THE REVIVAL CONSERVATIVE.
Lord Macaulay’s verdict upon John Wesley, that he possessed a “genius
for government not inferior to that of Richelieu,” received immediate
demonstration when he came actively into the movement, and has been
abundantly confirmed since his death, in the history of the society
which he founded. It has been said that all institutions are the
prolonged shadow of one mind, and that by the inclusiveness, or power of
perpetuity in the institution, we may know the mind of the founder. Much
of our last chapter was devoted to some attempt to realise the place and
power of Whitefield;[7] what he was in relation to the Revival may be
defined by the remark, often made, and by capable critics, that while
there have been multitudes of better sermon-makers, it is uncertain
whether the Church ever had so great a pulpit orator. In Wesley’s mind
everything became structural and organic; he was a mighty master of
administration; but he also followed Whitefield’s example, and took to
the fields; and very great, indeed, amazing results, followed his
ministry.
Footnote 7:
See Chapter XIV. for his place and power in America.
Many of the incidents which are impressive and amusing show the
difference between the men. Whitefield overwhelmed the people: Wesley
met insolence and antagonism by some sharp, concise, and cuttingly
appropriate retort, which was remarkable, considering his stature. But
both his presence and his words must have been unusually commanding: “Be
silent, or begone,” he turned round sharply and said once to some
violent disturbers, and they were obedient to the command.
Wesley’s rencontre with Beau Nash at Bath is a fair illustration of his
quiet and almost obscurely sarcastic method of confounding a troublesome
person. Preaching in the open air at Bath, the King of Bath, the Master
of the Ceremonies, Nash, was so unwise as to attempt to put down the
apostolic man. Nash’s character was bad; it was that of an idle,
heartless, licentious dangler on the skirts of high society. He appeared
in the crowd, and authoritatively asked Wesley by what right he dared to
stand there. The congregation was not wholly of the poor; there were a
number of fashionable and noble persons present, and among them many
with whom this attack had been pre-arranged, and who expected to see the
discomfiture of the Methodist by the courtly and fashionable old dandy.
Wesley replied to the question simply and quietly that he stood there by
the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to him “by the present
Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid hands on me and said, ‘Take thou
authority to preach the Gospel!’” Nash began to bustle and to be
turbulent, and he exclaimed, “This is contrary to Act of Parliament;
this is a conventicle.” “Sir,” said Wesley, “the Act you refer to
applies to seditious meetings: here is no sedition, no shadow of
sedition; the meeting is not, therefore, contrary to the Act.” Nash
stormed, “I say it is; besides, your preaching frightens people out of
their wits.” “Sir,” said Wesley, “give me leave to ask, Did you ever
hear me preach?” “No!” “How, then, can you judge of what you have never
heard?” “Sir, by common report.” “Common report is not enough,” said
Wesley; “again give me leave to ask is your name not Nash?” “My name is
Nash.” And then the reader must imagine Wesley’s thin, clear, piercing
voice, cutting through the crowd: “Sir, I dare not judge of _you_ by
common report.” There does not seem much in it, but the effect was
overwhelming. Nash tried to bully it out a little; but, to make his
discomfiture complete, the people took up the case, and especially one
old woman, whose daughter had come to grief through the fop, in her way
so set forth his sins that he was glad to retreat in dismay. On another
occasion, when attempts were made to assault Wesley, there was some
uncertainty about his person, and the assailants were saying, “Which is
he? which is he?” he stood still as he was walking down the crowded
street, turned upon them, and said, “I am he;” and they instantly fell
back, awed into involuntary silence and respect.
It is characteristic that while Whitefield simply took to the work of
field-preaching, and preaching in the open air, and troubled himself
very little about finding or giving reasons for the irregularity of the
proceeding, Wesley defended the practice with formidable arguments. It
is remarkable that the practice should have been deemed so irregular, or
should need vindication, considering that our Lord had given to it the
sanction of His example, and that it had been adopted by the apostles
and fathers, the greatest of the Catholic preachers, and the reformers
of every age. A history of field and street-preaching would form a large
and interesting chapter of Church history. Southey quotes a very happy
series of arguments from one of Wesley’s appeals: “What need is there,”
he says, speaking for his antagonists, “of this preaching in the fields
and streets? Are there not churches enough to preach in?” “No, my
friend, there are not, not for us to preach in. You forget we are not
suffered to preach there, else we should prefer them to any place
whatever.” “Well, there are ministers enough without you.” “Ministers
enough, and churches enough! For what? To reclaim all the sinners within
the four seas? and one plain reason why these sinners are never
reclaimed is this: they never come into a church. Will you say, as some
tender-hearted Christians I have heard, ‘Then it is their own fault; let
them die and be damned!’ I grant it may be their own fault, but the
Saviour of souls came after us, and so we ought to seek to save that
which is lost.” He went on to confess the irregularity, but he retorted
that those persons who compelled him to be irregular had no right to
censure him for irregularity. “Will they throw a man into the dirt,”
said he, “and beat him because he is dirty? Of all men living those
clergymen ought not to complain who believe I preach the Gospel; if they
will not ask me to preach in their churches, they are accountable for my
preaching in the fields.” This is a fair illustration of the neat
shrewdness, the compact, incisive common sense of Wesley’s mind. Thus he
argued himself into that sphere of labour which justified him in after
years in saying, without any extravagance, “The world is my parish.”
We have said the Revival became conservative. It is true the Countess
of Huntingdon did much to make it so; but it assumed a shape of
vitality, and a force of coherent strength, chiefly from the touch of
Wesley’s administrative mind. The present City Road Chapel, which was
opened in 1776, opposite Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, is probably the
first illustration of this fact; it stands where stood the
Foundry—time-honoured spot in the history of Methodism. It stood in
Moorfields; the City Road was a mere lane then. The building had been
used by government for casting cannon; it was a rude ruin. Wesley
purchased it and the site at the very commencement of his work, in
1739; he turned it into a temple. As the years passed on it became the
cradle of London Methodism, accommodating fifteen hundred people.
Until within twenty years of Wesley’s purchase this had been a kind of
Woolwich Arsenal to the government; it became a temple of peace, and
here came “band-rooms,” school-rooms, book-rooms—the first saplings of
Methodist usefulness.
[Illustration:
JOHN WESLEY.
]
It has been truly said by a writer in the _British Quarterly_, that 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. Romish stories claim that Blessed
Raymond, of Pegnafort, 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! The devout and zealous
Francis Xavier spent three whole days in two different places at the
same time, preaching all the while! Rome shines out in transactions like
these: Wesley does not; but he seems to have been almost ubiquitous, and
he moves with a rapidity reminding us of that flying angel who had the
everlasting Gospel to preach, and he shines alike in his conflicts with
nature and the still wilder tempests caused by the passions of men. We
read of his travelling, through the long wintry hours, two hundred and
eighty miles on horseback, in six days; it was a wonderful feat in those
times. When Wesley first began his itinerancy there were no turnpikes in
the country; but before he closed his career, he had probably paid more,
says Dr. Southey, for turnpikes, than any other man in England, for no
other man in England travelled so much. His were no pleasant journeys,
as of summer days; he travelled through the fens of Lincolnshire when
the waters were out; and over the fells of Northumberland when they were
covered with snow. Speaking of one tremendous journey, through dreadful
weather, he says, “Many a rough journey have I had before; but one like
this I never had, between wind and hail, and rain, and ice, and snow,
and driving sleet, and piercing cold; but it is past. Those days will
return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been.
“‘And pain, like pleasure, is a dream!’”
How singular was his visit to Epworth, where he found the church of his
childhood, his father’s church, the church of his own first
ministrations, closed against him! The minister of the church was a
drunkard; he had been under great obligations, both to Wesley himself
and to the Wesley family, but he assailed him with the most offensive
brutality; and when Wesley, denied the pulpit, signified his intention
of simply partaking of the Lord’s Supper with the parishioners on the
following Sunday, the coarse man sent word, “Tell Mr. Wesley I shall not
give him the Sacrament, for he is not _fit_.” It seems to have cut Mr.
Wesley very deeply. “It was fit,” he says, “that he who repelled me from
the table where I had myself so often distributed the bread of life,
should be one who owed his all in this world to the tender love my
father had shown to his, as well as personally to himself.” He stayed
there, however, eight days, and preached every evening in the
churchyard, standing on his father’s tomb; truly a singular sight, the
living son, the prophet of his age, surely little short of inspired,
preaching from his dead father’s grave with such pathos and power as we
may well conceive. “I am well assured,” he says, “I did far more good to
my old Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father’s
tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit!”
[Illustration:
WESLEY PREACHING IN EPWORTH CHURCHYARD.
]
As he travelled to and fro, odd mistakes sometimes happened. Arrived at
York, he went into the church in St. Saviour’s Gate; the rector, one Mr.
Cordeau, had often warned his congregation against going to hear “that
vagabond Wesley” preach. It was usual in that day for ministers of the
Establishment to wear the cassock or gown, just as everywhere in France
we see the French abbés. Wesley had on his gown, like a university man
in a university town. Mr. Cordeau, not knowing who he was, offered him
his pulpit; Wesley was quite willing, and always ready. Sermons leaped
impromptu from his lips, and this sermon was an impressive one; at its
close the clerk asked the rector if he knew who the preacher was. “No.”
“Why, sir, it was that vagabond Wesley!” “Ah, indeed!” said the
astonished clergyman; “well, never mind, we have had a good sermon.” The
anecdotes of the incidents which waited upon the preacher in his travels
are of every order of humorous, affecting, and romantic interest; they
are spread over a large variety of volumes, and even still need to be
gathered, framed, and hung in the light of some effective chronicle.
[Illustration:
EPWORTH CHURCH.
]
The brilliant passage in which Lord Macaulay portrays, as with the
pencil of a Vandyke, the features of the great English Puritans, is
worthy of attention. Perhaps, even had the great essayist attempted the
task, he had scarcely the requisite sympathies to give an effective
portrait or portraits of the early Methodists; indeed, their characters
are different, as different as a portrait from the pencil of Denner to
one from that of Vandyke, or of Velasquez; but as Denner is wonderful
too, although so homely, so the Methodist is a study. The early
Methodist was, perhaps, usually a very simple, what we should call an
ignorant, man, but he had “the true Light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world.” He was not such an one as the early Puritan[8]
or the ancient Huguenot, those children of the camp and of the sword,
Nonconformist Templars and Crusaders, whose theology had trained them
for the battle-field, teaching them to frown defiance on kings, and to
treat with contempt the proudest nobles, if they were merely
unsanctified men. The Methodist was not such an one as the stern
Ironside of Cromwell; as he lived in a more cheerful age, so he was the
subject of a more cheerful piety; he was as loyal as he was lowly. He
had been forgotten or neglected by all the priests and Levites of the
land; but a voice had reached him, and raised him to the rank of a
living, conscious, immortal soul. He also was one for whom Christ died.
A new life had created new interests in him; and Christianity, really
believed, does ennoble a man—how can it do otherwise? It gives
self-respect to a man, it shows to him a new purpose and business in
life; moreover, it creates a spirit of holy cheerfulness and joy; and
thus came about that state of mind which Wesley made subservient to
organisation—the necessity for meetings and reciprocations. It has been
said that every church must have some sign or counter-sign, some symbol
to make it popularly successful. St. Dominic gave to his order the
Rosary; John Wesley gave to his Society the Ticket. There were no
chapels, or but few, and none to open their doors to these strange new
pilgrims to the celestial city. We have seen that the churches were
closed against them. Lord Macaulay says, had John Wesley risen in the
Church of Rome, she would have thrown her arms round him, only regarding
him as the founder of a new order, with certain peculiarities calculated
to increase and to extend her empire, and in due time have given to him
the honours of canonisation.
Footnote 8:
See Appendix A.
The English clergy as a body gathered up their garments and shrunk from
all contact with the Methodists as from a pestilence. What could be
done? Something must be done to prevent them from falling back into the
world. Piety needs habit, and must become habitual to be safe, even as
the fine-twined linen of the veil, and the ark of the covenant, and the
cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat, were shut in and all their glory
defended by the rude coverings of badger-skins. John Wesley knew that
the safety of the converted would be in frequent meetings for singing
and prayer and conversation. Reciprocation is the soul of Methodism; so
they assembled in each others’ houses, in rude and lonely but convenient
rooms, by farm-house ingles, in lone hamlets. Thus was created a homely
piety, often rugged enough, no doubt, but full of beautiful and pathetic
instincts. So grew what came to be called band-meetings, class-meetings,
love-feasts, and all the innumerable means by which the Methodist
Society worked, until it became like a wheel within a wheel; simple
enough, however, in the days to which we are referring. “Look to the
Lord, and faithfully attend all the means of grace appointed in the
Society.” Such was, practically, the whole of Methodism. So that famous
old lady, whose bright example has so often been held up on Methodist
platforms, when called upon to state the items of her creed, did so very
sufficiently when she summed it up in the four particulars of
“repentance towards God; faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; a penny a week;
and a shilling a quarter.” Wesley seems to have summed the Methodist
creed more simply still: “Belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, and an
earnest desire to flee from the wrath to come.” This was his condition
of Church fellowship. When the faith became more consciously objective,
it too was seized by the passionate instinct, the desire t o save souls.
This drove the early Methodists out on great occasions to call vast
multitudes together on heaths, on moors. Perhaps—but this was at a later
time—some country gentleman threw open his old hall to the preachers;
though the more aristocratic phase of the Methodist movement fell into
the Calvinistic rather than into the Wesleyan ranks, and subsided into
the organisation of the Countess of Huntingdon, which was, in fact, a
kind of Free Church of England. The followers of Wesley sought the
sequestration of nature, or in cities and towns they took to the streets
or the broad ways and outlying fields. 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 these meetings, and all their
intercourse, whether in speech or song, was the sweetness and fulness of
Jesus. They had intense faith in the love of God shed abroad in the
heart; and their great interest was in souls on the brink of perdition.
They knew little of spiritual difficulties or speculative despair; their
conflict was with the world, the flesh, and the devil; and in this
person, whose features have lately become somewhat dim, and who has
wrapped himself in a new cloak of darkness, they did really believe.
Wesley dealt with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; he and his band
of preachers had little regard to proprieties, and it was not a polished
time; so, ungraceful and undignified, the face weary, and the hand heavy
with toil, they seemed out of breath pursuing souls. The strength of all
these men was that they had a definite creed, and they sought to guard
it by a definite Church life. The early Methodist had also cultivated
the mighty instinct of prayer, about which he had no philosophy, but
believing that God heard him, he quite simply indulged in it as a
passion, and in this to him there was at once a meaning and a joy. We
are not under the necessity of vindicating every phase of the great
movement, we are simply writing down some particulars of its history,
and how it was that it grew and prevailed. God’s ministry goes on by
various means, ordinary and extraordinary; that is the difference
between rivers and rains, between dews and lightnings.
A very interesting chapter, perhaps a volume, might be compiled from the
old records of the mere anecdotes—the very humours—of the persecution
attending on the Revival. Thus, in Cornwall, Edward Greenfield, a
tanner, with a wife and seven children, was arrested under a warrant
granted by Dr. Borlase, the eminent antiquary, who was, however, a
bitter foe to Methodism. It was inquired what was the objection to
Greenfield, a peaceable, inoffensive man; and the answer was, “The man
is well enough, but the gentlemen round about can’t bear his impudence;
why, he says he knows his sins are forgiven!” The story is well known
how, in one place, a whole waggon-load of Methodists were taken before
the magistrates; but when the question was asked in court what they had
done, a profound silence fell over the assembly, for no one was prepared
with a charge against them, till somebody exclaimed, “They pretended to
be better than other people, and prayed from morning till night!” And
another voice shouted out, “And they’ve _convarted_ my wife; till she
went among they, she had a tongue of her own, and now she’s as quiet as
a lamb!” “Take them all back, take them all back,” said the sensible
magistrate, “and let them convert all the scolds in the town!”
There is a spot in Cornwall which may be said to be consecrated and set
apart to the memory of Wesley; it is in the immediate neighbourhood of
Redruth, a wild, bare, rugged-looking region now, very suggestive of its
savage aspect upwards of a hundred years since. The spot to which we
refer is the Gwennap Pit; it is a wild amphitheatre, cut out among the
hills, capable of holding about thirty thousand persons. Its natural
walls slant upwards, and the place has altogether wonderful properties
for the carrying the human voice. Wesley began to preach in this spot in
1762. When he first visited Cornwall, the savage mobs of what used to be
called “West Barbary,” howled and roared upon him like lions or wild
beasts; in his later years of visitation, no emperor or sovereign prince
could have been received with more reverence and affection. The streets
were lined and the windows of the houses thronged with gazing crowds, to
see him as he walked along; and no wonder, for Cornwall was one of the
chief territories of that singular ecclesiastical kingdom of which he
was the founder. When he first went into Cornwall, it was really a
region of savage irreligion and heathenism. The reader of his life often
finds, usually about once a year, the visit to Gwennap Pit recorded: he
preached his first sermon there, as we have said, in 1762; at the age of
eighty-six he preached his last in 1789. There, from time to time, they
poured in from all the country round to see and to listen to the words
of this truly reverend father.
[Illustration:
The Great Revival.
Wesley Preaching in Gwennap Pit.
]
The traditions of Methodism have few more imposing scenes. Gwennap Pit
was, perhaps, Wesley’s most famous cathedral; a magnificent church, if
we may apply that term to a building of nature, among the wild moors; it
was thronged by hushed and devout worshippers. Until Wesley went among
these people, the whole immense population might have said, “No man
cared for our souls;” now they poured in to see him there: wild miners
from the immediate neighbourhood, fishermen from the coast, men who
until their conversion had pursued the wrecker’s remorseless and
criminal career, smugglers, more quiet men and their families less
savage, but not less ignorant, from their shieling, or lowly farmstead
on the distant heath. A strange throng, if we think of it, men who had
never used God’s name except in an oath, and who had never breathed a
prayer except for the special providence of a shipwreck, and who with
wicked barbarity had kindled their delusive lights along the coasts, to
fascinate unfortunate ships to the cruel cliffs! But a Divine power had
passed over them, and they were changed, with their families; and hither
they came to gladden the heart of the old patriarch in the wild glen—a
strange spot, and not unbeautiful, roofed over by the blue heavens.
Amidst the broom, the twittering birds, the heath flower, and the
scantling of trees, amidst the venerable rocks, it must have been
wonderful to hear the thirty thousand voices welling up, and singing
Wesley’s 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 hosannahs join,
While blasphemies are turned to praise!”
Such was one of the triumphs of the Great Revival.
------------------------------------------------------------------------