Immorality of the English The Wesleyan Revival. John Wesley's Early Life. Charles Wesley's to avoid Archdeacon Paley exhorted the young clergy of the diocese of Carlisle "not to get drunk or to frequent ale-houses, * profligate habits, not to be seen at drunken feasts or barbarous diversions"; * and in reading the service, "not to perform it with reluctance or quit it with symptoms of delight." Dr. Knox, headmaster of Tunbridge School, said: "The public have remarked with indignation that some of the most distinguished coxcombs, drunkards, debauchees and gamesters who figure at watering-places are young men of the sacerdotal order." Arthur Young wrote that "the French clergy are more decent than the English. They are not poachers or fox-hunters who spend the morning with the hounds, the evening at the bottle, and reel from drunkenness into the pulpit." But while the higher and lower classes were steeped in vice and crime, the great middle classes lived on in their old piety unchanged; and it was from that class that the Wesleyan revival burst forth near the end of Walpole's administration-a revival which in a few years was to change the whole temper of English society, which restored the Church to life and activity. Religion carried a fresh spirit of moral zeal to the hearts of the poor and purified English literature and English manners. It gave rise to a new philanthropy which reformed English prisons and infused clemency and wisdom into the English penal laws, abolished the slave trade and gave the first impulse to popular education. John Wesley was born at Epworth, in Leicestershire, June 17, 1703, and was the son of a clergyman of the Established Church. He was educated at Oxford University, and at the age of twenty-three he was ordained a clergyman of the Established Church and elected a Fellow of Lincoln College. His fellowship gave him a small salary, which supported him during a great part of his life. He passed much time in study and prayer and had few companions. While John Wesley was for a time acting as his father's curate at Religious Epworth, his brother Charles and several other students formed a Society. religious society to meet together for prayer and moral improvement, thus exciting the ridicule of their fellow-students, who called the new society "Bible Bigots," "Bible Moths," "the Holy Club," "the God Club," and finally "Methodists "; the last of which names adhered to the Wesleys and their religious society. John Wesley joined this club when he returned to Oxford, and Whitefield also became a member of the same religious association. John America. After his father's death, in 1735, John Wesley, on General OgleWesley in thorpe's invitation, went on a mission to preach to the Indians of Georgia; but at the close of 1737 he returned to England, just as Whitefield was sailing for America. While in Georgia, Wesley had learned something of the Moravians; and after his return he united with the Moravians of London in forming a religious society, which met in When the Methodist group transferred itself from Oxford to Lon- The Wesleys and White field. field's Preach ing. Whitefield, a servitor of Pembroke College, was the great preacher Whiteof the revival. As the pulpits of the Established Church were closed against the new apostles they were obliged to preach in the fields. Their voices were soon heard in every part of England-among the bleak moors of Northumberland, in the dens of London, in the long galleries where the Cornish miner hears the roar of the billowy deep. Whitefield's preaching was such as had never before been heard in England, silencing all criticism in its intense reality, its earnestness of belief, its deep, tremulous sympathy with the sin and sorrow of mankind. As a preacher John Wesley was next in power to Whitefield. As a hymn-writer he ranked second to his brother Charles, who came from Christ Church College as the "sweet singer" of the new religious movement. John Wesley also had other admirable qualities-an indefatigable industry, a cool judgment, a command over others, a faculty of organization, a singular combination of patience and moderation with an imperious ambition, which marked him as a ruler of men. He had likewise a learning and a skill in writing possessed by no others of the Methodists. He was older than any of his colleagues and he outlived them all. His life-from 1703 to 1791-embraced almost the whole of the eighteenth century; and the religious organization which he founded passed through almost every phase of its history before he died at the age of eighty-eight, after having done so much for the moral and religious elevation of his fellow-countrymen. John Wesley's Qualifica tions. His Asceti cism and John Wesley practiced a monkish asceticism, frequently living only on bread and sleeping on the bare boards. He lived in a world of wonders and divine interpositions. He considered it a miracle if the rain Superstition. ceased and allowed him to proceed on a journey. He regarded it as a punishment from Heaven if a hailstorm burst upon a town which had been deaf to his preaching. He said that one day when his horse became lame: "I thought, can not God heal either man or beast by any means or without any? Immediately my headache ceased and my horse's lameness in the same instant." He guided his conduct by His Conservatism. His Organization of the Methodist Movement. Green's Remark. Enthusi asm. drawing lots or by watching at what particular texts he opened his Bible. But, with all his superstition, John Wesley was practical, orderly and conservative; and no man ever headed a new movement who was more anti-revolutionary. In his earlier days the bishops had been obliged to rebuke him for the intolerance and narrowness of his Churchmanship. When Whitefield began his sermons Wesley could not at first approve of “that strange way." He condemned and fought against the admission of laymen as preachers till he found himself left with only laymen to preach. He clung with a passionate fondness to the Church of England to the last, and simply regarded the body which he had founded as only a lay society in communion with that Church. He broke with the Moravians, the earliest friends of his movement, when they imperiled its safe conduct by their contempt of religious forms. He broke with Whitefield when that great preacher plunged into an extravagant Calvinism. to But this same practical temper of mind finally enabled John Wesley grasp and organize the new movement. He himself became the most diligent of field preachers, and his journal of half a century is mainly When he was finally a record of fresh journeys and fresh sermons. obliged to employ lay preachers he made their work a new and attractive feature of his system. His earlier asceticism lingered only in his dread of social enjoyment and an aversion to the gayer and livelier side of life which marks the resemblance of the Methodist movement to the Puritan movement of the preceding century. As his superstitious fervor gradually gave way in his later years he discouraged the enthusiastic outbursts of his followers, so characteristic at the opening of the new movement. 66 Says Green: It was no common enthusiast who could wring gold from the close-fisted Franklin and admiration from the fastidious Horace Walpole, or who could look down from the top of a green knoll at Kingswood on twenty thousand colliers, grimy from the Bristol coalpits, and see, as he preached, the tears making white channels down their blackened cheeks."" This was in allusion to Whitefield. Methodist The effects of Whitefield's preaching and that of his fellow-Methodists were terrible for good and ill. They aroused a passionate enthusiasm in their followers. Women fell down in convulsions. Strong men were stricken suddenly to the ground. The preacher was interrupted by hysteric outbursts of laughter or weeping. All the manifestations of strong spiritual excitement followed in their sermons; and the terrible sense of a conviction of sin, a new dread of hell, a new hope of heaven, assumed forms both grotesque and sublime. Charles Wesle's sweet hymns expressed the fiery conviction of the converts in chaste |
