(v) The Testing and Expression of Faith
THE
EMERGENCE
A PROPHET
moments of rapture, vision and'victory were fleeting.
But the inner sunshine of assurance, peace and power which they brought remained constant.
And as Wesley co-related his new-found faith to his newly emerging task, an increasing sense of joy nourished and sustained his soul.
After the initial transfiguration, therefore, his conversion process was of an evolutionary nature.
With increasing " perfectionism'? came increasing joy ; also increasing ease and power in service.
(v) The Testing and Expression of Faith On the Sunday following his. never-to-be-forgotten experience, Wesley preached in the morning at St. George's Chapel,
Bloomsbury, London, on "' This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith," and in the afternoon at the Chapel in Long Acre, on "' God's justifying the ungodly."
The Journal significantly adds:
The last time, I understand, I am to preach at either" ; and Wesley's only comment is, '' Not as I will, but as Thou wilt."
'' On the evening of the same day," he notes, "I was roughly attacked in a large company as an enthusiast, a seducer, and a setter forth of new doctrines.
By the blessing of God, I was not moved to anger, but after a calm and short reply went away; though not with so tender a concern as was due to those who were seeking death in the error of their life."1
By the second Sunday succeeding his soul's awakening, his joy was beginning to express itself, for the Journal reads:
'' Sun. 4—was indeed a feast day.
For from the time of my rising till past one in the afternoon, I was praying, reading the Scriptures, singing praise, or calling sinners to repentance.
All these days I scarce remember to have opened the Testament, but upon some great and precious promise.
And I saw more than ever that the Gospel is in truth but one great promise, from the beginning of it to the end."
Within three weeks of his conversion, Wesley, like St. Paul who withdrew temporarily into Arabia, sought a period of retirement for meditation, observation and re-adjustment.
The vistas of the new life opening up before him were so vast, so wonderful, that he must needs pause a while to get his bearings and survey the land of his inheritance.
It was not unnatural that Germany beckoned him thither.
She was the land of his spiritual guides—Luther and Bohler.
So forthwith, on June 13th, Wesley set off for Germany, via Holland, bent 1 Journal, May 28th, 1738.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
particularly on visiting the Moravian settlements around Hernhuth and Marienborn.
He fain would study for himself the life, habits and institutions of communities which accepted seriously the doctrine of Salvation by Faith: nor was his sojourn in vain.
Referring to his Marienborn contacts, he says: 'Here I continually met with what I sought for, viz., living proofs of the power of faith: persons saved from inward as well as outward sin, by ' the love of God shed abroad in their hearts'; and from all doubt and fear, by the abiding witness of the Holy Ghost given unto them."
The charity, co-operation, frugality and cleanliness of these people, too, appealed strongly to Wesley.
The whole visit, in fact, among the Moravian communities afforded satisfaction ; for on leaving
Hernhuth (August 14th) he wrote:
'I would gladly have spent my life here ; but my Master calling me to labour in another part of His vineyard .
. I was constrained to take my leave of this happy place."?
Such tributes, however, are by no means applicable to all the experiences of the German tour.
Wesley was three months and four days away from England.
Scarcely a full month was spent among the Moravian communities: as for other parts of Germany, he frankly found them disappointing.
After attending Sunday worship in a Lutheran Church at Meissen, he writes:
'' I was greatly surprised at all I saw there: at the costliness of apparel in many, and the gaudiness of it in more.
. The minister's habit was adorned with gold and scarlet, and a vast cross both behind and before.
Most of the congregation sat (the men generally with their hats on, at the prayers as well as sermon).
. Alas, alas! what a reformed country is this!"
Lutheranism, as a whole, he found both rigid and frigid ; and commenting on a Rhine boat trip, he says:
''I could not but observe the decency of the Papists above us who are called Reformed."* The pomposity, moreover, of German civic officials and the inhospitality of German cities toward foreigners, did violence to Wesley's expanding conception of human brotherhood.
In more than one town he was refused lodgings, while repeatedly he was detained at city gates for hours on end, being bundled, " with the usual impertinent solemnity" from one " magistrate or officer to another."'
'' This senseless, inhuman usage of strangers!" is his designation of the treatment he and his friends received
1 Fournal, July 6th, 1738.
2 Ibid., August 12th and 14th, 1738.
3 Thid., July 30th, 1738.
4 Ibid., July, 28th, 1738.
THE EMERGENCE
A PROPHET
at almost every German city."
'"' A breach of all the common, even the heathen laws of hospitality," he again defined it.
At Weimar, after prolonged detention outside the gate, he was carried before some great man ("I believe the Duke") and submitted to a regimen of further questions.
Finally came the query, '' Why are you going so far as Hernhuth?"'
Wesley, with a droll, donnish thrust, answered:
'' To see the place where the Christians live.''} Even Count Zinzendorf, for all his piety, zeal and charity, was too patronising to appeal strongly to Wesley, who, upon reflection, questioned if the Moravians as a body were not too exclusive, too self-righteous, and too much given to overmagnifying their own Church.? Wesley's conversion had warmed his heart, unified his personality, multiplied his sympathies, and clarified and intensified his life purpose ; but it had in no sense stultified his critical faculties.
Much as he loathed Deism, he was always something of a Christian rationalist ; and never did he disparage the God-imparted faculty of reason, as the foundation of all critical judgment.
To him reason was an indispensable (though not the only) handmaid of Truth.
Hence certain aspects of Moravian mysticism were later to meet with his rational censure.
On returning to England, September 17th, Wesley at once began to declare "the glad tidings of salvation."'
Prisons, workhouses, society meetings and whatever Churches would open their doors to him were the chief scenes of his endeavour.
Already, though as yet but beginning to find his stride, was he proving that the faith which had expanded and co-ordinated his own faculties, bringing with it harmony, peace, power and gladness, was releasing others from the shackles of serfdom and sin.
But so far everything done was in accordance with conservative, even High Church, precedent.
The most starchy of his clerical brethren would admit that the holding of religious services in jails, prisons, workhouses and the like was within the scope of the Church scheme ; although the spiritual inertia and moral laxity of the times, had resulted in a gross neglect of this duty.
Soon, however, " the Enthusiast ''? was to take a step which shocked beyond repair the dignity and etiquette of his more stiff and formal brethren.
April and, 1739, is a date of poignant significance to the ~ whole English-speaking world.
On the evening of March gist, in response to Whitefield's invitation, Wesley arrived in Bristol.
Next day, by Whitefield's example, he was persuaded of the 1 Yournal, July 22nd, 1738, also July 30th.
2 See C. E. Vulliamy, John Wesley, pp. 88-9.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND
AFTER WESLEY
necessity of field preaching as the means most likely to reach the toiling masses, who, because of the frigid aloofness of orthodox procedure, had become virtual outcasts, untouched, and seemingly untouchable, by the Church.
Wesley's own record reveals the mental dilemma with which he was here confronted:
'I could scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church.'!
Whitefield's victory, nevertheless, was complete.
For that same evening—Whitefield meanwhile having left Bristol—Wesley expounded to "a little society"? in Nicholas Street from the Sermon on the Mount—" one pretty remarkable precedent of field-preaching,"' adds the Journal, "' though I suppose there were churches at that time also.'
Less than twenty-four hours later (April and, 1739) Wesley himself embarked on the new venture.?
"At four in the afternoon," he says, ''I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining the city, to about three thousand people."
His text for this, the first of his many thousands of field sermons, was prophetic of great things ahead:
' The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted ; to preach deliverance to the captive, and recovery of sight to the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
Having preached his first field sermon, Wesley had begun the aggressive march of his crusade for righteousness.
This twice-born man was now not only in possession of the central doctrine of his campaign; he also had discovered the chief vehicle of its expression.
Other developments would follow in due course, but the redemptive and creative power of a transfigured life was now about to be manifested: a great advance movement for personal and social regeneration already
— was launched upon a prodigal and debauched, an unexpectant and ungrateful, land.
1 Journal, March 31st, 1739.
2 The splendour of Whitefield's life is commonly overshadowed by the towering majesty of Wesley's achievement.
In the early phases of the Revival, Whitefield's influence over Wesley was decisive.
For Whitefield's importance, see Luke T'yerman's George Whitefield, and Dr. A: D. Belden's
Whitefield, the Awakener.
CHAPTER XI
THE SHAPING OF A CRUSADE
'" CHRISTIANITY
is essentially a social religion; to turn it into a solitary religion is indeed to destroy it."
Joun Westey's Works (1872 Edition), Vol. V, p. 296.
'"' For opinions and terms let us not destroy the work of God.
Dost thou love and fear God?
It is enough !
I give thee the right hand of fellowship."
Joun Westey, Character of a Methodist (1742), p. 10.
CHAPTER XI
THE SHAPING OF A CRUSADE
Lone has it been fashionable in rationalist circles to patronise, to ridicule or to caricature the Evangelical Movement, on the score that it made no really philosophical contribution to religious or political thought.
Sir Leslie Stephen, one of the most brilliant stars in the rationalist firmament, comparing the Evangelical Revival with the great religious movement of the preceding century, delineates "the new Puritanism" as but *¢ 4 faint reflection of the grander Puritanism of the seventeenth century.''} Now the creative capacity of the movement that threw up a Milton, a Cromwell, a Bunyan, a Hampden, a Marvell, a Baxter and a Fox, no one will question.
Nevertheless Stephen's criticism, and all other criticisms based solely upon philosophical, theoretic and literary standards, are far from the mark ; for it is impossible to peruse the primary documents of the Eighteenth Century Revival, without realising that it never made any pretence of formulating a new philosophy of life ; nor had it any desire so to do.
It was eminently satisfied with the doctrinal statement of religion expressed in the Articles of the Creed, while also it accepted unhesitatingly the Gospel ethic as a Revelation of life's deeper meaning, to which all
Christians, of whatever denomination, if really serious, were committed.
Had not Bishops Berkeley and Butler already engaged in brilliant philosophical speculations, and were not the masses of England oblivious to their existence?
To Wesley, arm-chair philosophies had no appeal.
He was, at many points, a religious pragmatist before the advent of " Pragmatism."
With a sensitiveness which his conversion had made peculiarly acute, he beheld the drunkenness, the ignorance, the cruelty, the vice, the misery and the poverty of teeming multitudes of his fellows, and he had an unflagging faith that the Spirit of the living God, working through the Gospel of Christ, could restore the divine image, even in the souls of the most degraded ;
1 Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. II, p. 433.