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Bible to many of them was an unknown book. Among Nonconformists there was the same lament of a want of piety; the atmosphere of the whole nation was saturated with religious indifference and spiritual decay.

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It was amidst all this that Methodism burst the world. Methodism came from Oxford, the birthplace a century later of an equally wonderful revival. The central figure of Methodism was John Wesley, born in 1703, the son of a country parson, educated at the Charterhouse, a graduate of the university, and a Fellow of Lincoln College. Its origin was simple enough. Resolving to lead a life of closer communion with God, John, with his brother Charles and two others, agreed to spend a regular portion of their time in religious exercises. They met three nights in each week for the reading of the Greek Testament; they spent Sunday evening in the study of divinity; they received the Holy Communion weekly; they kept a rigid fast on Wednesdays and Fridays; they arranged their hours of work and of sleep on a settled plan; they visited the poor of the city and the prisoners of the gaol. The story got noised abroad of these four or five young men for Whitfield soon joined them

who separated themselves from the folly and irreligion of their fellow-students. They were dubbed

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the Holy Club,' a name displaced later on by the more lasting and venerable title of Methodists. It was while John Wesley was temporarily absent from Oxford that there came over him a desire which has often influenced men of deeply spiritual natures. He craved peace and seclusion from the world; it was the decided temper of his soul,' he said. Happily there was no lack of remonstrant voices. His mother's was one, and his bishop's another. 'A serious man' whom he consulted admonished him almost in tones of severity. 'Sir,' he said, ' you wish to serve God and go to heaven; remember you cannot serve Him alone; you must therefore find companions or make them. The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.' Wesley obeyed, and his obedience was a crisis in his life. He was saved from a cell, and henceforth the world was to be his parish.

Let us not lose sight of the primary idea of early Methodism. It was to recall an indifferent and sinful nation to a warmer love of religion, to a deeper enthusiasm for the Church and the Church's system, to a more prayerful and self-sacrificing life. The first aim of the movement was to do for

the Church of England what had often been done by the monastic orders for the Church of Rome, and what is now a recognised feature of clerical duty to create, within the limits of the Church's laws, a guild, an order, a confraternity, an association, a society, the members of which, by their connection with it, might be enabled to live better, purer, more Christ-like lives.

The second phase of Methodism opens in 1735 with John Wesley's voyage to America, whither, with his brother Charles, he proceeded as a missionary to the aborigines, and with the view of instilling his principles into the settlers in Georgia. It was a noble mission, but it failed disastrously. On the voyage out, most of the passengers were Moravian emigrants whose spiritual leaders were as tenacious of their own particular doctrines as the Wesleys were of theirs. The churchmanship of the Oxford clergymen began to give before the simple piety of the German Christians. Soon after his arrival John had a conversation with one of their pastors. My brother,' said the Moravian, 'I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?' Wesley made no answer, and the

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minister went on. 'Do you know Jesus Christ?' I know He is the Saviour of the world,' replied Wesley. True,' rejoined the Moravian, but do you know that He has saved you ?' 'I hope He has died to save me.' 'Do you know yourself?' 'I do,' answered Wesley; 'but,' he writes afterwards, I fear they were mere words.'

Wesley returned to England after a period of unsuccessful effort which cost him many a pang. He confessed afterwards that he had gone to teach the Georgian Christians the nature of Christianity and to convert others, while, at the time, though he knew it not, he had never himself been converted to God. Charles was the first to find 'rest to his soul,' and three days afterwards John attained the perfect peace which he had not hitherto experienced. It was at about a quarter to nine, on the morning of Wednesday, May 24, 1738, that while listening, at a society in Aldersgate Street, to a layman who was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, I felt,' he writes, 'my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.' This was the new departure

in his life. This was the key-note of the rapidly approaching revival, which afterwards passed beyond Wesley's control, as to the issues of which he was often anxious, and upon some of the features of which he came to look back with sorrow and regret. From now dated the insistence upon the two doctrines which are still peculiarly identified with Methodism-that every man who would be a true Christian, be his temperament or his mental conformation what it may, must pass through a visible, momentary, sensible, definite change of heart, and that none can experience this process without certain assurance; and that, if a man knows it, he has attained unto perfection and cannot sin.

These were the motive forces of that marvellous revival of religion of which George Whitfield was the chief preacher, Charles Wesley the sweet singer, and John Wesley the director-general. Refused admission to the churches,1 they sought other outlets for their zeal. They went where

1 John Wesley, however, preached in many of the London churches, amongst others in our own parish church. 'Friday, Nov. 3, 1738,' he writes, "I preached at St. Antholin's; Sunday, five in the morning, at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate; in the afternoon at Islington; and in the evening, to such a congregation as I never saw before, at St. Clement's in the Strand.'

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