Chapter XXIV: Part 24

The social condition of England, when Wesley appeared presents no attractive picture to the student; in some measure it relieves and lightens our despondency concerning England at present, to remember what the country was then. It is true the population was small, almost insignificant, as compared with our present overcrowded masses--it was not more than about six millions--but with abundant wealth and means of happiness, the people fell far short of what we should now consider comfort. This was, however, a slight shade in the picture; there were cruelty and injustice in the administration of English law, life and liberty were held very cheap, deism or atheism in religion and a wild licentiousness and rude brutality of manners, pervaded all classes, from the court to the meanest hamlet of the land. For the most part the Church of England had shamefully forgotten and neglected her duty, while the Nonconformists had sunk generally into so cold an indifferentism in devotion, and so hard and sceptical a frame of thought in theology, that almost every interest of the land was given over to profligacy or recklessness, and in thoughtful minds to despair. Those who called themselves Christians were for the most part spiritually dead. The literature of England suffered a temporary eclipse, and such as it was, it was shamefully perverted from all high purposes, and was very generally adverse to all purity and moral dignity. The gaols, indeed, were crammed with culprits, but that did not prevent the heaths from swarming with highwaymen, and the cities with burglars; in the remote regions of England, such as Cornwall in the West, and Yorkshire and Northumberland in the North, and especially Midland Staffordshire, the manners were wild and savage beyond all description or conception. The reader must conceive a state of society divested of all the educational, philanthropic and benevolent activities of modern times. There were no Sunday-schools and few day-schools; here and there a solitary chapel sequestered in some lane, either in the metropolis or the country town, or more probably far away from a town, stood in some confluence of roads a monument of old intolerance; but religion was, as we have said, in fact dead or lying in a trance. To few men has it been given, commencing a career at the age of thirty-seven, to have reserved for them yet, upwards of half-a-century of health, strength, and mental vigour, to carry out and give effect to all their plans. Wesley rose to break up this monotony, and to alarm this depravity of social life; his strong, clear voice sounded over the land; the amount of hatred, hostility and persecution which he roused, evidently showed the living feeling he had created; it is a more favourable circumstance that a man should hate religion than be wholly indifferent to it; on the other hand, the love was more fervid and intense than the hate, hate roared and hissed, and threw about its mischievous display of foolish fireworks in the shape of pamphlets and satires; but there would appear to have been such a degree of genuine sympathy, that men and women, united by certain principles of faith, statedly met together, regardless of peril or cost, and thus there gradually extended over the whole of England a circle of religious societies bearing Wesley's name.

The Church of England very soon set itself against the new movement; Whitefield, much younger than Wesley, an ardent, flaming, seraphic man, had been compelled to betake himself to the fields. Like Wesley he was an ordained minister of the Church, but he had been threatened with suspension and expulsion, and he was the first who could collect thousands--sometimes not less than twenty thousand--to hear the gospel. It was with great fear and trembling that Wesley imitated him, and he says, referring to his first preaching in the open air near Bristol, 'I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields; having been all my life, till very lately, so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I would have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in church.' 'Such,' says Mr. Tyerman, 'were the prejudices and feelings of the man who for between fifty or sixty years proved himself the greatest outdoor preacher that ever lived.'

It does not seem very easy to settle the precise etymology of the term Methodist, whether derived, as some have said, from an allusion in Juvenal to a celebrated quack physician, or whether, as Mr. Tyerman seems to think, first used in a pamphlet attacking Whitefield in the earlier years of his ministry, in which the author fetches up an old sentence from the pages of Chrysostom, who says, 'To be a Methodist is to be beguiled.' We ourselves happened once, in a parish church in Huntingdonshire, to be listening to a clergyman notorious alike by his private character and vehement intolerance, who was entertaining his audience on a week evening by a discourse from the text in Ephesians iv. 14. 'Whereby they lie in wait to deceive.' He said to his people, 'Now you do not know Greek; I know Greek, and I am going to tell you what this text really says; it says, "they lie in wait to make you Methodists;" the word used here is _methodeian_, that is really the word that is used, and that is really what Paul said, "they lie in wait to make you Methodists." A Methodist means a deceiver, one who deludes, cheats and beguiles.' The Grecian scholar was a little at fault in his next allusion, for he proceeded to quote that other passage of the apostle, 'We are not ignorant of his devices,' and seemed to be under the impression that 'device' was the same word as that on which he had expended his criticism. 'Now,' said he, 'you may be ignorant because you do not know Greek, but "_we_ are not ignorant of his devices," that is, of his _methods_, his deceivers, that is his Methodists.' It was a piece of the richest criticism we ever remember to have heard in any pulpit. In such empty wit and ignorant punning, it is very likely, however, that the term had its origin; be that as it may, 'Methodist' soon became the designation of a really large body of social and spiritual reformers, and assuredly no term has obtained greater renown and importance since 'the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch;' but in fact the word is to be found in several places in our obsolete English. Wesley was not the greatest outdoor preacher that ever lived, but we can forgive Mr. Tyerman for thinking so in his high feeling of admiration for his illustrious hero. He became a power in the country. Earl Stanhope in his very interesting 'History of England from 1713-1783,' devotes a lengthy chapter to Wesley and the rise of Methodism, and says, 'with less immediate importance than war or political changes, it endures long after, not only the result, but the memory of these has passed away, and thousands who never heard of Fontenoy or Walpole continue to hold the precepts and venerate the name of John Wesley.' Thus this venerable name is a distinguished landmark or milestone in the history of the mind of England. By his labours he gave the noblest freedom to thousands of enslaved minds, and marshalled their wild natures under the principles of order and obedience. Wesley achieved his greatest victories in the open air; he probably inherited from his father a tolerably sharp power of satiric reproof, which often served him well in such encounters as he would be sure to have in the broad streets or the fields, and was well illustrated in his victory over Beau Nash. The accomplished rake and dandy king of Bath, master of the ceremonies in that then famous watering-place, appeared swaggering in his enormous white hat, and asked, 'By what authority he dared to do what he was doing now?' 'By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me by him who is now Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his hands upon me and said, "Take thou authority to preach the Gospel."' Cried the man of Bath, 'Your preaching frightens people out of their wits.' 'Sir,' said Wesley 'did you ever hear me preach?' 'No!' 'How then can you judge of what you have never heard?' 'I judge, he answered, 'from common report.' 'Common report,' replied Wesley, 'is not enough; give me leave to ask, Sir, is not your name Nash?' 'It is,' he said. 'Sir,' replied Wesley, 'I dare not judge _of you_ by common report.' Even the unblushing master of ceremonies was abashed and worsted; he was slinking away, when, to complete his discomfiture, an old woman lifted up her voice, and begged Wesley to allow her to question and to answer him; this made the scene ludicrous, and in the midst of such a singular and disgraceful defeat, the mighty dandy left the preacher to continue and to close his sermon.

The most romantic lives of the saints of the Roman Catholic calendar do not present a more startling succession of incidents than those which meet us in the life and labours of Wesley and his Prætorian band, and these are all the more marvellous and romantic because they lay no tax upon credulity and never appeal to miracle as their foundation. Wesley never, like blessed St. Raymond of Pennafort, spread his cloak upon the sea to transport him across the water, sailing one hundred and sixty miles in six hours, and entering his convent through closed doors; nor do we ever find him, like the dear and judicious Xavier, spending three whole days in two different places at the same time, preaching all the while. We fear it is true that Wesley does not shine in feats like these, but he seems almost ubiquitous, and moves with a rapidity which reminds us of that flying angel who had 'the everlasting gospel to preach;' while his conflicts with the tempests of nature, and those wilder tempests caused by the passions of men, crowd his life with incident. We read of adventurous journeys through regions in the North of England when snowstorms drifted and baulked the way, and made travelling almost impossible, or over roads made like glass by the hard frost, and through pathless wastes of white. Thus we read of his travelling through the long wintry hours, two hundred and eighty miles, on horseback in six days, a wonderful feat, and Wesley himself writes,--'Many a rough journey have I had before, but one like this I never had, between wind and hail and rain and snow and ice, and driving sleet and piercing cold; but it has passed, and those days will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been. So "the love of Christ constrained him."' Vast concourses met him in singular places: on Blackheath fourteen thousand people, in Kingswood more, in Moorfields and on Kennington Common twenty thousand people. Singular was his visit to Epworth, where he found the church of his childhood, his father's church, and the church of his own first ministrations, closed against him, but for eight days he stayed, and preached every night standing on his father's tomb; truly a singular sight, the living son, the prophet of his age, surely little short of inspired, preaching on the dead father's grave, with such pathos and power as we may well conceive. 'I am well assured,' he says, 'that I did far more good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father's tomb, than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.' Visiting York, he went to the service of St. Saviour's Gate church; the rector, the Rev. Mr. Cordeux, had warned his congregation against hearing that 'vagabond Wesley' preach. Wesley went into the church in his canonicals, it was not unusual for ministers then to wear the cassocks or the gown like the university man in a university town: the rector of course saw he was a clergyman, but not knowing who he was, offered him his pulpit to preach, and Wesley was thoroughly willing and ready. He took for his text a part of the gospel of the day--sermons leaped impromptu from his lips and heart; this sermon was an impressive one, and after the service the rector asked the clerk if he knew who the strange clergyman was. 'Sir,' said the clerk, 'it was the "vagabond Wesley" against whom you warned us.' 'Ay, indeed!' said the astonished rector, 'we have been trapped, but never mind, we have had a good sermon.' The Dean of York heard of the affair, and threatened to lay the matter before the archbishop; but the rector outstripped the dean, and went himself and told the story to the archbishop. 'You did quite right,' he said, and so the matter ended; only when the 'vagabond Wesley' came to York again, the rector offered his church the second time to him, and a second time be preached in St. Saviour's.

A succession of persecutions attended him and his followers on their way, and yet very little could be alleged to their discredit. In Cornwall, Edward Greenfield, a tanner, with a wife and seven children, was arrested under a warrant signed by Dr. Borlase, the eminent antiquarian, who was a bitter foe to Methodism. Wesley appeared to vindicate his friend, and he first inquired what objection there was to the peaceable, inoffensive man. The answer was, 'The man is well enough in other things, but the gentlemen cannot bear his impudence; why, Sir, he says that he knows his sins are forgiven!' When Bernardine of Sienna preached at Bologna, the people brought out their dice-tables and burnt them in the streets; when Antony of Padua preached at Pavia, he saw impure books and pictures committed to immense flames; and even more remarkable, when Savonarola preached in Florence, the woman left off painting their faces, and decorating their hair. The results of Wesley's preaching were scarcely less remarkable. The story is well known how in one place a whole waggon-load of Methodists had been taken before a magistrate, but when he asked what they had done, a deep silence fell over the court, for no one was very well prepared with any charge against them; at length some one exclaimed that 'they pretended to be better than other people, and prayed from morning till night;' and another said, 'They have _convarted_ my wife; till she went among them she had such a tongue, but now she's as quiet as a lamb.' 'Take them back, take them back,' said the sensible magistrate, 'and let them convert all the scolds in the town.' We are amazed when we attempt to realize all the causeless conflicts through which many of these holy enthusiasts passed, certainly the world in all its force was against them; no wild anti-popery riots were more unreasonable and brutal than the turbulent mobs which tore down houses and insolently assaulted women and men for their attachment to the new movement. Attempts were often made on Wesley's life in Cornwall; wild cries rose around him, 'Away with him!' 'Kill him at once!' 'Crucify the dog!' Stones and bricks were frequently hurled at him; often he might have said, 'My soul is among lions.' Staffordshire was scarcely behind Cornwall in the rough assaults. Quiet men were pressed for soldiers, and sent as prisoners to jail, simply because they were Methodists; hot-headed Hanoverians did their best to make the whole Methodist body disloyal, and both John and Charles Wesley were arrested or taken before the magistrates upon suspicion of being favourable to the Pretender. Thus Charles was brought before the magistrates at Wakefield, and five witnesses were ready to swear that he had either prayed or preached about the return of the 'Banished One,' the well-known and tender words of the wise woman of Tekoa, being supposed to convey some sinister allusion to the exiled Stuarts. It was the age of mobs and riots; for a long time the preaching of Wesley appears to have been greeted by turbulencies as wild and vehement as those which give a disgraceful notoriety to the name of John Wilkes or Lord George Gordon.

So astonishing were the results of these very simple and Christ-like ministrations, that there was surely something of the supernatural in the man Wesley. It is part of the very nature of Christianity to believe that from time to time the Church is invigorated by extraordinary impulses of divine life find grace, and singular effusions of the Holy Spirit: and to those who are able to reach at all the idea of supernatural causes in the Christian life, it is not difficult to apprehend the reality of such impulses. There was surely much that was remarkable in Wesley; it is unquestionable that strange influences seemed to attend him. His words, it has been remarked, seemed to possess a mesmeric power; his proximity to the supernatural has often been made the subject of criticism. Extraordinary circumstances which Southey, Richard Watson, Isaac Taylor, and other eminent writers have found to be perfectly inexplicable upon principles of natural reasoning marked his ministry; we read of innumerable instances of individual convulsions, and of multitudes falling prostrate to the ground before his words; cold and imperturbable natures were suddenly overwhelmed. Wesley was quite a believer in the visible and oral manifestation of the 'powers of the world to come;' such instances were especially prominent in the earlier part of his singular course. We have no remarks to make upon these phenomena, nor shall we inquire whether they may or may not be accounted for on merely natural principles; the facts remain unquestioned. One thing is certain, as when Peter preached, so at the preaching of Wesley, innumerable thousands were 'pricked to the heart, and exclaimed, "What shall we do?"'

The power of Wesley's teaching may probably be traced to the fact that it dealt with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; but then the whole doctrine was suffused in the fulness, the sufficiency, and the sweetness of Jesus, and it was a mighty reaction against the indifference and injustice of the age. The party formed against Wesley represented the higher classes, bishops and men whose minds and hearts it would seem were incapable of sympathy for the suffering and the poor, and for those who were out of the way; coarse ribalds like Lavington, the Bishop of Exeter, or dilettanti gentlemen like Horace Walpole, buffoons and time servers like Foote, or even hard theologians like Toplady, their doctrines tinctured with the harsh and morbid severity of the times, when, as we have seen, reckless disregard for life, a claim over it for the most insignificant offences, must have tended to give a rigour and narrowness to many religious ideas. Wesley's audiences were chiefly composed of the poor. The early Methodist was a very simple, perhaps usually an ignorant, man, but he had that light which 'lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' The Methodist was not such an one as the Puritan of other days, who was a sort of Knight of the Iron Hand, a Nonconformist crusader, whose theology had trained him to the battle-field, nerved him to frown defiance upon kings, and to treat as worthy only of contempt the unsanctified nobles of the earth. The Methodist was not such an one; he was as loyal as he was lowly, he had been forgotten or passed by, by priests and Levites, but suddenly he found himself raised to the rank of a living soul--a voice had reached him assuring him that he, too, was in possession of a soul. Over the country the ground, on the whole, was easy to Wesley to win; there was no education, there were no conflicts of opinion, there were no popular books, the people had no objects to claim their attention, the towns were far apart, and connected only by the mail or stagecoach, or that heavy and much more romantic-looking than agreeable conveyance, the market-cart; there was little popular excitement, there were only coarse amusements. It is unquestionable that the people had far fewer religious interests than in the old days of popery, the entire services of the Church were bald and uninteresting, there was no music, unless of such a description as to move the passions by shattering the nerves,--there was no popular psalmody worthy of the name; thus the religious nature was entranced or buried. But the Methodist was one who had heard the call of God, conscience had been stirred within him, and a new life had created new interests; for Christianity really ennobles a man, gives him self-respect, shows to him a new purpose and business in life, and stirs the spirit, moreover, with a pulse of joy and cheerfulness; hence Methodism created the necessity for meetings and for frequent reciprocations. There were no chapels, or but few, and none to open their doors to these strange new pilgrims to the celestial city. The churches, of course, were closed against them;--what could be done, for they must speak together. Reciprocation was the soul of Methodism; almost all the great religious movements have been instituted and marked by some sign--Dominic invented the rosary, Loyola the spiritual contemplations and the retreat, Wesleyanism created Class-meetings; this constituted its essential symbolism. A church can scarcely long maintain a standing without a symbol. This is the countersign of parties and sects. So these people assembled in each other's houses, in rude and homely rooms, by farm ingles, in lone hamlets; thus was created a homely piety, rugged enough, but full of beautiful and pathetic instincts. When the faith became more consciously objective, it was possessed by that singular belief ruling the Church in all such movements--the belief in the power, conjoined to the desire to save souls. This drove them out on great occasions to call the vast multitudes together on heaths and moors. Occasionally, but this was at a later period, some country gentleman threw open his old hall to the preachers; but the more aristocratic phase of the Methodist movement fell into the Calvinistic rather than into the Wesleyan ranks; these last sought the sequestered places of nature, or in cities and towns they took to the streets, outlying fields or broadways; in some neighbourhoods a little room was built containing the germ of what in a few years became a large Wesleyan society. The burden of all their meetings and their intercourse, whether in speech or song, was the sweetness and fullness of Jesus; they had an intense faith in the love of God shed abroad in the heart; their great solicitude was that souls were on the brink of perdition. This was to them more than spiritual difficulties, mere interior trials, or speculative despair; these were mostly a _terra incognita_ to them. Wesley dealt, as it has been expressed, with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; he had little regard to mere proprieties. Wesley and his preachers, 'out of breath pursuing souls,' seemed to many ungraceful, undignified, their faces weary, their hands heavy with toil. Yet these men had found, such as it was, a definite creed, and, as in the case of their great leader, all the inexhaustible variety and world-wide energy of other minds were in them concentrated into a burning instinct; the word of 'the Lord was like fire, or like a hammer.' The early Methodists had also the mighty instincts of prayer--to them there was a meaning in it and a joy. So these men pursued their way. God's ministry goes on by various means, ordinary and extraordinary; it is the difference between rivers and rains, between the dews and the lightnings, the rivers are exhaled by the sun and return to the earth in rains, the Severn and the Wye roll their beautiful forces through the meadow and along the hill-side, but if they did not give their waters to the sun and the cloud, and fall back upon the earth as dew and showers, they would cease from their channels among the hills. So Methodism availed itself of the ordinary and extraordinary.

All truly holy souls, even those the most opposed in their pews or their studies, meet and melt and mingle in song; holy song is the solvent of the most divergent creeds. Perhaps the greater number of the early Methodists were not pressed by physical want; concern for the soul was the grand business, in many instances possibly it was a wild and even diseased feeling. There was no art, no splendid form of worship or ritual; early Methodism was as free from all this as Clairvaux, in the valley of Wormwood, when Bernard ministered there with all his monks around him, or as Cluny, when Bernard de Morlaix chanted his 'Jerusalem the Golden.' Methodism, like all the great religious movements which have shaken men's souls, was purely spiritual, or, if it had a sensuous expression, it was not artificial; loud 'Amens!' resounded as Wesley preached, spoke, or prayed, and then the hearty gushes of, perhaps, not melodious song united all hearts in some Wesleyan Litany or Te Deum. It was so throughout the whole land; such cyclones of spiritual power mysteriously visit our world from age to age, but this surely was one in which there was infinitely more to bless and benefit, and far less to which good taste or good sense could take any exception, than in perhaps any of the great preceding waves of spiritual power which had rolled over Europe. It was the ascetic type set forth by Wesley in an age of animal and sensual indulgence. It was principally by fighting with the sins of the age, at the same time by laying hold upon its characteristics, and especially by remembering that man is more than a machine to fill rich men's pockets, or to digest victuals--a soul, in fact, for whom Christ died--that Methodism 'grew mightily, and prevailed.'

The strength of a great and popular leader is especially shown in his power to infuse his own spirit into the minds of other men, thus constituting an organized band of kindred helpers; never surely was there a man who more remarkably abides this test than Wesley, and he became the general of a remarkable order. Protestantism may well, with Wesley to adduce, challenge Rome to produce any superior illustration of spiritual power. Archbishop Manning has spoken of St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Ignatius, chiefs of the orders they created, as the four rivers of the water of life; it is a singular illustration and not creditable to the archbishop's piety or good taste; but if Wesley be compared with these great fathers of the Romish Church, he shines brilliantly in the comparison. Mr. Tyerman enthusiastically inquires, 'Is it not true that Methodism is the greatest fact in the history of the Church of Christ?' We may reply we do not think so, and may yet be prepared to render almost equal homage with Mr. Tyerman to this stupendous spiritual organization. John Wesley very soon poured his animating spirit into other men, and the history of Jesuitism--that marvellous story of the conquest of the human mind--does not exhibit anything like so striking an array of heroic and glorious achievements. Rome would make much of such a history, had she to recite it of herself. The names of those who surround Wesley as his fellow-labourers and helpers are, indeed, all of them humble men; no courtly or episcopal favour smiled upon him or them as they passed along. He had absolutely nothing but the pure Gospel, by the proclamation of which he sought to awaken human interest and to command attention; but soon there came a host, of whom it might be said, 'There went with him a band of men whose hearts God had touched.' The mind of England seemed to be waiting for that which Wesley brought to it. Spiritually dead as the Church of England was, many clergymen, responsive to his call, shook off their lethargy, and several, like William Grimshaw, of Haworth, laboured heartily with the apostle of Methodism. The right material was constantly at hand so soon as it was needed, in men who have almost passed away from memory, but whose 'record is on high.' We have no space for the review of that long gallery of interesting portraits of marked and remarkable men; only we notice there seemed to be a hand for every kind of work that had to be accomplished; one to lead on the polemic work of the disputant, and another, or others, to pour forth hymns; some to sway, by rugged but splendid powers of persuasion, immense masses of people; others to minister in localities and gather up the lost sheep into folds; and others to visit in prison, or in those scenes where the tender voice and the ministering hand were needed, while all bowed before the omnific mind of Wesley. Few lives are more startling than that of John Nelson; few types of saintly holiness are higher than Thomas Walsh; Thomas Maxfield has generally been supposed to be the first of the long line of lay preachers to whose exertions Methodism owes so much; while John and Thomas Oliver, John Haine, George Story, and Sampson Staniforth, and a number of other goodly names, represent lives of such intense earnestness, holiness, and activity, as would certainly win them a place in a Catholic calendar of saints, and are so full of glowing adventure, that the story of many of them would keep a boy's eyes from winking even late in the night.

Simultaneously with Wesley came the singular apparition of Whitefield, who fell into no groove of Church routine or life, although undoubtedly standing on the Calvinistic side of Methodist opinion. It is interesting to compare these two men together. Whitefield sprang upon the world ready armed as a youth of twenty, and finished his career in the prime of life; he seems almost to realize, if it can be realized, the idea of an abstract soul. We read his words, and they are nothing; but those words uttered by him broke down, overwhelmed, and dissolved all prejudices. What must he have been to whom such strong men, such courtly, artificial, yet highly cultured men, such sceptical and inaccessible men as Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield, and David Hume, and Garrick, and Benjamin Franklin, 'were as tow,' while he was as 'a spark' to kindle all into consuming flame. Not immediately connected with Wesley's organization, this mysterious and marvellous man, an entire soul of all-embracing love and compassion, greatly aided the movement;--equally at home in preaching in the select saloons of the Countess of Huntingdon, to Dukes and Duchesses and arrays of Peers, or in the wildest and most furious and murderous mobs. Whitefield is a mystery to us; he only seems to burn with an incandescent heat, so that words shrivel, and evaporate in the flame of that pure, ingenuous, generous, and wholly consecrated soul; and this, notwithstanding the melody of that full, clear, all-encompassing voice, varying to every passionate accent, sinking to the most penetrating entreaty, swelling to the most rousing apostrophe. In the full careering heat of his speech, Whitefield became, unconsciously to himself, poet, philosopher, psychologist, thus enabling us to understand something of his stupendous power, even while we are still perplexed as to its cause. No melody or poetry shines through the words of his published discourses; but no pictures we have ever met with of inspired, rapt oratory, are more surprising than those which are presented to us by his contemporaries of Whitefield's preaching, on the slope of some mountain or hill, the trees and hedges full of people hushed to profound silence, the open firmament above him, the green fields around him, the sight of thousands on thousands of people, some in coaches, some on horseback, gathered around him and all affected--melted to tears. When the evening approached, he once said, 'Beneath the twilight it was too much, and quite overcame me!' One night he describes a time never to be forgotten: it lightened exceedingly; he preached the warnings and the consolations of the coming of the Son of Man; the thunder broke over his head, the lightning gleamed upon his path; it ran along the ground, and shone from one part of the heavens to the other. His spirit rose above the storm; he longed for the time when Christ should be revealed in flaming fire. 'Oh,' exclaims he, 'that my soul may live in a like flame, when He shall actually come to call me!'

But Wesley's success! Wesley, as an orator, seems still more inconceivable. By all accounts Whitefield was seraphic. Wesley seldom rose beyond penetrating good sense, and nothing appears to have transported him out of his invariable calm. Yet the effects of his oratory were even still more wonderful; there was something of magnetism in it. Henry Moore, his great friend, says, 'At this moment, I well remember my first thought after hearing him preach nearly fifty years ago; _spiritual_ things are natural things to that man;' In innumerable instances we find audiences shaken as by a mighty wind, hurled down, agonizing, screaming aloud; there was much more of all this in Wesley's preaching than in Whitefield's, yet in Whitefield's we should expect it more. Wesley, in the style of his oratory, seems to have been judicial, and our readers are not unaware of the remarkable power that quiet statement is able to exercise. Who so passionless apparently as Jonathan Edwards, a man who would have disdained every approach to sensationalism, whose entire mode of pulpit delivery was obnoxious to all ideas of pulpit oratory, and whose whole scheme of thought and expression were as calm and clear as logical metaphysics could make them? yet what scenes he witnessed when he preached? Thus it was eminently with Wesley; crowds thronged around him intent to listen wherever he appeared; if the face was beautiful, the height of the body was so far beneath the average standard that it seems almost contemptible for the holding of such powers as he wielded; and then the voice, not less than the manner, appears to have been unfitted to carry tempests of passion--nor did he desire that it should; we suppose that it must have been singularly clear and penetrating, and that every sentence was sharply cut and elaborated, not by preparation and the pen, but by convictions deep and indelible. Such sentences carried upon a clear penetrating voice--and in oratory the voice is all but everything--will achieve more than more plausible means. It is fervour which fires, but fervour often burns more effectually in the still, white, soundless heat, than in what seems to be the most raging flame. There must have been considerable natural dignity in the man. 'Be silent, or begone,' he said on one occasion to some who were molesting him in preaching, and the intruders were silenced. The traditions of Methodism are rich in the recollection of such scenes;--the scenes of Gwennap Pit for instance. This is a natural excavation, three miles from Redruth, an amphitheatre, formed by nature, whose walls are from seven to eight hundred feet in height, and which is capable of holding from twenty-five to thirty thousand persons. This was one of Wesley's most famous churches. Year after year this most spacious and magnificent cathedral amongst the wild moors of Cornwall was crowded by vast and hushed assemblies. Until Wesley's day, all that immense population might have said, 'No man cared for our souls.' Wild, rugged miners and fishermen of whom it was true that they never breathed a prayer except for the special providence of a shipwreck--men whose wicked barbarity in kindling delusive lights along the coast to allure unfortunate ships to the cruel cliffs of those dangerous shores, had won for their region the name of 'West Barbary.' Now, as if some power had passed over them, clothed anew and in their right minds, they assembled to greet and gladden their venerable father in that wild glen, creating a strange and not unbeautiful life in the stillness of that desolate and romantic spot, and worshipping with the birds overhead and the broom and the wild flowers under foot, under the overhanging shadow of the venerable rocks. Truly it must have been a sublime thing to have heard that great multitude peal out in Wesley's own words:--

'Suffice that for the season past,
Hell's horrid language filled our tongues,
We all thy words behind us cast,
And loudly sang the drunkard's songs.
But, oh! the power of grace divine,
In hymns we now our voices raise,
Loudly in strange hosannas join,
And blasphemies are turned to praise.'

Twenty-five thousand persons! and it is said he was able to make everyone hear his words; wonderful, whether we think of the acoustical properties of the church itself, the attentiveness the preacher could command, or the marvellous strength, the clearness and fulness of his voice.

Of all the helpers from whom Wesley derived assistance essential to the carrying on his work, his brother Charles was the most providential. He was a narrow ecclesiastic, and often troublesome, but he did good service. Much as Wesley loved the service of the Church of England, it was utterly impossible to employ it in the work he set himself to perform; but it has been felt again and again, whether it has been expressed or not, that a religious service without liturgies is impossible. People may disclaim and disown the word liturgy, and substitute for it psalms and hymns, the fact remains the same; psalms and hymns are liturgies in rhyme--liturgies sung instead of said. Congregations need to be held together; the voice of a solitary soul is not enough for religious purposes, and especially for the pressure of overwrought emotions; multitudes require something more than a mere monologue. Wesley arose at a time when that popular and united form of worship, the hymn, had but just ceased to be regarded as an innovation. There were Churches in London--Maze Pond, for instance--which had divided upon the question of singing, and the unmusical members went off, and formed a community of their own, undistracted by notes of song. Watts had only just published some of his psalms and hymns, when Wesley came down among the people and began to move to and fro amongst his congregations. The want of simple forms of prayer and praise was soon felt. No doubt his recent acquaintance with the Moravians had given him invaluable suggestions, of which he was prepared to avail himself. Amidst much which was worse than foolish, the Moravians had, as he knew, many inspiring psalms, and a far greater variety of metre than English devotional verse had heretofore employed. Some of the most magnificent hymns in the Wesleyan collection are Wesley's translations from Zinzendorf and other German psalmists; but the fulness and splendour of Wesleyan psalmody was developed by Charles Wesley. His hymns have been the liturgies of Methodism, the creeds of that Church have been embodied in them, they have formed its collects, and enshrined its loftiest bursts of devotional ardour. What sentiment of Christian experience is there which does not find an utterance in them? What phase of Methodist faith is there which is not translated into some of these verses? In preparing the hymn-book, indeed, a great number of Watts's hymns were included, and included not only without any acknowledgment, but the preface, from the pen of John, claims for the Wesleys all the hymns in the volume. In this condition the hymn-book remains to this day, and we have often conversed with Methodists who have stoutly maintained that certain hymns in the volume legitimately belong to it, although published by Watts years before its compilation. This, however, in no way interferes with the estimate we have to form of these sacred lyrics; of course, the Methodist estimate of them is that they are the highest achievements of sacred song. That which we are constantly using, and which touches our affections becomes supremely precious and dear to us. They are all eminently experimental; they seem to have been constructed for the class-meeting and band-meeting; they are especially conjubilant, hymns well calculated to excite and stir, and carry aloft the feelings of the people; and they have become--they very soon became--the voices of the Church.

Wesley, in his reformation, soon commenced the work of reforming the singing. Throughout his life and labours he often remarks upon the questionable psalmody by which he was greeted; thus at Warrington, he says:--

'I put a stop to a bad custom which was creeping in here; a
few men, who had fine voices, sang a psalm which no one
knew, in a tune fit for an opera, wherein three, four, or
five persons sung different words at the same time; what an
insult to common sense! what a burlesque upon public
worship! no custom can excuse such a mixture of profanity
and absurdity.'

Elsewhere he says,--

'Beware of formality in singing, or it will creep upon us
unawares; is it not creeping in already by those complex
tunes which it is scarce possible to sing with devotion?
Such is the long quavering "Hallelujah," and next, the
morning song tune, which I defy any man living to sing
devoutly, the repeating the same words so often, especially
while another repeats different words, shocks all common
sense, brings in dead formality, and has no more religion
in it than a Lancashire hornpipe.'

In harmony with the Hymns, he introduced tunes, which appropriately rendered the words, and were soon used throughout the whole communion; from one end of the country to the other these have echoed and rolled; few are the circumstances in which they have not awakened or sustained some thrilling emotion. They hailed the bridal party as it returned from the church singing,--

'We kindly help each other,
Till all shall wear the starry crown.'

they followed the bier to the grave chanting--

'There all the ship's company meet,
Who sail'd with their Saviour beneath;
With shouting, each other they greet,
And triumph o'er sorrow and death.'

And few separations took place without that consolotary song,--

'Blest be that dear uniting love,
That will not let us part.'

While some hymns speedily became like national airs to the Methodist heart: amongst the chief,--

'Jesus, the name high over all
In hell or earth or sky.'

They sob, they swell, they meet the spirit in its most hushed and plaintive mood; they roll and bear it aloft in its most inspired and prophetic moods, as on the surge of more than a mighty organ's swell. Among the mines, and quarries, and wild moors of Cornwall, among the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in the chambers of death, in the most joyful assemblages of the household, they have relieved the hard lot, and sweetened the pleasant one; in other lands, soldiers, and slaves, and prisoners have recited with what joy those words have entered into their life. So early as 1748, when a sad cluster of convicts, horse-stealers, highway robbers, burglars, smugglers, and thieves, were led forth to execution, the turnkey said he had never seen such people before. When the bellman came, as usual, to say to them, 'Remember, you are to die to-day;' they exclaimed, 'Welcome news! welcome news!' The Methodists had been in their prison, and their visits had produced these marvellous effects; and on their way to Tyburn, the convicts sang that beautiful sacramental hymn of Charles Wesley:--

'Lamb of God, whose bleeding lore
We still recall to mind;
Send the answer from above,
And let us mercy find.
Think on us who think on Thee,
And every struggling soul release;
Oh, remember Calvary,
And let us go in peace.'

These hymns supplied battle-cries for all the scenes of open-air aggression and warfare. When Charles Wesley himself was preaching at Bengeworth, he was beset by a mob. He says, 'Their tongues were set on fire by hell!' One in the crowd proposed to take him away and duck him; he broke out into singing with Thomas Maxfield, and allowed them to carry him whither they would. At the bridge end of the street they relented and left him; there, instead of retreating, he took his stand, and, with an immense congregation about him, sang,--

'Angel of God, whate'er betide,
Thy summons I obey;
Jesus, I take Thee for my guide,
And walk in Thee, my way.'

Innumerable anecdotes might be accumulated touching the glories and triumphs of Methodist song. With all our higher love and admiration for Isaac Watts, and our feeling that, as a sacred poet, he had a more lofty and gorgeous wing, even a far more, tender and touching expression, and that in some of his hymns he speaks in a manner of strength altogether far more wonderful, nevertheless it is true that to Charles Wesley must be given the merit of, perhaps, the most perfect of all hymns, as the expression of Christian experience,--

'Jesus, lover of my soul.'

It is necessary to have some apprehension of the Theology of Methodism, for the spirit of Methodism was in its theology, even as the soul of that theology was in its hymns. It met the heart at that point of experience at which it felt its need of God, a living God: consciousness pervaded it everywhere. This was the central teaching of the great evangelical reaction. How well does it compare and contrast with the contemplations and exercises of Loyola in the solitude of the Manreza; and also with the 'De Imitatione' of à Kempis, against which, large as has been the regard for it, a certain instinct of the Church has always testified. The theology of Methodism was, in one word, Christ for the conscience. Those, happily, were not the days of scientific theology; as a scientific statement the theology of Wesley has justly been regarded as defective, but it is possible to be defective in comprehensive knowledge, and yet to have a sufficiently full and clear understanding for practical uses; even as it is possible to work an engine well, and yet in no sense to be an accomplished engineer. The secret of Wesley's success lay in the fact that his was a theology for the multitude; on the one hand it was not a forensic theory, on the other it was not rationalistic. Both are alike unsatisfactory to the heart. There is a forensic theology, but it is for the schools rather than for the factories or the fields. 'Wesley,' says Alexander Knox, 'regarded justification neither merely nor chiefly as a forensic acquittal in the court of heaven, but as implying also a conscious liberation from moral thraldom.' Indeed this was the important point with him; consciousness, everywhere consciousness. It is in the consciousness faith is to be wrought, as he sings--

'Inspire the living faith,
Which whosoe'er receives,
The witness in himself he hath,
And _consciously_ believes.'

The strife ran very high upon matters where the disputants were not substantially divided; the doctrine of personal election and reprobation, Wesley, indeed, denounced in some of his most vehement words; and it seemed that the imputed righteousness of Christ, and in consequence, the doctrine of the substitution of Christ for the sinner, paled and became ineffective in his teaching. This was especially manifested in his controversy with the beloved and amiable rector of Weston Favell, James Hervey, on the publication of his 'Theron and Aspasio.' Hervey says, 'The righteousness wrought out by Jesus Christ is wrought out for all His people,' &c. Wesley replies, with truth and force, but with needless vehemence, 'What becomes of all other people? They must inevitably perish for ever. The die was cast ere ever they were in being. The doctrine to pass them by has consigned their unborn souls to hell, and damned them from their mother's womb. I could sooner be a Turk, a deist, yea, an atheist, than I could believe this. It is less absurd to deny the very being of God, than to make Him an Almighty tyrant.' It was Wesley's great and favourite faith that 'in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.' In some hymns he expresses, however, very unreservedly the doctrine of substitution for instance--

'Join earth and heaven to bless
The Lord our righteousness;
The mystery of redemption this,
This the Saviour's strange design;
Man's offence was counted His,
Ours His righteousness divine.'

Wesley dealt always with those great truths which, because of the depths of his own moral consciousness, man cannot hear announced without awe. It is possible to receive Christian doctrine as only a science, or a judicial exposition; the Calvinistic theology has too often been merely this, but the core of Wesley's creed was personal perception and appropriation of the work of Christ--in a word, Consciousness. And usually his ideas were presented in a clear and transparent style, the chief of them being salvation by faith; _salvation_ by faith rather than _justification_ by faith. No doubt Wesley clearly and distinctly held and preached the latter, but those who have made this the principal theme of their religious teaching have been usually led into a region of thought higher than was suitable to the practical purposes of the great Methodist apostle. The designation of his doctrine, 'Evangelical Arminianism,' has often been charged with involving a contradiction in terms. The discussion of the principles of the Divine government, and the Divine decrees, the relations of fore-knowledge and predetermination in the Infinite mind, impressions concerning the freedom of the will and the nature of evil--such questions, it must be admitted, are more curious and speculative than useful, or sometimes even pious. Wesley was no metaphysician, he had little taste for such studies; and his life was passed in a round of useful activities unfavourable to their prosecution. Into the department of thought which implies the relation of logic to theology, he never entered. Alike in the frame-work of his popular creed, as we shall see in the frame-work of his Church organization, he struck out a broad basis; breadth rather than depth was the characteristic of his mind and work; he cared little for the nice distinctions of philosophical refinement; his theology turned chiefly on the responsibilities of man; his aim was to make man feel, rather than to make him think. The Calvinistic side of theology produces the exactly opposite effect. Wesley, naturally, insisted strongly on the personal sanctification of the soul, this follows, of course, that other chief and much-belaboured item of Wesleyan faith, the doctrine of perfection. 'This,' says Alexander Knox, 'was the perpetual bone of contention between Wesley and the whole phalanx of Calvinist religionists.' And assuredly, that whole phalanx showed itself to be imperfect enough in the controversy. In the story of the strifes of good men this has a shocking pre-eminence. We cannot blame Mr. Tyerman for presenting the various phases of the struggle, or even for quoting passages from the innumerable abusive volumes and pamphlets which were poured out upon Wesley, but we shall not ourselves dwell upon these scandals. On the whole, we have in Wesley the picture of a fine Christian temper and spirit, seldom condescending to reply at all, and when replying, doing so in a tone worthy even of him who could say, 'Let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'