ART. V.-JOHN WESLEY, EDUCATOR. THE flaming evangelist and the great educator have but very seldom been found in the same person. They combine in John Wesley. The whole Christian world knows him as the great evangelist of the centuries, but his work as an educator has not been so clearly presented. It should be emphasized, it must be, in any just estimate of his marvelous life and work. His work as an educator began with his fellowship of Lincoln College, Oxford, to which he was elected on March 17, 1726, and which he held for more than a quarter of a century. "Sometime Fellow of Lincoln College" he was pleased to declare himself to the end of his life. His father was very pleased at this appointment, and wrote him four days after his election, addressing him as "Dear Mr. Fellowelect of Lincoln"-the "elect" referring to the usual probationary term. On April 1 he wrote: "What will be my own fate before the summer be over God only knows-sed passi graviora. Wherever I am, my Jack is Fellow of Lincoln." In October of that year, 1726, John Wesley began his real work as an educator. He was "Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes." Dr. Overton says truly: These appointments have been strangely misunderstood; perhaps a Lincoln man may be allowed to explain them. "Greek lecturer" does not mean teacher of Greek generally; it is a technical term, the explanation of which illustrates the traditions of piety as well as learning which belonged to Lincoln College. The object was to secure some sort of religious instruction to all the undergraduates; and for this purpose a special officer was appointed, with the modest stipend of twenty pounds a year, who was to hold a lecture every week in the college hall, which all the undergraduates were to attend, on the Greek Testament. As became a learned society, the lecture was to be on the original language, but the real object was to teach divinity, not Greek. The duty of "moderator of the classes" was to sit in the college hall and preside over the "disputations" which were held at Lincoln College every day in the week except Sunday. Bishop Rotheram lays great stress upon these disputations in his statutes for the college, and gives minute directions as to how they are to be conducted; it ill be remembered that John Locke found "disputations" prevaistchurch College seventy years before, and lamented those verbal niceties." John Wesley seems 172. and Wr did some find no recor work at Lincoln, his college. There now understood, at addition to his other cones~ The need of schools for the poorer chi. *John Wesley, p. 20. six years of age (1729), soon felt this great need of schools for the poor. He was quick to provide for it. On his return he founded the "Holy Club." He soon became the head of it, and had it meet in his own rooms. They visited prisons and schools. One of the schools they visited Wesley himself had founded, the mistress of which he paid, and some, if not all, of the children of which he clothed. This seems to have been his first attempt at popular education. l he was founder, banker, and clothier, as well more vile," and himself preaches in the open air. Did he cease to be an educator when he became an evangelist? No. His great educational work began that very day; for while he was preaching his first open-air sermon in Bristol, Whitefield, at Kingswood, was projecting a school for the children of the colleries. On that very day a stone was consecrated and set upon a site. This became the first school of Methodism, the "Kingswood School." Concerning this earliest school at Kingswood there is much confusion in the histories. In recent years additional data have been gathered, and these beginnings are made clear. The clearest putting of the case we know of is that of the Rev. John S. Simons, now Governor of Didsbury Wesleyan College, England, and formerly of Bristol and Kingswood. In the Methodist Recorder, of London, for November 11, 1897, he writes of "The Third Jubilee of Kingswood School," saying: The painful historian will probably raise an objection to the statement that on Midsummer Day, 1898, Kingswood School will complete the one hundred and fiftieth year of its existence. Surcharged with knowledge, he will suggest that Wesley had a school in Kingswood in 1740, and that the projected celebration is somewhat belated. As we wish to stand on good terms with accurate men, we will state the case dispassionately, and will try to show that the celebration of the third jubilee of the school next year is according to the fitness of things. On Monday, April 2, 1739, George Whitefield, having taken a sorrowful leave of the crowds that attended his preaching in Bristol, found himself, about two o'clock, at Kingswood. The colliers, unknown to him, had prepared "a hospitable entertainment." They were much excited about the school which had been promised them, and they insisted that he should, there and then, lay its foundation stone. In his Journal he says: "At length I complied, and a man giving me a piece of ground, in case Mr. C should refuse to grant them any, I laid a stone; and then kneeled down and prayed God that the gates of hell might not prevail against our design. The colliers said Amen; and, after I had given them a word of exhortation, suitable to the occasion, I took my leave." The stone then laid marked the spot where the school was to be built. It would probably have remained in solitude if John Wesley had not entered into and completed Whitefield's design. On Tuesday, June 26, 1739, we catch sight of Wesley standing under a little sycamore tree which then grew “in the middle of Kingswood." A violent storm had driven him to take shelter beneath its broad, overlapping leaves. The sycamore stands near a house which has begun to rise from the earth, a house which, as Wesley tells us, is designed for a school. Above the noise of the pelting of the storm and the murmurs of the crowd we hear the clear voice of the preacher declaring that, "As the rain cometh down from heaven and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, . . . so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." John Wesley, describing the site on which the school was being built, tells us that it was "in the middle of the wood, between the London and Bath roads, not far from that called Two-mile Hill, about three measured miles from Bristol." It is uncertain whether this was the spot on which Whitefield placed the stone. From Wesley's statement concerning the origin of the school we should be inclined to think that another site was secured. In a letter to Rev. Mr. Church, speaking of the schoolhouse at Kingswood, Wesley says: "I bought the ground where it stands, and paid for building it, partly from the contributions of my friends (one of whom contributed fifty pounds), partly from the income of my own Fellowship." A letter to Whitefield, written in June, 1741, sheds light upon several matters connected with the erection of the school. In this letter Wesley says: Two years since your design was to build the colliers a school that their children also might be taught to fear the Lord. To this end you collected some money more than once- -how much I cannot say till I have my papers. But this I know, it was not near one half of what has been expended on the work. The design you then recommended to me, and I pursued it with all my might, through a train of difficulties as, I might be bold to say, you have not yet met with in your life. For many months I collected money wherever I was, and began building, though I had not then a quarter of the money requisite to finish. However, taking all the |