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Home Domestic Politics and the First Two Georges, 1714-1760 Pitt and Wesley; Part 3 |
Pitt and Wesley; Part 3The activity shown by John Wesley and his colleagues, Charles Wesley and Whitefield, was astonishing. Of the three, Whitefield was probably the greatest preacher, and he, during the thirty-four years of his ministry, is said to have preached on the average ten sermons a week to audiences numbering sometimes as many as thirty thousand (No popular preacher has probably ever had such influence as Whitefield. He had a voice which could be heard by thirty thousand people in the open air, but which was managed with such skill that he could pronounce, a contemporary said, an unpromising word like Mesopotamia in a way to produce tears from his audience. Of his powers of vivid description many stories are related. Even such a pattern of propriety and aristocratic conduct as Lord Chesterfield, when Whitefield was relating the story of a blind man deserted by his dog and losing his way on a dangerous moor, lost all self-control, and bounded out of his seat as the blind man neared a precipice, exclaiming, "Good God! he's gone!" One of Whitefield's admirers held that a sermon of his would only reach its highest perfection at the fortieth repetition). His record, however, is surpassed by that of John Wesley, who, in the half century preceding his death in 1791, is estimated to have delivered forty thousand sermons, and to have travelled a quarter of a million of miles, the greater part of it on horseback. Their preaching affected all classes-the miners of Cornwall, the soldiers in the army, the negroes in Georgia, as well as a section of fashionable society in London. Nor was the activity of the three confined to England and Wales, for the whole world was their parish. Whitefield made over twelve journeys across the Atlantic, and Wesley had a missionary tour in Scotland when over eighty years of age.Throughout his life Wesley remained a member of the Church of England. But gradually the movement which he initiated became independent of that Church. His doctrines concerning sin and conversion were disliked by many in the Anglican Church. The chapels which he built were designed to be supplemental to the parish churches; before long they became rivals. Quite early in his career, in 1737, Wesley had instituted "lay" preachers, and in 1784 he even began to ordain ministers; and after his death the Wesleyans formed themselves into definite and separate organizations (How much the various Methodist societies have grown may be realized by statistics. On Wesley's death, in 1791, the members of his societies numbered seventy-six thousand, and the preachers three hundred; at the present time, throughout the world, there are nearly fifty thousand preachers and not far short of thirty million members belonging to the Wesleyan communities). Yet John Wesley is not to be remembered only as the founder of a new religious organization. He was a great social reformer as well as a great religious leader, and to him, perhaps in a greater degree than to any other man, is due the increased kindliness and humaneness which was exhibited in the later part of the eighteenth century, and the development of practical efforts to deal with the problems of poverty, inadequate though those efforts still were. But above all else we may put his influence on the religious life of the whole British people. A great French thinker, who visited the country soon after the accession of George I, was of opinion that there was no such thing as religion in England; and there is no doubt that the early period of the Hanoverian rule was singularly lacking in religious activities and enthusiasms. It is the imperishable glory of John Wesley that he restored Christianity, as has been said, to its place as a living force in the personal creed of men and in the life of the nation. |
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