(ii) Forerunners and a Retrospect
THE
EMERGENCE
A PROPHET
No single figure influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts.
No other man, did such a life's work for England.''!
Even Primates and Prime Ministers are at last awakening to the centrality of Wesley's high influence on the English-speaking world.
Archbishop Davidson, in 1928, after pronouncing Wesley ** one of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived,"' declared that, it was "' not too much to say that Wesley practically changed the outlook and even the character of the English nation."
He admitted also that the Primates of the revival era, '' were not the men to make the right response to a magnificent enthusiast like Wesley."?
Mr. Lloyd George, when Prime Minister, in 1922, avowed that Wales "' owed more to the movement of which Wesley was the inspirer and prophet and leader, than to any other movement in the whole of its history...
It civilised the people.
. There was a complete revolution effected in the whole country."
As for the wider impact of this movement, Lloyd George affirmed that, "it had given a different outlook to the British and American people from the outlook of Continentals.'
Mr. Stanley Baldwin, commenting, as Prime Minister, on Wesley's labours, said:
"' I am supposed to be a busy man, but, by the side of Wesley, I join the ranks of the unemployed."
He said, too, that historians of the eighteenth century "who filled their pages with Napoleon and had nothing to say of John Wesley, now realise that they cannot explain nineteenth century England until they can explain
Wesley."
Then poignantly he added:
"And I believe it is equally true to say, that you cannot understand twentieth century
America, unless you understand Wesley."'¢ (ii) Forerunners and a Retrospect Now is this sweeping reversal of contemporary judgments justified ?
Are these diversified and remarkable tributes— every one, be it remembered, from men outside the Methodist connection*—really merited ? In this and succeeding chapters,
1 Essays and Reviews, p. 35.
See also An Appreciation of Wesley's Fournal, by Birrell, prefaced to Parker's abridgement of the Fournal, pp.
Xiii—xXxiv.
2 See The Times (London), November 2nd, 1928.
8 From his Address supporting the Renovation Fund of Wesley's Chapel (June 2oth, 1922).
; 4 The Times, November 2nd, 1928.
(From an Address celebrating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of opening of Wesley's Chapel.)
5 The present writer, too, is not a Methodist.