To talk to a crowd of 5,000 people--few living speakers know
what that means; the expenditure of nervous force, the strain
on throat and brain, on body and soul. But Wesley did this, not
only every day, but often twice and three times in a day. He did
it for fifty years, and the strain did not kill him!
Gladstone’s Midlothian campaign in 1879 is famous in history;
but it was confined to a little patch of Scotland; it lasted
fifteen days, and represented perhaps twenty speeches. But
Wesley carried on his campaign on a scale which leaves Mr.
Gladstone’s performances dwarfed into insignificance. He did
it on the great stage of the three kingdoms, and he maintained
it without a break for more than fifty years!--W. H.
FITCHETT, “Wesley and His Century.”
(3026)
See TACT.