One song of praise for mercies past, Through all our courts resound; One voice of prayer, that to the last Grace may much more abound.
All hail! a hundred years ago!
And when our lips are dumb, Be millions heard rejoicing so, A hundred years to come.
CHAPTER XIX.
WESLEY"S CHARACTER AS ESTIMATED BY UNBIASED JUDGES.
REV. DR. RIGG, author of _The Living Wesley_, says: "No single man for centuries has moved the world as Wesley moved it; since Luther, no man."
Dr. Abel Stevens, the historian of Methodism, says Mr. Wesley "possessed, in an eminent degree, one trait of a master mind--the power of comprehending and managing at once the outlines and details of plans.
It is this power that forms the philosophical genius in science; it is essential to the successful commander and great statesman. It is ill.u.s.trated in the whole economical system of Methodism."
Bishop c.o.ke, in speaking of Mr. Wesley"s unbounded benevolence, says: "Sometimes, indeed, the love which believeth and hopeth all things, of which he had so large a share, laid him open to imposition, and wisdom slept at the door of love; if there was any fault in his public character, it was an excess of mercy."
Mr. Lecky (no mean judge) has this to say: "The evangelical movement which directly or indirectly originated with Wesley produced a general revival of religious feeling which has incalculably increased the efficiency of almost every religious body in the community, while at the same time it has materially affected party politics."
In Green"s _History of the English People_ he speaks of Wesley and Whitefield thus: "In power as a preacher Wesley ranked next to Whitefield; as a hymn writer he stood second to his brother Charles.
But, combining in some degree the excellences of either, he possessed qualities in which both were utterly deficient--an indefatigable industry, cool judgment, command over others, a faculty of organization, and a union of patience and moderation, with an imperious ambition which marked him as a ruler of men." "If men may be measured by the work they have accomplished, John Wesley can hardly fail to be recorded as the greatest figure that has appeared in the religious world since the days of the Reformation."
When Dean Stanley, in 1876, unveiled the memorial tablet erected in Westminster Abbey to the memory of John and Charles Wesley, consisting of medallion profiles of these great men, he said: "John Wesley is presented as preaching on his father"s tomb, and I have always thought that it is, as it were, a parable which represented his relation to national inst.i.tutions. He took his stand on his father"s tomb--on the venerable and ancestral traditions of the country and the Church. That was the stand from which he addressed the world; it was not from points of disagreement, but from the points of agreement, with those in the Christian religion that he produced those great effects which have never since died out in English Christendom. It is because of his having been in that age, which I am inclined to think has been unduly disparaged, the reviver of religious fervor among our churches that we all feel we owe him a debt of grat.i.tude, and that he ought to have this monument placed among those of the benefactors of England. These men had a perfect right to this national and lasting honor."
Mr. Augustin Birrell, queen"s councilor and member of Parliament, in a lecture before the Royal Inst.i.tute of London, says of John Wesley: "The life of John Wesley, who was born in 1703 and died in 1791, covered, practically, the whole of the eighteenth century, of which he was one of the most remarkable and strenuous figures, and his Journals were the most amazing records of human exertion ever penned by man. Those who have ever contested a parliamentary election know how exhausting was the experience; yet John Wesley contested the three kingdoms in the cause of Christ, and during the contest, which lasted forty-four years, he paid more turnpike toll than any man who ever lived. His usual record of travel was eight thousand miles a year [we think this an overestimate], and even when he was an old man it seldom fell below five thousand miles. Wesley was a great bit of the eighteenth century, and was, therefore, a great revealing record of the century. He was a cool, level-headed man, and had he devoted his talents to any other pursuit than that of spreading religion he must have acquired a large fortune; but from the first day of his life, almost, he learned to regard religion as his business."
"A greater poet may rise than Homer or Milton," says Dr. Dobbins, "a greater theologian than Calvin, a greater philosopher than Bacon, a greater dramatist than any of ancient or modern fame; but a more distinguished revivalist of the churches than John Wesley, never."
"Taking him altogether," says Mr. Tyerman, "Wesley is a man _sui generis_. He stands alone; he has no successor; no one like him went before; no contemporary was a coequal. There was a wholeness about the man such as is rarely seen. His physique, his genius, his wit, his penetration, his judgment, his memory, his beneficence, his religion, his diligence, his conversation, his courteousness, his manners, and his dress made him as perfect as we ever expect man to be on this side of heaven." He arose with the lark, traveled with the sun, preached like an angel through three kingdoms, claimed the world for his parish, and died like a hero, shouting, "The best of all is, G.o.d is with us."
Wilberforce said, "I consider Wesley as the most influential mind of the last century--the man who will have produced the greatest effects centuries, or perhaps millenniums, hence, if the present race of men should continue so long."
No more graphic description of the Wesleyan movement has appeared than that given by F. W. Farrar, Dean of Canterbury. He says:
John Wesley found a Church forgetful and neglectful of its duties, somnolent in the plethora of riches, and either unmindful or unwisely mindful of the poor. He found churches empty, dirty, neglected, crumbling into hideous disrepair; he found the work of the ministry performed in a manner scandalously perfunctory.... But John Wesley, becoming magnetic with moral sincerity, flashed into myriads of hearts fat as brawn, cold as ice, hard as the nether millstone, the burning spark of his own intense convictions, and thus he saved the Church....
Although the world and the Church have learned to be comparatively generous to Wesley, now that a hundred years have sped away, and though the roar of contemporary scandal has long since ceased, I doubt whether even now he is at all adequately appreciated.
I doubt whether many are aware of the extent to which to this day the impulse to every great work of philanthropy and social reformation has been due to his energy and insight. The British and the Foreign Bible Society, the Religious Tract Society, the London Missionary Society, even the Church Missionary Society, owe not a little to his initiative. The vast spread of religious instruction by weekly periodicals, and the cheap press, with all its stupendous consequences, were inaugurated by him. He gave a great extension to Sunday schools and the work of Robert Raikes. He gave a great impulse both to national education and to technical education, and in starting the work of Silas Told, the foundry teacher, he antic.i.p.ated the humble and holy work of John Pounds, the Portsmouth cobbler. He started in his own person the funeral reform, which is only now beginning to attract public attention, when in his will he directed that at his obsequies there should be no hea.r.s.e, no escutcheon, no coach, no pomp. He visited prisons and ameliorated the lot of prisoners before John Howard; and his very last letter was written to stimulate William Wilberforce in his parliamentary labors for the emanc.i.p.ation of the slave. When we add to this the revival of fervent worship and devout hymnology among Christian congregations, and their deliverance from the drawling doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, and the frigid nullities of Tate and Brady, we have indeed shown how splendid was the list of his achievements, and that, as Isaac Taylor says, he furnished "the starting point for our modern religious history in all that is characteristic of the present time."
And yet, in this long and splendid catalogue, we have not mentioned his greatest and most distinctive work, which was that through him to the poor the Gospel was again preached. Let Whitefield have the credit of having been the first to make the green gra.s.s his pulpit and the heaven his sounding-board; but Wesley instantly followed, at all costs, the then daring example, and through all evil report and all furious opposition he continued it until at last at Kingswood, at the age of eighty-one, he preached in the open air, under the shade of trees which he himself had planted, and surrounded by the children and children"s children of his old disciples, who had long since pa.s.sed away.
Overwhelming evidence exists to show what preaching was before and in his day; overwhelming evidence exists to show what the Church and people of England were before and in his day--how dull, how vapid, how soulless, how Christless was the preaching; how torpid, how Laodicean was the Church; how G.o.dless, how steeped in immorality was the land. To Wesley was mainly granted the task, for which he was set apart by the hands of invisible consecration--the task which even an archangel might have envied him--of awakening a mighty revival of the religious life in those dead pulpits, in that slumbering Church, in that corrupt society. His was the religious sincerity which not only founded the Wesleyan community, but, working through the heart of the very Church which had despised him, flashed fire into her whitening embers.
Changing its outward forms, the work of John Wesley caused, first, the evangelical movement, then the high church movement, and, in its enthusiasm of humanity, has even reappeared in all that is best in the humble Salvationists, who learned from the example of Wesley what Bishop Lightfoot called "that lost secret of Christianity, the compulsion of human souls."
Recognizing no utterance of authority as equally supreme with that which came to him from the Sinai of conscience, Wesley did the thing and scorned the consequence. His was the voice which offered hope to the despairing and welcome to the outcast.... The poet says:
"Of those three hundred grant but three To make a new Thermopylae."
And when I think of John Wesley, the organizer, of Charles Wesley, the poet, of George Whitefield, the orator, of this mighty movement, I feel inclined to say of those three self-sacrificing and holy men, Grant but even one to help in the mighty work which yet remains to be accomplished! Had we but three such now,
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN WESLEY"S GRAVE.]
"h.o.a.ry-headed selfishness would feel His deathblow, and would totter to his grave; A brighter light attend the human day, When every transfer of earth"s natural gift Should be a commerce of good words and works."
We have, it is true, hundreds of faithful workers in the Church of England and in other religious communities. But for the slaying of dragons, the rekindlement of irresistible enthusiasm, the redress of intolerable wrongs, a Church needs many Pentecosts and many resurrections. And these, in the providence of G.o.d, are brought about, not by committees and conferences and common workers, but by men who escape the average; by men who come forth from the mult.i.tude; by men who, not content to trudge on in the beaten paths of commonplace and the cart-ruts of routine, go forth, according to their Lord"s command, into the highways and hedges; by men in whom the love of G.o.d burns like a consuming flame upon the altar of the heart; by men who have become electric to make myriads of other souls thrill with their own holy zeal. Such men are necessarily rare, but G.o.d"s richest boon to any nation, to any society, to any Church, is the presence and work of such a man--and such a man was John Wesley.
CHAPTER XX.
THE GREATER WESLEY OF THE OPENING CENTURY.
WHEN on March 2, 1791, John Wesley closed his eyes to earth and opened them in heaven the visible results of his life were already great. At the opening of this new century they are greater. Only a few rods from where he his "body with his charge laid down, and ceased at once to work and live," is Wesley"s Chapel, City Road, the head center of universal Methodism. Standing on the walls of this Zion in 1791 and looking around, what would we see?
Confining our vision within the bounds of Great Britain and Ireland, we would see this chapel surrounded by 644 others, "wholly appropriate to the worship of G.o.d." These chapels are ministered unto by 294 itinerant preachers, and have an enrollment of 71,668 members of the societies.
Extending our vision to the regions beyond, in the Wesleyan Methodist missions in France, the West Indies, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, we would see in 1791 an enrolled membership of 5,300, looked after by 19 ministers; giving as the total of Wesleyan Methodists at that time 76,968, and 313 ministers.
In addition to the home and foreign work of which John Wesley was the head, and City Road Chapel the center, was the Methodism of the United States, which in 1790 reported 43,265 members and 198 ministers, and which was known as "The Methodist Episcopal Church of America." So that we would see as the total of Methodists in the world at Wesley"s last Conference, in 1790, 120,233 members, and 511 ministers. Besides these, a great number who, from 1739 to 1790, saved by Methodist agency, had been transferred to the Church above.
Let us now in this year 1901 stand again on the walls of this old Methodist cathedral and look around us for the living monument of the greater Wesley. With the March quarterly meetings" returns in our hands we see that in great Britain alone "the total number of persons meeting in cla.s.s, seniors and juniors, is 573,140, an increase for the year of 12,937." To these must be added the 46,262 full members and 11,619 "on trial" in the Wesleyan foreign missions reported in 1899. All these are under the government of the mother Conference. Then there are the Irish, French, South African, and West Indian Conferences, which are affiliated to it; and to these must be added the detached bodies, such as the Australian Methodist Church, the Methodist New Connection, Wesleyan Reform Union, Primitive Methodists, Bible Christians, United Methodist Free Churches, and Independent Methodist Churches, all included in "Old World Methodism," and rolling up the grand totals of 25,675 churches, 1,201,663 members and probationers, and 64,550 traveling and local preachers.
Thus the great Methodism of the Old World in 1791, with its 313 ministers and 76,968 members, in 1901 has become the greater Methodism, with 64,550 preachers and 1,201,663 members.
Let the point of view now be changed from City Road Chapel, London, to John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, in New York city, for a survey of the New World Methodism. To the north is the Methodist Church of Canada, with 11 Conferences and a mission in China, with a ministry, traveling and local, of 4,322, and a membership of 284,901. The missions in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, in 1791, have thus developed and become the greater Canadian Methodism.
After this telescopic view let the vision be confined to American Methodism. We are still at old John Street Church in New York city. The Methodist tree, planted on this spot in 1766, has spread itself out into 16 branches, which with the parent trunk includes 9 white and 8 colored growths. The 43,265 American Methodists of 1790 have grown into 5,916,349 in 1901, and the 198 ministers have increased to 37,907, who preach in 54,351 Methodist churches. The Methodists lead the ecclesiastical hosts in America in the matter of members, and stand second only to the Roman Catholics, who count all adherents as communicants. The latter claim 8,766,083 by including all born into their families. Roman Catholicism in America has for its sharpest compet.i.tor American Methodism. If the Methodists counted their adherents as the Catholics do they would claim about 18,000,000 over against the Catholics less than 9,000,000.
The names of the branches of the American Methodist family are: 1. The Methodist Episcopal; 2. Union American Methodist Episcopal; 3. African Methodist Episcopal; 4. African Union Methodist Protestant; 5. African Methodist Episcopal Zion; 6. Methodist Protestant; 7. Wesleyan Methodist; 8. Methodist Episcopal, South; 9. Congregational Methodist; 10. Congregational Methodist (colored); 11. New Congregational Methodist; 12. Zion Union Apostolic; 13. Colored Methodist Episcopal; 14. Primitive Methodist; 15. Free Methodist; 16. Independent Methodist; 17. Evangelical Missionary. These all claim to be one in doctrine, one in spirit and aim, and should be one in piety. Would that they were all one in Church union!
Epworth Leaguers will be more especially interested in the progress of their own Methodist Episcopal Church, which is the oldest daughter, as well as the largest branch, of Wesleyan Methodism. From _The Methodist Year Book_, 1901, we learn that our "lay membership--total of full members and probationers (on partial returns only)--is 2,907,877." Dr.
H. K. Carroll in _The Christian Advocate_, January 3, 1901, tells the story of progress so well that we insert the entire article:
Only living things grow. The abundant life of American Methodism, beginning under favorable conditions, made growth natural, luxuriant, and easy. The soil and the sun, the air and the rains, were all that the fresh, vigorous plant needed for a development which has been truly amazing.
Time, 1766; place, New York; a G.o.dly woman calling a few backslidden Methodists to their duty; a local preacher; meetings in a sail loft; a new church costing $3,000. Such was the beginning.
The soil was fallow. It produced rank weeds. There were few husbandmen. Other churches insisted on well-trained men from European schools. Methodism, having no such resources, organized training cla.s.ses on the field and taught its men at the plow. Such were the conditions.
Time, 1784; place, Baltimore; a plain meetinghouse with stiff benches; 60 preachers in Conference; an independent Church, with a name, an episcopacy, a ministry, the sacraments, a practical system, a doctrinal standard, a ritual. Such was the organization. What has been the growth?
A growth of 2,900,000 in 134 years and of 2,835,000 in the past century. The 65,000 has added to itself nearly 44 times. The average annual gain has been 28,350.
The percentage of increase is 4,362. If the population of the country had increased in this period at the same rate, it would now be 232,000,000 instead of 76,300,000.
But the gains of the Methodist Episcopal Church have been only a part of the gains of Methodism. Include all branches since 1834, and we have: