The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature METHODISM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS IJottbUtt: FETTER LANE, E.G. C. F. CLAY, Manager ^ m, in m It m ^ (Ebmburflh: loo PRINCES STREET Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO. i:ei4)i3: F. A. BROCKHAUS llctoSork: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS ^mnhajj an6 Calcutta : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. All rights reserved Photo, Emery Walker JOHN WESLEY From the portrait in the National Gallery by Nathaniel Hone, R.A. JVith the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1 5 2 1 PREFACE In this short sketch of a great subject the author has tried to put himself into the critical but not un- friendly position of the interested outsider, for whom primarily this volume is intended. This is especially the case in Chapter IV. on the Divisions of Method- ism, and in Chapter V. on the Theology and Polity of Methodism. It will be perfectly obvious that, in so short a sketch as the present, many questions have had to be dealt with briefly, which in a work on a larger scale could have been more generously treated. H. B. W. March, 1912. 249499 CONTENTS John W^esley ..... Fronthpicce CHAP. I. The Eighteenth Century . II. John Wesley .... III. Methodism in America and beyond the Seas IV. The Divisions and Re-unions of British Methodi V. The Theology and Polity of Methodism . Select Bibliography .... Index . . . PAQB 1 25 (58 M 88 107 129 131 vu METHODISM CHAPTER I THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Argument I. The fact and bxtent of Methodism The meaning of the Eighteenth Centtiry The expansion of Britain The opportunity of Methodism . . PP- 1^-7 II. The Industrial Revohition The changed conditions The new towns The failure of Anglicanism to meet the needs ...... pp. 8-12 ITT. The general blindness of the age Want of foresight The worldliness of the age Absence of spiritual mes- sage Decay of doctrinal teaching Erastianism Theological polemics The danger of exaggeration The religious life of tlie middle classes . . pp. 12-24 To the student of the history of the English-speaking races the story of Methodism must always form one of considerable interest. A Church which enfolds some thirty millions of adherents ; which has estabhshed itself in every quarter of the globe, A ' 1 2 . c . ., METHODISM with especial prbttiinence in the United States ; which is to-day, with the possible exception of the Lutheran Church, the largest Protestant Church in the world, certainly the largest Church of the EngHsh race, Protestant or otherwise ; whose indirect influence has been almost as great as its direct ^is manifestly a fact in the sphere of the spiritual which cannot be ignored even by those who would on a priori grounds refuse to recognise its apostolic origin, or its ecclesiastical claims. In these pages, leaving on one side all that is con- troversial, the attempt will be made to set forth in briefest compass the origins and meaning of Methodism, with such facts in its later history as may be of more general interest. We have stated that Methodism, with its millions of adherents in the United States, is the largest Church of Enghsh races in the world. To the English AngHcan who has never travelled in America or in the English Colonies, above all, to the Scot familiar only with the predominant Presbyterianism of his native country, such a statement will come, perhaps, with surprise. Assuming the accuracy of the claim, we may point out the close connection there is between the vast extension of Methodism in the modern world and the time of its origin. For Methodism was the outcome of the eighteenth century. Now it is the fashion in certain quarters THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 3 to look upon that century as lifeless. But it is in the eighteenth century, and in the movements, religious and political, of that most interesting age, that we discern the beginnings of the great currents, economic, social, political, intellectual, and religious, that govern the modern world. In the eighteenth century we see the older systems crumb- ling away under the dissolvent action of forces created and fed by the vanishing age. On all sides we note the signs of a fundamental reconstruction, culminating in Methodism and the French Revolu- tion, in their diverse ways the most tremendous phenomena of the century, the first for the English- speaking races, the second for the world at large. But Methodism would have been of but slight importance had not its origin coincided with the remarkable development and expansion in the political and social life of the EngHsh people. In the eighteenth century, the century that is which, properly, may be said to begin with the death of Anne and to close with the Congresses of Vienna (1714-1816), three features in the expansion of Great Britain stand out clear and distinct the growth and consolidation of the empire and its colonies, including the United States ; the organisa- tion of the Parliamentary State, and the beginning of democracy ; and the rise of the industrial revolu- tion. Each of these great features in the evolution 4 METHODISM of the national life has contributed to the place and power of Methodism. Bnt as the chief effect of the new democratic ideas was seen in the internal history of Methodism itself, we shall defer any con- sideration of this factor to a later chapter, and confine our attention for the present to the other two. Of these three factors the first, the physical ex- tension of the English race, is the simplest. In the sixteenth century, in her conflict with Spain, England first discovered the value of sea-power ; in the eighteenth century a series of fortunate events gave to her a hold upon the greater part of the undeveloped portions of the globe. For England the Seven Years' War was a turning-point in her national history, as indeed it was in the history of the world. England ceased to be a mere European power, whose position was determined by its place in a single continent ; henceforth she claimed the Empire of the Seas, and that her destinies lay in the lands beyond the oceans. The voyages and discoveries of Cook ; the intrepid adventures of North American trappers ; the irresistible impulse which drew the settlers west- ward over the AUeghanies to the blue grass of Kentucky, on "to the Father of the Waters,'" and the Rockies beyond ; the war which, by the fall of Quebec and the capture of Pittsburg and Louis- burg, changed New France into the future Dominion THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 5 of Canada ; the European struggles which led to the cession of the mighty area of Louisiana first to Spain, afterwards to the infant States ; the strange events which, in the next century, were destined to evolve a mighty continent from a penal settle- ment at Botany Bay ; the fortune which handed over an outpost of Dutch farmers and merchants at the Cape to the government of a country that, happily, knew not of the troubles the gift was destined to bring in its train all these were part of the forces which gave to the revival, begun by the Wesley s, its world-wide opportunity. But for these Methodism could have become little more than a small sect of English Nonconformists a position that still, by the ignorant, is so commonly assigned to her instead of a vast imperial Church. One illustration of the importance of these factors must suffice. Let the reader take the map of North America as it was in 1712, and he will note a little strip of English settlers hemmed in on all sides by the dominions of France and Spain. If fortune had dealt otherwise in the conflicts at Pittsburg (1758), on the Heights of Abraham (1759), and in Acadia (1757), the opportunity of Methodism might have been as slight as it still is in the French provinces of Quebec, or in the Spanish countries beneath the Southern Cross. In the marvellous expansion of the English- 6 METHODISM speaking race, of which the eighteenth century saw the beginnings, Methodism obtained her supreme advantage. No spiritual revival, however deep, could have produced the Methodist Church of to- day if it had found the ground already occupied, or if it had been retained, Uke some medieval order of monks or friars, within the parent Church. But when, whether from latent forces within herself or by the folly or apathy of the bishops, Methodism was driven out of the Anglican Church, she dis- covered on all sides vast opportunities, some the result of new circumstances, others the issue of neglect. A simple illustration from to-day will make our meaning clear. The early years of the twentieth century have witnessed the great marvel of the re-awakening of the East. A chance has arisen the like of which has never been seen in missionary annals since the fall of the Roman Empire. As yet none can say what section of the one Church will respond to the call and claim for her Master the heritage of the East. To-day, as in the third century, the future of the world, it may be the future of the Church of Christ, lies with the de- nomination that seizes aright the great missionary opportunities of the age. In the seventh and eighth centuries the Roman Church established herself by the response she gave, under the lead of Gregory the Great, to the call of the barbarians, Saxons, THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 7 Danes, and the like. In the twentieth century the church or denomination that rises to the need of China or Japan or India be she Protestant or Roman will be the Church of the future, in spite of all a priori reasonings or prepossessions. Hers will be the logic of established fact. So in the eighteenth century we witness a similar crisis, a similar opportunity, though limited, broadly speak- ing, to the Anglo-Saxon race. The annexation by the English of the uninhabited portions of the world was not the less the great fact of the century because it was so largely undesigned, we might almost write, accidental. In an empire founded by design pro- vision would have been made for the transference to the new provinces of the established religion of the centre. As a matter of fact, such provision was almost totally ignored, as we see from the con- stant refusal of the English Government to allow the ordination of bishops for America. The failure of the Anglican Church, for reasons partly political partly spiritual, to respond to the needs of the expanding Empire issued in Methodism stepping in her own way into the vacant place, and thereby securing the remarkable position that she now holds. 8 METHODISM II If to the expansion of Britain we owe the world- wide extension of Methodism, its hold at home must be largely traced to the industrial revolution of the century. At the birth of Wesley the most populous counties, next to Surrey and Middlesex, were Somerset, Wilts, Oxford, Suffolk, and other country districts, none of which, however, had on the average more than sixty individuals to the square mile. At the commencement of the eight- teenth century, England and Wales had a population considerably less than that of modern London, for the most part rural in character and pursuits, or living under the shadow of some ancient cathedral, or in some small county town whose picturesque decay to-day tells us of a vanished age. Apart from the capital, Bristol, Norwich and York were the only cities of any size, while the population of Worcestershire was more dense than that of Lancashire or Yorkshire. But within the lifetime of Wesley all this was changed. By the year 1800 England had become the workshop of the world, at that time the sole industrial State in existence. She had ceased to be the nation of shopkeepers that Louis XIV. had called her, not without some justification, and had become a nation of artisans and capitalists. The result of this industrial growth THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 9 of the latter part of the eighteenth century was a revolution in which the older England, the England which for a thousand years had developed slowly but continuously on certain definite lines, passed away for ever. A new England was born, at first misshapen, undesirable, unconscious of herself ; nor were there absent the usual pangs and pains of an unexpected birth. With the incoming of the age of iron and steam, the centre of gravity Avas shifted from the rural south to the new populations north of the Humber. On all sides we see the influx from the country into the towns, the depopulation of the country ; this last aided by the selfish system of enclosures the great legalised crime of the age which deprived the villagers, without compensation, of the rights in the soil that for centuries had been theirs. But the towns, for the most part, were not the old boroughs. London, it is true, maintained its pre-eminence, and Bristol struggled, though ineffectually, to adapt its trade to the nevv^ conditions. But Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Birm^ingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford were almost the new creations of the industrial revolution, and of a commerce that more and more turned its gaze away from Europe and the old trade-routes towards the West. Vast as were the growths of population in the towns in the nineteenth century, they but accentuated the results 10 METHODISM already accomplished by the industrial revolution in the last thirty years of the eighteenth century. The England of to-day, so far at any rate as its organised Ufe is concerned, is essentially the develop- ment of the England of 1780 ; separated from the England of 1680 b}^ a gulf almost as deep and broad as that which divides the England of Charles II. from medieval times. For the shifting of population from country to town was the least important element in the new England. The inhabitants of the new towns soon showed characteristics, the product of their toil and of their specialised skill, that cut them off from the slow-going, conservative dwellers round some cathedral close or in the southern villages. In many directions we see the cracking and crumb- ling of the old social and economic structure. Ter- ritorial feudalism gave place to the new relations of capital and labour. The new towns, with their teeming life, found the old ideals impossible, and demanded new creeds, new economics, new politics and a new literature. On all sides we see the rise of new problems ^the drink question, the need of popular education, and of a reform of the Poor Law, are three instances out of many that will occur to the thoughtful the result of the new, ill-regulated, unorganised industrialism. Unhappily for herself, in this hour of revolution, THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 11 the Church of England was almost wholly unable to adapt herself to the new needs. Her parochial system had become stereotyped by the centuries. Where a thousand new churches and schools would have been none too many, she built with niggard hand but here and there. Under Walpole's ad- ministration a full stop was even put to Queen Anne's scheme for the building of fifty- two additional churches in London. The AngHcan clergy were, for the most part, country Tories, cut off, through the necessities of the Hanoverian dynasty, from all influence upon government ; fatally cut off, by education and politics, from either understanding of, or sympathy with, the new populations. Her bishops, who should have been the first to see the needs of the hour, were largely court Whigs, nominees of the Crown, through their politics thus cut off from their clergy, over whom they kept the political watch, which to some of their mimber appeared the whole duty of spiritual overseers. Even if they had been accepted as leaders they had few of the qualities which would have guided the Anglican Church in the new problems which confronted her. Where the economic and social dislocation of the age demanded a constructive statesmanship instinct with love, the bishops, with rare exceptions, showed that they were unaware of any problem that needed attention. Where the people, in their inarticulate 12 METHODISM misery, cried out for bread, they gave them a stone ; instead of the living water they suppHed them with rivers of ink ; in place of leadership through the wilderness they advocated a stern repression. So once again, at home as in the Colonies, the English Church lost her opportunity. When, after the Oxford Movement, she awoke to the call, she found that the new populations had largely fallen away from her to the older Dissenters and the new Methodists. These, at any rate, however im- perfectly, had tried to understand their needs. But in Scotland the new industrialism which turned Glasgow from a small town sheltering beneath its cathedral into a mighty metropolis, found a native Presbyterianism alive to its wants at any rate possessing the latent qualities needed and so rejected the Methodism which appealed to the southrons. Ill In her inelasticity of methods, in her blindness to the great needs of the day, the Church of England was only too truly representative of the nation at large, and of the statesmen who lost the American colonies because of their inability to discern the signs of the times. To the student of the eighteenth century nothing is more remarkable than the THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 13 intensity with which the eighteenth century interested itself in what are now seen to have been the merest trifles, the bhndness it displayed to the great ele- mental forces working below the surface. Its history, until stung from unconsciousness into reality by the great fact of the French Revolution, too often disgusts by the pettiness of its political cabals and the grossness of its financial abuses, by the brutality of its legal system, and by the in- sufferable arrogance with which a landed class, wrapped up in its pleasures, resisted or mutilated, when it could not reject, every movement towards reform. Yet a keener vision discerns beneath the mass of corruption and intrigue the slow trans- ference of executive authority from the Crown to the Cabinet, the slow rise of the new democracy. We remember that in spite of politicians it was in the eighteenth century that we won India, and, by the capture of Quebec, determined the future of America. The more we look back the more we are amazed at the apparent accidents which in the eighteenth century gave us a world-wide empire, of the extent and future of which the shrewdest thinkers had neither dreams nor visions. To-day we see clearly the great results hidden from the eyes of the age that wrought them. Trivial as were oftentimes the ostensible causes of her constant wars the war of Jenkins' ear may serve as an 14 METHODISM example we now know that upon them depended the most tremendous issues. As usual, unknown to ourselves, we blundered into success. The battles fought in Flanders, or beyond the Rhine, to bring the Bourbons to their knees, were fought there in name alone. Their effect was to open up the Great Lakes of Canada, to hand over to us the great hinterland beyond the AUeghanies, or to turn our trading factories in Bengal or on the Coromandel coast into the beginnings of our Indian Empire. Equally remarkable was this bUndness both in the world of ideas and of social life. Absence of foresight was the great characteristic of the age ; the natural result of its constant policy trmiquiUa non movere. Through want of foresight, of power to discern the new needs of a new world, Europe, England included, lost its colonies, where a greater sympathy, big ideas of adaptation and reconstruc- tion, would have saved them. The unexpectedness with which the French Revolution burst upon the world is one of the commonplaces of history. In English political life the same bHndness was seen in the dreary Toryism characteristic of the period, which resisted all change simply because it was change, and conceived that the one end of states- manship was the defence of the rights of property to the neglect of its duties, or the maintenance of THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 15 the existing social order by a ruthless regime of coercion and repression. Not less remarkable, how- ever, was the blindness of our rulers to the meaning of the great forces, economical, social, and religious, which were slowly springing into being beneath the surface. And because these things were hidden from its eyes, the eighteenth century concerned itseK with the superficial facts of a life whose picturesque, elegant charm has so fascinated all that we sometimes forget that the eighteenth century will be for ever memorable, not because of its beaux, its wits, its exquisite manners, its delightful dilet- tanteism, but because of the revolutionary forces that, unknown to itseK, were maturing within its womb. In the blindness and inelasticity of fche Anglican Church in the eighteenth century, we find both the occasion and the opportunity of Methodism. But blindness and inelasticity, though sins unto death, are themselves the result of a deeper cause. Nothing is easier than to dwell on the worldliness of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. The historians of Methodism, as a rule, have made too much of the sins, the follies, the religious indiffer- ence, the open infidelity, the cultured licence, the grossness of life, the absence of any ideal of duty or spiritual sense which characterised the age, and had eaten out the life of the Church. The facts. 16 METHODISM too familiar to need repetition, Avere sad enough in all conscience. Even if the Church liad been ahve she would have needed all her reserves of strength in facing the vast problems of a new age. As it was she had a name to live but was dead. At the commencement of the century she had political power in abundance, as we see from the Sacheverell struggle, and from her passing such disgraceful measures as the Occasional Conformity Act and the Schism Act (1714). But such power is of no avail where there is the absence of spiritual life ; in fact, by its prostitution to selfish or intolerant ends, such power becomes in the long run a positive hindrance. The reader should grasp clearly wherein the weakness of the Anglican Church consisted. First and foremost we put the absence of all spiritual message. Even the nobler men in the Church, its Seekers and Butlers, seem to have been unconscious of any higher source of inspiration than reasonable- ness and moderation. In this absence of spiritual vision the Church of England proved herself on the same low level as the age before which she should have upheld the ideals of the Cross. The century was, in reality, in its early years especially, an age of spiritual fatigue, of dim ideals and expiring hopes. Instead of the great religious and political ideas of the seventeenth century we have the age of Walpole THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 17 and the Pelhams, an age in which idealism and self-sacrifice, with one or two great exceptions, are conspicuous by their absence. The forces which had produced the religious struggles of the previous century had become exhausted, and had given place, partly by reaction, to a hard uninspiring materialism, opportunist in its methods, destitute of all the nobler and more ideal elements of life, and, in consequence, fatally degraded in its standards of religion and ethics. On all sides the age was one of inertia, of the absence of " visions,'' and of con- sequent spiritual sterility. As is usually the case in a materialistic age we note the rapid disappearance of doctrinal teaching, and the conversion of Chris- tianity into a mere system of moralit3^ The natural results followed. The substitution of a moral for the supernatural basis of religion led to the decay of morality itself. The Church prided itself upon its elimination of " enthusiasm," and upon its practical tendencies ; the real result was extra- ordinary coarseness and inefficiency in all depart- ments of life. The effects of this national decadence are seen in their most exaggerated forms in such hideous scandals as the South Sea Bubble, and the passion for gambling which seized the upper classes. More lasting in its results was the extraordinary increase of drinking, especially of gin, among all classes of 18 METHODISM the community, and the rapid growth of all forms of lawlessness and crime. English philosophy, poetry, and religion were all alike dominated by the same lifeless materiahsm. In the sphere of thought this called itself rationalism. In the sphere of religion it resolved itself into a self-complacency unconscious of the fact of sin, and, therefore, of the need of a Saviour, that masqueraded as theoretical Deism, or as a benevolent neutrality between rival religions. Even poetry, under its influence, became so intensely didactic as to lose all its lyrical and natural notes. Turn where we will we see all upward longing lost in a destructive materialistic satisfaction with a level of effort or attainment that at the best was but decent mediocrity. One special feature of this absence of spiritual message should be noted. In the reaction of the Restoration the Church had become so thoroughly Erastian that the leading tenet of her Christianity if we may judge from the dying profession of Lake, Bishop of Chichester, from the national enthusiasm it evoked at the trial of Sacheverell (1710), from printed sermons innumerable, and from legal statutes, oaths of allegiance, and the like Avould appear to have been the doctrine of non-resistance to the Divine Right of Kings. As Lecky has pointed out, " It occupied a more prominent place than any other tenet in the whole compass of theology/' THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 10 The discredit of this doctrine, begun by the Revolu- tion of 1688 and completed by the Hanoverian succession, was bound to react upon the influence of the Church which had proclaimed it as a cardinal tenet ; the more so, because, unfortunately for herself, the Church had nothing to take its place. With the accession of the Georges Erastianism merely took a new form . The Hanoverian statesman, Walpole, in especial, systematically degraded the Church into a useful state-engine. For this purpose, after silencing convocation, they governed a hostile Tory clergy by Whig bishops, selected for political, at best for intellectual rather than spiritual, con- siderations, whose latitudinarian doctrines, however much might have been said for them otherwise, were bitterly resented by High Church orthodoxy. Such evidence as the Church showed of religious vitality was almost confined to the production of endless theological polemics, for the most part of the earth earthy and barren. Apologetics were poured out for Christianity, a few no doubt of permanent value, as all work must be which places Christianity upon a firm intellectual basis. But the greatest apology, the Christian life itself, was too conspicu- ously absent. The apologists, moreover, forgot that Christianity, if true to its genius and history, should always be on the attack against the gates of hell rather than sheltering behind the walls of syllogisms. 20 METHODISM Even Butler's Analogy, with all its force of argument, is the exhibition of Christianity upon its last line of defence, as indeed to Butler's pessimistic mind it would appear to have been. Not with such a theory of Probabilism did the Church win its ancient conquests. At all events the zeal for orthodoxy of the few can never atone for the apathy in the discharge of spiritual duties of the many. In the case of the better placed clergy, including even such men as Butler, absenteism was the rule rather than the exception. In ten parishes round Cheddar there was not a single resident curate. The devotion of such men as Walker of Truro, Fletcher of Madeley, Grimshaw of Ha worth, Berridge of Everton, and William Romaine, could not make up for the general indifference of the parochial clergy and the utter lack of organisation. Owing largely to the pluralities whereby the few were gorged at the expense of the many, the parish clergy, for the most part, were ill-paid, of low social position, of times cringing and obsequious. Unfortunately also some of the sainthest of the clergy were non-Jurors, e.g. Jeremy ColUer and William Law, who were thus cut off from their due influence. Though in the large towns the clergy as a whole were of superior stamp, they had little spiritual influence with their con- gregations, and, for that matter, in too many cases showed little desire to possess it. When Romaine THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 21 filled St George's, Hanover Square, with '* a ragged, unsavoury multitude '' attracted by his preaching, his vicar was the first to forbid him the pulpit. Nevertheless, though the facts of spiritual decad- ence are beyond dispute, we must beware of exag- geration. Historians, we think, have sometimes attached too much weight to the well-known utter- ances of Butler, they have forgotten the pessimism so habitual with him that he declined the arch- bishopric of Canterbury on the ground that it was " too late for him to try to support a falling Church." We are in some danger, in dealing with the eighteenth century, of being misled by its writers and politicians, and of forgetting the great middle and lower middle classes never more inarticulate than in that age of surface-culture. The need of avoiding exaggeration, so far as the middle classes are concerned, is especially seen when we consider the number and extent of the reHgious societies, composed almost without exception of members of the Anglican Church, which to some extent anticipated the society classes of Wesley. The formation of these can be dated back as far as 1678, and during the first thirty years of the century they flourished exceedingly, largely through the influence of WiUiam Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. The intention of one and all was " to quicken each other's affection towards spiritual 22 METHODISM things/' But from seeking to save their own souls they soon passed b}^ the inevitable transition into the attempt to save the souls of others ; as Law puts it, " that some might be relieved by their charities, and all be blessed with their prayers, and benefited by their example/' Unfortunately, though hedged about with precautions to keep them within Church lines, they became the object of suspicion to the dignitaries of the Church, who, at the first show of " enthusiasm " or earnestness, showed an hostiUty which eventually ruined them. The existence of these Anglican societies is, how- ever, but a detail. There are larger grounds for bewaring of exaggeration. The political defeat of Puritanism has led many writers to overlook the degree to which it had woven new strands of abiding influence into the life of the nation. The surface- facts of the eighteenth century must not mislead us. Beneath all the froth and scum that floated on the top the waters of the river of life still ran deep though not always clear. We see this in the lives of such laymen as Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, of the Countess of Huntingdon and Lady Elizabeth Hastings, and of such bishops as the saintly Thomas Wilson of Sodor and Man. George I. may have been a murderer, as Lord Acton claimed, a murderer " whose proper destination should have been not St James' but Newgate, and indeed not THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 23 Newgate but Tyburn '' ; Frederick, Prince of Wales, was probably, to quote his own mother's verdict, " the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world " ', an utter lack of decorum and morality alike may have characterised Walpole and his circle ; but, after all, English home life in the main was still pure in spite of its corrupt court and aristocracy, Voltaire's published assertion that England was the most irreligious of countries, will not stand dispassionate examination. The clergy, it is true, judged as a body, were held in con- tempt ; but Christianity itself, though, as Bishop Seeker complained in 1738, " railed at and ridiculed with very little reserve '' in certain intellectual quarters, still claimed the allegiance of the people. In London and many provincial towns the lecture- ships, founded in Puritan times and largely held by Evangelicals, still drew large congregations. Of Melmoth's Great Importance of a Religious Life, published in 1711, no fewer than 42,000 copies were sold within a few years. Deism, though popular at court and with the educated few, had no footing among the masses or with the country squires. In diverse ways, both in the university and else- where, thoughtful men were feeling out towards something less arid than the current beliefs not always wisely, as we see from the curious story of 24 METHODISM the Hutchinsonians. Walpole and Bolingbroke and others of the governing classes might privately ridicule the religion to whose forms for political purposes they professed complete adherence, but after all this scepticism was one of the marks of a class, like the snufiF-box or the powdered peruke, one of the many signs of the dangerous breach between the few and the many, the governing and the governed, the outcome of which, on the Continent, was the French Revolution, the result of which in England would have been the same dangerous outbreak, had it not been for the Methodist revival. CHAPTER II JOHN WESLEY Argument I. The greatness of John Wesley His services to England pp. 25-28 IT. Wesley's ancestry Educttion Oxford The Holy Club Mission to Georgia Peter Boliler Wesley's conversion His apostolic labours His death pp. 28-40 III. Wesley's co-workers Whitefield Charles Wesley Poverty of later hymnology John Fletcher Countess of Huntingdon . . . PP- 40-48 IV. Features of Wesley's ministry Anti-parochialism Use of the pen Emphasis of doctrinal basis Wesley's relation to the thought of the age His appeal to experience Limitations of the age Blindness to child-life Kingswood School Sunday School pp. 49-57 V. Absence of constructive statesmanship Wesley's genius for organisation His indifference to regula- tions Causes of the separation of Methodism from the Anglican Church Wesley's influence upon his age The social effects of the Revival . . pp. 57-07 I In this hour of sensual indifference, hard material- ism and contented blindness, England was saved by one man, " A mighty leader who brought forth 26 METHODISM water from the rocks to make a barren land live again." ^ In John Wesley the importunity found the hero. "It is prodigious," remarked Johnson once, " the quantity of good that may be done by one man if he will make a business of it." And throughout his long life Wesley certainly made this his one " business." In an age of indifference he was ever strenuous ; amid the profound selfish- ness of the times he never spared himself. In return it was given him to see of the travail of his soul, and to rejoice in the " prodigious quantity of good " which he had been enabled to accomplish. " To thousands of men and women his preaching and gospel revealed a new heaven and a new earth ; it brought religion into soulless lives and recon- stituted it as a comforter, an inspiration, and a judge. No one was too poor, too humble, too de- graded, to be born again and share in the privilege of divine grace, to serve the one Master, Christ, and to attain to this blessed fruition of God's peace. Aloof alike from politics and the speculations of the schools, Wesley wrestled with the evils of his day and proclaimed the infinite power of a Christian faith based on personal conviction, eternally re- newed from within, to battle with sin, misery and vice in all its forms." The social service that he accomplished was not the least of his triumphs. 1 H. W. Ternperley in Camh. Mod, Hist, vi. 16. JOHN WESLEY 27 For Methodism diverted into religious channels a vast volume of social discontent, which in France swelled the tides that in 1789 submerged Church and State. 1 Of even greater importance is it to remember the new elements of moral and religious influence which he gave to the English people at the beginning of an era of imperial expansion. Of the greatness of Wesley there can be no question. A sufficient monument of his greatness, for those who would look around, will be found in the organised millions of adherents of the Methodist Church among the English-speaking races of all lands. " I consider him,'' wrote Southey in 1818, " the most influential mind of the last century." In 1879 he was described by Gladstone as " that extraordinary man whose life and acts have taken their place in the religious history, not only of England, but of Christendom.'' " In the many- sidedness of his education, and in his unwearied interest in all branches of knowledge " we quote the verdict of one of the foremost scholars of Germany, Dr Loofs of Halle " he is without a peer among revival preachers in any age." According to J. R. Green, " he embodied in himself not this or that side of the vast (Methodist) movement, but the very movement itself." " If ever there was a poor, fallible man," writes Canon Overton, " whose aims 1 Gf. C. G. Robertson, England under the Hanoverians, p. 211, \l 28 METHODISM were uniformly noble and disinterested, that man was John Wesley." " If the England of to-day," adds Cornelius de Witt, " no longer resembles the England of the eighteenth century, it is mainly due to him." To the same effect is the judgement of a recent historian. After pointing out the hard materiaUsm of the eighteenth century, Mr Temperley reminds us that the eighteenth century was not without its rebels who " sought to dam or divert the streams of tendency. Of these men Chatham among politicians, Thomson among poets, Berkeley among philosophers, Law among divines, all derived new thoughts, evoked new harmonies, or caught new inspirations from the age. But more im- portant than any of these in universality of in- fluence, and in range of achievement, were John Wesley and the religious revival to which he gave his name and life." ^ II John Wesley was born on 17th June (O.S.) 1703 at Ep worth rectory in Lincolnshire. By descent on both sides he came of a tough Nonconformist stock. His paternal great grandfather, Bartholomew Westley of Lyme Regis, was one of the clergy ejected in 1662 ; his grandfather was driven from place to ^ Cambridge Modern History, vi. 77. JOHN WESLEY 20 place under the infamous Five Mile Act ; while his grandmother's father, Mr White, was the chairman of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. But Wesley's father had early renounced Dissent, tramped to Oxford, and there become saturated with the pre- valent High Church Toryism. Nevertheless, in spite of himseK, we see the influence in Samuel Wesley of his Nonconformist ancestry and their beliefs. As he lay dying (1738) he told his son John : " The inward witness, son, the inward witness ! This is the proof, the strongest proof of Christianity." " I did not at the time understand them," adds John, when repeating the words long years afterwards. More important than the influence upon John Wesley of his father, Avas that of his mother Susanna, to whom has been rightly given the title of " The mother of Methodism." All writers acknowledge that she was a woman of extraordinary intelligence and will, of somewhat Spartan instincts, totally destitute of humour, who carried method into every- thing, religion included. Her father was a dis- tinguished Nonconformist divine, Dr Annesley, of Queen's College, Oxford, who, in 1662, was ejected from Cripplegate Church. From him she had in- herited a character, the main traits of which, accord- ing to her son, were "her orderliness, reasonable- ness, steadfastness of purpose, calm authority, and tender affection." Her reading was extensive for 30 METHODISM the day, and shows the strong influence upon her of Pascal. At the age of thirteen she showed her force of will by renouncing her father's dissent, or rather the Socinianism into which she had reasoned herself. Her letters, especially her correspondence with her son John, show a deeply religious char- acter, remarkable both for its insight, and for the way in which she succeeded in winning to herself the tender confidence of her sons. As the mother of nineteen children of whom John was the eleventh, as the partner of a somewhat impractic- able poetaster, as the housewife who could never escape the burden of poverty the total income of Epworth was less than 50 a year, she needed to have all her wits about her ; all her bravery, too, to bear up against the tragedy of her daughters' marriages. At the age of eleven Wesley entered Charterhouse as a gown-boy. There he remained six years. In 1719 his brother Samuel, who was then head usher of Westminster, writes to his father : " Jack is with me a brave boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can." In strenuousness, at any rate, the boy was father of the man. In spite of its rough lawless- ness Wesley formed a high esteem of Charterhouse. " A public school,'' writes Wesley at a later date, " promises manly assurance, and an early know- ledge of the ways of the world." In 1716 his JOHN WESLEY 13 1 brother Charles entered Westminster, and for four years the three brothers Avere in London together. But in 1720 John entered Christ Church, Oxford, his brother Charles following him six years later. In the eighteenth century Oxford was at the lowest point of the long degradation which had followed the Reformation. Its dreary hatred of all " en- thusiasm '' was not even redeemed by the twentieth- century cult of the athlete. Politically, Oxford had become identified with a sullen Jacobitism, and in consequence was fatally cut off from the currents of national life. Educationally, its influence was but slight, " casual, secondar}^, and incidental '' to quote the verdict of Mark Pattison. Wesley's judgement upon Oxford was almost as severe as that of Gibbon. He found that nothing was " so scarce as learning, save religion.'' The general idleness disgusted him ; the utter disregard of the statutes seemed to him immoral. In 1726 Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, one of the few colleges that had not alto- gether yielded to the evil influences of the times. For a short time he held a curacy at Wroote, in his father's parish ; in November 1729 he returned to Lincoln to take up tutorial work. He lectured in Greek and logic. This last subject was always a favourite with him. " I praise God," he writes, " for giving me this honest art." His contemporary, 32 METHODISM Gambold, supplies us with the reason. " The first thing Wesley struck at in young men was that in- dolence which would not submit to close thinking/' His fidehty to his duties was marked. Wesley himself tells us that he would have thought himself " little better than a highwayman '' if he had neglected his lectures ; " learning on principle of conscience '' was one of the matters that he sought to instil into his pupils. Shortly after his return from Wroote, Wesley, who had come under the influence of Law's Serious Gall, became the recognised leader in a little group in the University, already known as " Methodists/' because they had " agreed together to observe with strict formality the method of study and practice laid down in the statutes.'' The number of members in this " Holy Club " fluctuated considerably. At the outside it numbered twenty-seven ; once it sank to five. The founder of these Oxford " Methodists/' " Sacramentarians/' or " Bible Moths " ^for their nicknames were many was his brother Charles who, in 1726, had been elected a student of Christ Church. At that time Charles was " a sprightly, rollicking young fellow with more genius than grace." " What ! " he retorted once to his brother's entreaties, " would you have me to be a saint all at once." But coming under deeper impressions he began to partake of the JOHN WESLEY 33 Sacrament weekly in the College Chapel, and to induce two or three others to follow his example. Feeling the need of further guidance Charles con- sulted his brother John. " In November 1729," writes Wesley in his Journal, " four young gentlemen of Oxford, Mr John Wesley, Fellow of Lincoln College, Mr Charles Wesley, Student of Christ Church, Mr Morgan, Commoner of Christ Church, and Mr Kirkham, of Merton College, began to spend some evenings a week in reading, chiefly the New Testament.'' They also bound themselves to hold regular seasons for prayer, to the rigorous observ- ance of the fasts of the Church, the use of the Con- fessional, a stern self-discipline, and systematic visitation of the sick and poor, as well as of the prisoners in Bocardo the Oxford gaol. In a pas- sionate enthusiasm for self-denial Wesley at this time found the mark of true religious life. " No man,'' he said, "is in a state of salvation until he is contemned by the whole world." In all essentials, in fact, the beginnings of the Oxford Movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth century were similar. In the long run also the leaders in both were driven out of the Church of England. But while for the most part the disciples of the Tractarians remained within the Anglican Church, the followers of Wesley were anxious for separa- tion. But long before the separation came, c 34 METHODISM Wesley himself had abandoned most of his Oxford ideas. Of the members of this " Holy Club '' the best known, next to the Wesley s, was George Whitefield, though James Hervey, the author of the Meditations among the Tombs, and John Clayton, the Jacobite Rector of Manchester, should not be forgotten. As in the later Oxford movement Pusey and Keble remained when Newman left, so with the " Holy Club.'' Clayton and Hervey had no sympathy with the later developments into which Wesley was led. Comparisons with the Oxford Movement, though useful and necessary, break down in one matter. Newman and the Tractarians profoundly swayed the University ; there is Httle evidence that W^esley and his associates produced much impression upon the life of Oxford. The " Holy Club " would have been as ephemeral in its reputation as most other University societies, nor, for that matter, had it a much longer life than the majority. It owes its place in history solely to the after deeds of three of its members Whitefield, and the two Wesleys. In October 1735 John and Charles Wesley set off for America to convert the settlers and Indians in Oglethorpe's colony of Georgia. " My chief motive," John writes, " is the hope of saving my own soul." In words which would have charmed Rousseau, he dreamed of a return to nature as a JOHN WESLEY 35 return to grace. " I cannot hope," he said, " to attain the same degree of holiness here which I may there/' The Wesley s were followed in 1737 by George Whitefield. This missionary journey must not be judged either by Wesley's motives, or by the apparent failure of the results. As with much else in the eighteenth century the event was greater than the age conceived. The missionary call so long neglected by the Protestant Churches was once more heard and obeyed. As we see from Bishop Berkeley's project for a college in Bermuda, from Codrington's College in the Bar- badoes, from Colonel Spotswood's school for the education of Indians in Virginia, and from the mission in 1751 of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to the coast of Guinea, once more men began to dream of the world for Christ. In the mission to Georgia we have one of the begin- nings of the great movement which, at a later date, received fuller organisation from Carey, Coke and other founders of modern missionary societies. Wesley's mission, while of importance for the future, was, however, worse than a failure. Wesley, in Southey's words, instead of feeding his flock with milk, " drenched them with the physic of an intolerant discipline," of which, in after years, he was heartily ashamed, and which, at the time, led him into trouble. Throughout life, in his re- 36 METHODISM lations to women, Wesley displayed a " guileless simplicity/' His later domestic life was spoiled by his shrewish wife ; his earlier career at Savannah was in danger of being wrecked by a romantic and painful love affair. In the upshot it led to his leaving Georgia. At the same time Charles ruined his career by a lack of tact which set even Oglethorpe against him. Though the mission was a failure, the importance of the experience for the Wesleys, personally, was great. The journey had taught John to quote his own words, about the truth of which, however, in later life he had many misgivings " that I, who went to America to convert others, was never my- self converted.'' The journey had also brought the brothers into touch with the Moravians. Through their leader, Peter Bcihler, Wesley was led at last into spiritual rest. The first step was the conviction of " the want of faith whereby alone we are saved." From this stress and doubt Charles was the first who found deliverance, followed a few days later by his brother. On the evening of 24th May 1738, a day which marks, as Lecky says, " an epoch in English history," Wesley went, " very unwillingly," to a meeting of one of the " religious societies," an Anglican society be it noted, and not as is so often stated, a Moravian, in Aldersgate Street, probably in Nettleton Court. Throughout the day he had JOHN WESLEY 37 been eagerly listening for some message. Now as he heard a member read Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans : " About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins.'' On that day Methodism, as history knows it, was born, nor is it by accident that it was so strangely linked up in its birth with the great German re- former. Into the precise meaning of Wesley's conversion, as a fact in his own spiritual history, we do not propose to enter. Without the throes of a great spiritual struggle, no great religious leader has ever reached the clear consciousness of his spiritual mission. St Paul, St Augustine, St Francis, Luther, Bunyan the nam^e is legion all aUke illustrate this fundamental fact. Most of those who have passed through such fires are somewhat prone to undervalue their previous experiences, or to ex- aggerate the suddenness of the transition. Wesley was no exception to the rule, though, in his later years, he formed a much more charitable view of the value of his earHer reHgious life than in the first 38 METHODISM enthusiasm of his conversion. Most men to-day would agree with Canon Overton's criticism of Wesley's excessive self-condemnation : "If John Wesley was not a true Christian (when in Georgia), God help millions of those who profess and call themselves Christians/' But be this as it may, of the importance as a landmark in the history of Protestant Christianity of this " conversion " there can be no doubt. The Wesley of the " Holy Club " and of Georgia would scarcely have secured the humblest mention even in the most comprehensive Dictionary of National Biography. It was " that wonderful experience " in Aldersgate Street that has given to the name of John Wesley its place in the history of Christendom. Henceforth, for half a century ^we quote his letter to Walker of Truro he had but : " One point in view to promote so far as I am able, vital, practical religion, and by the grace of God, to beget, preserve, and increase the life of God in the souls of men." How well and faithfully he carried out his ideal is known of all men. Upon the details of that won- derful life we shall not dwell, if only because every student should read them for himself as set forth by Wesley in his Journals one of the most valuable human documents of any age, indispensable for all JOHN WESLEY 39 who would understand the England of the eighteenth century, or the life and labours of its great apostle. In the heat of summer, in the snows of winter ; exposed to discomforts of all sorts and dangers not a few, by day or night ; along roads infested with robbers, so bad that three days was a fair allowance for a ride from London to Bristol ; losing his way on the mountains, detained at the ferries for hours, overtaken by the dark where there was no shelter but the meanest hovel ; through the length and breadth of England, Scotland and Ireland John Wesley incessantly journeyed, never travelHng less, as he tells us, than " four thousand five hundred miles in a year '' ; reading as he went ; writing, as he rested, tracts and polemics, or abridging the best literature for his people ; preaching everywhere, whether the people were anxious to hear him or had been kindled into a furious mob that sought his life, indifferent whether it were to half a dozen in some tiny room, or to the thousands that thronged around him on Moorfields or Kennington ; with the care upon him of all his churches, and the numberless details, neither relinquished nor over- looked, which the affairs of a growing society involved. On Wednesday, 2nd March 1791, Wesley passed away amidst the tears and songs of those who had loved and reverenced him as their father in God. 40 METHODISM The last sentence he had recorded in his Journal is in one sense characteristic of his whole life : " For upwards of eighty-six years I have kept my accounts exactly : I will not attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction that I save all I can and give all I can ; that is, all I have/' Five months before the end he had preached his last sermon in the open air at Winchester, from the text, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. " The tears of the people,'' writes one who was present, " flowed in torrents." Though manifestly feeble he toiled on to the end, planning a round of visits to the West of England which he did not live to fulfil. On 23rd February, he preached his last sermon in the magistrates' room at Leatherhead. A few days later he was not, for God took him. Almost his last words were a shout of victory, " The best of all is God is with us ! " III Hitherto we have said nothing as to Wesley's co-workers and helpers. Lack of space, and not the measure of their deserts, compels us to brevity. Whitefield, the great orator of Methodism, was for a long time, by a curious lack of historical perspec- tive, regarded as the head of the revival, compared with whom Wesley was but of secondary importance. JOHN WESLEY 41 That a truer estimate isTnow current of his real position must not lead us to overlook the greatness of his labours. Born in 1714, in the Bell Inn, at Gloucester, in 1732 Whitefield entered Pembroke College, Oxford, as a servitor, and was there at once brought into touch with the " Holy Club," so far as his humbler opportunities allowed. In 1736 he was ordained a deacon and preached his first sermon, the effect of which was that he was reported to his bishop for driving fifteen people mad. Though only twenty-two his success was instant and phenomenal. In Bristol the churches were crowded twice every day of the week to hear him ; in London he was forced to ride by coach to his services to escape the attentions of the people. After a year in Georgia he was back again in London, and in 1739 was ordained a priest. Finding the doors of the churches closed against him, he was the first to take a bold step, the influence of which on the fortunes of the revival cannot be exaggerated. On 17th February 1739, he cast all scruples aside and preached out of doors to a congregation of two hundred colliers on Kingswood HUl, near Bristol. Within a few days the congregation had grown into thousands. Though only a return to the methods of St Francis of Assisi, of Wyclif's Bible- men, and of other medieval preachers, this departure from dull convention aroused bitter opposition. 42 METHODISM Within one year forty-nine pamphlets and bur- lesques were pubUshed against the author of this innovation. In August 1739 Whitefield sailed a second time to America. In Philadelphia and New York he carried aU before him, and powerfully prepared the way for the more enduring labours of the Methodist pioneers who followed him. As Whittier has finely expressed it in his poem of The Preacher : " The flood of emotion, deep and strong, Troubled the land as it swept along. But left a result of holier lives." From this time' onwards, Whitefield, whether back again in the old country, or across the seas in the new continent, led the life of a clerical free-lance somewhat hampered by holy orders. His oratory, the secret of which is not revealed by any of his pubUshed works, with their manifest absence both of culture and thought, influenced all classes ; it could charm the cynical Horace Walpole, wring gold from the close-fisted Benjamin Franklin, awaken envy in Garrick, move the cold, sceptical Hume to admiration, and at the same time cause the tears to stream down the sooty faces of the Kingswood miners. Whatever may have been his gifts of voice or manner the real soul of his influence must be found in the intense reality of his sympathy JOHN WESLEY 43 with the sins and sorrows of the human heart. " If ever/' writes Sir James Stephen, " philan- thropy burned in the human heart with a pure and intense flame embracing the whole family of man in the spirit of universal charity, it was in the heart of George Whitefield. He loved the world that hated him. He had no preferences but in favour of the ignorant, the miserable, and the poor. In their cause he shrunk from no privation, and declined neither insult nor hostility.'' ^ After thirty-one years of restless energy, during which he preached 18,000 sermons, and crossed the Atlantic thirteen times, he passed away to his reward at Newbury Port in America (30th September 1770). His funeral sermon at Tottenham Court Road Chapel was preached by John Wesley. The two friends, severed for a while by the bitter Calvinistic con- troversy, were now one. '* Have we read or heard," asked Wesley, " of any person since the apostles who testified the Gospel of the Grace of God through so large a part of the habitable world ? Have we read or heard of any person who called so many thousands, so many myriads of sinners to repent- ance ? Above all, have we heard or read of anyone who has been a blessed instrument in the hands of God of bringing so many sinners from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God ? " 1 Essays in Ecdesiasiiad Biograyhy, p. 387. 44 METHODISM Of more permanent importance than Whitefield, from the standpoint of Methodism and its future, was Charles Wesley, who was born at Epworth on 18th December 1707. For long years he and his brother John, though they had seen little of each other in early life, were one alike in their aims, their methods, and in the intensity with which they threw themselves into their work. But towards the end of life they drifted somewhat apart, as Charles perceived more clearly than John the inevitable tendency of the societies towards separation from the AngHcan Church, and especially the bearing of John's ordinations. His happy marriage in 1749 had also caused Charles to retire from his former constant itinerancy, and to settle down, first at Bristol, and afterwards (1771) in Marylebone. Thus he grew out of touch both with the Methodist preachers and mth the work in general, apart from the London societies. To these last he ministered to the end, being especially assiduous in his attentions to the prisoners of Newgate. He died on 29th May 1788 and was buried, at his own request, in Marylebone Parish Church. Of John's power of organisation Charles showed but little sign. Nor did he share in his brother's intensely practical outlook, with its consequent determination to subordinate the theoretically perfect to the main end. But the value of the work JOHN WESLEY 45 of Charles as the " sweet singer '' of the movement cannot be exaggerated. " Long hence, when pos- sibly the standard works of the elder brother are read only by the preachers, and the organisation which he built up has been so modified as to show but little trace of its original form, the hymns of Charles Wesley will continue to permeate the Methodist Church with the gracious leaven of its primitive experience/' ^ For the people the creed of Methodism is expressed rather in the hymns of Charles than in the standard sermons of John Wesley. The hymns rather than the sermons have preserved the unity of belief. They have served, in fact, as a lyric credo, the expression in song of the faith of our fathers. The evangelical revival and its spirit throbs through them all ; they are instinct with the conception of the personal experi- ence of religion ; their constant proclamation is the universality of salvation ; their constant witness is to the Methodist doctrines of perfect love and assurance. At the same time, they present a full embodiment of the Person and Work both of the Redeemer and of the Holy Spirit. Nor, in their original forms, are the hymns of Charles Wesley uncertain in their emphasis of the importance and objective value of the Sacraments of the Church. There are few blessings which have not some dis- 1 F. L. Wiseman in New History of Methodism, i. 242. 46 METHODISM advantages. The greatness of Charles Wesley as a hymn- writer, the stately translations, especially from the German, of the elder brother, and the un- rivalled lyrics of Watts, upon Avhich Wesley had freely drawn in the preparation of his hymn books, led to a remarkable barrenness in later years in the Methodist Church itself. Two or three of the Methodist preachers had indeed contributed to the early hymn books, among whom mention should be made of John Bakewell, the author of " Hail, thou once despised Jesus,'' and of Thomas Olivers who, in 1774, composed the majestic ode, " The God of Abraham praise.'' Nor must we forget Edward Perronet, who, for some years joined John Wesley in his journeys, and whose hymn " All hail the power of Jesu's name " has become a universal favourite. But with the eighteenth century, Methodist song died away. While other churches were pouring forth their deepest thoughts and feelings in inspired verse, the Methodist Conferences, at any rate in the Old World, allowed their reverence for the priceless treasure bequeathed to them from the past to become a snare. The hymn book was stereotyped, and only through unofficial channels could the great modern hymns, e.g., those of Faber and Newman, find their way into popular use. No provision was made for the more recent developments of church life and thought, or for the growing consciousness of national JOHN WESLEY 47 problems and needs. This much may be said, for this excessive conservatism, that it kept out of the Methodist Church much that was ephemeral and unworthy ; at the same time, it preserved many hymns of Charles Wesley that had long since become unreal, whether because of their diffuse allegorism, or because of their excessive subjectivity. But from this danger, as recent hymn books both in England and America show, Methodism is now delivered. In the range and catholicity of its song the Methodist Church to-day still possesses its most effective appeal to the spiritual. But we must return to our more immediate theme. Of Wesley's co-workers mention must be made of John Fletcher of Madeley, a naturalised Swiss whom Wesley intended to be his successor. The character of this singularly saintly nian is said to have won the admiration of Voltaire ; we need not wonder, therefore, that Wesley found in him the completest embodiment of what he meant by his doctrine of entire sanctification. As a theological writer, Fletcher exercised considerable influence, especially by his exposure of the current antinomian tendencies. Though he did not join Wesley in his ceaseless itineration, he was yet throughout life one of the few Anglican clergy who understood John Wesley, and sympathised fully with his methods and aims. Others there were of whom much might be said, 48 METHODISM did space allow. Of these, the most prominent was Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-91), who made it her life business to bring about a revival among the upper classes, and whose zeal in building chapels of ease, which she supplied with evangelical clergy of her own appointment, led to her becoming registered as a dissenter, against her will. Of the men whom Wesley trained, mention must be made, in addition to Thomas OH vers, of John Haime who introduced Methodism into the British army, and of John Nelson, the stonemason of Birstall who was illegally pressed for a soldier in order to stop his preaching. But neither pressgangs nor mobs could silence him ; persecution was powerless against his serenity of soul. In Bradford he was flung into a filthy cell. " My soul,'' he writes, in words which remind us of a similar utterance of Jacopone da Todi, the author of " Stabat Mater,'' " was so filled with the love of God, that it was a paradise to me. I wished my enemies were as happy in their own houses, as I was in the dungeon." Of a younger generation, we should not forget Samuel Bradburn, a great orator who was, however, sadly lacking in self- control, and Joseph Benson, who, though the most scholarly of Wesley's itinerants, was a most im- passioned revivalist. JOHN WESLEY 49 IV To two or three distinctive features of Wesley's wonderful life, special attention should be drawn. When John Wesley said that the world was his parish, he pointed to the secret both of his success and of the antagonism which he aroused. In the England of the eighteenth century, localism was intense, the counterpart of the selfish individualism which was the bane of the age. Religious life was intensely parochial. The episcopate itself was local, each bishop doing what he deemed to be right, without consultation with his brethren or with his archbishop. And here was a man, who not only set at nought all the rules and regulations of parochial- ism, glorying in this breach of ecclesiastical dis- cipline (of the nature of which he seems to have been completely unconscious), urging that the supreme need of the day, was that others should follow his example. Add to this the plain, outspoken words which touched men in their tenderest spot their pride in their respectable but lifeless Chris- tianity, or roused men to opposition by the fear- lessness which condemned their darling or most profitable sins, and we need not wonder that the mobs which assailed him were too often stirred up by the parson or squire. Very noteworthy, especially when account is 50 METHODISM taken of the other extraordinary activities of his life, is the use that Wesley made of his pen. In this to some extent he was the child of his age. The early years of the eighteenth century were remark- able for an extraordinary multiplication of pamphlets pubUshed at low prices and reaching in some cases a gigantic circulation. As a rule, these pamphlets were poHtical. What Wesley did was to use the current taste for cheap Uterature for the promulga- tion of the articles of his faith. He filled the saddle- bags of his itinerant preachers with cheap books, including tracts, written in terse, logical English, and abbreviations of the great masterpieces of litera- ture. Though Wesley seems to have been strangely ignorant of the life and work of Wyclif, the later reformer, in his constant appeal to the pen, followed in the footsteps of the great medieval pamphleteer. We must not overlook another special cause of Wesley's success. We have noted already that in the eighteenth century the Church had substituted for doctrinal teaching, the emphasis of a moral code. Wesley discerned the great truth borne out by the experience of centuries, that the highest morality can only be founded upon a supernatural i.e., a doctrinal basis. He saw that to make morality the end instead of the consequence leads to disaster ; that the mere washing of the cup and the platter does not give moral purification. He insisted upon JOHN WESLEY 51 going back to iSrst principles, upon laying the foundation deep in the facts of the soul ; the rest would follow as inevitably as dayUght follows the dawn. And history once more showed the old lesson to which the Butlers and Clarks had been curiously blind, the lesson that in every century has to be learned afresh that the great doctrines are not dogmas of the intellect but fountains in the soul which well up into the most beautiful lives. Method- ism once more demonstrated, as Mcea had demon- strated in earUer days, that the dynamic of life lies in a great conviction, and that, to reach the people, such conviction must be stated in simple language, without subtle reservations and explana- tions, by those who make it manifest by their deeds that they beHeve the doctrines which they preach, A word should be said as to the relation of Wesley to the thought of the age.^ Some writers have spoken of Methodism as the swing of the pendulum from the intellectual to the emotional side of Christianity ; as a reaction against the tendency so manifest in the Apologists, to view Christianity almost exclusively from the standpoint of reason. But this is to do an injustice to Wesley. Throughout his life the " some- time fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford,'' tried to keep himself in touch with the intellectual movements of ^ On this matter I may refer the reader to the fuller analysis I have given in A New History of Methodism, i. c. 1. 52 METHODISM his age, and, considering his busy life, his success in this respect was remarkable. He never under- valued either scholarship or culture. In his Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason he refused to be misled by the specious reasoning of Dodwell (1742) that " Christianity is not founded on argument.'' But, on the other hand, he never made the mistake into which the Deists feU, of regarding the unassisted reason as sufficient for aU human needs, thus con- fusing knowledge and life. For him, knowledge was only the auxihary of love, and knowledge without love, however orthodox, was only a " dead empty form void of spirit and faith.'' A Christianity with- out practical influence might be proved on paper be- yond dispute, and yet from the complete absence of aU driving power be as logically denied. He was convinced that the best apology for Christianity would be found in its deeds, that a Church girded with strength need not trouble overmuch about the attacks on its minor fortifications. Like Napoleon, he beheved that the secret of effective defence lay in assuming the aggressive in the enemy's country. Nevertheless, the Methodist movement cannot be altogether disassociated from the thought of the times. If in some of its aspects Methodism may seem to be a reaction against the age, yet in others Wesley was more influenced than he was himself aware of by the Zeitgeist. We see this especially in the JOHN WESLEY 53 characteristic feature of the movement Wesley's appeal to experience. The appeal of philosophy to experience, had originated with Des Cartes. In this matter, as in some of its issues, Cartesianism was the philosophical counterpart of the Reformation. Oxford, it is true, following the lead of the Jesuits, had banned Cartes- ianism. As a consequence the extension by Male- branche of Cartesian doctrine into the mystical vision of all things in God had failed to establish itself in the university of Wesley. Instead, English philosophy had developed the Cartesian argument on lines of reaction peculiar to itseK, and, under the lead of Hobbes and Locke, had twisted the whole matter into a question of deductive psychology. In intro- spection, the examination of the contents of the mind and feeHngs, they had endeavoured to find the grounds of validity of thought and being. Such an effort was bound to lead to nescience, as indeed we see when Hume with unflinching logic, carried out the promises of Locke and Hobbes to their legitimate conclusion. Introspection cannot but end, as he showed, in the demonstration of its own impotence. The analysis of the mind, viewed as the sole sufficient organon of truth, resolves all into fleeting sensations in which we can flnd neither permanence of the ego, nor warrant of belief in aught objective, whether God, morality, or self. The " waking " of Kant 64 METHODISM from his " dogmatic slumbers '' saved philosophy from the impasse into which the English school had thus led it. But we are anticipating. Wesley himself knew little of Hume and nothing of Kant. The Zeitgeist influenced him before Hume had shown its logical issue, or Kant pointed out the more excellent way. Nevertheless, in any survey of EngUsh thought, the place of Wesley cannot be neglected. For his appeal to experience was not " mere enthusiasm," as Warburton and other writers of the eighteenth century urged, still less was it the outcome of a mysticism which Wesley but imperfectly appre- hended. In his appeal he was one, however un- consciously, with the English philosophers, with one all-important difference. The philosophers had con- fined themselves almost exclusively to the intellectual factors. Wesley urged, though not, of course, in so many words, an enlargement so as to embrace spiritual phenomena of the contents of mind to which the philosophers applied their method of introspection. In modem terms Wesley claimed that spiritual phenomena have a reahty of their own, which neither scientist nor psychologist can ignore, and which is in itself its own sufficient warrant. Methodism, the child of the eighteenth century, was subject, as might naturally be expected, at any JOHN WESLEY 55 rate, in its early days, to many of the limitations of the century. For instance, the eighteenth century was curiously blind to the meaning of childhood ; in this respect it differed in nothing from the centuries before it. In consequence, the Methodist revival displayed neither sympathy with nor understanding of the life and soul of the child. Wesley's methods of training at his famous Kings- wood School, his refusal to allow either play or holidays, his dictum that " he who will play as a boy, will play as a man,'' his rigid conceptions of total depravity in its application to childhood, the absence from his services of all hymns either for children or that children could understand, or of any provision to meet their special needs, all seem strange to an age that has specialised in child- study. But in reality in these matters Wesley differed Uttle from the general thought of his day, except in his clearness of expression, and his greater insistence upon the value of education and of the strenuous life. Among the unrealised dreams of history, we may wonder at the difference that would have been made in the welfare of our own country if Wesley had understood children, and, with a heart as tender as St Anselm's or St Francis', had tried to meet their needs. The hideous horrors of child-labour which, in the next century, wrung from Mrs Browning, Dickens, and others, their 56 METHODISM noble protests, the general indifference to education which until 1870, doomed the major part of the children to ignorance, the rigidity and repression of child^religion except it took certain severe and conventional forms, in a words all the trouble of the children from the accumulations of which we are only slowly and with difficulty freeing ourselves in the twentieth century, might either have been prevented or their problems solved a century earlier. Yet even in this matter, undoubted as was Wesley's weakness, we may discover some germs of better things. Wesley's mistakes at his Kingswood School need not be minimised ; at the same time, it were well to remember how he stood out above his age in his insistence upon the strenuous life at school. The schools of the times, even the best of them, woefully failed to accomplish the purpose of their founders. The idleness of the boys, the incapacity of the ushers, the selfish greed which diverted foundations to other purposes, and, if we may trust Cowper and others, the immorafity of the schools was notorious. In his reaction from general rotten- ness, Wesley undoubtedly swung to the opposite extreme. Nevertheless the attempt, as the dis- tinguished history for now nearly two centuries of Kingswood School has abundantly shown, was not without its value. Nor must we forget that as one result of the JOHN WESLEY 67 Evangelical revival we have the foundation by Robert Raikes of Gloucester (1780) of the Sunday School, on the lines of previous attempts. In their early forms, and for long afterwards, Sunday Schools, it is true, showed little clear apprehension of either the needs of children, or of their special work in the Church. Sunday Schools were generally regarded as outside the Church, at the best its flying buttresses, never as an integral, necessary part of the adapta- tion of the Gospel to varying conditions. Moreover, they were hampered at every turn by the ignorance of the children, who could neither read nor write. But the fact that the problem of the Sunday School was neither quickly apprehended nor quickly solved for that matter the twentieth century is still seeking the right solution, ^nor that, in many quarters, the whole movement was looked upon with suspicion, should blind us to the great advance that was made. V The student who ponders the origin and history of religious revivals, will note the absence from them, as a rule, of all deliberate constructive statesmanship. PoUtics may find a place for the Abbe Sieyes, with his endless schemes of constitutions, or for a RicheHeu with his plan of reconstruction. In the great affairs pf the soul men are led by the Spirit of God, Neither 58 METHODISM St Paul, nor St Francis, nor Luther, were conscious, when they set out, of the end of their journey. Among great leaders in the Church, Hildebrand and Calvin alone stand out as men who imaged the whole, before they executed the parts. Wesley was no exception to the general rule. To compare him, as does Lord Macaulay, with Richelieu, because of his genius for organisation, is to miss the essential difference between the two men. With Richelieu organisation was a deUberate purpose and ideal ; with Wesley it was an incident into which he was driven, oftentimes, as in the case of his lay preachers, in spite of himself. In his powers of organisation Wesley would be better compared with another great Englishman of kindred temperament. Like Cromwell, Wesley possessed a firm grasp upon the facts of life, and a rare power of shaping into in- stitutions the religious emotions which might other- wise have exhausted themselves in momentary enthusiasm. As with Cromwell, so with Wesley, there was, in consequence, a certain opportunism, the result of practical necessities, which led them both to set at nought laws and regulations to which in heart they were perfectly loyal. We have said that Wesley set at nought the rules and regulations of his Church, while Whitefield's offences were even more flagrant. Whether these breaches of discipline were justified or not, is not JOHN WESLEY 69 now the question ; that they existed can scarcely be denied by impartial critics. We should do in- justice to Wesley's character, if we attributed this to design, or to a lack of appreciation of scholarship or order. By nature, Wesley was given rather to the trodden paths than to the discovery of new routes. With impulse and enthusiasm his cold, keen intellect had few affinities ; his habits and temperament incHned him to the hatred of all irregularities, whether in dress, conduct, or religion. Nothing is more remarkable than the fact, that such a man was driven into irregularity in spite of him- self. But his very irregularities were a proof both of his administrative genius, and of the intensity of his convictions. Like Oliver Cromwell, with whom we have already compared him, he was less concerned with the means, provided he deemed them righteous, than with the end ; like Oliver he was driven, in order that he might attain the end, to the use of means aUen to his nature. He subordinated everything, training, instincts, prejudices, to the accomplishment of his great object, or rather to the fulfilment of his imperative call. So, when driven out of the parish churches, he reluctantly followed Whitefield and took to field-preaching ; when the clergy forsook him, he fell back upon lay preachers ; when America could not obtain episcopal oversight, and the needs of his new societies called, he ordained bishops 60 METHODISM himself. With him the supreme need was the interests of the kingdom of God ; all else, however dear or desirable in itself, became secondary. There was, in Wesley, none of that obstinacy in the main- tenance of custom or prepossession which is gener- ally the mark of a mind unaccustomed to calculate real values, or to give to means and ends their proper proportions. Nor must we forget that the High Church party in the eighteenth century, to which by training and instinct, Wesley belonged, while making much of episcopacy as an abstract doctrine, were noted for their constant defiance of their ecclesiastical superiors one of the many results of the political separation between the higher and lower clergy. The student inquiring into the causes which led to the separation of Methodism from the Established Church, will thus discern on both sides the lack of design or insight so characteristic of the eighteenth century. Separation was certainly not the intention of the bishops ; they simply drifted on, and such action as they took, was marked rather by indiffer- ence than open hostihty. So also with Wesley. Not without cause has he been likened to a rower whose face is set one way, but whom stream and effort alike, carry in an opposite direction. In spite of his passionate devotion to the Church of his father, he plunged into acts and deeds which JOHN WESLEY 61 were logically bound to end in the separation he dreaded. His institution of lay preachers, under the supervision of a wiser episcopate, might have been successfully grafted on to the Church ; his Conferences might have been developed as a sub- stitute for the silenced Convocation ; his society classes did not differ organically from the AngHcan societies of the day. Nevertheless, owing to hostility, lack of management, and general indifference, each of the great features of the new society became forces in the disruptive process. This was completed by Wesley's momentous action in claiming that a presbyter was the equal of a bishop, and had in consequence, the right of ordination of a bishop. This right he exercised, first for America in 1784,i and afterwards for Scotland. Though Charles Wesley was aware of the seriousness of the step, John himself seems to have been unconscious that thereby he had made separation inevitable. More- over, even if he had been so conscious, his old love of regularity had long since given place to a deter- mination to judge everything by its practical worth, in making for what he deemed to be righteousness, and in ministering to the interests of his organisation. That in an age saturated with individualism and egoism, both in politics, philosophy and commerce, Wesley in his actions, should be a complete in- ^ See infra, p. 73. 62 METHODISM dividualist we are writing from what would be, as we deem, the standpoint of a thoughtful AngHcan " catholic "' need excite no wonder ; the only marvel is that he should have considered his in- dividuahsm to be reconcilable with his High Church principles. Add also that this individuaHstic out- look was united with constant insistence in his societies upon discipline and obedience, and the contradiction is complete. To point out the unconscious drift of the whole movement is one thing ; to claim, as do some writers, that Methodism need never have separated from the Church is another. The answer to this last question will largely depend upon other considerations. On analysis these resolve themselves into a circle. From a Church wisely organised and wisely governed, in which the supreme interest had been the welfare of the Kingdom of God, Methodism need never have separated ; on the other hand, if such a Church had existed in England in the eighteenth century, Methodism would never have arisen. We may further grant that if the Church of England had been the Church of Rome, there would have been no separation. The genius of Rome, even in the darkest days of degradation, has always enabled it to utiUse any movement of reform and turn it to account generally by organising it as a subordinate society. It was so in the thirteenth century with St Francis JOHN WESLEY 63 of Assisi ; it was so in a later age with the followers of Loyola. But for reasons into which we cannot now enter, Protestantism, in all its different forms, has never shown this capacity for dealing with difference within its borders. There are signs, on all hands, that the Protestant churches to-day are awake to this defect in their genius ; but the Church of England in the eighteenth century was neither conscious of inadequacy nor, if it had been so conscious, did it possess at that time the means of cure. Only by the vigorous blood-letting, first of the Methodist revival, then of the Oxford secessions of Newman and others, was it driven in upon the ArigHcan Church that her welfare did not lie in securing artificial uniformity, whether by act of ParHament or through episcopal unwillingness to face new situations. The bane of eighteenth-century individualism, the curse of its indifferentism, the effects of its narrow visionlessness, could not be escaped, nor without pain could a larger life be won. John Wesley seems to have been one of the few men who did not see that his reformation, in the then constitution of the EngHsh Church, was really re- volution, and could only be comprehended within the Church by its being so successful that its opponents would have become, virtually, non- conformists. The ideal and meaning of rehgion, as set forth by Wesley, and as held by the better 64 METHODISM t3rpe of eighteenth-century AngUcans, e.g. by Butler, were fundamentally opposite ; and it is useless, as well as unhistorical, for theorists to ignore the differences, or to point out the might-have-beens that would have followed from their imaginative reconstructions . Though Wesley and his followers were driven from the EngUsh Church, his influence upon it was not altogether lost. There was, it is true, no immediate improvement ; if anything, the first result was rather the hardening of thought and life by the violent hostility which he excited. Even the Evangelicals, though at first they had sympathised with Wesley and thrown open to him their pulpits, drifted off into opposition, largely as the result of the un- fortunate Calvinistic controversy. But when the first bitterness was past, we can see in the later Evan- geUcal movement, the centre of which was at Clapham, and the influence of which upon the Church was so prominent in the early years of the nineteenth century, the result of his teaching, above all of his life and example ; the appHcation also of some of his methods by men who, unlike Wesley himself, remained within the Church, or who, Hke Joseph Milner, disowned Methodism altogether. In another direction we note also influence of a more permanent character. Hitherto in the Church of England the " quires and places where they sing '' had been rare JOHN WESLEY 65 and poor ; hymns formed no authorised part of its services. Tate and Brady, Sternhold and Hopkins, still reigned supreme. But the burst of song which accompanied the great revival could not fail to produce its effects on others. The dreary services that had been the rule both with Dissenters and the Establishment, gave place to brighter and more emotional forms of worship. The ministry of song, so marked a feature in every great spiritual up- heaval, once more regained her own. The importance of Wesley's political influence cannot be exaggerated. In himself he was a curious mixture of critical independence and partisan Toryism. Of Wesley we may say with Green that " no man ever stood at the head of a great revolu- tion, whose temper was so anti-revolutionary.'' He believed in the divine right of kings. For the revolt of America, he condemned unsparingly the colonists, instead of the obstinacy of George III. and his ministers. At the same time he was before his age in his opposition to the slave-trade that " execrable sum of all villanies " as he termed it, and in his exposure of the evil effects of absenteeism in Ireland. The effects of his strong conservatism was apparent in the leanings of many of his followers. When, at the death of Wesley, the great shock of the French Revolution broke upon the world, the Methodists from the first ranged themselves against 66 METHODISM it. If the Methodist revival had been led by a revolutionary leader, the Revolution would have swept England from end to end ; as it was, we had instead a dreary Tory reaction, the only justifica- tion for whose excesses was that England was fighting for her life. But disastrous as was the reaction, there can be little doubt but that the revolution- ary spirit would have been more disastrous still. From this England was saved, not so much by the phiHppics of Burke as by the life and teaching of Wesley. When he saved the souls of the masses, he at the same time preserved the existing frame- work of society. Nevertheless the social effect of the Methodist revival, especially if we Hnk with it the Evangelical Movement, were most marked. In this connection, we may mention the checking of gambling by legis- lation, the greater strictness of Sunday observance, the suppression of duelling, a more sober style of dress, and an antipathy to theatre-going on the part of the serious in other words, the general emergence once more of the old Puritan spirit. In some directions the revival broke new ground. Until 1750, the slave trade had received national en- couragement and subsidies, and had been described in official documents as " most beneficial to this island."' But the awakened religious consciousness could no longer condone its " execrable villanies,'' JOHN WESLEY 67 and in 1787, a committee was formed for the abolition of the trade. The Sunday Schools, established by Robert Raikes of Gloucester, marked the beginnings of a new interest in education, as we see, despite their limited range, in the schools started by Hannah More at Cheddar in 1789, and in the pupil- teacher systems inaugurated by Bell and Lancaster. With passionate human sympathy, John Howard, follow- ing out more fully the line of reform first sketched by James Oglethorpe, devoted himseK to the cause of prisoner and debtor, visiting personally every English gaol, and forcing upon the country the consideration of the reformation both of prisons and of criminals. In many directions we see the rise of a broad, generous philanthropy, and of a civic and national consciousness of wrongs that must be righted. CHAPTER III METHODISM IN AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS I. The opportunity of Methodism in America Methodist Pioneers Asbury Influence on the United States pp. 68-72 II. Episcopal form of government Origin of, in America Its importance Camp meetings The question of slavery Consequent schisms . . . pp. 72-76 III. Methodism in Canada in Australia in South Africa West Indies pp. 76-81 IV. Methodist Foreign Missions Origin of Chief Centres Present problems The secret of Unity . . pp. 81-87 In the following chapter we propose to deal with the evolution of Methodism from a local society into a world-wide Church, with roots planted deep in every continent. Naturally we shall commence with the United States. As in England, so in America, the opportunity of Methodism was largely due to the neglect of Anglicanism. AngHcanism has always regarded Episcopacy as an integral part of her Church life, but in her treatment of her American churches the Church of England demon- AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 69 strated that for all practical purposes bishops might be dispensed with. In some of the States, also, originally settled by Congregationalists or Presby- terians, the introduction of bishops would have led to serious disturbance ; the colonists had been driven out of the Old World by the bishops ; they did not intend to suffer from them in the New. But even in States where the AngHcan Church was estabUshed and endowed, the political exigencies of the home Government would not allow of any appointment of colonial bishops, in spite of the appeals of colonial clergy and the efforts of the missionary societies at home. The War of Independ- ence increased the difficulties by making impossible even such oversight as had hitherto existed on the part of the Bishop of London and his commissaries. But George III was as obstinate as usual, and absolutely refused to allow of any episcopal ordina- tion. Not until 1784, could the Anglicans obtain the consecration of Seabury, and that only, by means of the Scottish Episcopalians. But the Anglican Church was never able to recover the ground that it had lost. The States were ready to receive any Church that would subordinate poUtics and red tape to the great spiritual needs of the new populations. And this Methodism was abundantly prepared to do. Methodism owes its introduction to the New 70 METHODISM World to an Irishman, Philip Embury, who in 1766, began to hold meetings in his own house at New York ; but its real history commenced with the preach- ing of Captain Thomas Webb, " soldier of the Cross, and spiritual son of John Wesley,'' whom President Adams described as a " most eloquent man/' As the work grew, in 1768 a request was made to Wesley, to send " an able and experienced preacher ; a man of wisdom, of sound faith, and a good dis- ciplinarian ; one whose heart and soul are in the work/' To this Macedonian cry, Wesley replied at the Leeds Conference in 1769, by sending Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmore, and collecting 20 for their expenses. In 1771, five others volunteered, among them the heroic Francis Asbury, to whose devotion and organising skill American Methodism will always owe an incalculable debt. With the arrival of these pioneers, Methodism steadily progressed, in spite of the disasters of the War of Independence, of the suspicions excited by Wesley's Calra Address to the American Colonies, and by the indiscreet loyalty of some of the English ministers. So bitter was the temper of the times, that even native-born Methodists were tarred and feathered as, of necessity, belonging to a " tory " organisation. Even Asbury was compelled to go into retirement. But with the declaration of peace in 1783 the work greatly revived. A heroic band AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 71 of pioneers penetrated everywhere, following the emigrants in their perilous journeys towards Ken- tucky, Ohio or Indiana, preaching to the little groups of squatters and settlers in the trackless forests, or on the great plains, oftentimes in danger of their lives from the Indians, more often in want of the barest necessaries. The historians of the United States have not always recognised the debt their country owes to these humble toilers. But for the zeal of these Methodist pioneers many thousands of the settlers would have had no rehgious instruction whatever. Nor were their services limited to preach- ing the gospel. They laid the foundations of commonwealths as they " inculcated respect for law, and created ideals of righteousness and citizen- ship along the mountain roads and through the trackless forests where civilisation walked with slow, yet conquering step.'' ^ They had their reward in the growth of their Church. So great was their success that within a few years of entering Kentucky they had won 2500 members in that State alone. In 1808, or v/ithin forty years of its first introduc- tion, Methodism had so increased that it numbered in America 140,000 communicants. To-day, after a century of marvellous expansion, in which, on the whole, unlike the Roman Church, it has been little aided by direct emigration of Methodists there are 1 Dv Faulkner in A New History of Methodism, ii. 99. 72 METHODISM in the United States over 45,000 ordained ministers of the various Methodist Churches, and more than seven and a half millions of communicants, in addi- tion to the millions of Sunday School scholars and adult adherents. In most parts of the United States, Methodism is to-day the predominant Church, with a responsibiUty, therefore, for the future develop- ment of that mighty nation, which it is impossible to exaggerate. II Any sketch, however slight, of the history of Methodism in the New World, must lie beyond our scope. But one or two special points demand our attention. The first and most important is its episcopal form of government. Throughout life Wesley beUeved the episcopal form of government V^' to be scriptural and apostolical. But as early as 1756, owing to his reading Lord Chancellor King's Primitive Church, he had retracted the opinion " which I once heartily espoused '' that it was " prescribed in the Scripture.'' " Uninterrupted succession," he added at a later date, " I know to be a fable which no man ever did or can prove." He had further convinced himself that, " bishops and presbyters are of the same order, and consequently have the same right to ordain." Holding these AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SI^AS U views, the plight of the American societies, where for hundreds of miles together there was no one to administer the Sacraments, as also the partial wreck and complete disorganisation in America of the Anglican Church, forced him to act. On the failure of his two attempts to persuade Bishop Lowth to ordain at least one of his preachers, he wrote : " As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the State and from the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle them again either with the one or the other." So in 1784, in conjunction with two other Anglican presbyters, he ordained two " elders '' for England, and " Thomas Coke, LL.D., superintendent for the Church of God under our care in North America,'' with instructions on his arrival in America, to consecrate Francis Asbury to the same office. Though Wesley did not approve of the use of the title of " bishop " in these ordinations, the American Methodists at once interpreted the word as such as indeed, Charles Wesley had done already. The outcome was the organisation in America, on the arrival of Coke, of the Methodist Church on an episcopal basis. On this basis in all its branches, it has ever since continued. The Methodist Episcopal Church, with its 3,000,000 communicants and 74 METHODISM 19,000 ministers, has 26 bishops ; the Methodist Episcopal Church South with its 1,656,000 com- municants, and 7000 ministers, has 11 bishops. In consequence, possibly, of this government by an episcopacy, combined with the national char- acter, the Methodist Church of America is both curiously conservative and yet democratic. The power of its bishops, especially in the location of the ministers, would scarcely be tolerated by any Church in England ; while laymen have a very subordinate place in the councils and courts of the Methodist Episcopal Church, compared with the rights they possess in England, even in the conservative Wesley an Methodist Church. The democratic side is seen in the comparative unimportance of the bishops at the great quadrennial Conferences, at which alone legislation can be passed. In the interval between these conferences their powers as executive officers may seem to some to be excessive ; at the conferences themselves they preside but are not allowed to speak. With American Methodists the episcopacy, though strongly cherished, is care- fully guarded. In reality it is not the outcome of any ecclesiastical theory but a great instrument for securing effective administration. In the development of its inner life, one feature assumed in past days a prominence in American Methodism out of all proportion, perhaps, to its AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 75 real importance. We allude to its famous camp- meetings. In their origin they were the result of the physical conditions of the country. The widely-scattered congregations came together at stated times, at some central place, where there was a good supply of water and other conveniences, and there spent a few days in worship and social intercourse. But with a more settled country and ministry, these camp-meetings, with their dangers and advantages, became a thing of the past. The great difficulty of American Methodism from the first was the question of slavery. To this, and not to disputes either over doctrine or, as in the old country, over church polity, must be ascribed the divisions of Methodism in the United States. That the coloured people were organised at an early date within separate folds of their own, was perhaps in- evitable ; the misfortune was that slavery led to a fatal dissension between North and South in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Into the merits of the controversy it is difficult at this time of day to enter with impartiality. Slavery is regarded by all as " the sum of all villanies '' which Wesley uncompromisingly proclaimed it to be, and the early Methodist preachers of America, almost to a man, were abolitionists. But the " peculiar in- stitution " of. the South was too strong for them, and the many efiForts of Conference to promote 76 METHODISM emancipation issued in 1816 in a compromise which practically followed the lines of political cleavage over the same difficult subject. The slow but inevitable breakdown of the political compromise is a matter of general history, and led to the great civil war between North and South. In the Methodist Church, where the issues were less in- volved than at Washington, the separation took place twenty years earUer. In 1845 the great American Episcopal Church South spHt off from the North. In the poHtical world, the genius of Lincoln, and the determination of Grant, saved the unity of the commonwealth ; but to this day the Methodism of North and South has continued apart. Of recent years the old bitterness has largely passed away, and there are hopeful signs that in the future, be it far or near, the Methodism of North and South, will again be one. But it is probable that the two million coloured Methodists will still remain apart, if only through the influence of their growing race consciousness. Ill In other lands of the English-speaking race Methodism has also done well, though nowhere securing the prominence that has fallen to her in the States. In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as in the United States, she has had the opportunity AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 77 of a new world in the making. In 1791, for instance, the population of Upper Canada the modern Ontario was not above 10,000, with not a dozen Protestant clergy along the whole St Lawrence. But as the new settlers passed into the country the " saddle-bag brigade '' of Methodist preachers, followed them up. Many of these were men of but little culture, but in Nathan Bangs Canadian Methodism possessed a pioneer, whose name be- came well known throughout the whole continent. Canadian Methodism in its beginnings, was only a " district '' of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but as a result of the disastrous war of 1812, between England and the United States, steps were taken which, though at first producing division, ultimately led to the whole being affiliated to the British Conference (1883) and organised upon the EngHsh rather than the American or Episcopal plan. Though the great growth of the work soon led to its establishment upon an independent footing, the close connection of Canadian with English Methodism was thus one of the bonds which linked Canada to the Old Country in the days before politicians had awaked to the value of the Empire. Great as has been the growth of Canadian Methodism, its history is even more remarkable for the spirit of union which it has displayed. Canadian Method- ism, though not without its initial periods of dis- 78 METHODISM sension, is not only one from ocean to ocean, but steps have been taken to formulate, if possible, a basis for the organic union of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches of the Dominion into one great non-episcopal Evangelical Church. In Australia, also, Methodist re-union has been a striking success. In spite of past divisions the Methodist Church of Australasia is now one, with 1000 ministers and over 100,000 communicants. Its history, from its first introduction into Sydney in 1812, has been the record of continental progress, in spite of the difficulties of work in a country which was, at first, regarded as a mere dumping ground for convicts, and which, afterwards, in the rush to the goldfields of Victoria, drew to it some of the roughest spirits of two continents. From Sydney pioneers carried the new enthusiasm into the convict hell of Tasmania, then over the seas to the Maoris of New Zealand. Fortunately, also, many of the diggers in the new goldfields were Cornish Methodists who brought with them the old fire. So great was the growth of the work, that in 1854, the Austral- asian mission v/as formed into a separate Conference, which has to-day the spiritual oversight of twelve per cent, of the whole population of Australia and New Zealand. In South Africa, Methodism found the ground more AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 79 securely pre-occupied than in either America, Canada, or Australia. The dominant Church of South Africa, as all men know, is the Dutch. Hence the mission of Methodism has been, in the main, the attempt to reach those for whom the Dutch Church could not, or would not, provide. Originally introduced in 1806 b}^ soldiers in the army which had recently seized Cape Town, it was not until ten years later that the Cape Methodists were able to secure a minister from England. On his arrival the Rev. Barnabas Shaw showed the Yorkshire spirit in preaching first to the soldiers, then afterwards to slaves, in spite of the governor's prohibition. Among the slaves and in a mission to the native races the South African Methodists found from the first, their chief opportunity. Their success among the Namaquas, and, later, among various Bantu tribes, has been so great that there are to-day in South Africa over 66,000 Methodist native communicants, with 30,000 on trial for membership. Not the least of the Methodist services for South Africa has been its ample provision of native schools, training colleges, and other educational equipment. Among the white races in South Africa the chief centres of Methodist influence have been in Enghsh settlements or enclaves ; the old settlement estab- lished in 1820 round Grahamstown by the sending out of 4000 selected emigrants ; the colony estab- 80 METHODISM lished in 1851 in Natal by the arrival of several thousand English, largely Methodists from York- shire ; and, in recent years, in the Transvaal and in Rhodesia. In both these countries many of the miners were Methodists from Cornwall. The unifica- tion under one South African Conference of all the work, part of which at present is supported by, and under the control of, the Wesleyan Missionary Society in London, is only a matter of time and of the growth of local resources. In the solution of the problems which confront a federated South Africa, the Methodist Church, with its great influence among the natives, must play a leading part. In another part of the world, Methodism has done a good work among the slaves. Methodism was introduced into the West Indies by a converted planter of some position, Nathaniel Gilbert, and in 1786 when Dr Coke was sent out to organise the work, there were already 2000 communicants in Antigua alone. Coke reported that the spiritual state of the island was most deplorable. In many parishes there were no churches ; but the planters, who were averse to any steps which might lead to emancipation, tried to crush out the Methodists by legislation. In some places all preaching to negroes was forbidden under a heavy fine ; in others it was restricted to impossible hours, outside of which even the singing of a hymn led to imprisonment. But AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 81 in spite of the bitterness aroused against the mis- sionaries by the growth in England of the movement for emancipation, in spite also of the illegal persecu- tions to which they were subjected, the work steadily prospered. The gift of emancipation brought diffi- culties of its own, through the economic disturb- ances which followed, while the recent economic depression in the West Indies has had a disastrous effect on all the Churches. Owing to financial em- barrassments the West Indian Conference, which had been established in 1884, found itself under the necessity of surrendering its autonomy and reverted to dependence on the mother society. In the West Indies both Methodism and the Empire are con- fronted with similar problems, the solution of which will require similar patient statesmanship. IV In its foreign missionary enterprises Methodism has been true to the well-known motto of its leader inscribed over his monument in Westminster Abbey " The World is my parish." In its earliest days the v/ork both in Ireland, in the States, and in the West Indies, was essentially of a missionary char- acter, and sufficiently absorbed all the energies of the preachers. The first attempt of Methodism to reach the heathen proper, did not take place until F 82 METHODISM after the death of Wesley, and was due to the in- defatigable perseverance and generosity of Dr Coke, an AngUcan clergyman, ordained in 1772, who had joined himself mth enthusiasm to Wesley. Though, year after year, he found himself blocked by the refusal of the East Indian Company to allow mission- aries in India, Coke did not despair. In 1812, he overcame the reluctance of his more cautious brethren by offering personally 6000 of his own, to start a mission to Ceylon, the cession of which in 1802 to the English Government offered an open door. Five missionaries were designated, and set aside, Dr Coke among them. In spite of ill health the voyage was spent by the veteran in the study of the Portuguese language, under the impression that it would be of use in Ceylon. His death at sea led to the Methodists at home realising their need of undertaking the heavy responsibilities which hitherto had rested solely upon the shoulders of Dr Coke. So on October 6th, 1813, the Wesleyan Missionary Society was formally constituted at Leeds, and by 1816 missionary work had become an integral part of the organisation of every home circuit. The same year saw the commencement of organised missions by the Methodists of America, in the attempt to reach the Wyandot Indians. At first the work met with much opposition ; the Methodists AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 83 felt that the needs of their vast country demanded all their resources. But in 1820, a wider outlook pre- vailed. The General Conference reported that " Methodism itself is a missionary system. Yield the missionary spirit and you yield the very life- blood of the cause.'' A missionary society was accordingly organised, and work begun among " the pagan aborigines of this continent.'' A great mission was soon carried on among the Creeks of Alabama, the Cherokees of Georgia, the Oneidas, Shawnees, Mohawks and other tribes of redmen. The most astonishing story is that of the mission to the Flatheads. Far away in the backwoods of Oregon the Flatheads had heard from a wandering trapper of the white man's God, and especially of a book which told of the Great Spirit and how to find Him. So four of their number were sent far East to find it. After a trail of over 3000 miles through pathless prairies and over untrodden moun- tains, they arrived in 1832 at St Louis. There two of them died, and the other two set off home in despair. They were returning they said " blind, to a bhnd people." They had not found the " White man's Book of Heaven." But " their long trail of many moons far from the setting sun " was not in vain. Indirectly it led to the dispatch of Metho- dist missionaries to Oregon ; ultimately it formed one of the factors which gave that vast territory 84 METHODISM to the States at the time of the dispute over the Oregon Territory with Great Britain (1846). The details of the growth of the missionary work of the Methodist Churches in England, America ^where it long since became more than the evan- gelisation of the native Indians, Canada, AustraUa, and South Africa would demand a volume to itself. We must restrict ourselves to a brief survey of the different parts of the missionary field in which the missionaries are toiling. The missions of the English Methodists, broadly speaking, are four in number : in India, in China, and in West and South Africa. In India they have concentrated upon Ceylon, Madras, Mysore and Bengal. In China, their chief efforts are in Canton and the Middle Provinces. One feature of the work is, however, a most successful mission recently started in Hunan, a province so long closed to all foreigners. In West Africa the mission to the Gold Coast was established as far back as 1792, and, in its own way, has attained remarkable success, though at a great cost, especially in former days, of the Uves of the missionaries. In South Africa the success of the missions to the Kaffirs, Basutos, and Hottentots, points the way in the near future to a determined attack from the South upon Central Africa with its great lakes and teeming populations. The American Methodists as far back as 1832, AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 85 began a work in Liberia, a country with special claims upon them. Of recent years they have also established many mission stations in Portuguese East Africa. As might be expected in the land of the Monroe Doctrine, Methodist missionaries have carried on a determined campaign in South America. In 1835 a commencement was made in Brazil, followed later by stations in Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, and Chile. In spite of the opposition of the Roman clergy, good v/ork has been accom- plished. Probably, the greatest success as yet, is the winning, after a long struggle, of religious freedom, largely as the result of the unwearied efforts of Methodist missionaries. On the opening in 1844 of the Treaty ports of China, the American Methodists at once commenced to send missionaries to the Middle Kingdom. In spite of privations, persecution and martyrdom, the work has grown steadily but surely. To-day there are in connexion with American Methodists, 1100 ordained and unordained native preachers. In addition, since 1882, there has been developed a successful mission work by the Canadian Methodists in the provinces of Sz'Chuan and Kweichau, with hospitals, schools, and more than 100 missionaries. In the fearful Boxer insurrection of 1900, hundreds of the new converts showed their fidelity by facing torture and death rather than return to their former 86 METHODISM heathenism. Nor is work among the Chinese limited to China. Both in California and in the Transvaal, Methodists have followed the Celestials and tried to win them for the Cross. Passing by the successful American missions in India, two or three special fields claim some notice. In 1907, the Methodist Churches of America and Canada united to form a Japanese native Church, the membership of which already consists of more than 11,000 converts. The example of union thus set, will certainly be imitated elsewhere when the times are ripe. In 1896, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, also, began a very successful mission work in Korea. In Europe the American Metho- dists have numerous stations both in Germany and Italy. For the work in Germany, which is essenti- ally evangelical and in no sense antagonistic to the Lutheran Church, America has special advantages in the large number of Methodist Germans in its own country. Perhaps the most difficult of all American missions is that to Bulgaria. Begun in 1857, it still continues in spite of constant persecu- tion, of the Bulgarian atrocities of 1876, and of the embarrassment of the work, whenever possible, by the authorities. Of the Australian Methodists the chief missions are in the islands of the Pacific, in- cluding stations such as Fiji and Tonga originally founded by English sacrifice. In a past generation AMERICA AND BEYOND THE SEAS 87 the name of Fiji, with the story of its conversion by such heroes of the Cross as Hunt and Calvert, was a potent source of enthusiasm and generosity. To-day the Methodist Church throughout the world, and for that matter every other church, is face to face no longer with the impressionable, infantile races of mankind, but with the entrenched super- stitions and hoary civilisations of the immemorial East. The easy victories of the past have given place to the less sensational and more arduous toil of the sappers. But of the issue of the fight, if only the Church of Christ is true to herself, there can be no shadow of doubt. In the winning of the East for the Cross, Methodism must play a great part. Possibly, also, on the missionfield there may come solutions of the problems of unity which at present are but dreams, or even are regarded, from the stand- point of the difficulties at home, as impossibilities. CHAPTER IV THE DIVISIONS AND REUNIONS OF BRITISH METHODISM I. Divisions of Methodism Apology for Static and Dynamic Forces " Sturm und Drang " . . pp. 88-90 II. Calvinism The Separation of Whitefield and Wesley The rise of the New Connexion The Primitive Methodists Bible Christians The great split of 1849 Watson, Bunting, and Newton Recent history pp. 91-101 III. Tendencies towards reunion reunions accomplished The chances of larger reunions . . pp. 101-106 With some misgivings we have headed this chapter The Divisions of British Methodism. By so doing we run the risk of undue emphasis of the accidental at the expense of the essential. For the divisions of Methodism, large as they loom to the outside world, are in reality the least part of its spiritual history. For this reason we do not propose to inflict upon the reader any long account of the divisions of Methodism. For the Methodist such a chapter, within the limits that we can allow, would be valueless ; he would justly complain that it was impossible to set out in a few lines, without caricature THE DIVISIONS AND RE-UNIONS 89 or injustice, especially to the inner spiritual life of the movement, the history of divisions the roots of which, for the most part, lie rather in personal con- siderations than in fundamental differences either of doctrine or government. The attempt, also, so far as the outsider is concerned, would be useless. For the divisions of Methodism have not been founded upon reasons that will commend themselves without reserve at the bar of history. Too often they have been the results of misunderstanding, or of tactless administration ; above aU they have been the outcome of the " settling down '' process through which every great movement and institu- tion must pass. Nor must we overlook the influence of the strong democratic wave which characterized the century after Waterloo, in producing friction in a body so conservatively organized as was Wesley's Methodism. In defence of Methodism we might plead that the divisions which attended .this " settHng down'' have not been more marked or numerous than those which have accompanied every other great religious awakening. The dynamic forces which underlie a great revolt are never at first static, whatever they may become in process of time. We could illustrate this position abundantly both from the history of the Early Church, of the Reformation, of the Puritan struggle or of the great upheaval in Europe that we 90 METHODISM call the French Revolution. To find fault with this tendency to cleavage that marks all volcanic or elementary outbursts may be right and good for the a priori philosopher, but betrays a curious ignor- ance of the great facts of life. History shows that all revolts and reforms tend to carry them^selves in diverse directions farther or faster than the original intentions of their leaders, and are, in consequence, accompanied by divisions which it is the wearisome task of a later generation to smoothe away. When the philosopher, in consequence, proclaims that all revolts are dangerous he may be right, but the historian who deals with facts cannot be guided by his a "priori dictum. If, therefore, we approach the study of Methodist divisions in this spirit, the student will not be astonished at the divisions themselves, though he may regret the causes. These, in fact, lie deep- rooted in the imperfections and Hmitations of all human movements, however spiritual in intention. Instead, therefore, of attempting to trace in detail the schisms in British Methodism, or to narrate the history of the sections, we shall restrict ourselves to the indication of the causes which led to these divisions, with some reflections at the close upon the prospects of the heaUng of the same. THE DIVISIONS AND RE-UNIONS 91 II The first dissension in Methodism arose between Whitefield and Wesley over the question of Calvin- ism. In reality Arminianism and Calvinism are so irreconcilable that it is difficult to conceive how the two opposing theologies could ever, under any circumstances, have been combined in one body. It was fortunate that the separation occurred during Wesley's lifetime ; it was disastrous that the con- troversy on both sides was conducted with more than usual theological positiveness. Finally, after both sides had considerably modified their first crude dogmatism, both went their several ways. Whitefield estabfished his own societies ; Wesley, supported by the powerful pen of Fletcher, went on to perfect his organisation. Another important result was the drifting away from Methodism of the Evangelicals, with Toplady, Berridge, Vernon and Romaine at their head. Whatever be the merits of the controversy, logically or theologically, the verdict of time has been for Wesley. Except in Wales, Calvinistic Methodism is now as extinct as Evangelical Calvinism in the Church of England. For that matter, within living memory, the doctrine of the universality of the gospel call has passed from an argument into a conviction, which, like every other fundamental conviction, is not dependent 92 METHODISM upon proof, nor assailable because of logical diffi- culties. Rightly or wrongly, the average Christian has settled the matter for himself by falling back upon his own consciousness of the fitness of things, of what is possible or probable in a moral world under a moral governor. The controversy, though all consuming in its day, is as dead as the great struggle which rent the thirteenth century between the Zealots or Spiritual Franciscans and the Moderates as to the meaning of " apostolic poverty.'' The next division in Methodism was the rise of the New Connexion in 1797. This schism, stripping it of all personal misunderstandings, was the result of the indeterminate relationship to the Anglican Church in which Wesley at his death had left his societies. In 1784, by his Deed of Declaration, Wesley, whether consciously or not, had taken the final step of separation, by providing the machinery for the continuation and government of his societies upon his decease. In place of a successor he had appointed a conference of one hundred preachers the Legal Hundred, as its shadow is now designated to take his place, with all his rights and privileges, providing always that they maintained both the doctrines and itinerancy of Methodism unchanged. But Wesley, though thus constituting a separate Church, had taken few steps to provide for the administration of the Sacraments except by attend- THE DIVISIONS AND RE-UNIONS 93 ance at the parish church. How completely he had exaggerated the attachment of both preachers and people to the Established Church, is shown in the demand which arose, immediately upon his decease, for the settlement of this question. As usual in such cases there were two parties ; the one, cautious and conservative ; the other, anxious to carry out logic to its conclusions without hesitation or delay. Without doubt the balance incHned towards the more cautious policy. The " Church Methodists,'' especially in London, were in the majority, and if the Anglican bishops had been wise in their generation, there is little doubt that they could have entered into some arrangement which would have satisfied the majority and anchored Methodism as a society to the Church of England. But the opportunity passed, and the unwillingness of the clergy to allow Methodists to participate at the Lord's Table forced the question more definitely upon a reluctant Conference. The answer given was neither logical nor heroic. By the Plan of Pacification of 1795 each separate " society " was allowed to settle for itself the question of the holding of its services within " church hours," as also of the administration of the Sacraments by its preachers. This method of local option, though difficult to defend upon theological grounds, proved, on the whole, a statesmanlike solution. It satisfied 94 METHODISM the great majority of the societies, and provided a way, illogical, perhaps, but cautious, for future complete separation of Methodism and Anglicanism. In the next generation the adoption of the " Plan '' became universal. But, naturally, there were some whom this method of settlement of a great question did not satisfy. They desired to force more logical con- clusions upon a reluctant community. They were unwilling to await the settlement that the great logician. Time, would inevitably effect. This party, under the lead of Alexander Kilham, put forth counter proposals of their own, the general effect of which would have been a considerable alteration in Methodism, amounting in some details to a revolu- tion. These proposals may be called " statesman- like and prescient '' provided we understand our terms. They have long since been adopted in the main by the most conservative Methodists ; judged merely from the standpoint of to-day it is difficult to conceive that they should ever have been opposed. But when they were put forward they were altogether in advance of the general demand, and their adoption would undoubtedly have led to a greater schism than their rejection. The party of cautious advance was in the majority, and, as the result of unwise action on both sides, the party of logical hurry withdrew, founding, in 1797, The Methodist New Connexion. THE DIVISIONS AND RE-UNIONS 95 The next division in Methodism was the result of the emotional " revivalism '' which was so rife at the opening of the nineteenth century, especially in the North of England. Hard things may be said, ofttimes with justice, about these " revivalists,'' as hard things have always been said about men supremely in earnest. They pushed individualism to an extreme. Like George Fox they laid supreme stress on the inner light. They subordinated, as Wesley had done before them. Church order and regulations to soul saving and individual edification. Undoubtedly they gave too much play to the emotional as distinct from the more intellectual aspects of rehgion. They delighted in the camp- meetings at Mow Cop and elsewhere, which had formed so remarkable a feature in America. If Methodist officials had been wise, they might, per- haps, have controlled these extremists by giving them fair latitude as mission bands auxiliary to the regular societies, as irregular cavalry in the host of the Lord. As it was, they acted towards them with the unwisdom with which the Anglican bishops had acted towards their fathers. Wesley an Method- ism, in fact, at this time was setting its house in order ; it was cautiously constituting its organisa- tion and complete independence. The thing it most dreaded was irregularity always the supreme anxiety of courts that are seeking to regularise their 96 METHODISM own affairs, especially when they are keenly conscious of the criticism of those from whom they are seceding. The consequence was the separation (1808-1811), under William Clowes and Hugh Bourne, of the Primitive Methodists as a separate organisation. Though at first almost confined to Staffordshire the zeal of the Primitive Methodists, the devotion of its ministers, indifferent to persecution, ridicule or poverty, led to its rapid growth, especially in East Anglia. One striking feature of its work was the extent to which women participated, both as local preachers, and even, in early days, as travelling preachers and missionaries. In the social life of England Primitive Methodist local preachers have played a great part by the leadership they have given to the working classes. The excessive in- dividualism which marked the birth of the move- ment has long since passed away, as also has the over-abundant emotionalism. With the closing years of the nineteenth century the Primitive Methodists acquired a deep sense of the value both of culture and connexionalism, and a strong deter- mination to work out the development of their Church on broad, comprehensive lines. Another branch of Methodists, the Bible Christians, arose from similar causes. The spiritual needs of Devon and Cornwall weighed upon the soul of William 0' Bryan. When he offered himseff as an THE DIVISIONS AND RE-UNIONS 97 itinerant the Wesleyan Methodists of Cornwall could not see their way to accept him, inasmuch as he was a married man. Consumed with zeal, he made light of discipline. But between his own irregularities on one side and martinets on the other, the result was inevitable, and 'Bryan withdrew (1815) that he might work on his own Unes. The community he formed was not so much a secession from Methodism as a fresh ingathering of the neglected. Through the length and breadth of Cornwall and Devon, the Bible Christians toiled with a passionate earnestness which made light of persecution, and that no poverty could daunt. But in the early years of the nineteenth century Cornwall and Devon were still cut off from the rest of England, and the community that O 'Bryan formed thus remained strictly local. We believe that, on the whole, both Primitive Methodists and Bible Christians have accompHshed more by separate existence than they would have done otherwise. They have not so much weakened Methodism as gathered in classes that might other- wise never have been reached, or which would not have been contented mth the less democratic government of the original societies. But, as Httle can be said in defence of the causes which led to the schism of the New Connexion, so still less can be said in defence of the great disruption of 1849, G 98 METHODISM the issue of which was the rise of the United Methodists. For Wesley an Methodists the first fifty years of the century had been years of astonish- ing growth. In every part of the country they had built stately chapels, oftentimes crowded with large congregations. Their class-meetings, band meetings, prayer-meetings, were full of vigour and spiritual life. At the same time there had been a wonderful development in organisation. Under the leadership of four men of remarkable power Jabez Bunting, Adam Clark, Richard Watson, and Robert Newton the inchoate society which John Wesley had left had become a powerful, compact Church, conscious of its independence, determined to fulfil all its legitimate functions. Of the four leaders to whom we have referred, Newton was famous for his gifts as an orator, Watson for his powers as a preacher and writer, especially in theology, and Adam Clark for his scholarship. But the greatest of the four un- doubtedly was Bunting. For over forty years he was the acknowledged ruler of Methodism. So far from being, as is often supposed, intolerant of change, to Bunting must be attributed the initiative in the measures which have secured for the Methodist laity legislative and administrative privileges of which Wesley had never dreamed. But like many other statesmen of the first order he was too master- THE DIVISIONS AND RE-UNIONS 99 ful ; he neither allowed his opponents free play, nor was he as careful a^s he should have been to disassociate himself from some unworthy syco- phants. In his later years also, he seems scarcely to have realised the need of the further develop- ment, with the changing times, of the principles which he had been the first adequately to expound. The consequence was the rise of a spirit of dis- affection, which found its issue, through the bitter pen of James Everett, in the publication of anony- mous Fly Sheets (1846-8). The unworthy character of these squibs cannot be defended ; nor, unfortun- ately, can much be said for the methods that were taken in the Wesleyan Conference to discover and punish the authors. The result was a schism which reflected credit on nobody, the details of which are better for- gotten. But the effects cannot be so easily dis- missed. Over 100,000 communicants withdrev/ to form a separate organisation, afterwards known as United Methodists. Nor was this numerical loss the worst part. In some places Methodism, by being rent asunder, was almost destroyed, and has never recovered from the wounds inflicted by the foes of its own household. In others, those who had withdrawn, though sometimes politically noisy, were often the most ardent and spiritually fervent. Through the retirement of these forwards too often 100 METHODISM a dismal lethargy took possession of those who remained, the effects of which were felt long after- wards. Even where there was no lethargy, for years the energies which should have been employed in aggression were used up in the effort to support the existing crippled agencies. PoHtically also, the results were disastrous. The withdrawal of the liberal section led to the identification of Wesleyan Methodism too closely with the conservative party, with a natural reaction, or tendency to reaction, in later years that has had equal dangers and dis- advantages. Only one good thing came out of the deplorable controversy. The Wesleyan Conference learned its lesson ; the history of its proceedings for half a century has been one of steady development of the privileges and responsibilities of the laity, while at the same time duly conserving the pastoral functions. The invaluable work in these matters, both of Dr Rigg and of Hugh Price Hughes, can never be forgotten. To Hughes, also, it was given to arouse once more under new forms the old enthusiasms, and, in his own impetuous way, to point to broader ideals of service and influence. If Methodism had been organised in 1797 or 1849 as it is organised in 1912, no schism or division would ever have arisen. But, on the other hand, possibly such wise and liberal organisation and temper would never have arisen had Methodism THE DIVISIONS Al^D BE-UNIOMS, , .101 not learned through disaster and schism the advan- tages of a far-sighted comprehensiveness. Through the friction of past days, Methodism in all its branches has learned the value of a government based upon a conservative yet democratic basis, in which shall be conserved the essentials of stability and progress. Ill That Methodism has now got over the " sturm und drang '' of its youth, that the process of " settling down '' has now virtually been completed, will be admitted by most intelligent observers. The days of individuahsm and schism, the spirit of sect which seems to be a necessary force in some stages of religious growth, have now given place to a deeper conception of solidarity ; the tendency to-day is all towards reunion rather than further division. But, as the history of the Church has always shown, divisions are not so easily rectified as created, even when, as in the case of Methodism, there are ab- solutely no theological differences to overcome. There are vested interests of all sorts, not necessarily material, which are not easity accommodated, though the animosities originally engendered have passed away. Something, no doubt, has been accomplished already in Methodism towards reunion. In Ireland, 102 METHODISM in Australia, and in Canada, the Methodist Church to-day is one. To the deeper divisions in the United States and the chances of unity we have already referred. 1 Even in the Old Country the last quarter of a century has seen a wonderful develop- ment of amity. On all hands the evils and weakness of division are recognised ; there is no longer the burning desire to build four different Methodist chapels in a village that could scarcely support one. But to undo the past is not easy of accomplishment. Mere legislation, or even the convictions of the ministers and more intelligent laity, would accom- pUsh nothing except cause further division unless they carried with them the practical unanimity of all classes. That, in the providence of God, this will come can scarcely be doubted. But the time is not yet. Much spade work has yet to be done before the foundations of a united Methodism can be securely laid. There are financial obstacles to be overcome ; difficulties with reference to the different status and equipment of the ministry ; and also in spite of the growing liberahsm of the original Methodism, and the growing conservatism of the seceders a few, not many, difficulties of constitution and organisation. Above all there is the supreme need of a great sweep through the length and breadth of the land of the influence of 1 ^Swpra, p. 76. THE DIVISIONS AND RE-UNIONS 103 the Holy Spirit. When this comes faith will laugh at impossibiUties, and love rejoice to dwell on the deeper things wherein there is agreement, to the exclusion of the more trivial differences. In the meanwhile haste may do mischief, and mechanical combinations prevent ultimate organic fusions. One great reunion in England has, however, been accompHshed, which demands some notice, both for its own sake and as an omen of the future. We allude to the reunion, under the title of the United Methodist Church, of the divisions alluded to in these pages as the New Connexion, the Bible Christians, and the United Free Methodists. After long negotiations, which at times seemed destined to lead to nothing, the three Conferences in 1905 adopted a basis of union. On this being referred to the several quarterly meetings ^the local courts of the circuits of Methodism it was adopted with but four adverse votes. As a result of this remark- able vote the three Conferences were enabled to obtain the necessary Act of Parliament in 1907, and to meet in one united Conference on September 17th, 1907. This memorable reunion gained emphasis from the fact that it was held by invita- tion in Wesley's Chapel, City Road, the metropoUtan church of world-wide Methodism. For various reasons the Primitive Methodists could not at the time see their way to join in this reunion ; but it is 104 METHODISM certainly no little advantage that but three divisions now remain. In due time, possibly within the course of another generation, the three will be still further reduced, thus paving the way for the eventual outcome when, as we believe, the Protestant rehgious life of England will be organically grouped under three forms ^the AngHcan, the Methodist, and the united Congregational and Baptist. These three forms, again, may be, we trust will be, virtually one in life and loyalty, as also in the essentials of creed, differing chiefly in methods of government. To some of our readers such a consummation may appear meagre and inadequate. They can be satisfied with nothing short of absolute reunion " that they all may be one.'' What the future may bring forth, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we cannot say. The questions which seem so insuperable, when viewed from a local centre, may some day be solved in ways of which at present we Uttle dream ; as, for instance, by the great spiritual awakening of India or China, and the imperative unity which such an awakening might produce. But leaving out of account this great though not impossible contingency, if by reunion is intended the absorption of Methodism in Anglican- ism, we must frankly confess that of this we see no possibility, not even in England, certainly not in the United States. Those who urge such absorption THE DIVISIONS AND RE-UNIONS 105 cannot have realised that Methodism is the largest Protestant Church in the world. In America, from the relative insignificance of AngHcanism, especially in the Central and Western States, the proposition would be laughed out of court. But even if the question is restricted to this country alone the issue cannot be in doubt. Between the Methodist doctrine of the ministry and of the Sacraments, and the High Anglican theory as often enunciated, there is a guK fixed which it were absurd to ignore. The virtual suppression of Evangelicalism as a governing force in the Church of England has made Methodism more conscious of itself as the representative Evangelical Church of the country. Even Wesley an Methodism, which at one time almost regarded itself as a sort of poor dependent of the Established Church, has in these later years drifted into complete separation, largely as the result of the pressure from without of an intolerant form of AngHcanism. Harmony can never be restored on the old basis. Only the frankest recognition by the AngHcan of the validity and reaUty of the church life of Methodism, including the orders of its ministers, only the unswerving fidelity of Anglicanism to the great principles which underlay the Reformation, can prevent a further widening of the breach, than which we can conceive no greater disaster of English religious hfe. Whether such recognition and 106 METHODISM fidelity might not lead to schism in the Anglican Church itself is, however, more than doubtful, at any rate under present conditions. As things now are, a large party in the Church of England seems more anxious to secure the approval and friendship of the ahen adherents of the Eastern and Roman faiths than to take steps for the consolidation of the Protestantism of the Empire. Such an outlook is, we hold, as disastrous imperially, as it is unjust to the teaching of history. CHAPTER V THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY OF METHODISM I. Methodism has no new creed or symbol Its relation to the historic symbols Evangelical doctrine of the Atonement Doctrine of Assurance Conversion and HoUness Lack of a Confirmation Service The alleged narrowness of Methodist theology Its alleged one-sidedness .... pp. 107-119 n. Methodist polity The class- meeting The circuit The district The Conference Limitations of the Con- ference ...... pp. 119-127 IIL Conclusion pp. 127-128 In the present chapter we propose to give, though in merest outHne, some presentation of the doctrines and poHty of the Methodist Church, so far as these differ in any considerable degree from the creeds and poHties of other churches. Methodist teaching throughout the world is one, though the differences in Methodist polity and organisation are considerable. But, after all, true unity is determined by oneness of creed. 107 108 METHODISM The student of Methodism ^ must not expect to find within it the enunciation of a new creed or ^ The term " Methodist" was not, of course, new. Not to mention older application of the word to students of certain schools of botany and of medicine (on which see Murray's New Eng. Dict.^ s.v. 1), it was definitely applied to a class of religious people in a sermon at Lambeth in 1647 by Farindon {Serm. xx. [1672] i. 394), and not as if it were newly coined for the occasion. In 1658 J. Spencer, in Things New and Old, p. 161, writes: "Where are now our Anabaptists and plain pack-staff Methodists, who esteem all flowers of rhetoric in sermons no better than stinking weeds, and all elegance of speech no better than profane spells?" In 1693 a pamphlet was published entitled A War among the Angels of the Churches : wherein is shelved the Principles of the New Methodists in the great point of Justification, by a Country Professor of Jesus Christ ; see R. Traill's Sel. Works (1845), p. 167. In a dictionary published by Phillips (ed. Kersey) in 1706 the word "Methodist" is thus explained: "One that treats of method or affects to be methodical." The application of the title to the "Wesley movement would thus seem to be a loose combination of several ideas, and was possibly influenced by current slang to which we have now lost the key. While undoubtedly the main emphasis would be on the " methodical " character of the new movement, we must bear in mind certain theological significations which may have influenced the wits of Oxford [cf. C. Mather's Magn. Chr. (1702), iv. 132, " Parum aut nihil asserunt Amyraldistae quos Novatores et Methodistas vocant " (quoted in Murray, s.v.), just as the wits of Antioch were influenced in giving the Graeco-Latin names of "Christians" or " Christianoi " (see my Persecution in the Early Church, p. 58 n.), the latter of which finally became used. "Methodists" was not the first name that was given to Charles Wesley and his friends. The nickname "Sacramentarians," which originated in Merton College, seems to have preceded it. Many other designations, e.g. Bible Moths, Holy Club, Supererogation Men, were applied to them, but the term "Methodists" was the name that sur- THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 109 symbol of faith. Methodism, it is true, was born in a university, but in reality owed nothing to Oxford, and was soon driven out of it. Apart from this, its genius did not lie in the schools of the theologian. Like St Francis, John Wesley, the St Francis of the eighteenth century, did not set out to discover buried truth, but to live out a forgotten life, and to group together into societies those of like mind with himself. Unlike Wyclif, his object was not to overthrow existing dogmas, but to gal- vanise them into life. Luther was driven into a life-long fight with a great organisation ; Calvin into the working out of a creed that could take the place of the discredited absolutism of Rome. Wesley, on the contrary, was supremely anxious to serve the Church of his fathers, whose creed, as he interpreted it, appealed to him as the final word of God. To theological thought his contribution is thus insignificant and cannot for a moment be compared with the masterpieces of such leaders of revolt as Wyclif, Melancthon or Calvin ; as the apostle of primitive Christianity he has obtained an abiding place in history side by side with the heroes of the early Church. To the lead thus given by vived. John "Wesley's definition of the word in his dictionary (published in 1753) would account for the survival : "A Methodist is one who lives according to the method laid down in the Bible." The word, in accordance with the usual evolution of such terms, has refer- ence now to the organised body of '* Methodists " and not to "method." 110 METHODISM Wesley, Methodism, on the whole, has been con- sistent. Its genius is practical rather than theo- logical ; for its small contribution to thought abundant atonement has been made by its larger contribution to life. In the great fundamentals of the faith, the doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of the Atonement, Methodism is naturally one with its mother-church. In these essentials it is Catholic in the true sense of that misused word.^ It accepts the primary historic symbols, the early Roman symbol or Apostles' Creed, and the enlarged edition of the Baptismal Creed of Jerusalem that passes under the name of Nicea ; as well as the great song- creed that we call the Te-Deum. From these symbols its only difference would be some hesitation as to the value of the late addition, " He descended into heU,'* and its interpretation of the obscure clause " sanctorum communionem,'' with a reference mainly to present Christian fellowship, a meaning, we frankly own, probably not in accord with the original intention. To the so-called Athanasian Creed, in reahty a symbol of Gallic, possibly Spanish, origin, 1 For a fuller exposition of the doctrines of Methodism in their relation to the development of the Christian Church and in their reference to religious psychology I may perhaps refer to my chapter in A New History of Methodism, vol. i. c. 1. " The Place of Methodism in the Christian Church." THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 111 designed as a condemnation of Apollinarian doctrine, Methodism attaches Uttle practical value, at any rate in its present form, inasmuch as its logical subtleties savour rather of the schools than of life. But in this rejection of this great song for so it should properly be regarded as the shibboleth of faith, Methodism is one with the Eastern Church. In its doctrine of the Atonement, Methodism is Arminian and Evangelical. The Arminianism of Wesley, historically considered, was a legacy of Archbishop Laud, who, as part of his protest against Geneva, laid stress upon the universal aspect of the life and faith of the Church. Through the Wesley s this part of Laud's high-churchmanship has passed into the life-blood of Methodism. To the twentieth century Arminianism seems almost axiomatic, largely, of course, because the century starts with the postulate of the Fatherhood of God. The Calvinism that appealed so powerfully to the eighteenth century is to-day a discredited faith. The universality of the gospel-call is now the belief of most men. That this is so must be attributed largely to the influence of Methodist teaching ; though the all pervasive universalism of the age, avowedl}^ based upon what is possible or probable in a moral world under a moral governor, should not be ignored. The Methodist doctrine of the Atonement is also Evan- gelical. It proclaims that religion is the individual 112 METHODISM consciousness of relation to God, and that this relationship is the result of personal appropriation of, or trust in, Jesus Christ and not the outcome of organisation or the gift of any priesthood. With this fundamental truth she will allow no tampering. Upon this consciousness she lays the utmost stress. This consciousness has given to its preaching its greatest power, is the explanation of its fervid evangelistic appeals, and Ues at the root of its special institution of the class-meeting. For Methodism to cease from the proclamation of this doctrine would be to deny the grounds of her existence. This personal consciousness of relationship to God through Jesus Christ is technically known as the doctrine of Assurance. In the eighteenth century Wesley's formulation of Assurance was looked upon as a dangerous innovation. One Methodist preacher was actually imprisoned for saying that he knew that his sins were forgiven. At first, also, Wesley preached the doctrine in an extreme and uncharitable form, nor did he always remember how long he him- seK had taken to learn its truth. But putting on one side the exaggerations of the doctrine, and the dangers into which such exaggerations lead, we can see that the doctrine of Assurance is in reaUty the appeal to experience. This is the fundamental contribution of Methodism to the life and thought of the Church. And as such it is wonderfully con- THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 113 gruent with the best scientific and philosophic thought of to-day. If we have read aright the drift of thought in the last thirty years, it has set in steadily towards the recognition of the reality of the phenomena of experience. And chief est of these phenomena is the religious consciousness, the vaUdity of which cannot be questioned without questioning the grounds of being. Tolstoy is not now alone in his claim that faith is among the forces by which men live, " without which I myseK would not exist.'' Such faith, according to Methodist teaching, is not only personal but conscious of the attainment of its object. A corollary of the stress thus laid by Methodism upon religion as the personal consciousness of relationship to God is the Methodist doctrine of conversion. As reHgious Hfe itseK is a consciousness, so also is conversion. Now, as a rule, this conscious- ness has its beginning in time, though a deeper analysis would show that this is not invariable ; nor for that matter is " time " the vulgar equivalent for the ticks of the pendulum. Time is not an actuality so much as a quahty of consciousness. In the past, we must allow, Methodism often laid unwise stress upon the time-factor, and also made the common mistake of interpreting a vivid or full consciousness as " instantaneousness " ; though in reality the two things belong to different planes of 114 METHODISM thought. But this stress upon time is, after all, a detail, to the dangers of whose exaggeration Metho- dists to-day are fully aUve. But on the fact of conver- sion, i.e. the fact of a present conscious life in Christ, Methodism is no less careful to insist than in the past. The same criticism and defence may be made as regards the Methodist doctrine of Holiness or " perfect love.'' Wesley's doctrine is really a coroUary of his appeal to experience. For if a son is conscious of his relation to his Father there must be the possibiHty that that consciousness shall be complete, and as such the source of exquisite joy and untroubled confidence. That this is possible now is a further necessity, for otherwise the experi- ence would not be in consciousness. But when we begin to give the full content of this consciousness, to subject it to analysis, to write down cause and effect, to express it in theological terms, then difficulties begin, and from these difficulties Wesley's statements are by no means exempt. In reality, with Wesley, hoHness is not a theory but an experi- ence, a life. But this is true of the saints of God in aU generations. The wise theologian will insist on the fact, nor will he be anxious to insist on applying to this grace the categories of time and cause. In every age the desire for holiness has been the mark of the child of God. Varieties in the definition of the mark are immaterial : it is the conscious pursuit THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 115 that gives unity to the lives of the saints of aU time. If we must dwell upon dijfferences we would point out that in the main, they are found in the laying of the stress either upon probation as with the medieval saints or upon grace as with Wesley and St Augustine. From these two great differences spring the differences in the method of pursuit, though, after all, the end is the same, and, in the long run, it is the end that is all important. The defects of one generation are not easily reme- died by the clearer discernment of a later age. The inability of the eighteenth century to under- stand the life and religion of a child, reference to which has been already made,^ unfortunately led to Methodism making no proper provision either for the oversight of its baptised children, or for the recognition by the Church of its children, when they came to years of discretion. The lack of something in Methodism corresponding of course, with the necessary alterations which the Methodist position involves ^to the AngUcan Confirmation service has often been deplored, by none more than by a growing number of Methodists themselves. The fact that Wesley, with all his Anglican training, failed to make such provision, must be attributed either to his unwillingness to recognise that the Confirmation- Service of the Anglican Church was no longer avail- ^ Supra, p. 55. 116 METHODISM able, even if desired, for his adherents, or else to the general inabihty to understand child-religion. For long years after his death a rigid and narrow theory of conversion, suitable possibly for many adults, unsuited for the child of pious parents, prevented the Methodist people from realising the need of making proper provision for public confession of faith by those who had never left the Father's house for the Far Country. Nor were they fully aware of the loss involved by the want of a formal reception of the adolescent into the Church of Christ. Though in recent years, many attempts have been made, both by guilds, junior classes, and other organisations to solve the difficulty, it cannot be said that Methodism has yet found the bridge that she needs between the Sunday School, the home, and the Church. In consequence she has sometimes been charged, not always unjustly, with showing greater powers of conversion than of conservation. Hard words have sometimes been said as to the theology of Methodism, that it is narrow, illiberal, and one-sided. But the life and thought of a Church is always larger and deeper than its official documents. We should pity the student who should try to understand the genius of the Church of England by a diligent consideration of its Thirty- nine Articles. So also with Methodism. In its origins Methodism stood for the insistence upon THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 117 certain doctrines that seemed to be fundamental the depravity of human nature, the need of con- scious faith and definite conversion, the necessity of sanctification after justification, the witness of the Spirit, and so on. Some of these, no doubt, were expressed in language that is now out of date, and drawn out from a standpoint that to the twentieth century seems unintelligible. Exactly the same thing might be said of Nicea and of the teaching of St Augustine. The twentieth century may not approve of the fourth-century metaphysics, may be bewildered by terms some of which have lost their meaning, or may dismiss as hopelessly contra- dictory the positions of St Augustine. Nevertheless the creeds rem^ain because there was in them the dynamic of a living faith. They have Uved because they are among the affirmatives and imperatives which from time to time, surge up in consciousness, and which carry a larger authority than belongs to any dialectics. They have survived the wear and tear of centuries, because in a real way, they em- bodied vital experience. No student would ever maintain that the creeds embody the whole of theology ; they single out those features which formed the battlefield of the moment. They are the monuments more lasting than brass, erected to the triumph of certain vital positions. Similar remarks might be made as to St Augustine. So 118 METHODISM also with the primar}^ documents and doctrines of Methodism. The facts of experience to which they point, must not be judged by the language and arguments which Wesley and Fletcher used in their support. Metaphysics, methods of reasoning, above all methods of scriptural interpretation, change with the changing ages the facts of the soul alone are constant. Methodism to-day, though seeking to express itself in more modern language, and from the standpoint of a wider and more liberal interpretation of the Scriptures, ^ sees no reason to believe that the experiences of the heart to which she appeals, are fundamentally different from what they were in the days of her origin. With more justification the critic might urge that Methodism is one-sided, that she lays too much stress on certain doctrines to the neglect of others, that while clear and distinct in her teaching as to conver- sion and holiness, she is uncertain in her emphasis of the Sacraments, and nebulous in her notion of the Church. Such a charge seems to us exaggerated. If true and we are not concerned to deny a measure of truth, ^it was true rather of the past than of the present, and will be less true of the future than of 1 Fortunately Methodism in its official documents is not hampered by any theory of inspiration ; it insists merely on the fact without any dogma as to the method or limits. Its appeal to experience as one test of the spiritually true is, in fact, not far removed from the standpoint of sound critical methods of Biblical interpretation. THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 119 to-day. After all it is not much more than a hundred years since the death of Wesley, and in the Hfe of a Church that is but a span. Methodism to-day is paying increasing attention to the teaching of the full truth as it is in Christ, including the need of the Sacraments, the objective grace involved therein, and the meaning and claims of the Church. From the experience of the individual she is turning to the experience of the body corporate. To the validity of this experience, to the laws of its growth and development she is now giving more careful con- sideration. The individualism of the eighteenth century has yielded to the modern conceptions of solidarity. II We have left but scanty room for a brief descrip- tion of the polity of Methodism. Methodism, un- doubtedly is Presbyterian in the main outhnes of its organisation, both in England and America. The Presbyterian stamp ^as impressed upon it, curious as it may seem, by Wesley himseK, uncon- sciously, no doubt, for the most part. But Wesley's " superintendents,'' or elder-minister in each " circuit " or parish, his system of " stewards " and " leaders," his annual " conferences," his " quarterly meetings " of the ministers and laymen 120 METHODISM in every circuit, all feU in so closely with the Presby- terian system that the later division into synods, the later ordination of the ministers by the laying on of hands of the senior brethren, the emphasis and value placed upon the pastoral office, the later admission of the laity to all the courts of the Church, have consolidated not altered the work he began. For the outsider some explanation may, perhaps, be necessary of these different terms and courts. The germ-ceU of Methodism, as every one knows, is the class-meeting.^ Wherever there is a class- meeting there is a Methodist society ; in Methodism a church without a class-meeting is almost incon- ceivable, at any rate it was inconceivable until very recently. At one time the class-meeting was of a somewhat rigid character, and personal testimony or experience was almost enforced. In these days personal testimony is, perhaps, the exception ; but the open fellowship of believers in prayer, medita- tion, and praise is of none the less value both for building up the Church and for the maintenance of the more pubUc worship. Over every class, the numbers in which vary, there is a leader, generally a layman, who, though not ordained for this office is yet solemnly and deUberately chosen. Each 1 In the following sections I have disregarded sectional differ- ences. The description is only strictly accurate of English Wesleyan Methodists. THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 121 leader is held responsible for the oversight of the members of his class, and for reporting to the minister cases of sickness, of indifference, and the like, while regular meetings of the ministers and leaders give full opportunity for systematic oversight of the whole society and church. It will be evident that where the system is properly worked, it is most efficient both for obtaining its immediate purpose, and for using to the full the services of the godly laity, men and women. In country districts especially, remote perhaps from a minister, the leaders of Methodism have nobly discharged the duties of a sub-pastorate. Round this primary germ-ceU of the class-meeting there has slowly gathered and grown up, in differing complexity according to local circumstances, all the equipment of a modern church Sunday schools, guilds, and the rest. But on these, as they are in nowise peculiar to Methodism, it is not necessary to linger. Methodism differs from CongregationaHsm in that it does not allow the society or societies in any one place to form a separate Church. All the societies within a given area, the size of which will depend upon population and other circumstances, are grouped together into a " circuit "" with two or more ministers attached to it. The senior of such ministers is called the " superintendent '' and is held 122 METHODISM responsible for the due discharge of the duties both of himself and of those appointed to work under him. A circuit the name takes us back to the old days of wide travel upon horseback, when Metho- dists were few and distances great is thus a collec- tion of societies, generally grouped round some strong central society which is therefore expected to give of its strength and resources to the help of the others. Every circuit is governed by a " quarterly meeting " of the ministers and officers of the various societies, and its interests are the special concern of two lay officers, " circuit stewards,'' who among other responsible duties are charged with the making of due provision for the support of the ministers. To the Quarterly Meetings is given the right of inviting their ministers, subject to the consent of Conference. Every candidate for the ministry must also obtain the endorsement of the Quarterly Meeting of his own circuit, i.e. of those who will be the best fitted to know his character and general promise. But important as are the rights of Quarterly Meetings, they are not, as a rule, allowed any voice in the pastoral matters of the Church, the admission of members, the exercise of discipline, or the selection of lay preachers. These are left to the ministers acting in consultation with the leaders of the classes. Thus, in some respects, the courts of the germ-cell or societies, are kept distinct from the courts of the THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 123 Church that has grown round them with its more diverse interests. Before we pass away from the society a word should be said upon the " local preachers '' of Methodism. " Local preachers " are laymen who while pursuing their daily business, yet render assistance on Sunday in preaching ; generally in the smaller country chapels. Before a layman can become a local preacher he is subjected to trial and examination, especially as regards his preaching ability. As regards this last Methodists are exacting, though the standard in other respects might be raised with advantage. Without its noble army of local preachers Methodism, with its thousands of chapels too small or too poor to provide a resident minister, would be in a parlous condition, and would rapidly become a matter of the to wns only . The circulation of the local preachers within a circuit, Sunday by Sunday, also serves to bind together the interests of the diverse places ; the weakest, smallest chapel becomes an object of interest and prayer for the succession of laymen who visit it. In its " local preachers '' and " leaders " Methodism has made that effective use of its laity, without which every Church is shorn of its greatest strength. The connexionalism of Methodism is further seen in the grouping of the various circuits into a number of " Districts " the Anglican equivalent 124 METHODISM would be dioceses. At the head of each " district " is a " chairman '' with certain well-defined though limited powers of interfering, when necessary, with the superintendents and circuits of his district. All the ministers and circuit-stewards of every district also meet twice a year, under the super- intendence of the " chairman,'' for the discussion and discharge of the work of the district, the super- vision of missions, of funds, in a word of all matters common to the various circuits. From the society, the circuit, the district, we pass by a natural evolution to the Conference remember- ing always that as a matter of fact, Wesley began his Conferences or annual assemblies of his friends and itinerant helpers before either circuit or district was evolved. In Methodism, the Conference which meets annually under a presiding officer or " President " ^ is the supreme court of appeal, and the final executive, thus giving to Methodism its pre-eminent " con- nexionalism.'' In all branches of Methodism the Conference consists of ministers and laymen in 1 The President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference is annually chosen by a silent ballot of the ministers without nomination or speeches a method of election that is, we believe, without parallel save for the papal chair. He must, of course, be a minister. Theoretically he is " President " only of the Conference, and with the Conference his powers originally lapsed. But practice has long since outgrown the restrictions imposed by early jealousy of any successor to Wesley's autocracy. THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 125 varying proportions ; but as a rule the purely pastoral matters of the Church the acceptance and ordination of candidates, doctrinal or discipUnary lapses of the ministry, and the like are left to the ministers sitting apart. To be elected to Conference by his district Synod or by the Conference itself is looked upon as the supreme honour of a Methodist layman's life. We must not pass from the Conference without drawing attention to a curious fact. The Conference, as originally founded by Wesley in his famous deed- poll, is a statutory body of one hundred ministers elected for life. To this " Legal Hundred '' Wesley entrusted all the rights and duties that he had acquired or exercised, whether as regards property or the internal affairs of the Connexion. As regards property the years that have elapsed since Wesley's death has only strengthened the hold of the Conference ; nearly all the properties of Methodism are now securely held on identical trusts " model deeds " as they are called ^for the use of the Conference. But the Conference itself has suffered a marvellous " sea change " that would have astonished no one more than Wesley himself. The ministerial Legal Hundred is still maintained by a legal fiction as the sole Conference we aUude, of course, to the mother-Church of Methodism but by long established usage is expected to ratify 126 METHODISM without discussion or question, all the acts and discussions of the large representative gathering of ministers and laymen, in which, for all practical purposes, it is now wholly merged. ^ To be elected into the " Legal Hundred "' or actual legal Conference has now become a mere honour, the greatest save the presidency which his brethren can confer upon any minister. By the ingenious use of legal forms all the advantages of the existence of a small statu- tory body are thus retained, together with the utmost freedom in its own internal organisation. Two things, however, the Wesleyan Methodist Conference the heir of Wesley's deed-poll or legal act of enrolment ca,nnot do. It cannot alter the doctrinal standards of Methodism, nor can it do away with the " itinerancy '' of the ministers ; that system which seems so strange to outsiders, whereby every few years, ministers must leave their circuits and seek " fresh woods and pastures new.'' In spite of various means for mitigating the rigours of this enforced itinerancy, in Wesleyan Methodism the location of ministers in fixed charges, much as it is desired in many quarters, especially in the towns, ^ This ratification takes place at the close of the Conference. The minutes of the Conference are rapidly read over and then adopted as the acts and resolutions of the Legal Hundred. If any point must be decided before the close, e.g. an expulsion of a minister for misconduct, a separate vote of the Legal Hundred is taken at the time. THE THEOLOGY AND POLITY 127 is impossible without an enabling act of Parliament. But as a compensation, Methodist ministers are never left without some sphere of work ; there are no " stickit ministers/' no curates waiting long years for preferment ; none of the troubles that afflict congregations and pastors, while awaiting or giving " calls/' All changes are made at the same time,^ and care is taken that years of service shall have their due return. In order the better to work the system there is a rule that the salaries of all ministers shall be reduced to much of a level ; the highest minister in the Church, the President of the Conference himself, receiving very little, if anything, more than most of his brethren. On the other hand, the financial poverty of many ministers in other Churches is not allowed, Methodism, on the whole, paying all its ministers a sufficient " living wage,'' without, how- ever, much surplus or chance of saving. For every minister, on his retirement, there is also provided a small pension, while from the days of Wesley special provision has been made for the education of the sons of the manse. Ill Our hmits and not our subject compel us to a conclusion. On looking back over this inadequate sketch of a great theme we regret that in our last ^ Tii9 first week in September in Wesleyan Methodism. 128 METHODISM word, we should seem to dwell on matters of organisa- tion. The Methodism genius for organisation and finance is indeed remarkable, and is due to the complete co-operation in its working of devoted laymen. But no Church can live either by organisa- tion or finance ; for the secret of Methodism we must look elsewhere. The greatness of Methodism as a world-wide church does not, and will not, lie in the millions of its adherents, nor in the magnitude and adequacy of its equipment, but in the degree to which it is true to its fundamental conviction ^the personal, conscious appropriation of the Life and Passion of the Risen Christ. In the history of every Church to the thoughtful student the salient fact is not so much the human agencies as the presence of the Divine. We beheve, as did the earher Fathers : Vv^here Jesus Christ is, there is His Church. And in the story of Methodism only the blind and irreverent can fail to discern the presence and power of the Master. For us, as for St Ignatius : Our Charter is Jesus Christ Our infallible Charter IS His Cross, His Death and His Passion AND Faith through Him. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 A. Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century. Abbey, C. J., and Overton, J. H. Eng. Ch. in the I8th Cent. (2 vols., 1896). Ashton, J. Social Life at the End of the I8th Cent. (1885). Godley, a. D. Oxford in the 18th Cent. (1908). Leland, J. View of the Principal Deistical Writers (1807). Lecky, W. H. Hist. England in the 18th Cent, (new ed., 7 vols., 1892). Hist. Ireland in the 18th Cent. (5 vols., 1897). Overton, J. H., and F. Relton. Ch. of England from 1714- 1800 (1906). Simon, J. S. Tlie Revival of Religion in the 18th Gent. (1907). B. John Wesley and the Methodist Leaders. FiTCHETT, W. H. Wesley and his Century (1906). Jackson, _T. Life of C. Wesley (1848). Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers (6 vols., 1871). Macdonald, F. W. Fletcher of Madeley (1885). Overton, J. H. John Wesley (1891). RiGG, J. H. The Living Wesley (1891). Churchmanshii) of J. Wesley (1907). SouTHEY, R. Life of Wesley (best ed., 1889). Tyerman, L. Oxford Methodists (1873). Life and Times of Wesley (3 vols., 1890). Life of G. niiitefield (2 vols., 1876). Wedgewood, Julia. /. Wesley and the Evangelical Revival of the 18th Cent. (1870). 1 For full Bibliography see one by present author in New History of Methodism, ii, pp. 533-50. I 129 130 METHODISM C. History of Later Methodism. Buckley, J. W. Hist, of Methodists in the U.S. (2 vols., 1896). Crookshank, C. H. Hist, of Methodism in Irelayid (3 vols., 1885). Kendall, H. B. Hist, of Pi-imitive Methodists (2 vols., 1895). Smith, G. Hist, of Wesleyan Methodism (3 vols., 1859). Stevens, A. Hist, of Methodism (3 vols., 1875). Hist, of Methodist Episcopal Church (4 vols., 1864). Workman, H. B., Townsend, W. J., and Eayrs, G. A Nevj Hist, of Methodism (2 vols., 1909).^ 1 Gives the history in all countries and divisions. INDEX America and the Anglican Church, 69, 73 American Methodism, 59, 68/. See "Argument," p. 68 Anglican Church, Position of, in Eighteenth Century, 11 /., 15/., 63 and Methodism, 62/, 92, 104/ Religious Societies in, 21, 22, 36 Annesley, Dr, 29 Apologetics, 19 Arminianism, 111 Asbury, 70, 73 Assurance, Doctrine of, 112 Australia, Methodism in, 78 Carey, 35 Cartesianism, 53 Charterhouse, 30 Children, Wesley and, 55, 56 Class-meetings, 120 Clayton, 34 Coke, Thomas, 35, 73, 80, 82 Conference, 124 Confirmation, 115 Conversion, 113 Cromwell and Wesley, 58, 59 Deism, 18, 23, 52 Divine Right, 18, 19, 65 Divisions of Methodism, c. 4 (see "Argument," p. 88) Dodwell, 52 Bakewell, John, 46 Benson, Joseph, 48 Bible Christians, 97 Bible Moths, 32 Bohler, Peter, 36 Bradburn, Samuel, 48 Bunting, Jabez, 98 Butler, Bishop, 20, 50, 64 Calvinistic Controversy, 64, 91, 111 Camp Meetings, 75, 95 Canada, Methodism in, 77 Embury, 70 English Race, Expansion of, 4/, 14 Episcopacy, Wesley and, 72/ Evangelicals, 64, 66, 91 Experience, Doctrine of, 53, 54, 112 FJatheads, Mission to, 83 Fletcher, John, 47, 91 Fly Sheets, 99 Francis of Assisi, 55, 62, 109 Frederick, Prince of Wales, 23 131 13: METHODISM French Revolution, 3, 13, 14, 24, 27, 66, 90 Gambold, 32 Georgia, Mission to, 34 Gin-drinking, 17 Hervey, 34 Holiness, Doctrine of, 1 14 Holy Club, 32/ Howard, John, 67 Hughes, H. P., 100 Hume, 53 Huntingdon, Countess of, 48 Hutchinsonians, 24 Hymns, 45/., 65 Itinerancy, 127 Nelson, John, 48 New Connexion, 93, 94 New Zealand, Methodism in, 77 Newton, Robert, 28 Nonjurors, 20 0' Bryan, 97 Oglethorpe, 34, 36, 37 Olivers, Thomas, 46 Ordinations, Wesley's, 59, 61, 73 Oxford, 31 Oxford Movement, 12, 33, 34, 63 Perronet, Ed., 46 ' Plan of Pacification," 92, 93 Primitive Methodists, 95 Puritanism and English Char- Kilham, A., 94 Kings wood School, 55 Law, William, 20, 21, 22, 32 Lecturerships, 23 Legal Hundred, 125 Local Preachers, 123 Locke, 53 Logic, Wesley's love of, 31 Luther, 37, 109 Melmoth, 23 Methodism, Extent of, 1, 27 Theology of, 45, 108/ Mihier, J., 64 Missionary opportunity of to- day, 6, 7, 87 Missions in Eighteenth Century, 35 Missions of Methodism, 81/ Moravians, 36 Reunion, 104 Revivalists, 95 Richelieu, Wesley and, 58 Rigg, Dr, 100 Sacheverell, 18 Schools, Eighteenth Century and, 56 Scotland, Methodism in, 12 Seabury, 69 Slave-trade, American Method- ism and, 75/ Wesley and, 66 South Africa, Methodism in, 79,80 South Sea Bubble, 17 Sunday Schools, 57, 67 Symbols, 110 United Methodists, 98/, 103/ INDEX 133 Walpole, 19, 23 Wesley, Samuel, 29 Webb, Thomas, 70 Susanna, 29 Weslev, Charles, 81, 32, 34, 36, West Indies, Methodism in, 80 44 / Whitefieid, George, 34, 35, 40/ , John, c. 2 (sec "Argu- 58, 91 ment," p. 25), 70, 109 Wyclif, 50, 109 'J THE CAMBRIDGE MANUALS OF SCIENCE AND LITERATURE Published by the Cambridge University Press GENERAL EDITORS P. GILES, LittD. Master of Emmanuel College and A. C. SEWARD, M.A., F.R.S. Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge VOLUMES NOW READY The Coming of Evolution. By Prof. J. W. Judd. C.B., F.R.S. Heredity in the Light of Recent Research. By L. Doncaster, M.A. The English Puritans. By the Rev. John Brown, D.D. The Idea of God in Early Religions. By Dr F. B. Jevons. Plant-Animals : a Study in Symbiosis. By Prof. F. W. Keeble, Sc.D. Cash and Credit. By D. A. Barker, l.C.S. The Natural History of Coal. By Dr E. A. Newell Arber. The Early Religious Poetry of the Hebrews. By the Rev. E. G. King, D.D. The History of the English Bible. By the Rev. John Brown, D.D. Plant-Life on Land. By Prof. F. O. Bower, Sc.D., F.R.S. An Historical Account of the Rise and Development of Presby- terianism in Scotland. By the Rt Hon. the Lord Balfour of Burleigh, K.T., G.C.M.G. Enghsh Dialects from the Eighth Century to the Present Day. By the Rev. Prof. W. W. 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Bonney, LL.D., Sc.D., F.R.S. Individuality in the Animal Kingdom. By Julian Huxley, B.A. The Civilization of Ancient Mexico. By Lewis Spence. China and the Manchus. By Prof. H. A. Giles. Clouds. By C. T. R. Wilson, F.R.S. The Measurement of Time. By the Astronomer Royal. St Paul and Christianity. By the Rev. Principal Headlam, D.D. The Development of Coinage. By George Macdonald, LL.D. Glaciers and Ice Sheets. By Prof. Garwood, M.A., Sec.G.S. The Psychology of Insanity. By Dr Bernard Hart. The New Field Botany. By Dr C. E. Moss. Flies. By Dr Gordon Hewitt. The Green Leaf. By Dr F. F. Blackman, F.R.S. The Phoenicians. By Prof. J. L. Myres, F.S.A. The Physical Basis of Music. By A. Wood, M.A. The Meteorology of the Globe. By Dr W. N. Shaw, F.R.S. Brewing. By A. Chaston Chapman, F.I.C. The Talmud. By I. Abrahams, M.A. Growth and Form. By Prof. D'Arcy W. Thompson, C.B., M.A. Beyond the Atom. By Prof. J. Cox. Ancient India. By Prof. E. J. Rapson, M.A. The Icelandic Sagas. By W. A. Craigie, LL.D. Mysticism in Modern English Literature. By Miss C. F. E. Spurgeon. The Early Religious Poetry of India. By A. A. Macdonell. German School Education. By K. H. Breul, Litt.D. The Moral and Political Ideas of Plato. By A. M. Adam, M.A. The Growth of Municipalities. By H. D. Hazeltine, M.A. Ancient Babylonia. By Rev. C. H. W. Johns, Litt.D. Early Christian Poetry. By Prof. F. C. Burkitt, M.A., F.B.A. Discovery in Greek Lands. By F. H. Marshall, M.A. The Crusades. By Rev. Prof. J. P. Whitney, B.D. Monumental Brasses. By J. S. M. Ward, B.A., F.R.Hist.S. The Earth. By Prof. Poynting, F.R.S. Metals. By F. E. E. Lamplou>h, M.A. The Book. By H. G. Aldis, M.A. Wireless Telegraphy. By C. L. Fortescue. Women's Work. By Miss Constance Smith. The Modern Warship. By E. L. Attwood. VOLUMES IN PREPARATION {continued) The Vikings. By Prof. A. Mawer. Eugenics. By Prof. R. C. Punnett, M.A. Insects as Carriers of Disease. By Prof. G. H. F. Nuttall, F.R.S. Natural Caves and Fissures. By Dr A. 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