car- 
 ried to the hearts of the poor a fresh spirit of moral zeal, 
 while it purified our literature and our manners." 
 
 Lecky, though no friend of orthodox Christianity, gives to 
 Wesley the credit of averting an English Revolution. In his 
 "England in the eighteenth century," he says, "Although 
 the career of the elder Pitt and the splendid victories by land 
 and sea that were won during his ministry form unquestion- 
 ably the most dazzling episodes in the reign of George II, 
 they must yield, I think, in real importance to that religious 
 revolution which shortly before had begun in England by 
 the preaching of the Wesleys and Whitefield. The creation 
 of a large, powerful and active sect, extending over both 
 hemispheres and numbering many millions of souls, was but 
 one of its consequences. It also exercises a profound and 
 lasting influence upon the spirit of the Established Church, 
 upon the amount and distribution of the moral force of the 
 nation, and even upon the course of its political history." 
 Again, "Methodism incalculably increased the efficiency of 
 every religious body. It has been more or less felt in every 
 Protestant community speaking the English language." 
 
 Cardinal Manning said, "Had it not been for John Wes- 
 ley and his preaching of justification by faith, no man could
 
 WESLEY BT-CENTENARY. 155 
 
 tell to what depth of degredation England would have 
 sunk." 
 
 Dr. Martineau the Unitarian divine, theologian and phil- 
 osopher, says, "For myself I own that the literature to which 
 I turn for the nurture and inspiration of Faith, Hope and 
 Love is almost exclusively the product of orthodox versions 
 of the Christian religion." "After the scriptures, the Wes- 
 ley Hymn Book appears to me the greatest instrument of 
 popular religious culture that Christendom has ever pro- 
 duced." 
 
 The incisive and vigorous essayist, Birrell, says, ''Wesley 
 was himself the greatest force of the eighteenth century in 
 England. No man lived nearer the center than John Wes- 
 ley ; neither Pitt nor Clive, neither Mansfield, nor Johnson. 
 No single figure influenced so many minds ; no single voice 
 touched so many hearts ; no other man did such a life work 
 for England." The Encyclopedia of Social Reform says: 
 "It is difficult to find any religious or social enterprise of the 
 Christian Church which was not anticipated by Wesley." 
 Canon Farrar says, "John Wesley saved the Church of 
 England from lethargy and death, although at first she so 
 angrily and contemptuously rejected him. He stood forth 
 like the Hebrew Prophets of old, as a preacher of righteous- 
 ness. He furnished 'the starting point for our modern re- 
 ligious history' in all that is best characteristic of the present 
 time. He discovered that 'lost secret of Christianity, the 
 compulsion of human souls'." 
 
 Dean Stanley says, "The Methodist movement has mould- 
 ed the spiritual character of the English speaking Protestant- 
 ism of the world." 
 
 If Christianity throughout the world is conforming more 
 and more in doctrine and method to those emphasized by 
 the Wesleyan movement, if the Anglo-Saxon civilization in 
 its essential characteristics is approximating the embodi- 
 ment of the ideals it set forth and insisted upon, and if An- 
 glo-Saxon influence and stability are in alignment with the 
 standards of personal character, civic righteousness, diffused 
 education and organized benevolence which Methodism pro- 
 claimed and maintained, how shall we estimate ?nd in what 
 reverence shall we hold "John Wesley, the most English man 
 of the eighteenth century ?" 
 
 As our Lord said in the first century, "Among them that 
 ?re born of women there hath not risen a greater than John 
 the Baptist," so it might be said in the opening- of the twen- 
 tieth century of John Wesley. None has made more valu-
 
 156 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 
 
 able contributions for the enrichment of human well-being. 
 What Copurnicus did for astronomy, what Sir Isaac New- 
 ton did for physics, what Lord Bacon did for philosophy, 
 Wesley did for religion. He coordinated it with its true 
 center, he organized its various manifestations, formulating 
 the law of its great attractive force-love, he remanded every 
 pretense to the bar of experience and proclaimed that to be 
 the unanswerable demonstration. He exemplified in his life 
 the power and beauty of a personal knowledge of God, 
 "Whom to know aright is life everlasting," and heralded the 
 experience to be accessible and essential to every man, wom- 
 an and child who would please God. 
 
 His work is imperishable. His memory should be ever 
 green. On this two hundredth anniversary of his birth, in 
 this fair city of Savannah, hallowed by his residence, minis- 
 tries and wrestlings of spirit, memorable as the scene of his 
 humiliation, where he became convinced that austerities, vi- 
 gils and works are inadequate to procure peace that they 
 are but results and not the cause of salvation we do well to 
 i.iark in enduring bronze the places especially associated 
 with his sojourn in America, as a memorial for the genera- 
 tions to follow. 
 
 But above all, let us as Anglo-Saxons thank God for the 
 life which he lived, let us emulate the virtues which he ex- 
 emplified, let us contribute to the extension of the glory of 
 his God and ours, co-operating personally, heartily, con- 
 tinuously and devotedlv, according to our ability; with tire 
 onward march of "Christianity in earnest." 
 
 TABLETS UNVEILED. 
 
 At the close of the address the ministers, speakers and 
 members of special committees entered carriages as follows : 
 
 First Carriage Dr. J. F. Goucher, Rev. Thos. D. Ellis, 
 Judge S. B. Adams and Mr. J. P. Williams. 
 
 Second Carriage Bishop W. A. Candler, Rev. J. A. Smith, 
 Col. J. R. Saussy, and Mr. W. H. Fifer. 
 
 Third Carriage Bishop C. B. Galloway, Rev. C. A. Jack- 
 son, Mr. R. J. Travis and Mr. H. A. Cordson. 
 
 Fourth Carriage Hon. J. C. C. Black, Rev. H. C. Chris- 
 tian, Mr. J. H. Shuptrine and Mr. R. B. Reppard. 
 
 Fifth Carriage Rev. Dr. W. W. Pinson, Rev. Dr. A. M. 
 Williams, Mr. T. J. Arline and Mr. F. C. Stone. 
 
 Sixth Carriage Hon. DuPont Guerry, Senator A. O. 
 Bacon, Congressman R. E. Lester, and Rev. G. G. N. Mc- 
 Dpnell,
 
 Court House Tablet
 
 WESLEY Bl-CENTENAKY. 159 
 
 AT THE POSTOFFICE. 
 
 The carriages started off slowly and the great majority of 
 the people who had been in Trinity Church followed to the 
 United States postoffice. Here, on the west end, facing 
 Whitaker street, the first of the tablets was seen, covered 
 with the combined folds of the flags of England and the 
 United States. 
 
 Rev. J. A. Smith, pastor of Epworth Church, stepped out 
 on the sidewalk and near the tablet ; his little daughter 
 Beulah Louise took the cords that held the flags together, 
 and Mr. Smith said : "It is fitting and proper that this city 
 of monuments and tablets erected to commemorate the lives 
 of great men who have made rich this city in the things 
 which perish not, that we mark a few of the places of a man 
 whose memory lives in the love and veneration of the 
 millions who follow him as he followed Christ. We unveil 
 to-day on this spot of ground, on which once stood the 
 preaching place of Mr. Wesley, this tablet. May his life 
 and the lives of millions of his followers continue to be 
 as precious ointment poured forth in all the earth." 
 
 The cords were then drawn and the bronze was revealed 
 with its inscription.
 
 HliM H MB ! * Mil ll Ml M< W8 Itl 
 
 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 ON THIS SPOT, WHERE STOOD THE 
 
 FIRST PUBLIC BUILDING ERECTED IN 
 
 GEORGIA, JOHN WESLEY PREACHED 
 
 HIS FIRST SERMON ON AMERICAN SOIL. 
 
 MARCH 7,1736 (OS) 
 TEXT- I CORINTHIANS Xllt 
 
 THIS TABLET COMMEMORATES THE BI-CENTENARY 
 OF HIS BIRTH, JUNE 2S.I903 
 
 Custom House Tablet
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 163 
 
 AT THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 
 
 The procession then moved to the United States Custom 
 House, at the corner of Bull and Bay streets, and on the 
 west, facing Bull street, a second tablet was unveiled. Here 
 Rev. Charles A. Jackson, pastor of the Grace Church said : 
 "It is indeed appropriate that the government of these 
 United States honor a citizen like John Wesley by authoriz- 
 ing a tablet on this public building. It was during the early 
 days of the colony, when pirates smuggled in goods, that the 
 man whom we honor taught in private and preached in pub- 
 lic against such practices and impressed upon his hearers 
 the necessity for obeying the laws." As his remarks were 
 concluded the flags were withdrawn by little Apphia Jackson, 
 his daughter.
 
 If L..OL.C, I 
 
 i HE FOUNDED OF METHODISM 
 
 LIVED. 1736-1737; ON THIS LOT 
 'APART BY QGLETHORPE ! 
 JR; A PARSONAGE 
 
 - it *amt 
 
 HERE IN APRIL 1736, 
 ACCORDING TO HIS RECORD 
 
 SECOND RISE OF METHODISM 
 
 Parsonage Lot Tablet
 
 WESLEY BI-CENTENARY. 167 
 
 PARSONAGE SITE. 
 
 The third tablet was unveiled at the corner of Congress 
 and Drayton streets. The cords were pulled by little Sarah 
 Carson, and a few words were said by Rev. Dr. Christian, 
 pastor of Wesley Monumental Church. The tablet marked, 
 he said, the place where Wesley had lived while in Savannah 
 and this city could not do better than in honoring her most 
 renowned citizen. 
 
 The exercises were then closed with the singing of Dox- 
 ology, and this war taken up by a considerable portion of 
 the large crowd that had gathered in addition to those who 
 came from the church service.
 
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