(iv) Changing Horizons
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
factious, aristocratic oligarchy, addicted to bad morals and strong intoxicants; and the surest passport to the " best'' society was to be a well-bred, clever rake.
True, the gospel of Class Hatred—a Continental product—had not yet been propounded, but the chicanery of English Class rule and the arrogance of English Class privilege were, up to the middle of the eighteenth century, seen at their height.
Among the labouring masses, too, the publican and the pawnbroker, the kidnapper and the crimp, the bookie and the quack, the fakir and the tout, the magician and the charlatan, the footpad and the highwayman, paraded in the heyday of their power.
Till toward the end of the fifth decade, indeed, it seemed as though when the century had run its course, its certain epitaph would be Ichabod: for the glory of the land of Spencer, Shakespeare and Milton had steadily been ebbing away ; and dawn was long deferred.
(iv) Changing Horizons Nevertheless, mighty, though despised, spiritual influences already were operating among the outcast masses ; and greater days than any the Anglo-Saxon peoples had previous known, lay still ahead.
Survey first the age of Marlborough and Bolingbroke, of Pope and Gay, of Swift and Butler, of Walpole and Chesterfield, of Collins and Hume. Then turn to the latter half of the century and survey the age of Chatham and Clive, of Smith and Pitt, of Burke and Mansfield, of Gibbon and Blackstone, of Johnson and Goldsmith, of Cowper and Howard, of Burns and Blake.
The inherited and accumulated sins of the century, are still appallingly manifest ; but there can be no mistaking the certainty that a better era was now dawning.
A new moral earnestness was entering into the warp and woof of British character.
A new sense of philanthropy and humanity was stirring in the blood. A new vision of justice and righteous- < ness, of altruism and fellowship, was challenging the souls of men.
'The spirit of reform was in the air.
It no longer was smart in England to boast of being a " four" ons five-bottle man"; nor were spiritual values any longer in the discard.
The British people were becoming more worthy of the guardianship of an expanding Empire and of the world trust which it entailed.
Whatever else the trial of Warren Hastings implied, his impeachment expressed a new demand for moral values in Government and a new recognition of trusteeship, even toward conquered and backward peoples.
On all sides it was apparent that a new and nobler Keitgeist was possessing the land.
Mere
DAWN DEFERRED
smartness was fast falling into disrepute.
Integrity and vision, in addition to mental acumen, were coming to be recognised as essential to true leadership.
Substance and sincerity were dispelling tinsel and gloss. Already the judgment was spreading among the nations, that a Briton's word was "as good as his bond"; and relatively speaking, that judgment was not untrue.
Higher values were passing into circulation, which never could have been transmitted in the current moral coinage of the earlier half of the century.
England, at last, was regaining her Soul.
True, many who manifested the unmistakable effects of this changed national outlook would have despised, had they ever suspected, its primal cause: for the ruling, privileged and educated classes, even in the latter half of the century, were loath to admit that they could be moved and moulded by the impulse of a religious revival mediated first of all through the multitude.
But not so with all. Vital spiritual fire is possessed of amazing propensities for consuming Class barriers and dispelling Class snobbery. Hanway and Howard, Lady Huntingdon and Hannah More, Lord Dartmouth and John Thornton,
Newton and Cowper, as much as any itinerant preacher, were among the band of fearless exemplars who carried the Torch of Faith to the very portals of the succeeding century : while among those who bore it across the threshold to purge, illumine and challenge the nineteenth century were William Wilberforce and Zachary Macaulay, William Carey and the younger Venn,
Isaac Milner and Sir James Stephen, Charles Simeon and Henry Martyn, Lord Teignmouth and Charles Grant, Henry Thornton and Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Francis Asbury and Dr.
Thomas Coke.
'Times were changing mightily for the better since the days when Cowper wrote of, "' one who wears a coronet and prays."
The "conversion"? of the one-time don of Oxford, which " strangely warmed " his heart toward God and impelled him forth as the friend and releaser of the outcast, vulgarised masses, was fraught with a succession of results destined finally to change the whole tend of social history throughout the British Empire and the English-speaking world.
Nor was the impact of this prophet, who claimed "' the world for his parish," confined even within those spacious limits.
Millions, of many colours, climes and tongues, inhabiting the four corners of the earth, have lived richer, happier, nobler and more serviceable lives because, in 1738, fire from off the altars of God purged and illumined the soul of a downcast and disillusioned English priest.