(iii) Economics and Religion
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can find no better way to convert them, than Penal Laws and Acts of Parliament."?
Again, in a quaint tract, wherein he suggests a '"'short and sure"? way of converting Ireland to Protestant Christianity, after emphasising and commending the high veneration in which Catholics hold the lives of the Apostles, he tilts subtly at the worldliness and arrogance of Anglican officialdom in Ireland.
" Let all the clergy of the Church of Ireland," he advises, "' only live like the Apostles and preach like the Apostles, and the thing is done!"
Often, too, Wesley denounced vehemently the laws restraining the free importation of Irish products into England, while he approved with zest nearly every effort for co-operation and understanding between the two countries.
But in one regard, he was surely bigoted.
Believing that all Catholics were under immediate dictation from Rome, he opposed sternly the repeal or modification of the repressive legislation that, in his day, kept them from holding any public office in England.
(iii) Economics and Religion The true purpose of all creative economic theory and organisasion being the advancement of "' human material well-being," it becomes at once obvious that to Wesley all economic problems were primarily ethical, and therefore religious.
Moreover, as religion encompasses the whole of life, and as the question of earning a livelihood for one's self and one's dependants occupies most of the waking hours of normal adults, it becomes equally obvious that the realm of economic associations affords at once the largest and the most immediate field for the cultivation of brotherhood and co-operation, of character and virtue.
This constantly was Wesley's position.
He was an economic "' realist '' because he believed spiritual values the only ultimate
'reality? : hence those values he would cause to permeate and control, every material relationship of man.
It is not surprising therefore that Wesley showed an alert, intimate and life-long interest in the '' bread and butter " problems of life.
The people among whom his mission chiefly lay, were those compelled to struggle grimly with stern economic difficulties: he was more familiar with the life of the poor than any other man of his age ; he knew that many of them dwelt in cellars and attics, amidst verminous surroundings, lacking warmth, raiment and decent victuals.
Yet never did he assume a fatalistic attitude: never did he accept a " law " of indifference and drift.
Certain doctrinaire aspects of Jaisser 1 Journal, August 15th, 1747.
Wesley, A Short Method of Converting all the Roman Catholics in Ireland.
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faire, indeed, would have made his blood boil ; while, as for the crasser interpretations of the Malthusian and Ricardian theories regarding food, disease, poverty, population and wages, he would have declared them diabolical.
Man's inhumanity to man,"' he believed, '"' made countless thousands mourn " ; and to excuse or condone that inhumanity by any sophisticated appeal to " predestinations of Providence," or to the '' nature of the Universe," was to him hypocritical sacrilege.
Often, therefore, Wesley felt himself '' called of God" to proclaim righteousness, temperance and forthcoming judgment to Power,
Avarice and Luxury, in all their arrogance and sloth: for they, by perverting the gift of Free Will, and by "' embezzling " the talents of God, not only thwarted temporarily the Divine purpose, but robbed mercilessly their fellow men.
Wesley emphatically was a Constitutionalist and an anti-Revolutionist ; but unless both government and economic organisation strove sincerely, resolutely and intelligently to serve the Common Good, he believed them wholly at variance with the Christian ethic and a hollow mockery of their true intent.
On February 8th, 1753, Wesley wrote:
"In the afternoon I visited many of the sick; but such scenes, who could see unmoved ? There are none such to be seen in a pagan country.
If any of the Indians in Georgia were sick (which indeed rarely happened till they learned gluttony and drunkenness from the Christians), those that were near him gave him whatever he wanted.
Oh, who will convert the English into honest heathens ! "! The following day he notes: "I visited as many more as I could.
I found some in their cells underground ; others in their garrets, half starved both with cold and hunger, added to weakness and pain.
But I found not one of them unemployed, who was able to crawl about the room.
So wickedly, devilishly false is that common objection, ' They are poor, only because they are idle.'
If you could see these things with your own eyes, could you lay out money on ornaments and superfluities ? "'?
A fortnight later, his Journal reads:
"I visited more of the poor sick.
The industry of many of them surprised me.
Several who were ill able to walk, were nevertheless at work ; some without any fire (bitterly cold as it was), and some, I doubt, without any food; ...'?
Wesley, with Shakespeare, was crying:
'' Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!"
Ceaselessly he called upon the rich to " visit the poor," as "their brethren"? ; and among his strict injunctions to his followers, was the warning:
'' Give none that asks relief, either 1 Yournal (above date).
2 Yournal, February 9th and toth, 1753.
3 Ibid., February 21st, 1753.
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an ill word or an ill look. Do not hurt them."!
" Treat every poor person," was his constant rule, "as you would God Almighty should treat you!"
Wesley never was a theorist ; his economic principles were forged by the action of his religious faith, on the anvil of social experience.
Yet certain very definite economic proposals he did put forward.
Great estates, in his day, were the centre and symbol of power and influence, nevertheless he suggested the radical reform of permitting "no farm above one hundred pounds a year."
This proposal in fact was revolutionary ; Wesley had no sympathy with a land system of vast domains
- hedged off as private preserves ; recognising that "' the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,'' he would use the soil for the national good—to provide wholesome food, at cheap prices, for all the people.
And lordly, luxurious estates both decreased the amount, he believed, and raised the price, of the workers' bread.
'"' The rich," he complained, "' consume so much, they leave nothing for the poor."? A favourite epigram of Wesley's was:
'"'An ounce of love, is worth a pound of compulsion."
He loathed the "' Decrees" of predestination and fatalism.
Continually he propounded the " free grace of God " and the " free will" of man.
His life, too, incarnated the robust Englishman's love of Liberty; yet he indulged no sentimental effusions about Liberty.
He saw what many English theorists have commonly failed to see—that most laws are themselves inhibitions ! Hence when institutions, habits or customs became a public nuisance or a social plague, and their perpetrators failed to respond to the appeals of reason, conscience, sympathy, or faith, he was quite prepared to support legal restrictions and positive prohibitions.
'The distilling of, and traffic in, spirituous liquors, as we have seen, he would completely prohibit.
Slavery, "' gambling hells'? and such like '"' curses,"' he would submit to the same fate. Wanton luxury, he would repress both by " laws and example." Upon every " gentleman's horse," he would place a "' tax of £5 "' ; while "' useless pensions "' he would abruptly abolish, '' especially those ridiculous ones given to some hundreds of idle men, as governors of forts and castles ; which forts have answered no end for above these hundred years, unless to shelter jackdaws and crows.''?
It is notable, too, that Wesley supported fair prices, a living wage and honest, healthy employment for all.
No one disliked mob action more than he: yet in his Journal, in 1758, 1 Wesley's Works, Vol. VIII, p. 262.
2 See Wesley's Thoughts on Present Scarcity of Provisions; also J. A.
Faulkner, The Socialism of F. Wesley.
3 Works, Vol. XI, pp. 58-9.
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he records with obvious admiration a high-handed work of economic justice, achieved by the rabble.
'' The mob," he says, '' had been in motion all the day ; but their business was only with the forestallers of the market, who had bought up all the corn far and near to starve the poor, and load a Dutch ship, which lay at the quay ; but the mob brought it all out into the market, and sold it for the owners at the common price.
And this they did with all the calmness and composure imaginable, and without striking or hurting anyone."!
In Wesley's occasional experiments in providing employment for the unfortunates, it may fairly be presumed that he was dealing mostly with second or third class workmen, who had to be patiently instructed in the craft set them.
But they, too, had souls ; so a definite principle guided his efforts.
The produce of their labour he sold at the standard rate; and that being insufficient for a decent livelihood, he made it up to a reasonable living wage ; for while there was plenty in the land, he regarded it a national disgrace that any should be denied the material necessities of a healthy and self-respecting life.
How basic was this principle to him, may be gauged from the fact that as late as August, 1789, we again find him condoning, if not justifying, the direct action of a mob. In Truro, on his way to the society's
' preaching house, he found the street completely blocked by *'numberless tinners," stampeding for higher pay.
He was compelled to retire, and so preached at "the other end" of the town instead.
Now a peevish man, in his eighty-seventh year, might have reacted bitterly to this industrial mob, which had thus upset his plans.
Not so Wesley: his Journal entry depicts it as "'a huge multitude," who, " being nearly starved, were come to beg or demand an increase in their wages, without which they could not live."?
Obviously, therefore, he believed these workmen, like the African slaves in resisting the suppression of their "natural"? liberty, to be but asserting their "natural rights."
In brief, Wesley's ethical and social teaching, the product of his religion, was based upon the following articles of faith :
The spiritual brotherhood of man under the Fatherhood of a loving and moral God, who, with high Purpose, has granted to His children a large degree of free will.
This free will, though utterly necessary to the moral and spiritual development of man, is capable of dire abuse, thus causing perplexing social problems.
3. All social problems are fundamentally spiritual and 1 Curnock edition, Vol. IV, p. 268.
2 Journal, August 18th, 1789.
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ethical ; and persons who fail to dedicate mental equipment and material power to spritual-ethical ends, are enemies of the Kingdom of God—anti-social citizens, who needs must be restrained by humane law.
In a really Christian society, men will recognise that they are stewards of God, the Creator and Owner of all: human " possessions,' accordingly, are a self-acquired delusion, and priyate " riches " a subtly dangerous snare.
Service, not material acquisitions, being the real standard of human attainment, fellowship, co-operation, and a truly equalitarian spirit, are the genuine marks of a Christian society ; wherein the strong, motivated by sympathy and love, will rejoice to assist their weaker brethren, even as parents rejoice to assist their children.
Faith in the ultimate justice of God, in Heaven, and in the immortality of the soul, are essential inspirations of any stable and happy society on earth: all human institutions, therefore, including those of politics and economics, must be impregnated with spiritual values, if they are to serve the highest interests of man, and fulfil the will of God.
If men persist in perverting the grace of free will, refusing to recognise that they are stewards of God and their brothers' keepers, then Divine Providence must necessarily resort to catastrophic means to upset their vain, pompous plans and force them, in chastened mood, to build anew.
Wesley, even more than Shaftesbury, his spiritual descendant, was a mighty social reformer ; for by initiating and directing a marvellous spiritual movement latent with moral imperatives, he opened the springs of human sympathy and understanding, which in turn inspired and nourished a glorious succession of social reforms.
Ostrogorski, the Continental political writer, in his La Democratie, has glimpsed something of the high humanitarian influence of Wesley, and the heroic succession of Christian crusaders whom the Evangelical Revival raised up.
"They appeal always and everywhere," he says, "' from the miserable reality, to the human conscience.
They make one see the man in the criminal, the brother in the negro."
They " introduced," he avers, 'a new personage into the social and political world of Aristocratic England—the fellow man."
And that fellow man, Ostrogorski predicts, 'never more will leave the stage.''!
See French edition, Pp. 10 (the above version is from an unpublished English translation by William Jones, M.Sc., by kind permission).
CHAPTER XIV
THE SPIRIT OF EQUITY AND FELLOWSHIP
"We need great grace to converse with great people !
From which, therefore (unless in rare instances), I am glad to be excused."
Joun Wes.ey, after dining with Lady —— in Dublin, April, 1758.
"Do nothing as a gentleman; ye are the servants of all."
Joun WesLey (among Rules and Maxims to his helpers).
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INCREASINGLY
has it become a fashion to judge bygone historical periods, by economic and social theory fashioned long after their close; for Marx, to many, has become the touch-stone of all social criticism.
Now even were this questionable procedure justifiable, by no possible leap of the imagination, could Wesley's teaching and example be reconciled to the tenets of Marxian Communism.
From the soulless materialism, the economic determinism and the ruthless classhatred of Marx's
" philosophy," his every sensitivity would have recoiled.
Albeit, like Marx, Wesley's primary interest was in the, working multitude: like Marx, he believed in the dignity of ~" labour, for labour he conceived the chief—though not the only— source of human material wealth.
Scarcely less than Marx, he believed the poor frequently were exploited and "robbed " by the rich; while no whit less than Marx, did he consider social justice to the worker the foundation of any true society.
But their differences in temper, spirit and outlook were colossal : the two men were as diametrically opposite as Love and Hate.
Marx was a militant, dogmatic Atheist, the prophet of " Nogod," whom he worshipped with vociferous acclaim : to Wesley,
God—*' the source of all insight, confidence, justice and truth "'
—was closer than breathing.
The individual man, to Marx, was a materialistic animal, who at death perished like a rat: to Wesley, he was an immortal spirit with infinite latent capacity for infinite growth.
Marx, in the name of " Science," harping always on the "inexorable laws of economics," sought social justice by revolution : Wesley held that men's first step towards emancipation, was to find their souls, by entering into communion with the spiritual world ; and then, having the prototype and essence of social justice within them, they would be social builders indeed.
His primary medium of expression, therefore, was conversion, not revolution.
To Marx, all religion was a priest-concocted opiate, a pernicious, paralysing
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soporific, which at any cost must be destroyed: to Wesley, true religion was the eye of the soul, the source of liberty, the fountain head of every worthy aspiration, the sustaining power behind every exalted attainment of man; it was the Mighty Indispensable.
Brotherhood, to Marx, was a mechanised "comradeship," forced upon "the workers of the world" in self-interest and self-defence, that, as a vast army, they might wreak vengeance upon their hated exploiters—the capitalist class : to Wesley, it was a spiritual affinity, a social fellowship, which one day, in love and co-operation, would embrace all mankind.
Even Professor Laski admits that Marx " hated too strongly ; he was jealous, and he was proud."
From the day of his conversion, Wesley hated no man ; jealousy had no discoverable place in his life; and his only pride was in the things appertaining to the Kingdom of God.
Laski again says of Marx:
" The seeming logic of his attitude is deceptive, for it in part rests upon... an abstract view of human nature with which the totality of facts is in direct contradiction. ..
He was often wrong, he was rarely generous, he was always bitter."1
Wesley, like all mortals, at times was wrong, but always he was generous, and never was he bitter: few mighty leaders of men, indeed, have ever been so severe with themselves, or so chivalrous with their foes.
Wesley, in brief, would change society by "changing men"; for really changed men, becoming endowed with sensitised consciences and socialised wills, must perforce be workers for the Kingdom of Righteousness on Earth:
Marx "' scientifically'? would marshal the proletariat for the day of World Revolution, when, in ruthless, long-cherished vengeance, they would strike down their " enslavers '" and proceed to mould their social Utopia, according to their own materialistic desires.
To Wesley, the true Society was organic and evolutionary: to Marx, be it emphasised, it was mechanical and revolutionary.
Wesley, too, knew individual men—including thousands of the " proletariat "—as his brethren and friends:
Marx, who lived for thirty years an alien on a foreign strand, knew few workmen individually ; nor did he wish so to know them; the " workers," to him, were abstract beings fitted neatly into his own theoretic, doctrinaire plans.
The Gospel of Christ to Wesley was a Revelation of God, containing an inspired ethic, whose application pointed the way to social equity and fellowship, among all peoples.
Christ, to Marx, was a fanatical idiot, whose Gospel was worse than foolishness.
He taught the proletariat 1H. J. Laski, Karl Marx, pp. 28, 48.
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to despise not only religion in general, but Christianity in particular.
The High Priest of Communism knew what to omit. Astutely, he does not explain just how the proletariat, after stimulating for generations the lust for blood, would, following their Revolution of Revenge, at once settle down into peaceful co-operative
"comrades" and friends.
He who scoffed at the possibility of miracles, blandly assumed that, after the great proletarian banquet of blood, long nourished tiger appetites would forthwith give way to those of the lamb; that the beast of prey would at once, and by choice, become a vegetarian, delighting to feed and frolic in the common pastures of the Communistic
Utopia.
But One wiser than Marx has said: "* Of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.''!
From that Wiser One, Wesley drew the inspiration of his social teaching and example.
And not least among the reasons why Marxian Communism, with its gospel of hate, has cast no deep root into the mental soil of the English-speaking world, is the fact that Wesley started a movement which largely revived vital, practical Christianity, and made it a moral and social force.? we (i) Dress and Station Wesley was not a sociologist.
As a prophet of God and an ordained ambassador of Christ, he did not conceive it his task to formulate economic, political or social theories ; nor did he judge himself competent so to do.
His "calling" he believed far more sacred, and more thorough-going: it was to lead men into contact with spiritual reality, to enable them to possess their souls and enter the realm of "' abundant life."
For if once men, in sufficient numbers, were endowed with an illumined conscience and a spiritual insight, they, collectively as well as individually, would become possessors of the " wisdom that passeth knowledge" ; and in that wisdom social problems gradually would be solved.
Ultimately, therefore, the movement guided by Wesley became a far-reaching social leaven : for no sociologist has yet lived, with the exception of Marx, who has exercised such direct and intimate influence upon the social activities of great multitudes of men; and no sociologist, including Marx, has yet inspired such voluntary,
1St. Luke vi, 44.
2 For Marx's teaching, see Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867).
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cheerful, creative sacrifice, on the part of his disciples.
But though Wesley's cardinal purpose remained spiritual, and though he elaborated no comprehensive theory of social organisation, never did he shirk the duty of striving to apply the Christian ethic to the most pressing social problems that crossed his path.
Had he -not done so, he believed he would have betrayed his trust.
Perhaps, on occasions, he was rash; but "rashness,"' as Professor Tawney reminds us, is surely "a more agreeable failing than cowardice, and, when to speak is unpopular, it is less pardonable to be silent than to say too mach.' 24
Dress to Wesley was an expression of the inward man.
His own habit always was neat, tidy, shapely, but severely plain and cheap: his linen was spotless, and his shoes regularly were shined, however wet the weather, or however muddy the road.
No frill or flounce found any place in his attire, and in an age of powdered and monstrous wigs, he was content always with his natural hair: yet from a hundred sources it is clear that immaculateness and simple comeliness were outstanding marks of his person.
Wesley's teachings concerning dress exhibit an interesting combination of his native, Oxfordnourished conservatism, and his radical religious convictions.
In studying his writings and records, one quickly discovers the arch-instance of his conservatism.
It is the British Kingship—ever, to him, the emblem of the people's corporate life.
English royalty, to Wesley, was a divinely sanctioned institution ; hence, never do we find him criticising the "ruling sovereign.'
George II, though possessed of undoubted physical bravery, was a weak King, maintaining an immoral
Court.
Yet, sagacious and observant as Wesley in most matters was, he seems never to have suspected the sensual conditions surrounding that monarch's life ; and more than once, he applauds him as a just and generous prince.
Thus, accepting without question this exalted view of Kingship—as did most other
Englishmen of his age*—Wesley does not condemn a high degree of grandeur and gorgeousness in royal attire.
Yet even as he states his case, his conscience is ill at ease.
"It is doubtful," he writes, "if Scripture forbids those in any nation that are vested with supreme authority, to be arrayed in gold and costly apparel; or to adorn their immediate attendants * R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, p. 287.
It must be remembered that to this day English royalty is largely immune from criticism by the contemporary generation.
Criticism of kings is the prerogative of later generations.
For Wesley's severe criticism of Elizabeth, Charles II and James II see his History of England.
THE RoE a OO tLe ka tN aba tle OPW SEIT Po 250 or magistrates, or officers with the same."!
He also admitted that there might be "' a moderate difference of apparel between persons of different stations."
But quickly forging on to the conviction upon his heart, he exclaims:
'" These Scriptures manifestly forbid ordinary Christians, those in the lower and middle ranks of life, to be adorned with gold or pearls or costly apparel.''?
; Gay, gorgeous, gaudy attire, Wesley taught, " engenders pride, and where it already is, it increases it"; it " breeds and increases vanity"; it '"' begets anger,'' and directly tends to ''create and inflame lust."
'" Every shilling,' he says, 'which you save from your own apparel, you may expend in clothing the naked and relieving the necessities of the poor"? : and "everything about thee that costs more than Christian duty required thee to lay out, is the blood of the poor !''*
Then, pointing the tenor of his message—for always there is a piquant directness in Wesley's teaching—he asks:
"Is not your dress as gay, as expensive as theirs, who never had such warning?
Are you not as fashionably dressed as others of your rank that are not Methodists?"
'' But I can afford it," comes the reply.
'' O lay aside that idle, nonsensical word !
No Christian can afford to waste any part of the substance which God has entrusted to him.'"'
'' Let me see before I die," he pleads, "a Methodist congregation full as plain dressed as a Quaker congregation.
Only be more consistent.
Let your dress be cheap as well as plain.
Otherwise you do but trifle with God, and me, and your own souls.
I pray you let there be no more costly silks among you, how grave soever they may be."
Just here, to Southey and his soberly superior set, lay the rub.
They were too refined to desire loud, foppish apparel : they wanted a habit "rich not gaudy," but always costly as their purse could buy.
To Wesley, by such indulgence, they were " making themselves accountable for all the want, affliction and distress, which they may, but do not, remove.''®
Moreover, even the special privileges which Wesley, somewhat waveringly, conceded to royalty, were not without limitations.
Five years before the demise of George II, he was " in the robe-chamber, adjoining to the House of Lords, when the King put on his robes."
The Journal records his impression:
'His brow was much furrowed with age, and quite 1 Sermon on Dress, p. 5.
2 Tbid., pp. 5, 6 3 Ibid., pp. 7-10.
£ Jbid., p. 10.
5 Wesley's Works, Vol. V, p. 375-
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clouded with care.
And is this all the world can give even to a King?
All the grandeur it can afford?
A blanket of ermine round his shoulders, so heavy and cumbersome he can scarce move under it!
An huge heap of borrowed hair, with a few plates of gold and glittering stones upon his head !
Alas, what a bauble is human greatness! ..
Wesley's subconscious and recurrent Toryism, was the "' hangover" of the natural man : his spiritual being revolted against all pompous, parading display.
The fashionable dress of his period now seems preposterous.
Certainly its more flamboyant styles achieved the grotesque : for periwig-pated males, sported fringe, ruffles and fluff, gold and silver lace and braid, silks, satins and velvets of gaudy hues, colourful tassels, garters and bows, together with huge bejewelled buckles and, perhaps, a dozen glistening, garish buttons, each the size of a small sunflower.
The wardrobe of an eighteenth-century fop cost hundreds of pounds—if paid for.
Even the proverbially slouchy Dr. Johnson, who declared that " fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect," for his visit to Paris in 1755 '"' spent £30 on a new suit and a new bourgeois wig."
Smart feminine fashions were on a par with those of male dandies.
Women achieved incredible hairdressing and incredible millinery, while hoops, bustles, open bosoms and wasp waists, together with abundance of flashy jewellery, augmented the ravishing allurements and embellishments of their attire.
Nevertheless, while the rich paraded all their feathers and fripperies, exhibiting often their vulgarity no less than their wealth and pride, multitudes of the hard-working poor eked out their existence in tatters and rags.
No wonder, therefore, that Wesley placed strong emphasis on the moral significance of dress.
He despised all garnished gaudiness.
He would have every man, woman and child to be clothed in raiment at once comfortable, neat, modest, shapely and clean: and to him such raiment was more comely, than any '"' daubed with gold.''8
1 Journal, December 23rd, 1755.
® Fohnson's England, Vol. I, p. 384.
For the fashionable dress of this period, see collections in Victoria and Albert Museum and London Museum.
See, too, T. T. Osserhyn, Costume in the Time of George II.
Many of Hogarth's paintings reflect the meaner garb of the times.
Illustrations in Besant's London in the Eighteenth Century, in Sydney's England and the English, and in Fohnson's
England are also revealing.
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(ii) The True Nobility Having touched upon Wesley's conservative attitude toward
Kingship, it is noteworthy that even to royalty he could at times speak with a boldness few of his contemporaries approached.
In his Address to George II (1744), assuring him of the loyalty of the Methodist Societies, and repudiating the current, though absurd, accusation that they were allied to the Pretender, he reminds his Majesty that the loyalty of his societies must be based on Scriptural principles.
'' We cannot indeed do either more or less," he says, "than we apprehend consistent with the written Word of God; but we are ready to obey your Majesty to the utmost, in all things which we conceive to be agreeable thereto."!
In this Address, moreover, Wesley takes opportunity to remind his sovereign of the eternal supremacy of the '' Prince of all the Kings of the earth," to whom all men, whether princes or peasants, must one day render account.
So Kings, too, were subservient to the proprietorship of God.
Their elegance and pomp, though granted as a concession to traditional custom, and to the people's love of the spectacular, were but external trappings: their souls, if hidden to men, were naked to God.
Whitefield repeatedly has been accused of a fawning, subservient demeanour toward the genteel and titled; though his thirteen Atlantic crossings in days when Johnson described all ships as '' floating prisons," and the fact that always he was happier on the American frontier than in England, tend sharply to modify this criticism.
Charles Wesley was a noble, generous character possessed of sympathy and love for all mankind: yet there can be little doubt that after his sons became musical prodigies, performing in exclusive drawingrooms before nobles, princes and Kings,* the glitter of the brilliant society in which he not infrequently found himself, dulled, in some degree, his zest for the national service of humble folk.
No such accusation could sanely be levelled against the guiding genius of the Revival.
His supreme mission was to the Common People, whom he specially loved ; and 1 ¥ournal (Standard), Vol. III, March 5th, 1744.
Owing to the pressure of Charles Wesley, this address was not presented, lest it might encourage the tendency to look upon the societies as separate bodies outside the Church.
The Moravians did send such an address.
2 It is said that after playing for George III and his party, a son of Charles Wesley was greeted by the King with the words:
" To your uncle John Wesley, to your father Charles Wesley, and to Mr. Whitefield, the Church of this realm owes more than to all others."
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his glorious life record shows not a trace of any subserviency toward titled, élite or wealthy society.
Outside the sphere of Kingship, with its unique symbolism, he judged men entirely on the basis of character and service; and, by such standards, he was convinced that dress and station, wealth and titles, were no dependable recommendation to honour.
His prejudices (and no man is without them) were distinctly in favour of the poor ; rarely did he turn to a rich man for financial support : the Common People financed his crusade.
To Wesley, as to Burns :
"The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gold for a' that."
And the chief reason why, after his conversion, he jettisoned The Whole Duty of Man as a religious text, was the fact that it taught a nauseating, pagan servility on the part of the poor toward the "rich and great'? ; for pseudo-religious jingo he could not endure.
Far, then, from fawning or crawling before the rich, the aristocratic or the famous, Wesley commonly avoided them.
"They do me no good," was his conviction, "and I fear I can do none to them."
Even Dr. Johnson, who came to admire Wesley because he "could talk well on any subject," complained that he could not enjoy more of his company.
" Wesley is never at leisure," repined the renowned literary monarch ; "he is always obliged to go at a certain hour.
That is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do."
In June, 1739, when Wesley came to Bath the air was full of threats, and the general excitement drew
"many of the rich and great" to his preaching.
Grasping the opportunity, he "told them plainly the Scripture had concluded them all under sin—high and low, rich and poor, one with another."
After his sermon, an electric curiosity charging the atmosphere, several fine ladies followed him to his lodging, desiring conversation with him.
The ensuing interview was brief, for he read their motives.
"I do not expect," he told them tersely, " that the rich and great should want either to speak with me, or to hear me ; for I speak the plain truth—a thing you hear little of, and do not desire to hear.??!
Not seldom, when invited to dine with the high and mighty, Wesley politely declined, and went on his way.
A casual Journal memorandum (February roth, 1758) reads:
" The judge, immediately after sermon, invited me to dine with him.
But having no time I was obliged to send My cexcuse.. asese 1 Fournal, June sth, 1739.
Ged Beni ee Ore OOU Lely ACNG Dr BE Eihy O OW. Seep
After dining with the Governor of Guernsey (August 18th, 1787), he was "' well pleased to find other company."
Having spent "an agreeable hour at a concert"? rendered by his nephews, he poignantly adds : " But I was a little out of my element among lords and ladies.
I love plain music and plain company best."?
On another occasion he writes:
"I spent an hour agreeably and profitably with Lady C H—— and Sir C H It is well a few of the rich and noble are called.
Oh, may God increase their number!
But I should rejoice if it were done by the ministry of others.
If I might choose, I should still preach the Gospel to the poor.''?
In Dublin (April, 1758), after dining with Lady Wesley noted:
'"' We need great grace to converse with great people !
From which, therefore (unless in rare instances), I am glad to be excused.
. Of these two hours I can give no good account."
'' O how hard it is,"" he again muses, "' to be shallow enough for a polite audience !"' while further, he refers to " the learned, rich and honourable heathens, commonly called Christians."
On Sunday, March 16th, 1788, Wesley, now a national character, preached by invitation before the Lord Mayor of London and " most of the aldermen."
He "applied" the *' awful " history of Dives and Lazarus—a subject chosen for very "plain speaking."
Always he treated Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, the sincere, wealthy, zealous patron of the Revival, with courtesy and respect; but his attitude to her was not a whit different from the gracious fellowship he invariably extended to the humblest lay preacher, or the most obscure Class leader ; and generous character as Lady Huntingdon was, it is doubtful if she quite relished Wesley's habitually equalitarian mood.
Indeed, it is probable that the customary, if unconscious, subservience Whitefield commonly manifested toward her, was by no means distasteful.
Her conversion in many respects was catastrophic; but never did it wholly remove from her the proud consciousness that she was a peeress of the realm.
And to this prophet-evangelist even a converted peeress was, like himself, but a sinful mortal, in constant need of grace divine.
Repeatedly Wesley speaks of the '' ignorance," even the '"'oross ignorance," he "had observed in rich and genteel people throughout the nation.'4
" Gentlefolk, so-called,' were 1 Fournal, January 25th, 1781.
2 [bid., November 17th, 1759.
3 See Wesley's Thoughts on the Earthquake at Lisbon.
4 ¥ournal, July 4th, 1757.
264 ENGLAND: BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
the subject of his constant irony ; and once, in exasperation, he permitted himself the licence of referring to "' things called gentlemen."
With succeeding years, too, his suspicion of accumulated riches only increased!
'"'I saw a very rare thing," he remarked. in 1776, '' men swiftly increasing in substance and yet not decreasing in holiness"? ; but eleven years later, after a similar observation, he adds:
"If they continue so, it will be the only instance I have known in above half a century.
I warned them in the strongest terms I could.''2
After addressing a fashionable company, including " the chief men of the town," he notes: "I spared neither rich nor poor.
I almost wondered at myself, it not being usual with me to use such keen and cutting expressions: and I believe many felt that for all their form they were but heathens still.''3
The same fearless, independent spirit is exhibited in Wesley's reply to a Bishop, who had " forbidden all his clergy to admit any Methodist preacher to the Lord's Supper."
"But is any clergyman obliged," asks Wesley, '' either in law or conscience, to obey such a prohibition?
By no means.
The will even of the King does not bind any English subject, unless it is seconded by an express law.
How much less the will of a bishop?
But did you not take an oath to obey him?
No, nor any clergyman in the three kingdoms.
This is mere vulgar error.
Shame that it should prevail almost universally."
Wesley, like every true and effective prophet, was something of a rebel.
If a deep-lying strain of recurrent Toryism occasionally forced its way to the surface, it is well to remember a dictum of Overton's, that Wesley surely was " the most revolutionary Tory who ever lived."
To him, true nobility was a thing of the soul, superseding all rank, station, colour and class: yet the fact that he had deep conservative instincts, perhaps enabled him the better to understand the real genius of the English peoples, and the better to serve the English-speaking world.'
For rarely have the Anglo-Saxon peoples, despite their long quest for Liberty, bestowed their allegiance upon any rebel, or leader, who has striven abruptly to break the continuity of History, or whose hatred of individuals, classes or institutions, has obscured the higher ideals and deeper humanities, which alone can justify radical or revolutionary change in organic institutions.
Compare with Defoe's satire, The Compleat English Gentleman.
* Journal, August 27th, 1776, and March 31st, 1787.
5 [bid., June roth, 1757.
* Ibid., June ist, 1777.
For a_thoroughgoing—though occasionally misleading—attempt to elaborate Wesley's '"' Toryism," see M. Edwards's Fohn Wesley and the Eighteenth Century (1933).
THE SPIRIT
OF EQUITY
AND FELLOWSHIP
(iii) Constructive Social Work Scarcely is it an exaggeration to say that Wesley's Sermons,
Journal, New Testament Notes, Appeals and Letters, together with his occasional and miscellaneous publications, contain either definite teaching or suggestive reflections on practically every recognised social problem of his time.
few of his most representative utterances, we have brought together: it remains briefly to survey certain of his constructive social labours among the poor—labours to which such contemporaries as Hume and Gibbon, Voltaire and Rousseau, Paine and Cobbett were totally blind.
Their outlook on life was agnostic, deistic, materialistic or egotistic.
Wesley's was spiritualistic, though experimental and pragmatic.
Hence, lacking the faintest comprehension of Wesley's standards, and accepting prejudiced ridicule at face value, they naturally despised or ignored his endeavours ; and many of the sophisticated and cynical of the twentieth century, following their verdict, as embellished by the later raillery of Rev. Sydney Smith, Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt, have mediated the same supercilious contempt.1
Disinterested investigations, however, point increasingly to an opposite conclusion.
Mr. A. E. Dobbs, in his scholarly book, Education and Social Movements, says : '' The part which the Evangelical Revival played in the political education of the masses has been often misrepresented or ignored.
An exceptional degree of intelligence and attainment was not uncommon among the Methodists in humble station and those who had been raised in Methodist homes ;"' while of the Class Meeting, he declares: "It was the starting point of serious friendships, and often contained an inner circle of companions, more intelligent than the rest, who would meet to converse on religion and matters of general interest, and who occasionally entered on a course of reading.""?
A circle of labourers or mechanics led in worship or conference by one of their own rank,'? Dobbs also reminds us,
"' was a great step for Democracy."
Fairburn, moreover, claims that "the local preacher and not the secularist lecturer has formed the mind of the miner and the labourer," with the result that when " the politician addresses the English peasantry he has to appeal to more distinctly ethical and religious principles
1 Smith's '" Liberalism " did not apply to ecclesiastical affairs.
He stoutly opposed the reform of the "' Rotten Boroughs " of the State Church, and used the Edinburgh Review to lampoon the Evangelical Revival, which insisted on their reform.
Hazlitt, too, used the Examiner to ridicule the Revival.
2 Op. cit. (1919), p. 119f.
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BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
than when he addresses the upper and middle classes."
But Wesley's social initiative and example, as well as his teaching, lay behind all such influences.
If education means character building and the imparting of ability to live nobly, usefully and co-operatively, Wesley, beyond comparison, was the greatest educationist of his century, and one of the greatest of all time.
He and his preachers "' found many of the people in a semi-barbarous state, deeply sunk in ignorance and vice, and almost lost in dirt and wretchedness."'
Albeit, wherever the Revival "' took deep root, cleanliness and order, with personal and domestic comfort, followed in the trail of vital Godliness."
As an adult educationist Wesley, throughout history, has had few peers.
His movement, long despised by the "cultured"? and the " great,' *was compelled to find and educate its own leaders : and considering the social conditions of the age, it rose magnificently to the task.
Of the thousands who during Wesley's day attained to the position of preachers, teachers and leaders, the overwhelming majority served a mental, moral and spiritual " apprenticeship," passing with democratic mobility and by natural selection from stage to stage, without any barriers of class, wealth or sex.
Self-help and mutual service were outstanding marks of the movement : and the attainment of ability for greater usefulness, was the recognised passport to higher opportunity.
'Do nothing as a gentleman," was one of Wesley's axiomatic precepts to his army of lieutenants.
" Ye are the servants of all."?
To character, initiative, ability and consecration, every avenue of the Revival was open; and before the close of Wesley's long life, not a few from the middle, professional and upper classes were serving cheerfully under the leadership of those who had sprung from the humblest labourers' homes.?
But the amazing educational results of the Revival, were not achieved without commensurate causes, paramount amongst which was Wesley's genius for creating, editing and distributing literature specially adapted to the mental, moral and spiritual needs of the abandoned multitude.
Wherever the Spiritual Awakening spread, there was generated a persistent craving for popular instruction, and that craving Wesley, the one-time don, was determined to satisfy.
His religion was a Bible religion ; and Bible religion demanded a knowledge both of the Scriptures and co-related ethical books.
Wesley himself taught * Wm. Entwistle, Memoirs of Rev. Foseph Entwistle, p. 28. ra See Wesley Historical Society Publications,
" John Bennet's Minutes of 1744."
* See Dr. W. J. Warner, op. cit., p. 257ff.
THE SPIRIT OF EQUITY AND FELLOWSHIP
that one could never be a '""thorough Christian" without extensive reading.
The duty therefore of acquiring knowledge was obvious, and this set thousands of converts to the task of teaching themselves to read, so that they might 'search the Scriptures"? and peruse other works designed to strengthen their moral and spiritual life.
Such auxiliary publications, Wesley, with incredible energy, set himself to place before his people at the lowest possible cost: hence the previously unparalleled dissemination of simple, direct, didactic Christian literature, to satisfy newly created but unmistakable needs ; hence the fifty volumes of The Christian Library gleaned and edited from a very wide field ; hence Wesley's "* Book-room " ; hence the endless stream of pamphlets, tracts, appeals and textbooks ; hence the Arminian Magazine, the various hymnals and the ceaseless use of the printing press, to augment and strengthen the preachers' spoken word.
Tens of thousands must have taught themselves to read from the Revival's publications ; and perhaps chief among the spelling and reading texts were the collections of hymns, for when once people knew hymns by heart they soon learned to spell them out and read them.
Then rapidly they proceeded to devour Wesley's prose, for his vivid, chaste, logical Saxon style was specially adapted to the people's immediate needs.
Every home deeply affected by the Revival, had its little collection of much-pondered books, and almost every convert helped to distribute the printed message.
Most publications were sold at a small price, but for those too poor to buy, funds were forthcoming to provide literature.
Mr. G. D. H. Cole in a recent essay says : "' We get an impression throughout Wesley's Journal that he is appealing to persons incapable of an intellectual response, whose souls must be saved by other and more ferocious means
. ." ;_ while of the Revival in general, he suggests that, "setting out to catch men's souls by all means, it used methods of approach which played upon the fears of the uneducated and the illiterate without qualm or remorse.
And it was able to do this with the less compunction because from the outset it would have no truck with political democracy in any form."?
It is unfortunate that a man of Mr. Cole's eminence, learning and influence, should, at this late hour, be reflecting the spleen of a Cobbett or a Hazlitt.
Indeed, such remarks force one to doubt if Mr. Cole has ever really studied Wesley's Journal, Sermons or 1 Wesley's Works, Vol. XII, p. 254.
; 2G. D. H. Cole, '' Town Life in the Provinces " (Yohnson's England, Vol. I, p. 222).
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
other publications. He, like many another theoretic agitator, is annoyed with the Revival, because its huge following refused to be exploited by the Paines, Cobbetts or other "' Democratic " demagogues of the era, for semi-revolutionary ends ; but that it laid the foundations of '"' Self-Help " and prepared the way for later and saner democracy, is, nevertheless, indisputable.
Moreover, who can deny that .the Movement itself was a democracy of service, fellowship, aspiration and attainment ?
Wesley's immediate contribution to popular education, however, extends far beyond the stimulation and satisfaction of an adult desire for literature and knowledge.
Wherever his teaching sank deep, parents desired education first for their own children and then for neglected youngsters around them.
The result was a steady increase in schools, some supported by converted individuals of means, some by local societies, some, like Kingswood seminary, by the United Societies.
In London both West Street Chapel and the Foundery ran schools.!_ The first preaching-house in Halifax was used also '' as a day school," which was taught by a local preacher.
The Bradford Society, in 1766, built a school chapel ;2 and so on all sides the re-birth of religion advanced efforts for education, which Wesley everywhere encouraged.
One instance at least is on record of orphan children for many years, by society efforts, being " fully maintained and taught."*
The Revival, too, was the mother of the world Sunday School Movement.
Eleven years before Robert Raikes began his famous work in Gloucester, Hannah Ball,
Wesley's disciple, was conducting Sunday School work in High Wycombe : and Wesley himself lived to examine local Sunday schools with nearly one thousand children in attendance, and about one-tenth that number of voluntary teachers.4
But this great movement will demand our later attention.
Wesley's interest in the physical welfare of the underprivileged was of a piece with his zeal for their spiritual and mental emancipation.
In 1746 he founded the first really free medical dispensary in England.
"TI mentioned to the society,' he notes, ""my design of giving physic to the poor.
About thirty came next day, and in three weeks about three hundred.
This we continued for several years, till the number of patients, still increasing, the expense was greater than we could bear : meantime, through the blessing of God, many who had been ill for months or years were restored to perfect health.">
In 1747 1 John Telford, Two West End Chapels, p. 72.
2 W. H.S., Proceedings, Vol. III, p. 102.
° E. M. North, Early Methodist Philanthropy, Pp. 99.
* See Fournal, July 27th, 1787, and April 2oth, 1788.
» Fournal, December 4th, 1746 ; Ibid., June 16th, 1747.
THE SPIRIT
OF EQUITY
AND FELLOWSHIP
appeared Wesley's Primitive Physic (An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases), a compilation which for over a century has béen the butt of endless ridicule.
But recently that 'beloved physician," Sir George Newman, long the " official guardian of Britain's public health,' has bestowed upon it high praise.
Pointing to the remarkable improvement in household sanitation, personal cleanliness, domestic hygiene and general health which followed in the Revival's wake, Sir George places Wesley among the vital pioneers of the national health movement, and the long-despised Primitive Physic among the effective instruments to that end.!
Certainly the book contains some odd remedies ; for the approaching infirmities of old age, it prescribes "' tar water," or a "decoction of nettles."
"But remember!" it quaintly warns, "' the only radical cure is wrought by Death."
deal of needful information was mediated through this treatise : plain foods, abundance of fresh air, daily exercise and contented spirits, were medicines on which Wesley placed the highest store ; and to ensure the purity of drugs, he advised people, where possible, to procure them " at the Apothecaries Hall.''?
Wesley had a special and practical interest in electricity.
Writings by Franklin, Priestley and other authorities, he avidly devoured ; and his own experimentation convincing him of its healing power, he forthwith established free electrical treatment for the poor.
'"' Having procured an apparatus on purpose," he writes in 1756: '"'I ordered several persons to be electrified who were ill of various disorders, some of whom found an immediate, some a gradual, cure.
From this time I appointed, first some hours in every week, and afterwards an hour in every day, wherein any that desired it might try the virtue of this surprising medicine.
Two or three years after, our patients were so numerous that we were obliged to divide them : so part we electrified in Southwark, part in the Foundery, others near St. Paul's, and the rest near the Seven Dials: the same method we have taken ever since ; and to this day, while hundreds, perhaps thousands, have received unparalleled good,
I have not known one man, woman or child who has received any hurt thereby : so that when I hear any talk of the danger of being electrified (especially if they are medical men who talk so), I cannot but impute it to great want either of sense or honesty.''?
1 See Sir George Newman, Health and Social Evolution, p. 41.
2'The author has seen copies of Primitive Physic even on the frontiers of Canada, which have been passed down as heirlooms.
Before Wesley's death it ran into twenty-three editions, and many afterwards.
3 Yournal, November 9th, 1756 ; see also Tyerman's Wesley, Vol. I, p. 525.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
Free electrical and dispensary service, together with the distribution of "' health literature," were, however, but typical of the humanistic initiative which, on all sides, the Revival kindled.
On occasions, following marked calamities, Wesley and _ his followers, by co-operative methods, were feeding from one hundred to one hundred and fifty persons a day in a single place.1
Constantly in conjunction with their amazing systems of prison, sick and poor visitation, they raised money to clothe and relieve prisoners and to buy food, medicine, fuel or tools for the stricken and unfortunate ; while the universal collection of warm raiment for the helpless-aged and the half-naked, was so continuous and persistent a feature of their work, that generally it passed unobserved.
The renaissance of vital religion in their hearts, had made this despised people their brothers' keepers indeed !? And "brother" to them had a comprehensive significance.
Wesley also, according to his opportunity, was a promoter of co-operative industry among the poor.
He had no sympathy with an industrial and economic procedure which, in the sweat shops of cellar and attic, or in the dark, damp depths of the mine, could reduce the bodies of men, women and children to the resemblance of walking skeletons, finally to hurl them on the scrap-heap—when no longer the source of gain.
His persistent teaching concerning the use and abuse of money, contained at least a germinal answer to this grossinhumanity.
But meantime, the slave trade had first to be abolished ; and the hour had not yet struck when Lord Shaftesbury, in complete religious devotion, would consecrate his life to the epic task of '' converting Parliament"? and '"' emancipating the workers of industrial England."
Wesley, the initial pioneer, had, in this sphere, to be content with doing what he could, as he could; but the problem he did not shirk.
On November 25th, 1740, he wrote:
After several methods proposed for employing those who were out of business, we determined to make a trail of one which several of our brethren recommended to us.
Our aim was, with as little expense as possible, to keep them at once from want and from idleness ; in order to which we took twelve of the poorest, and a teacher, into the society room, where they were employed for four months, till spring came on, in carding and spinning of cotton.
And the design answered : they were employed and maintained with very little more than the produce of their own labour."'* This was but one of Wesley's endeavours * Journal, January 21st, 1740 (concerning an area near Bristol).
* Ibid., May 7th, 1741.
3 See Fournal (above date).
THE SPIRIT
OF EQUITY AND FELLOWSHIP
to provide wholesome, remunerative employment for the needy.
His efforts in this realm extended to women as well as men.
Part of his Journal jotting for May 7th, 1741, reads:
'' My design, I told them, is to employ, for the present, all the women who are out of business, and desire it, in knitting.
To these we will give first the common price for what work they do; and then add according as they need.
Twelve persons were appointed to inspect these, and to visit and provide things necessary for the sick."
The chief value of Wesley's industrial undertakings, however, lies not in the size of his experiments, nor yet in their material success, but rather in the humane spirit by which he approached the problems involved. To him such industrial terms as '' hand" and "' boss'? were pagan and degrading.
Unswervingly did he believe in the nobility of toil and the fraternity of man.
All faithful, productive '' workers "' to him were honourable ; while, contrariwise, no one commanded his respect who did not engage in some honest, creative service for the common weal.
For wilful idleness and assuming arrogance, he could not cloak his contempt ; and that perhaps is the reason his Journal is so loaded with biting references to '' the great vulgar " and to the ** gross ignorance "' and "' paganism "' he had so often observed among the "rich and genteel."
'' Polite triflers,"' so characteristic of his age, were Wesley's chief aversion.
Never did he hear the modern maxim, "' From each according to his ability : to each according to his need."'
Yet both his example and his teaching, endorse the social principle therein implied.
Wesley's Benevolent Loan Fund and his Strangers' Friend Society, are specially interesting.
Always it was his purpose to stimulate the expression of initiative and independence on the part of the under-privileged, and that of social responsibility on the part of the privileged.
'These two schemes are symptomatic of that double aim.
In January, 1748, he wrote: "'I made a public collection towards a lending stock for the poor.
Our rule is to lend only twenty shilling at once, which is repaid weekly within three months.
I began this about a year and a half ago: thirty pounds sixteen shillings were then collected, and out of this no less than 255 persons have been relieved in eighteen months."'!
By later collections the capital of this fund was raised in 1772 to £120, and the borrowing limit to £5; and certain business romances, including that of Lackington, who became a famous bookseller, owe their origin to its initial aid.2, The Strangers' Friend Society was one of the last of 1 Journal, January 17th, 1748.
* See J. Telford's Wesley, p. 334f.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
Wesley's social creations.
Not till 1787 was it founded ; yet, even prior to Wesley's death, it had its branches in every populous centre of the country.
A casual Journal memo in 1790 explains its purpose: "In the morning I met the Strangers' Society, instituted wholly for the relief not of our society, but of poor, sick, friendless strangers.
I do not know that I ever heard or read of such an institution till within a few years ago.
So this also is one of the fruits of Methodism."!
Without the new spirit and the new humanity. created by the Revival, the utterly selfless efforts of this Society would have been unthinkable.
Yet by the turn of the century, public tributes, in populous centres, were being paid to its work.
'' This Society," says J. Smith's History of Liverpool (1810), "' originated among the Methodists of this town, and is in a great measure supported by them.
The principles upon which it rests are liberal in the extreme, and reflect the greatest honour on the sect.
It includes the wretched of every religious persuasion except their own, who are relieved from another fund.
The only recommendation is distress.''?
Still more important, with the assisting genius of '" brother Charles,' Wesley caused the masses of England to break forth into song.
Carlyle, in his essay on Burns, says : '' Let me make a nation's songs, and I care not who makes its laws."
His epigram, if exaggerated, is not devoid of truth.
Charles Wesley made the songs of the more earnest of the working populace of his day, and John Wesley's marvellous organisation taught the people to sing and love them.
Multitudes, up and down the land, including many who once had been drunkards, prostitutes, wife-beaters, bruisers, gamblers, smugglers, sluggards and thieves, as they joined in the refrain :
"" My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee," were singing from the depths of a miraculous personal experience.
Thousands, too, who struggled stoutly for mean raiment, and scanty bread, rose in ecstasy on the wings of faith as they sang :
" Riches unsearchable in Jesus' love we know, And pleasures from the well of life our souls o'erflow."
1 Fournal, March 14th, 1790.
Quoted in Edwards's Wesley and the Eighteenth Century, p. 153.
WESLEY'S DEATH BED
(After painting by Marshall Claxton, R.A.) Charles Wesley's widow is kneeling at foot of bed. Most of the others present are itinerant preachers.
John Wesley (inset) (after painting by Frank Salisbury, A.R.A.)
THE SPIRIT
OF EQUITY AND FELLOWSHIP
Such flaming, triumphant songs, even if they infuriated the Lavingtons and Warburtons, the Paines and Cobbetts, the Places and Owens, the Hunts and Hazlitts of the time, were no opiate, no soporific ; rather were they the portents and harbingers of better days on earth—the invigorating strains of a cloud of witnesses whose conception of social reform started with the purging of their own motives, and the moral reformation of their own lives.
The popular hymns and choruses of the Revival contained no trace of ranting jingo or syncopated clamour : they bore no kinship to the uproar and fury of modern jazz, to the stupid insipidity of radio "' crooning," or to the sombre, sullen rumbling of Proletarian chants of hate.*
On the contrary, this new hymnody, born of a new and vital experience, was expressive of noble aspirations: it strove to penetrate the purpose, the meaning and the end of life; it pointed the relationship between Earth and Heaven, between Time and Eternity ; it radiated an atmosphere of peace and progress, of harmony and co-operation ; it fostered human fellowship and gladness ; it symbolised the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man: the triumph of faith and the immortality of the soul.
And it was expressed in music at once lyrical, dignified, soulful and sweet.
The Evangelical Movement gave to the whole English-speaking world, its richest heritage of sacred song.?
Such songs, nevertheless, were an effect, rather than a cause ; the renewed life created by the Revival had to express itself in the ecstasy of sacred praise, but it by no means stopped there.
The significant fact is, that Wesley and the movement of which he was the impelling centre, brought to the neglected masses of Britain the priceless boon of hope and aspiration, of selfrespect and self-control.
They removed from the working multitude the dead hand of an inferiority complex ; yet they indulged no stupid superiority complex.
Without the sobriety, the discipline, the joyous fellowship, the love of knowledge, the training in co-operation and the new consciousness of human dignity and divine purpose, which the Revival brought to countless numbers of humble folk, the vigorous Self-Help and Social
Reform movements, following in steady succession, could never have been born.
England, be it reiterated, without the 1 For an excellent treatment of the early hymnody of the Revival, see
J. E. Rattenbury, Wesley's Legacy to the World, pp. 257-301.
2 Charles Wesley published several thousand hymns.
John wrote some, but made many excellent translations, especially from German. . The Revival, too, in its wider impact, created a great company of hymn-writers, whose productions have become the common heritage of Christendom.
SS)
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AFTER WESLEY
moral cleansing, the mental stimulus, the spiritual vision, which this mighty Spiritual Awakening brought to her, was ripe for social disintegration and soulless chaos ; with them she began gradually—if all too falteringly—to lead the world in humanitarian achievement.
CHAPTER XV
THE PASSING OF A PROPHET
Till glad I lay this body down, Thy servant, Lord, attend ; And O! my life of mercy crown With a triumphant end."
CHARLES WESLEY
A larger soul I think, hath seldom dwelt in house of clay!"
(Cromwell's valet, six months after his master's death)
CHAPTER XV
THE PASSING OF A PROPHET
WESLEY's eight octogenarian years were a prolonged and glorious evening, terminating in a golden sunset.
If the face of the very young man had been ascetic, rigid and slightly overweening, that of the very old man was mellow, gracious and beatific.
His white, silken, wavy locks, his expansive brow, his aquiline nose, his firm jaw and his expressive mouth, together with his clear, ruddy complexion, his penetrating, kindly eyes and his radiant, permeating cheerfulness, combined to give him an appearance resemblant more of heaven than of earth.
Still would the cynics sneer: but no sensitive person could look deeply into Wesley's age-worn face and fail to behold in it the tokens of a man of God.
He was, as one of his latest biographers puts it, "'so truly human and so truly divine."
Christian—though not sinless—'' Perfection' was the goal to which he long had aspired ; and though he himself was acutely conscious of his shortcomings, the marks of his high aspiration were written unmistakably in the beauty and strength of his countenance, and reflected unmistakably in the graciousness of his spirit and manner.
The vital, incarnate saintliness of Wesley's old age, was a thing of winsome and irresistible charm.
Though from his " spiritual birthday," late in his thirty-fifth year, unbroken peace and increasing joy had reigned within, nevertheless for at least four decades following, he had encountered a succession of violent tempests without.
But ere the termination of his eightieth year, cloud and storm had well nigh passed from his horizon, and the veteran prophe thenceforth moved largely in an atmosphere of serenity, veneration and awe.
Many indeed who once had cursed him, now were praying for him.
Not a few parsons who long had thundered against him from their pulpits, now were imploring him to preach from those same pulpits.
The stiff-necked—ecclesiastical and lay—continued to put on airs and expatiated on the " folly of enthusiasm" and the "' madness of the masses"; but to multitudes Wesley finally was an honoured and matchless 1C,. E. Vulliamy, Zohn Wesley, p. 349.
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prophet.
The tide had turned.
The latter years of the great Evangelist's itinerary were a series of triumphal tours.
Commonly, as this veteran campaigner for God passed through towns and villages, the streets were lined with excited crowds gazing with stark admiration and wonder, "as if the King were going by."!
Clergymen—Nonconformist and Anglican— turned out everywhere to hear him preach.?_
Even bishops stole sheepishly into his open-air congregations.
The fury of the anti-Wesley mobs was no more.
(i) A Last Retrospect This patriarch-preacher's virility as an octogenarian is one of the marvels of recorded history.
Still he rose regularly at four a.m., and generally he preached at five.
Still his manifold labours were unabated, and still his mental and physical powers matched—or all but matched—the vigour of his indomitable soul.
Increasingly, but particularly on successive birthdays and other commemoration occasions, he praised God for sustained powers of body and mind.
On his eighty-fifth birthday, for instance, he breaks forth in a typical strain:
'' What cause have I to praise God !—as for a thousand spiritual blessings, so for bodily blessings also!
How little have I suffered yet by * the rush of numerous years!'
It is true, I am not so agile as I was in times past.
I do not run or walk so fast as I did : my sight is a little decayed .
. I find likewise some decay in my memory, with regard to names and things lately past ; but not at all with regard to what I have read or heard twenty, forty, or sixty years ago ; neither do I find any decay in my hearing, smell, taste or appetite .
. nor do I feel any such thing as weariness, either in travelling or preaching: and I am not conscious of any decay in writing sermons; which I do as readily, and I believe as correctly, as ever."??
His famous letter to Wilberforce, written three years later, in the last week of his life, exemplifies the sustained richness and clarity of his mind.
Wesley's life extended into all the decades of the eighteenth century.
To many of his followers it must have seemed incredible that ever he should leave them.
His very person appeared to them the symbol and embodiment of all that was immortal.
Yet the days even of holy men are numbered, and * See Journal, August 17th, 1789.
* Ibid., October 19th, 1790.
3 Ibid., June 28th, 1788.
* See chapter xii, end of section (i).
THE PASSING
A PROPHET
the sands of his life were fast running out.
On Tuesday, February 22nd, 1791, he preached in the City Road Chapel and conferred with his leaders; but he was not well.
Up at four the following morning, he travelled to Leatherhead, where, in the home of a magistrate, he preached from the text, "' Seek ye the Lord while He may be found."
It was his last sermon.
On Thursday, he visited an old friend, Mr. Woolf, at Balham, spending the night with him.
On Friday, he was hurried back to his London rooms in the City Road,—a stricken man.
With difficulty he mounted the stairs to his chamber.
Premonition told him he would mount those familiar stairs no more.
Immediately Bessie Ritchie had a blanket about him and he was seated in an easy chair.
Friends already were clustering around, desiring to serve him.
Calmly and graciously he bestowed upon them his blessing.
Then, emphatically, he requested to be left alone.
For at least "' half an hour,"' no one must enter his chamber—not even his faithful confidant Joseph
Bradford, or Dr. Whitehead, his physician.
For fifty-three years past, the central doctrine of Wesley's preaching was that men are saved by faith: but the corollary of that doctrine, he taught, was that they would be judged by their works.
And now he who had spent his long life in leading a nation to God, was himself about to stand before the Eternal
Judge.
No sooner was the chamber door closed, than the deeper impressions of his life began to surge in rapid sequence across his mind.
As with one in a trance, time and space were gone: now subjectively, now objectively, all passed in fleeting review.
Again a child of five, the old man felt himself a "' brand plucked from the burning," staring wildly from his rescuer's arms to see the blazing roof of the Epworth parsonage crash into a furnace of flames.
. Again he heard his mother's soft voice, explaining to him the mysteries of the Spirit.
' Your rescue from the fire, Jackie, was wrought by the hand of God !
Providence has sealed you for his own ! "—How often had he heard those words from his mother's lips! ... The scene changed.
Charterhouse school... Oxford... the Holy Club, loomed before him.
The Holy Club !—Very sincere had been that band of legal zealots, struggling, with monkish ardour, to hammer out their salvation by ascetic habits and rites !
Their faith was that of servants—not sons.
His mind sped on to Georgia .
. Sophy Hopkey—that capable, sprightly, lovely girl.
Little had he understood her! ..
. and his squabbles with his parishioners... and his stern sacerdotalism ..
How well have I since been beaten with my own stick!" he mused. ..
. The panorama swept back to England...a
ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
soul in anguish—groping for light.
Then appeared Peter Bohler, with his tender patience, and his quiet communion with Christ.
. " Preach Faith till you have it!' implored the young Moravian missionary of the donnish priest, whose sophistication and sacerdotalism had obscured the simple truth.
. Aye, Béhler's example and advice, had indeed been a lam to his feet.
For the thousandth time, he thanked God that the youthful Pietist had crossed his path...
And now once more it was May 24th, 1738—the day of his spiritual baptism: the day of his rebirth. ... Again the anthem in St. Paul's was ringing in his ears
. again he was with the little society in Aldersgate Street.
The eternal glory and power of Faith, now flashed afresh as a mighty revelation athwart his soul .
. Anew, his heart was " strangely warmed," and vividly he saw himself impelled to " testify,' concerning the marvellous "' experience" that there first filled his being.
. Struggles and difficulties were ahead ; but worry, morbidity, corroding doubt—these
(Heaven be praised!) were nightmares of the past.
. Sin still would tempt him, but never again could it conquer him ; he had glimpsed the glory of the " transfigured life': a new Power possessed him.
Henceforth he knew himself an approved ambassador of God.
. And now, as his life's work really began, the Church that had ordained him, began to disown him.
'Go hence!" was Bishop Butler's advice.
" Pretending " to any special guidance of the Holy Spirit, was 'a horrid thing—a very horrid thing."?
. The visit to the Moravian settlements at Hernhuth and Marienborn, confirmed his faith : but blind, leaden officialdom, ever more obdurately, blocked his path.
. It was Whitefield who cast down the barriers.
His open-air preaching to the disinherited had illumined the example, and revealed the will of Christ.
Was not the Sermon on the Mount preached by the Son of God, in God's open-air, to God's wandering sheep ?
. .. The brooding man now saw himself preaching on the Horse Fair, Bristol.
In the benighted multitude's dumb woe, he had heard the call of God.
. A national crusade had been forced upon him.
Henceforth, the market place, the town common, the open field, the dock, the factory yard, the mouth of the pit, were to him the Temple of God:
. And how the Holy One had sealed his witness ! Strong men, by the hundred, had wrestled violently with the demons of sin, and, by the grace of Christ, had prevailed...
. Presently, the dreamer was in the saddle, riding in sunshine and rain, o'er plain, fell and bog—now jotting down notes for a sermon, now
* See J. H. Overton, FohniWesley, p. 100.
THE PASSING OF
A PROPHET
planning a pamphlet, now perusing a well chosen book, now dismounting, to extricate his horse from the mire.
. Once more, he saw the mobs—" raging as lions"' ;_ sticks and stones again were hurtling round his head:
"Satan was fighting furiously for his kingdom"
. But how the arm of the Lord had been revealed!
What wondrous deliverances had he known ! Even mob leaders, had turned defenders and friends.
Persecution assuredly had proved a blessing in disguise! ..
Abruptly then, the chambers of memory opened upon the itinerant and local preachers, upon the Class leaders and teachers of the crusade.
They now were to be numbered in thousands—'' a cloud of witnesses"? to the redeeming power of grace.
. The stones which the builders rejected, had become a living edifice of truth.
Ah, the ways of God put the pride and snobbery of man to shame!
. The kaleidoscope moved on to Scotland.
Twenty-two times, he had visited the land of the '"' North Britons."
Increasingly had he come to admire the Scots ; but never quite, could he understand them : the seed, however, had been faithfully sown—with what result the Great Reaper would know.
. And so to Ireland: during his twenty-one tours of that island, he or his associates had repeatedly been assaulted by wild, howling hordes
. Nevertheless, they were a lovable people—the Irish ; and his mission to them had not been in vain.
Even now, he could see the vast multitude falling reverently upon their knees, on the docks, as, from the deck of his departing ship, he invoked upon them—for the last time—God's blessing and peace.
. Reverie glided on to America.
Where he had failed, Whitefield had prepared the way for his disciples .
. Oh, the encouraging letters from Asbury and Coke!
In ten years, the preaching circuits within the young Republic had increased five fold!
He himself, had hoped to visit America again; but well had his place been filled!
If the English colonies had separated from " the Motherland," thank Heaven they had not separated from Him who, once more, was being acknowledged and worshipped, as the Motherland's God!...
Anon came a group of old friends .
. Whitefield—dear George!
With what holy abandon had he placed his life on the Altar of God!
'' Oh, the tragedy," thought the brooding man, aloud, "that ever we had bickered!
As though any creed or doctrine, could encompass the wisdom or ways of God !
Ah, here our hearts were purged, but, hereafter, our brains also will be purged." ... and brother Charles: already his hymns were proving a blessing in far-flung ends of the earth
. and Lady Selina : she too, had been wondrously used.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
and that sturdy Yorkshireman, Grimshaw ... Henry Venn . and the eccentric, lovable Berridge.
. Grace Murray.
- .
. Mary Bosanquet ... and his wife: her lot had not been easy.
Should he not have remembered, ere he married, that a wife reasonably might expect a husband's companionship.
And how could he grant that, when his life was spent so largely on the roads? ... and the serene, reflective Perronet ..
. the promising young Simeon ... and Fletcher—the saintly John Fletcher : he had preached " Perfection' ; but Fletcher had come nearer to its attainment, than he.
Even in controversy, that gracious, godly man had breathed but tender love toward his adversaries.
. The Holy One however was merciful : he claimed no merit ; he had made many mistakes : but, without presumption, he trusted he had not been altogether an unprofitable servant.
. God knew, he had striven to do all for the glory of His Kingdom, and the welfare of His children.
- - - Soon now, he would join his friends departed.
. His life's work was done.
He was ready—to go...
But England! ... True, the Revival had made religion once more vital, and God, through Christ, both personal and real.
True, routing cynicism, fatalism, and paganism, it had established the sovereign merit of goodness and truth, in countless souls .
. But England's need of spiritual vision, was. still great... The poor!
How misunderstood were the poor !
How neglected, and how abused!
How very, very much remained to be done—in England.
. And the African slaves !
Their appalling wrongs cried aloud to Heaven, for redress !— Oh, man's inhumanity to man!
Yet (God be thanked !) the National Conscience was gradually, if slowly, awakening.
Widespread spiritual forces had been released.
Something approaching a moral revolution, was under way.
Already, there were Wilberforces, Clarksons and Sharps spending their lives for the Negroes' Cause.
'" The world is my parish! had not been preached for naught. ... But hark!
The brooding, stricken man roused himself, as from slumber.
The great clock was striking.
His " half-hour " of solitude was more than up.
Someone was vigorously tapping on the door.
Anxious voices were heard without.
Wesley's musing, ceased.
(ii) Crossing the Bar The veteran preacher's end was wholly beautiful.
The Last Enemy for him had no sting, the grave no victory.
For five days the silver cord was loosing: but in Death, as in life,
THE PASSING
A PROPHET
Wesley's example was one not only of spiritual triumph, but of continued fellowship with the poor.
During his half-century crusade, he never claimed for poverty any peculiar virtue ; while, on the other hand, he said much regarding the value of money—if properly used.
Yet despite the fortune accruing from his publications, never did he retain more than a few odd pounds.
All went to the needy.
During no single year, did he expend an average of twelve shillings a week upon himself.
Never did he wear other than the cheapest, as well as the plainest, clothes ; and always he dined on the humblest fare.
To the end, he gave his time, his talents, his means, his all, that he might gain Christ and make Christ real to England.
His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world:
' This was a man!' "
And now when Time, in last farewell, had shaken him by the hand, and Death was beckoning him to Eternity's brink, being full of years, yet full of hope and gladness, his parting words, his funeral instructions and his last will, reflect the undimmed splendour of his majestic spirit.
Often had he prayed, '" Lord let me wear out, not rust out ! Let me not live to be useless ! "
That prayer was literally fulfilled.
Though in the ninth month of his eighty-eighth year, he was preaching and writing even into his last week on earth.
And now, on his death-bed, his spirit * all love " and " breathing the air of paradise,''+ he called out :
'"' Where is my sermon on The Love of God?
'Take it, and spread it abroad.
Give it to everyone!"* Then he broke into song:
All glory to God in the sky, And peace upon earth be restored."
But the strength of his body being spent, long periods of sleep ensued.
Once or twice, as the fever reached its zenith, he was wafted into a gentle delirium, and imagined himself preaching to the multitude or conferring with his preachers.
As the fever waned, his countenance would kindle and his eyes sparkle, as though beholding some wondrous vision, afar.
And as full consciousness returned, he would bid his friends, '"' pray and praise."
No murmur, no complaint, escaped his lips.
With the humility of saintliness, several times he cried :
"I the chief of sinners am, But Jesus died for me."
1 From the Account of Elizabeth Ritchie, who attended Wesley before his death.
See, too, Standard edition of Fournal, Vol. VIII, p. 132.
2 Many thousands of copies of this sermon were gratuitously distributed.
284 ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
The lines, however, which focussed his consciousness, and which again and again he sang, were :
T''ll praise my Maker while I've breath, And when my voice is lost in death, Praise shall employ my nobler powers."
On the evening preceding his translation, he smiled benignly on all about him, an dwith great effort, raising his hand, exclaimed calmly and clearly, '' The best of all is—God is with us |"?
The night brought slumber.
About ten o'clock, on the morning of March 2nd, 1791, casting his eyes again slowly from person to person around his bedside, he whispered:
'' Farewell ! "
Instinctively, all present fell on their knees: and as Joseph Bradford led in prayer, the holy man's soul, without struggle or groan, sped forth to the spirit centre of the Kingdom of God— the Kingdom which had provided the inspiration and the dynamic for his abundant labours on earth.1
In death, his countenance reflected the supreme gladness of his exultant soul.
A winsome smile enwreathed his face.
Thus, the man who had preached more than forty-five thousand sermons, who had travelled (mostly on horse-back) a distance equivalent to nine times round the world, who had written two hundred and thirty-three books and pamphlets, and helped with the writing of fully one hundred more?—the "grand old man" and noblest prophet of the English-speaking world—passed to his Long Home.
No sooner was his spirit released, than those who had come " to rejoice with him," burst into an anthem of praise.
Among Wesley's funeral instructions, was the request that his body be buried in nothing more costly than wool.
No silk or satin was to adorn the corpse from which his spirit had fled.
And his last will and testament gave final seal to the Gospel he had so long and so courageously preached—in " darkest England."
'Whatever remains in my bureau and pockets, at my decease," he directed, was to be " equally divided " among four poor itinerants, whom he named.
To each of the travelling preachers within the connection six months after his death, he bequeathed copies of the eight volumes of his sermons.
Then came a clause expressive both of his solicitude for the unemployed and of his efforts for funeral reform.
Specially requesting that neither hearse nor coach take any part in his See Fournal, Vol. VIII, p. 139.
R. Green, in his collection of Wesley literature, prints the titles of 417 publications by John and Charles Wesley.
LHESPASSING
A PROPHET
funeral, he desired that six poor men, in need of employment, be given a pound each to carry his body to the grave.
His statement on this point is emphatic.
"I particularly desire," the will reads, that "' there be no hearse nor coach, no escutcheon, no pomp, except the tears of those who love me, and are following me to Abraham's bosom.''!
For several days, Wesley's body lay in state in his City Road Chapel, where multitudes filed silently by, each reverently pausing a moment over the now cold, lifeless face, which so often they had seen aflame with a living fire, divine.
Thousands in that multitude shed tears, as they thought of all they owed to him who, in the deepest sense, was their "' father in God."
But to avoid any final blockade, the actual hour of interment was kept secret to the inner circle.
The funeral, on that memorable winter's morning, was conducted by torchlight, and was concluded before dawn of day.
All Wesley's burial instructions were punctiliously observed.
Dr. Whitehead, his faithful medical adviser and loyal disciple, delivered the funeral address : an itinerant preacher performed the last rites.
The solemn comrades, looking on, knew well that "' Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,"' referred only to the body.
Wesley already was in the Land of the Immortals, where always he will occupy a foremost place among the world's very worthiest leaders of men.
'' Do you think we shall see John Wesley in Heaven?" once inquired an overaggressive Calvinist of Whitefield.
''I fear not," replied the fellow evangelist, musing.
'"' No !—he will be so near the throne, and we at such a distance, that we shall hardly get a sight of him."
Though this great gentleman and mighty prophet died without material estate, he nevertheless left behind him a heritage which has enriched, beyond computation, the real and abiding wealth of all mankind.
For if spiritual values and spiritual attainments be the ultimate standard of greatness, few greater than this little English preacher have yet trodden the earth; and none greater, has spoken the English tongue.
1 Wesley's will may still be seen at Somerset House, London.
See, too, Journal, Vol. VIII, p. 343
a ot caer Sater wher to
GHAPTER XVI
A PEOPLE FINDS ITS SOUL
"For is not God ... the principle of coherence in the universe?
('In Him all things consist') and is not religion the supreme synthesis in which all lesser syntheses are brought together into a _ coherent WDOLE P.. ss PRoFEssOR FREDERICK Tracy, Broken Lights, p. 139.
AT a time when Bishop Butler asserted that Christianity was wearing out of the minds of men, Wesley kept the English people Christian.
. It is certain that into the moral fibre of the English people, even in the classes most anxious to repudiate the debt, were woven new strands by the abiding influence of Methodism."
Str C. Grant Rosertson, England Under the Hanoverians (in A History of England, Edited by Sir Charles
Oman, Vol. VI, p. 386.)
1, GREAT BUST OF LORD SHAFTESBURY
presented by the Factory Workers of the North of England to his wife, in 1859 (top) 2. SHAFTESBURY MEMORIAL (Eros Monument),
Piccadilly Circus, London.
Erected by the consecrated pennies of the Emancipated Industrial Workers of Britain (bottom)
CHAPTER XVI
A PEOPLE FINDS ITS SOUL
OrteN, after the manner of Sydney Smith, has it been assumed that '' Methodism " and "' Evangelicalism "' are purely synonymous terms.
And though this assumption frequently has been born of a desire to stimulate ecclesiastical prejudice or to confuse the popular mind, nevertheless so close is the historical relationship between the two that they are inextricably joined.
Almost, they may be considered as cause and effect.
The '' Methodist " crusade, initiated by the efforts of the Wesleys, Whitefield and the Countess of Huntingdon, was the vital nucleus from which' emanated ever expanding zones of spiritual quickening, moral renewal and social zeal.
But the baptising fire of this mighty Revival overleapt all '' society"? and denominational barriers.
Soon it permeated the dry and dying body of Old Dissent and, injecting into it a pulsing life, created a new and Evangelical
Nonconformity.1
Similarly, despite contumely and persecution, it revived religious vision and kindled religious initiative among thousands within the National Church; while, yet more important, reclaiming multitudes of religious outcasts who long had been quite beyond the pale of any immediate spiritual influence, it finally transformed the whole tone and tenor cf the National life.
With that larger, interdenominational and truly Catholic Evangelicalism, this study is chiefly concerned.
(i) The Streams O'erflow Constantly must it be remembered that harsh as was the treatment they received from the National Church, the Wesleys and Whitefield were ordained clergymen of the Establishment, who struggled against heavy odds to keep their followers within the Anglican communion.
They insisted that, save in cases of special and extreme necessity, their societies should never meet during the hours of Church worship; they urged all their members to attend Church services, particularly the Holy Communion ; and sternly did they insist that the societies
1 Dr. E. D. Bebb's Nonconformity and Social and Economic Life (1935), throws light on the influence of the Evangelical Revival over the Old Dissent.
See Chapters II, IIl and X. Professor Elie Halévy, too, in different volumes of his History of the English People substantiates this truth.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
should not be called a Church.
True, the expulsion of the six Evangelical students from Oxford in 1768, the repeated refusal by parish priests of the Lord's Supper to '' Methodist "? preachers and class leaders, and the vindictive persecution of Methodists
(under long dormant Conventicle Acts) for meeting in unlicensed places, caused endless annoyance, and finally forced both Wesley and the Countess: of Huntingdon reluctantly to license their preaching houses, under protection of a statute
"exempting Protestant Dissenters from the penalties' of the said Acts.* But if it is certain that the relationship of the societies to the Establishment was never cordial, and equally certain that most of the ecclesiastical potentates continued to caricature and lampoon the '' Methodists" as " wild," if not ** mad,"' " enthusiasts,"' it yet is none the less certain that the impact of these Societies upon the long suspicious and resentful mother Church, had, within half a century, greatly mitigated the initial prejudice of her more earnest and tolerant lay members ; while also, it had convinced many of them that Evangelical endeavour, with its spiritual motives, its missionary fervour and its strong sense of stewardship, could alone save England from moral turpitude and social disintegration.
Consequently, the influence of the movement grew steadily within the State Church.
For thousands of Anglicans who never dreamed of joining the Methodist societies, nevertheless found in the Revival a new vision of life, a new love for God and man, a new passion for service—a new yearning to be used of God in building the Kingdom of Righteousness on earth.
The names of such men as Fletcher, Romaine, Newton, Scott, the Venns, the Milners, Grimshaw, Berridge, Hervey, Walker,
Perronet, Clarke, Jones, Adam and Charles Simeon indicate something of the hold which the Revival began to exercise over the clergy of the Established Church, even before the close of Wesley's century*: while the mere mention of such pioneering zealots as Wilberforce, the Emancipator ; Zachary
Macaulay, the Governor of the freed slave colony at Sierra Leone :
Cowper, the poet; John and Henry Thornton, the eminent banker philanthropists ; James Stephen, the famous advocate and Under Secretary to the Colonies; Lord Dartmouth, the Colonial Secretary ; Lord Teignmouth, the Governor-General
1 See G. R. Balleine, History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England, pp. 46, 58, 88, 125 and 245-6.
The Countess of Huntingdon resorted to this protection in 1782 and Wesley in 1787.
For an excellent survey of the labours of such men, see Balleine, op. cit., pp. 50-143; also Bishop Pilcher's Evangelical Movement and Oxford
Movement.
ASPs OUPi, ba Fl N D'S) Las SONU 1:
of India ; Charles Grant, Chairman of the East India Company ; and Hannah More, friend of the poor, and most noted literary woman of her day, affords some idea of the inspiration which the Movement had provided within the ranks of the Anglican laity.
Yet most of the prelates remained sullen, or hostile ; and had not these "' Enthusiasts '? abode in the ship, it is doubtful if the National Church could have been saved.
The practical influence, however, of the Evangelical group within the Establishment was altogether disproportionate to its numbers.
Canon Overton, with his High Church outlook, is scarcely liable to be prejudiced in this direction.
Yet, reviewing the effects of the Evangelical Movement, he says that, in the sphere of religion, '"' to be serious and to be Evangelical were only different ways of saying the same thing."?
And concluding his able survey, he adds: "In short, it would be no exaggeration to say that, morally and spiritually, though by no means intellectually, the dominant religious power, both inside and outside the Church of England, at the close of the eighteenth century, was that which had been evoked by the Evangelical Revival."* Nevertheless, contrary to general belief, not more than five or six per cent. of the clergy of the Establishment were at this time avowed Evangelicals.
Mr. Gladstone (British Quarterly Review, July, 1879) estimated that, at the close of the eighteenth century, the proportion of Evangelical clergy within the State Church was "' about one in twenty"; but Balleine considers this as, "' probably an _ over-estimate.'
Certainly any suggestion of appointing '' an Evangelical" as a Bishop at this time, would have been viewed by the Episcopal
Bench as utterly preposterous: indeed, with the close of the century, no real preferment had been proffered to any Evangelical, with the solitary exception of Isaac Milner, who in 1788 was appointed President of Queen's College, Cambridge, and in 1791 Dean of Carlisle.
But so brilliant had been his mathematical attainments, that the University examiners had appended to his name the word "' Incomparabilis.""
With Milner's Presidency of Queen's College, came the Evangelicals' first opportunity to have their candidates for Holy Orders educated at one of the ancient universities without violence to the principles of their Faith.®
At a time when Bishop Butler asserted that Christianity was wearing out of the minds of men,''6 says Sir C. G. Robertson
1See Bishop Inskip's Evangelical Influence in English Life (Preface, . Viii).
: = ees Evangelical Revival in the Eighteenth Century, p. 160.
3 Jbid., p. 161 ; see also pp. 131-160.
SOD) cits op. 134.
§ Balleine, p. 124ff.
6 See Butler's Preface to his Analogy.
292.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
in the Oxford History of England, "' Wesley kept the English people Christian, and shamed the Church, which had closed her pulpits to him, into imitating his spirit, if not his methods.
. It is certain that into the moral fibre of the English people, even in the classes most anxious to repudiate the debt, were woven new strands by the abiding influence of Methodism.'
This conclusion is incontrovertible: but those hardest to "shame" and "most anxious to repudiate the debt," were the eighteenth-century prelates.
That this leavening effect was produced in the Nonconformist bodies as well as in the Established Church, is indubitable.
No less an authority than Dr. R. W. Dale, writes:
'' The fires of the Revival had been kindled from heaven, and before the accession of George ITI the Congregational Churches had caught the flame.
Their ministers were beginning to preach with a new fervour, and their preaching was followed by a new success.
The religious life of the people was becoming more intense.
A passion for evangelistic work had taken possession of church after church, and by the end of the century the old meeting houses were crowded ; many of them had to be enlarged and new meeting houses had to be erected in town after town, and village after village, in every part of the country."?
The extent of this Nonconformist quickening was positively phenomenal ; and the fact that all Dissenting places of worship had to be registered under the Toleration Act of 1689, provides the historian with a ready gauge of its effects.
In 1690, the total number of " permanent "' places of Dissenting worship, including those of Quakers, in all England and Wales, was 251, while the number of "temporary" places (private houses, barns, sheds, etc.) was 927.
By 1740, the " permanent " places of such worship had dwindled from 251 to 27, and the " temporary " from 927 to 506.
By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the " permanent" places of Dissenting worship had leaped from 27 to 926, and the " temporary' from 506 to 3,491.8
Both the Congregationalists and the Baptists meanwhile had copied much of the Methodist system, including that of local preachers and central organisation, while also the Dissenting outlook had quite shifted from a rational-political and individualistic emphasis, to a Christo-centric and more social-religious approach.
Under the permeating influence of the Evangelical Revival Nonconformity became again a power in the land.
This " New 1 Op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 386 (" England under the Hanoverians eae eR. W. Dale, History of English Congregationalism, p. 585.
3 Parliamentary Papers, 1852-53, pp.
78-9, 82.
See, too, Bebb's Nonconformity and Social and Economic Life (Appendix I),
A PEROPEE
FINDS ITS soOUL
Nonconformity "' represented a smaller proportion of the privileged and landed classes than did the Puritanism of the seventeenth century, and its primary emphasis was on the New
Testament and the Spirit of the Gospel, rather than on the Old Testament and the sanctity of the Law.
Nevertheless silently, peacefully, it now was sowing the seeds of a mighty quickening throughout the English-speaking world: and not yet, despite the researches of Professor Halévy, Dr. Bebb, P. A. Brown1, and many others, has that influence been duly appraised.
In the struggle for a sane Democracy and a balanced Liberty, its contribution was invaluable.
The Nonconformist Conscience has been a poignant dynamic in British history ; yet the rebirth and true effectiveness of that Conscience were inextricably associated with the eighteenth-century
Revival of 'vital practical religion.''
Wesley's societies, as Dr. Priestley and other contemporaries frankly acknowledged, were the spear head. of the general spiritualising and civilising advance,* but the self-governing tradition of Dissent enabled it the more effectively, at certain points, to apply the new enthusiasm and power to the problems of social, economic and political life.
Perhaps, too, almost as many of the newly ** civilised '? were tutored and found their souls within the revived Chapels of Dissent, as within the Preaching Houses of Methodism or the "' Evangelical"? Churches of the Establishment.
The new Christo-centric emphasis of the Revival, as the forthcoming great Missionary and Bible societies soon would reveal, made all Evangelicalism much of a piece, for it was in essence a unifying emphasis.
As for the Church in Scotland, Wesley and Whitefield wrought upon it more effectively than ever they knew.
The original design of the Revival was to quicken the dead bones of the National Church in England, to breathe into her the breath of spiritual sensitivity, and thus kindle the fire of religious energy.
The blindness, the lethargy, the pomposity of the English hierarchy thwarted this design.
Not so in Scotland.
One of the most amazing revelations of Wesley's Journal is the quiet, respectful, and even reverent hearing, which almost invariably was afforded him in "' North Britain."
Repeatedly there, he was invited to preach in College Chapels, Town Halls and prominent Kirks, and to dine and confer with Presbyterian ministers.
His work among the Scots was accompanied by comparatively few phenomenal conversions, by little excitement and not many highly successful Societies.
Hence, adroit as 1 The French Revolution in English History, (1918).
See Dr. Warner, op. cit., pp. 170-180.
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Wesley was, he never properly gauged the effects of the Revival upon the Scottish Kirk and people.
Large numbers of Presbyterian ministers were, at this time, keenly aware that all was not well with the National Church of Scotland.
Sadly they had observed the dour effects of frigid Deism and Socinianism in their own lives, and upon the Kirk they loved.
Like Wesley, before his conversion, not a few of them had eaten the bread of disillusionment ; they were penitent, and groping for light.
More than he himself ever dreamed of, Wesley, indirectly if not directly, was a Peter Boéhler to scores, perhaps hundreds, of Presbyterian ministers ;_ bringing faith, hope, courage and joy to their heavy, if not weary hearts.
He saw no great expansion of his societies, and thought the Scots over canny and critical.
Little did he realise that actually he was accomplishing for the Church of Scotland, much of what he set out to do for the Church of England.
But this he achieved not so directly through the Scotch multitudes, as through the Scotch clergy.
Largely he had converted the Presbyterian ministry from a glacial, latitudinarian rationalism to a warm Christo-centric zeal, while they, independent of his societies, in their own semi-philosophical way, carried the Evangel throughout the length and breadth of Scotland, and from Scotland to many a distant clime.
The renewed faith, vision and vigour of the Church of Scotland, soon to manifest itself in an adventurous missionary and philanthropic enthusiasm, can never be explained apart from the expanding influence of the Evangelical Revival.
In the light of all the facts, indeed, it is not surprising that Scotland was the first part of the Kingdom to begin to honour Wesley by conferring upon him the Freedom of prominent corporations and cities! ; and the influence of Presbyterianism was by no means disassociated from these public tributes.
Yet here, too, the new wine of "enthusiasm " finally proved too strong for the old bottles of formalism, and for many a decade the " Free Kirk," turning its back on endowments and patronage, chose to tread its own pioneering and heroic path.
This, however, is but half the story.
The influence of Whitefield in Scotland has not yet been fully recognised.
His mildly Calvinistic theology was more in harmony with Scottish backgrounds than was Wesley's Arminianism.
Nowhere, save in America, was his influence more triumphant than amongst the 1 When Perth, the old capital of Scotland, on April 28th, 1772, conferred this honour upon Wesley, his only Journal reference reads:
" They did me an honour I never thought of—presented me with the Freedom of the City."
A few days later (May 6th, 1772), the magistrates of Arbroath did likewise, and Wesley notes: 'I value it as a token of their respect, though I shall hardly make any further use of it."
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Scots,t and, beyond question, the credit for the steady renewal of deep religious life in Scotland was as much due to Whitefield? as to Wesley.
In Ireland, for obvious reasons, Wesley's task was hard.
Often there, he and his preachers found themselves the centre of tempestuous and violent mobs.
Yet his love both for Ireland and the Irish people is well known, and highly merited was his pride in his band of Irish itinerant preachers, including the memorable Thomas Walsh.
For despite poverty and _persecution, they created influences which not only brought insight, education and uplift to large sections of Ireland, but, voyaging in the spirits of thousands of Irish emigrants, enriched the life of numerous frontier settlements, both in the British Empire and the United States.
Indeed the first Local Preacher in the New World was an Irish immigrant.
(ii) New Birth, New Character, New Moral and 'Social Zeal Mr. G. W. E. Russell, a Liberal Under-Secretary, and a wholly detached observer, reviewing the characteristics of Evangelical religion as he encountered it in the latter part of the nineteenth century, writes:
''I recall an abiding sense of religious responsibility, a self-sacrificing energy in works of mercy, an evangelistic zeal, an aloofness from the world, and a level of saintliness in daily life such as I do not expect again to see realised on earth.
Everything down to the minutest details of action and speech were considered with reference to eternity.
. Money was regarded as a sacred trust, and people of good positions and comfortable incomes habitually kept their expenditure within narrow limits that they might contribute more largely to objects which they held sacred.
The Evangelicals were the most religious people whom I have ever known.'
This type of character and service grew naturally out of Evangelical faith, which sought to bring all mankind, independent of race, sex, class, wealth or station, into abiding personal communion with God, through Christ.
The Revival proclaimed " the infinite latent value of even the downmost 1 See Belden's Whitefield—ithe Awakener (Part III, chapter ii).
2 Had Whitefield, who died in 1770, lived but a few years longer, he, like Wesley, undoubtedly would have had honours conferred upon him by the Scots.
3 On June 23rd, 1772, Wesley notes:
'' What a difference between an English and a Scotch congregation!
'These judge themselves rather than the preacher ; and their aim is not only to know, but to love and obey."
On numerous occasions he refers to the Scotsmen's love of plain, direct speech and frank dealing ; on others he criticises them for their lack of zeal and their intellectual pride.
His criticisms of Scotland, however, are often repeated ; his many tributes are generally forgotten.
4 Russell's Household of Faith, p. 232.
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soul.'
Different from the Puritan Movement preceding, and the Oxford Movement succeeding, the Evangelical Movement centred religion neither in the state nor in the church, but in the individual and the home.
True religion, it taught, is " the life of God in the soul of man, bearing fruit in every good work for human betterment."
Yet, as suggested in Cowper's noble poem, The Task, from the individual and the home this Movement finally spread the faith, vision, fellowship and power of vital religion to the furthermost corners of the earth.1
Its ideal was to cause the spirit and ethic of Christ to permeate all departments of life.
Not only the individual, the home and the Church, therefore, would it claim for the Kingdom of God ; but the world of business, economics and education : all social relationships, all national and international affairs— these, too, would it bring under the lordship of Him Who, when on earth, '' went about doing good."
The Bible, to the Evangelical Movement, was " the book of books"? ; and if the Revival's staunch belief in " the allsufficiency of the Scriptures'? tended sometimes towards ** Bibliolatry ' and "' Sabbatarianism," it tended always toward high purpose, self-restraint, and a noble serenity of character.
If Evangelical theology often was narrow, it at least had the depth of its narrowness: a depth contrasting acutely with the shallowness of much boasted modern breadth.
Wherever the Revival spread, its first avowed aim was to dispel religious illiteracy, and in so doing it became a mighty and ennobling educational force.
To the individual convert, his muchunderlined personal Bible was his handbook of moral and spiritual guidance ; to the Evangelical household, the Family
Bible was not only the sacred register of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths, it also was the medium of " family worship " wherein parents and children were daily lifted together to the Throne of Grace: to all Evangelical society, the Bible was both chart and compass in the voyage of life.
Nor is it any accident that out of this Movement sprang The British and Foreign Bible Society which, to date, has circulated the Scriptures in hundreds of millions of copies in every quarter of the globe, while also it has translated them, in whole or in part, into over seven hundred different languages and tongues. ?
The Movement placed little emphasis on esthetics, and less on esthetic symbolism.
It shunned as superficial all "art for ' For Cowper's place in the Revival see Gilbert Thomas, William Cowper and the Eighteenth Century (1935).
See The Master-Light (Report of British and Foreign Bible Society, 1937), p. 40; also Bishop Inskip's Evangelical Influence in English Life,
Pp. 205.
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art's sake" theories of thought, expression or conduct.
Its worship was simple almost to the point of austerity ; but tense reverence was at its heart, and where reverence dwells, decency and order are never absent.
In most branches of the Revival, the Sacraments were esteemed as special and divinely appointed means of grace, to be administered only by duly ordained shepherds of Christ: but in all branches, priestly assumption and sacerdotal domination over the consciences of fellow Christians were quite discountenanced.
To this '' Second Reformation "—which certainly was more deeply spiritual than the first—'' the priesthood of all believers" bore a vital significance : for was not every "convert"? a mediator and missionary of the Cause of Christ?
Hence the spiritual character of all true greatness was strongly emphasised, with results that often cut clean athwart a hundred hoary and hampering social prejudices.
To the soul of this Movement there was neither Greek nor barbarian, neither male nor female, neither bond nor free ; for '' all were one in Christ."",
Women accordingly were treated as the equals of men ; the cause of the slaves was championed because the " black chattels' were all immortal souls and "' free men in Jesus Christ' ; while missionaries were dispatched over the Seven Seas to proclaim even to the fiercest cannibals, the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man and the Evangel of Goodwill.
On all sides, the Movement breathed a more soulful conception of the purpose and goal of life, thus engendering new standards of " attainment" and " success.""
And one of its most marked manifestations was its capacity for creating "lay saints," to whom
'prayer and spiritual meditation became instinctive, and to whom Christian altruism became the necessary concomitant of Christian faith.
Indeed, for all the importance which the Revival attached to the '' converted,"
"' regenerated "' or "' recreated " individual, always it emphasised that he was reborn to a social end; and two maxims of Wesley were indelibly impressed upon all true Evangelical tradition :
(1) "The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social, no holiness, but social holiness.''?
(2) 'I look upon all| the world as my parish ! "
Moreover, never should it be forgotten that if the Revival implied marked inhibition, it yet insisted that the content and purpose of pure religion is positive.
Inhibitions, therefore, represented but the pruning of the branches that the tree might bring forth more and better fruit: they were the necessary 1 See Wesley's Preface to his 1739 Hymn Book.
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discipline of body, mind and soul that, being kept clean and healthy, they might increasingly merge into a unified personality
—the temple of the living Spirit of God.
Nor, despite its intensity, was this "'new Puritanism "' as narrow as it is often portrayed.
Wehemently did it believe in freedom of conscience, and if some of its representatives opposed Roman Catholic
Emancipation, it was because they honestly thought that the consciences of vast masses of Roman Catholics were " priest ridden "' and therefore "not free."
It is poignant, however, that whereas many of the old High Church leaders continued to the end to oppose Catholic Emancipation, most of the leading
Evangelicals came to support it. From 1813 to the end of his Parliamentary career, Wilberforce spoke in favour of Catholic
Emancipation in the House of Commons.
" Persecution for religious opinions"? he pronounced "not only one of the wickedest, but one of the most foolish things in the world " ; while "to give the Catholics the vote and go no further"
(keep them out of Parliament) he insisted, '"' was to let them out of prison and keep them in their convicts' dress."?!_
When this question came to its final issue, in 1829, all three Evangelical bishops (Ryder and the Sumner brothers) supported Emancipation in the House of Lords: in the Commons such stalwart Evangelical leaders as Lord Ashley (Shaftesbury), then in his twenty-eighth year, Buxton, Thornton and the Grants all voted for Catholic liberty ; while the now aged Simeon bestowed upon the Catholic Emancipation cause his approbation, and Rev. Daniel Wilson wrote a pamphlet favouring the Bill.2.
In the case of the famous Reform Bill of 1832, Evangelicals as a body were largely behind this political advance, not so much because the Bill was " Democratic "'—for still they retained haunting memories of what had happened in the name of "' Democracy "' under the Rule of Terror in France—as because it was "anti-oligarchic," and because they believed it would clear the ground for the reform of " rotten boroughs" within the Church.'
(iii) Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect The case of William Wilberforce is but an outstanding instance of the character transformation which the Evangelical
' See Professor R. Coupland's Wilberforce, PP. 444-5 and 369-70.
* Balleine, op. cit., pp. 210-11.
If Wesley and most of the eighteenth century Evangelicals opposed Catholic representation in Parliament, it must be recalled that they remembered the Jacobite Rebellions and feared the possibility of a Catholic succession to the throne.
Dr. W. L. Mathieson's English Church Reform, 181 5-18 40, is illuminating on this subject.
See, too, Dr. J. H. Rose's Christianity and the French Revolution.
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Revival wrought on a grand scale.
A child of wealth, endowed with wit, brains, charm and the singing " voice of a nightingale," he was the centre of a gay set during his Cambridge days.
In 1780, at twenty-one years of age, having spent nearly £9,000 upon the election, he was returned M.P. for his native city of Hull, receiving as many votes as the two opposing candidates.
Exactly the same age as Pitt, he soon became his most intimate friend, Pitt often spending weeks on end at his country house.
The " political-game,"' too, was dear to his heart ; he loved its urbanity, its repartee, its satire, its banter, its innuendo and its thrusts; while nothing afforded him keener delight than an opportunity " to tear the enemy to pieces."
In every sense, he was a smart young " man-about-town " ; membership in five of the most exclusive London clubs affording him opportunity for much frolic and some dissipation.
He could drink as deeply and gamble as suavely, as most dandies in his set ; and all the while the shady antics and sensuous excitement of "night life'? were gaining hold on him.
Then casually in 1785, he fell upon Dr. Doddridge's book, The Rise and Progress of Religion.2, Discontent with his manner of life, at once began to scourge his conscience ; a wistful yearning plumbed the depth of his being : an ordeal of months ensued.
During that ordeal Isaac Milner, his one-time teacher at Hull, and John Newton, the one-time slave-ship captain, were his spiritual guides, and from it, after burning anguish of soul, he emerged ''a new man."
Even Pitt—much as Wilberforce loved him—could not shake his new found faith.
No longer, had mere party politics their old appeal; no longer would the gaming table, the drinking bout or the night club, dissipate his energies or fritter away his time: no longer would he consider either his wealth or his talents his own.
A new world had opened up before him ; new standards of judgment forthwith would control his mind; new motives would energise his life.
Henceforth be believed himself a steward of God: and if many were to mock him as a " budding saint,' his own deepest desire was that he might approximate, ever more nearly, toward the object of their raillery. But there are " saints ' and " saints "'; to Wilberforce, and to the religion he typified, sainthood was a highly practical and highly useful state of life.
Moreover, if the all-night ball and the smart set would know him no 1 Coupland's Wilberforce, p. 10.
2 Doddridge was President of a Nonconformist Theological Academy at Northampton.
His interest in Wesley and the Revival is evidenced by the fact that as early as 1745 he got Wesley to address his theological students.
See Wesley's Journal, September gth, 1745.
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more as a boon companion, as years passed there were those even among the glittering friends of early days who would yet declare that the cheerfulness and serenity of '' the saint '? were more utterly charming than the swagger and dash of the gay young sinner.
His love, too, for his intimate friends of early Parliamentary days, never abated.
True, Pitt as Prime Minister could scarcely pour out all his heart on such twilight questions, for instance, as party finance to the highly sensitised conscience of his '' converted'' comrade.
But if complete intimacy was broken, Pitt's veneration for the character and integrity of "the saint"? only increased; and the one occasion on which that cool, restrained, masterful statesman was ever known to bury his head or to shed a tear in the House of Commons, was when his revered friend, conscience-bound, opposed him sternly on a major moral issue of his policy.
Yet, when such rare occasions occurred, Pitt knew well that the cleavage pained his old friend no less than it pained him.
'" The saint" was no prig, and all semblance of pharisaism was obnoxious to him.
Long after his " transfiguring ordeal,'? Wilberforce wrote :
I devoted myself for whatever might be the term of my future life, to the service of my God and Saviour and, with many infirmities and deficiencies, through His help I continue until this day."
So strong, however, was the odium with which "* Methodist"? convictions were held by the ruling classes, even as late as 1785, that many associates on learning of his
"conversion," actually thought the young parliamentarian had gone mad.
"Strange reports,"' writes Wilberforce, '' were now raised about me.
I was said to be out of my mind and melancholy mad.
These reports were conveyed to my mother and to my relatives in Yorkshire, and for some time made them very uneasy, but on my going down to visit them, which I soon did, I took particular pains to be cheerful and pleasant and kind in the society of my friends.
My natural disposition was irritable, and it had often caused them much pain, They were exceedingly struck by my altered deportment—they found me so much more kind and patient—so much more forbearing and considerate than formerly, that one of them remarked, "if such were the effects of becoming ' melancholy mad,' it would be well if many of our acquaintance would take the infection."
Of the more positive effects of his soul's " awakening,"
Wilberforce speaks in no uncertain words.
In his famous } Travers Buxton, William Wilberforce—the Story of a Great Crusade, p. 38.
* [bid., pp. 40-1.
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book, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of ProSessed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country contrasted with Real Christianity," which ran into some forty editions and several translations, and for decades was judged a sort of Manifesto of Evangelical Christianity, he objects strongly that religion is too frequently " suffered to dwindle into a mere matter of police."* But "to the real Christian," he bluntly affirms, "the doctrines of the Gospel constitute the centre to which he gravitates!"
They are " the very sun of his system !
—the soul of the world !—the origin of all that is excellent and lovely !—the source of light and life and motion and genial warmth and plastic energy!"
'' Dim," says Wilberfore, " is the light of reason, and cold and comfortless our state, while left to her unassisted guidance."
Again, the directing power of his religious convictions over his public life, is clearly expressed in a letter to his mother :
"It is not, believe me, to any imagination, or to any system formed in my closet that I look for my principles ; it is to the very source to which you refer me, the Scriptures.
. All that I contend for is that we should really make this Book the criterion of our opinions and actions.
Some men are thrown into public life, some have their lot in private life.
. What I have said will, I hope, be sufficient to remove any apprehensions that I mean to shut myself up in my closet in town, or in my hermitage in the country.
No, my dear mother, in my circumstances this would merit no better name than desertion; and if I were thus trying to fly from the post where Providence has placed me, I know not how I could look for the blessing of God upon my retirement, and without this heavenly assistance, either in the world or in solitude, our own endeavours will be equally ineffectual.''® How thoroughgoing was Wilberforce's sense of stewardship and how deep his generosity, are illustrated by the fact that in 1801, a year of dire necessity and unemployment, his " gifts to the poor" were of such proportions that, when he came to take stock, he found they had exceeded his entire income " by £3,000."4
That, of course, could not long continue; but he 1 Wilberforce, op. cit., p. 1. a Ibid..
24.
% Buxton's Wilberforce, p. 41.
This book, written by a man who for many years was Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, is essential, along with Coupland's, to an understanding of Wilberforce.
The original tomes executed by Wilberforce's sons are a tomb in which their father lies embalmed.
* Coupland, op. cit., pp. 265 and 43.
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disposed of property, eliminated luxuries, lived simply, and besides manifold and generous benefactions to scores of causes at home and abroad, rarely did he give less than a quarter of his income to the poor.
To Hannah More's schools, for vears he subscribed £400 per annum.
With two friends, he provided an annuity for Charles Wesley's widow; and to hundreds of Lascars stranded around the London Docks, his purse was never closed.t_ In old age, Wilberforce lost nearly all his means : but refusing the proffered help of six friends who wanted to replenish his loss, he said good-bye to his beloved little estate and went to live alternately with two of his parson sons, where, he believed, God prolonged his life to show him " that a man can be as happy without a fortune as with one.'"?
To certain of the wilder Radicals, notwithstanding, this man was '"'an ugly epitome of the devil" whose " grandiose humanity " was all expended upon " fat, lazy niggers"? overseas, while Englishmen were "enslaved" or "starved"? at home: he was a "ranting hypocrite" whose religion was a "hollow sham."
Cobbett, who had no sympathy whatever with the African " niggers," who lauded bull-baiting, prizefighting and the like as '"' manly sports,' who aggressively encouraged the " rotten-egging "' of '' Methodists,"? and whom even Place pronounced a "mountebank," always had Wilberforce in the pillory of his Political Register.
"If all that was published about me was true," said " the saint" as early as 1816, " nothing but a special Providence can have prevented me being hanged thirty years ago.''® Wilberfore however was but typical of that remarkable group of men historically remembered as '"' The Clapham Sect."
So dubbed by Sydney Smith, because many of them lived around Clapham Common, and because their chief haunt was the spacious, Chatham-designed library of Henry Thornton, in Clapham, this group included statesmen and men of affairs, whose daily contacts extended to the ends of the earth. Among them were a Governor-General of India, a Chairman of the East India Company, the '' King" of the Colonial Office, several Members of Parliament, a Governor of Sierra Leone, the head of a great banking house, and philanthropists and publicists, whose ceaseless, sacrificial labours benefited millions of their fellow men.
Among them were Anglicans, Nonconformists and Quakers ; Conservatives, Liberals and Indepen1 Coupland, pp. 42-3 and 377.
2 [bid., p. 507.
* Coupland, pp. 456 and 421-2.
For Cobbett's poisonous venom against the Abolitionists and his smug praise of slave-owning planters who had just pulled down a Methodist Chapel in Barbados, see Political Register,
Vol. XLVILI, pp. 514, 559, 583, 591, 673, 677, and Vol. XLIX, pp. 31, 34.
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dents.
Their common bond was Evangelical Christianity and their common "enthusiasm" the application of the ethic of Christ to personal, social, political, national and international affairs.
None of them claimed to be theologians ; nearly all were laymen ; but all were Bible students, and men of prayer ; all accounted themselves stewards and missioners of the Kingdom of God; and all devoted themselves with amazing initiative to the practical application of the Faith they professed.
Something altogether-new to the British Empire, was this coterie of powerful Christian statesmen and_ philanthropists, giving so freely of their time, talents and means, that public life might be Christianised, and that the very Empire might become an instrument of moral and social welfare to all peoples.
Most of the " Clapham brethren" were members of the Church of England ; all, being fervent Evangelicals, were Protestants : but the most amazing feature of their lives, was the true
Catholicity of their Christian sympathy, and of their humanitarian crusade.
The Clapham Sect was directing influences which ennobled the life of coloured and primitive peoples the world over, before ever "' an Evangelical " was elevated to the Episcopal
Bench : and were it not for the influence of such " lay saints,"
Evangelical Christianity might have been quite cold-shouldered from the National Church.
A business man's ledger affords a revealing commentary on his mode of life. Many years after his death, a granddaughter of Henry Thornton, the banker, published figures from his accounts which show that, during the years 1790 to 1793, he gave to charity no less a sum than £20,408, while his total expenditures for all other purposes whatsoever, were but £6,964.
On different years, before his marriage, Thornton consistently gave away as much as six-sevenths of his entire income ;1 and such devotion was but characteristic of all the Clapham " brethren."
Granville Sharp, though " too poor for a Parliamentary career," gave lavishly of his time, talents and means in the negroes' cause.
Zachary Macaulay faced fever and bore labours sufficient to kill half a dozen ordinary mortals, in establishing the freed-slave colony at Sierra Leone; while later, he laboured for years without pay, as editor of the famous Evangelical magazine, the Christian Observer.
James Stephen turned his back on a most brilliant and lucrative career as '" advocate in prize cases before the Privy Council" to serve quietly as Under-Secretary for the Colonies—a post later occupied with equal distinction and devotion by his son, Sir James.
The consecration of Clarkson's life, was equal to that of Wilberforce.
As for other members of this " Christian Brotherhood," they * See Guardian, June 19th, 1907 ; Balleine, p. 149 ; Coupland, p. 251.
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included Lords Teignmouth and Glenelg, Charles Grant, William Smith, John Venn and Edward Elliot, together with Gisborne,
Milner, Babington and Bowdler ; while for all practical purposes, Hannah More also was a member of the " Sect.'
All regarded their vocations as sacred " callings'' ; all conceived their time, abilities and possessions, as naught else than stewardships held in trust for the God of Righteousness—the Lord of Heaven and Earth.
The " Clapham Sect" rose splendidly above the ordinary barriers of party, class, creed, colour and nationality. Inspired by a common faith, humanitarian and philanthropic questions, they saw with a single eye; and concerning them they spoke with a single voice.
No exclusive, theoretic pietists, were these "' lay saints' ; in projects which they believed for the common good, they would, and did, co-operate with Catholics, Unitarians and Utilitarians.
In Parliament, their influence was out of all proportion to their numbers.
Into the whole Indian and Colonial Administration they injected a new moral leaven, conceiving of the Overseas Empire not as a vast gold mine for British exploitation, but as a solemn, sacred trust to be developed for the highest good of the different peoples concerned.
At home, they furthered schemes of education and self-help among the poor; abroad, they created and sponsored missions of a highly practical mould, especially in the most savage and benighted communities.
Everywhere they stood for honourable peace and co-operation among all peoples of goodwill.
Whatever the limitations of the Clapham fraternity, this Christian coterie, in proportion to numbers, achieved perhaps more than any other group in English history to impregnate the British Empire and British policy with Christian ideals of service and helpfulness, particularly as they applied to backward and underprivileged peoples, who, up to this time, were being exploited and enslaved by vast mercenary interests for sordidly selfish ends.
Paine, Place, Cobbett, Hazlitt, Hunt and company, would, of course, continue to rail at them as archhypocrites and master-pharisees : but the concentrated fury of the assault, attested the wide influence
" the saints'? were exerting over the soul and conscience of the realm.
(iv) The Wider Impact If, however, Wilberforce was but intensely characteristic of the Clapham Sect, that Christian brotherhood, in turn, was but intensely characteristic of a new moral and spiritual earnestness which affected not only the tone and temper of the entire
English-speaking world, but, spreading through the English tongue and through a purged and invigorated Anglo-Saxon
A PEOPLE FINDS ITS SOUL
civilisation, brought hope and blessing to peoples of many tongues and climes.
The Evangelical Revival, despite the surge of many materialising forces, was making the Gospel of Christ a new and highly pervasive leaven, not only in the life of individual men and women, but in the world of practical affairs.
Like early Christianity, it had begun chiefly among the outcasts of society ; it now was impregnating the lives of men governing nations and leading world-stirring crusades.
Even royalty, would one day experience its power.
Turn first to the realm of poetry.
Can anyone even halffamiliar with the teachings and impact of the Evangelical Movement, fail to recognise in the most soulful poems of Cowper and Blake, of Crabbe and Burns, of Wordsworth and Coleridge of Southey and Hood, of Browning and Tennyson, of Whittier and Bryant, of Longfellow and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or even of Kipling and Masefield, the permeating influence of that mighty re-creation of soul and conscience?
In prose literature, the impress is scarcely less pronounced.
The pages of Hannah More and Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Scott and Reade, of Ruskin and Carlyle, of Irving and Hawthorne, of Dickens and Thackeray,
of Jane Austen and the Bronté sisters, of Emerson and Stevenson, of Macaulay and Green, of Besant and Stead, of Drummond and Helen Keller—all owe much to the same purging and ennobling source.
Some of these authors, admittedly, were girded when they knew it not: but their sincere reverence for purity, truth, temperance, virtue, integrity, justice, honour, bravery, liberty and the quest for righteousness (individual and social) marks them as men and women whose ideal of life was largely coloured or shaped by the " plain, vital, practical Christianity'? which Wesley had preached and lived, and which he had mediated to the multitudes.
Their appreciation of spiritual values, moreover, their knowledge of the Bible, their belief in prayer, their homage to sterling character, and, above all, their unswerving faith in the high Destiny of man, separates them by a wide gulf from the " post-war"? shoal of morbid " realists,' whose sex obsession, moral cynicism, spiritual defeatism and utter futility, plunging their whining and snivelling course through dirt, despair and death, succeed only in deleting all manliness from man and obscuring all purpose in life. From these "' emancipated " worldlings, comes the illuminating verdict that:
"' Man is a parasite, crawling on the vertebre of the pigmy among the planets."?
To them and to their set, Wesley and all his followers were simply fools.
1 This is the dictum of a smart American "intellectual," whose name mattersnot.
He is buta little bolder than hundreds of English and American novelists who suggest a similar "' philosophy of life."
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Turn next to the immortal social emancipators of modern times.
Wilberforce and Clarkson we have already mentioned.
Peruse the lives and labours of Lord Shaftesbury and Abraham Lincoln, of John Howard and Fowell Buxton, of Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale.1 and soon it becomes evident that the Evangelical Revival stands to them in the direct relation of cause and effect.
Shaftesbury, who constantly described himself as ''an Evangelical of Evangelicals,' when pressing in the House of Commons for the emancipation of women and children from '' white slavery '' in the mines and collieries of Britain, declared:
'' For my own part I 'will say, though possibly I may be charged with cant and hypocrisy, that I have been bold enough to undertake this task, because I must regard the objects of it as being created, like ourselves, by the same
Master, redeemed by the same Saviour, and destined to the same immortality."? Words of similar import, might be quoted from the mouths of every one of these heroic liberators of men.
The depth, sincerity and intensity of their Christian Faith, made them the doughty emancipators they were.
Proceed, however, to other creative crusaders and pioneers in the sphere of social achievement, and the story is much of of a piece.
Live awhile with the careers of Barnardo and Booth, of J. B. Gough and Frances Willard, of Oastler and Plimsoll, of Stephens and Loveless, of Orsman and Kirk,? of Toynbee and Jane Addams, of Agnes Weston and Evangeline Booth, and quickly the truth emerges that the source of their vision and the dynamic of their efforts was vital, practical Christianity.
Radicals would spin out plausible social theories, and sacerdotalists would argue much concerning religious ceremonies, sacred symbolism, '' Apostolical Succession'? and _ patristic orthodoxy ; but the very faith of sincere Evangelical Christians constrained them to put their hand to the plough, and to cultivate the vineyard of the Lord.
The first article of Dr. Barnardo's will reads:
" Death and the grave are but temporary bonds ; Christ has triumphed over them ! I hope to die as I have lived, in the humble but assured faith of Jesus Christ, Whom I have so imperfectly served, and Whom I acknowledge to be my
' Even the brilliant—sometimes satirical—paradoxes of Lytton Strachey do not remove the religious dynamic from Florence Nightingale's life.
See his Eminent Victorians, pp. 115-175.
See, too, Sir E. Cook's Life of Florence Nightingale.
See Hansard (H. of C.), August 4th, 1840; Shaftesbury's Speeches, p. 28; Bready's Shaftesbury, p. 269.
Orsman and Sir John Kirk are but typical of many thousands of Evangelical zealots who, in all the great industrial centres of Britain, have served the poor through the Ragged School Union.
They symbolise, too, thousands who to-day are serving under "' The Shaftesbury Society "—the new name of that organisation.
A PEOPLE FINDS
ITS SOUL
Saviour, my Master and my King."!
Herein is reflected the central inspiration behind the truest tradition of philanthropy and social reform among the English-speaking peoples. These intrepid pioneers, beholding in faith a better country, laboured for a society which hath foundations, whose maker and builder is God.
Believing themselves to be surrounded by a great cloud of spiritual witnesses, and enduring as seeing Him Who is invisible, they sought to save their fellows because they knew themselves saved by Christ.
They lived heroically, adventurously, gloriously on Earth, because their abiding citizenship was in Heaven.
The social fruits of their lives, were nourished by the deep roots of their faith.
Again, the mighty nineteenth century preaching tradition throughout the British Empire and the United States, drank deeply from the same fountain head.
Moody and Spurgeon, Beecher and Brooks, Chalmers and Guthrie, Robertson and Dale, Westcott and Ryle,? Talmage and White, Hughes and Jowett, Parker and Cadman—all were mighty expository preachers of the Bible, which the Evangelical Revival had not only opened to the multitudes but had made the Book of Books to the Anglo-Saxon peoples.
All, too, were fired by a consuming passion to mediate Christ not only as the Saviour of individual men and women, but as the Saviour of the world.
Even Newman and Keble, owed more to the Evangelical Revival than is generally imagined.
In his Apologia Newman pronounces Thomas Scott, author of the famous Evangelical Commentary, " the writer who made a deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to whom, humanly speaking, I owe my soul."?
And Hurrell Froude, the eager disciple of Keble who captured Newman for the Tractarian Movement, scented '"' Methodism "' in his spiritual father's Christian Year.
Come next to the splendid world missionary efforts of Protestantism.
Not only are Coke and Asbury, Carey and Livingstone, Moffat and Martyn, Morrison and Paton, Johnson of Sierra Leone and Smith of the West Indies, Alexander MacKay and Mary Slessor inextricably associated with this mighty outpouring of spiritual power, but the whole
Protestant " world movement," with its great succession of foreign missionary societies, is a lineal descendant of the Evangelical Revival.
Or proceed to the pioneers of popular education, and once more 1 See the author's Dr. Barnardo, p. 259.
2 If Bishop Ryle is little heard of to-day, it should be remembered that his religious tracts once sold in millions, and were translated into twelve languages.
Ruskin said of them:
'' The pleasantest and most useful reading I know, on nearly all religious questions whatever, are Ryle's tracts."
See letter quoted in Churchman, July, 1900; also Balleine, p. 279.
3 Cardinal Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (chapter I).
308 ENGLAND:
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AND AFTER WESLEY
the far-reaching impact of this baptism of fire is unmistakable.
Hannah Ball and Silas Told, Whitefield,1 and the American Tennents, Raikes and Lancaster, Lucas and Bell, Hogg and Williams, Arnold and Ryerson,? Mott and Kagawa, are all children of the same spiritual succession, confessing constantly the lordship of Christ.
Their educational efforts, indeed, grew out of their vision of the Kingdom of God on earth.
Nor even on the hard and stony ground of statecraft and public affairs, is this soulful succession quite broken.
Pitt and Burke were better men because of the character influences it shed abroad.
But consider the lives of Perceval and Liverpool, Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, Gordon and Lawrence, Gladstone? and Bright, Keir Hardie and Arthur Henderson, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, or again of Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Baldwin, and it will be found that the powerful influence of that Spiritual Baptism has been branded deeply upon their lives.
It is fatally easy to satirise Queen Victoria's famous message to two African chiefs:
"' England has become great and happy by the knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ.'?4
Yet even the very partial application of that knowledge, has been the saving salt not only of England, but of the British
Empire and English-speaking realms.
Some of the more creative and far-reaching Movements which flowed from this amazing outpouring of soul power, we shall examine in succeeding chapters. Meantime, we pause to consider certain of the attacks commonly levelled against Wesley and the mighty Revival so closely connected with his life's work.
The influence of Whitefield as a promoter of education in America, is too little known.
See Belden's Whitefield, pp. 236-8.
Egerton Ryerson, a Methodist minister, was the virtual founder of popular education in Canada.
See Chapter XXIII, Section (ii).
Though Gladstone was a Liberal High Churchman, the marks of the Evangelical Revival were written indelibly upon his life, and Evangelical
Nonconformity rendered him mighty support.
4 J. T. Inskip, op. cit., p. 200.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PERENNIAL CRITIC
"From scheme and creed the light goes out, The saintly fact survives ; The blessed Master none can doubt, Revealed in holy lives."
(See Professor
FRANCIS PEABODY,
The Christian Life in the Modern World, p. 199.) "He that loveth his brother abideth in light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him."
1 John ii, 10.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PERENNIAL CRITIC
Captains and conquerors commonly depart this world leaving but "a little dust,'' while kings and emperors are remembered only by '"' a dubious legend of their reign"; but the greatest seers, prophets and spiritual leaders, by making men vitally conscious of their divine origin, and by causing the deeps within them to respond to the Deeps Eternal, release soul forces and create movements which abide: for, transcending the ravages of time, and triumphing over the dead weight of materialism, cynicism and inertia, they incarnate the divine fire and the latent grandeur of man's imperishable soul.
They make men to feel and know that they are not puppets of fate, created only to be resolved to dust, but rather that they have a high destiny to achieve ; and greatest of all, they open to them the springs of faith, vision and courage which, despite all temporary rebuffs, enable them ever to labour steadfastly for the attainment of that High Destiny.
That Wesley and the Evangelical Revival represent such undying spiritual forces, is surely beyond dispute.
Yet, for obvious reasons, they are easy targets of ridicule and attack.
Their initial appeal having been chiefly to the outcast and the untutored, they not unreasonably fostered various self-imposed inhibitions and disciplines ; indeed such, during the early stages of the Revival, proved quite indispensable.
But also they laid down rules and precedents, not a few of which were designed to apply only to immediate and particular situations.
And, being human, they of course made mistakes: while furthermore, as so often happens in human affairs, rules and inhibitions, codes and precedents, organisations and ceremonies tended too frequently to assume a sanctity rightly belonging only to the living Spirit of Truth.
Nevertheless, beneath and above all that was sporadic, impulsive, incidental and transitory, there continued to be manifested the pulsing power of the Eternal, which created and mediated abundant life.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
(i) Recreation, Education, Emotion Perhaps the fiercest of all stock attacks upon Wesley, has been aimed at his attitude toward amusement and sport.
Repeatedly has it been contended that he was intolerant of all recreation.
This at best is but a half-truth ; for only can we appreciate his attitude when we recall the nature of the then prevailing popular "sports"? and inquire candidly whether " cocking," bear, bull and badger-baiting, bare-fisted prize-fighting, smutty comedy, fakir-ridden and prostitute-infested fairs, drinking bouts and innumerable gambling games, could make any possible contribution toward the '"' abundant life" he sought to mediate to needy men.
Were such diversions capable of " re-creating "" spiritual, mental or physical health?
'True, he prohibited all games at his Kingswood School, but it was planted in the midst of what, before his efforts, was one of the roughest collier districts in England ; and practically the only " games" which the youngsters knew how to play were coarse, crude and bullying.
Then, too, he retained haunting memories of his own residence at Charterhouse School, where the chief " games " and " sports " of the larger boys were hounding, beating and half starving the smaller, and especially the more sensitive, lads.
This, undoubtedly, was his reason for the Kingswood rule that the pupils always must be under the inspection of a master.
For he knew from bitter personal experience what crass, bullying tyrants some unimaginative and insensitive school-boys can be ; and at that time bullying in many forms was rife.
But if all sport was prohibited at Kingswood, if discipline was far too stern and the days were much too crammed with lessons and routine, at least it should be recalled that the curriculum was anything but monotonous.
Indeed, it was decidedly too diversified, and such recreating exercises as singing, gardening and walking were part of the daily round.
Wesley, too, was personally very fond of riding, swimming and the observation of natural phenomena : and such organised, co-operative games as presentday football, cricket, hockey, lacrosse, basket-ball and baseball, it must be remembered, were quite unknown in the England of his day.
Wesley's Journal, moreover, provides inescapable evidence that he was by no means opposed to such clean, innocent diversions as sharpen the wit, quicken the mind, renew the spirit and strengthen the body.
He rejoiced greatly at the singing performances of the children in his numerous Sunday schools ; he recorded the pleasure afforded him on hearing different concerts
THE
PERENNIAL
CRITIC
given by his highly talented nephews; and after attending a students' dramatic performance at Westminster School he wrote:
"I saw the Westminster scholars act the Adelphi of Terence, an entertainment not unworthy of a Christian.
Oh, how do these heathens shame us!
Their very comedies contain both excellent sense, the liveliest pictures of men and manner, and so fine strokes of genuine morality as are seldom found in the writings of Christians."
Are these the judgments of one opposed to all recreations?
Do they smack of the persistent "* joy-killer," or the proverbial '' prophet of gloom"?
Admittedly, Wesley had no sympathy with "time-killing" sports; for time to him, as much as money, was a precious talent and a sacred trust.
Neither would he encourage children's '"' games "' which pandered to mob brutality or savoured of hooliganism.
But of his great love for children and their sincere love for him, there can be no room for doubt; and Curnock, in his notes to the Standard Edition of the Journal, does well to point that fact.
Often large bands of children flocked forth to meet Wesley as he entered their town.
Commonly, as he preached in the open air, groups of youngsters were to be seen perched on walls, or on the stouter branches of overhanging trees, and the simple, direct vividness of his message frequently went straight to their hearts.
Contemporaries, too, have left touching impressions of how Wesley would take the smaller children tenderly in his arms and kiss and bless them ; while always he was greatly delighted to see them clean, neat, courteous and happy.
Commonly has it been stated or inferred that Wesley expressly prohibited his followers from all association with amusements, entertainments and sports.
This is an unwarranted assumption.
Moral and spiritual values, admittedly, always coloured his outlook, and certainly he took pains to explain to his people the evil influences so generally associated with the prevailing
"* pass-times " of his day.
But never did he anathematise all lighter diversions as harmful in themselves.
His actual prohibition was that his followers " cannot join in or countenance any diversion, which has the least tendency to vice of any kind.'"?
"A Methodist," he insisted, '' cannot even follow a multitude to do evil.""
The use of intoxicating liquors, as a beverage, he did prohibit because of their iniquitous personal, family and social effects.
All betting and gambling amusements he proscribed, because they excited an anti-social and immoral desire to get something for nothing, and because frequently they robbed children of bread.
Cock-fighting, bear-baiting and the 1 Fournal, December 14th, 1768.
2 Wesley, Character of a Methodist, p. 10.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
ilk he tabooed, not only in consequence of their brutalising effect on human character, but because of their cruelty to dumb animals, toward which—different from many of the contemporary political agitators—he taught his followers always to show mercy and kindness.
Toward diversions in general, his converts were free to follow the dictates of conscience.
But the awakened conscience of this " peculiar people" was highly sensitised.
Many of Cobbett's " manly sports' were as revolting to them as were gladiatorial "games" to the early Christians.
'What doest thou here, Elijah ?? was to them an interrogation written large on the whole eighteenth-century arena of " popular'? amusement and sport.
Wesley certainly would not have discouraged clean, wholesome, re-creating diversions.
He himself delighted in the open spaces, the vernal woods and the beauties of nature, and he taught his people to delight in them.
But they all were enlisted in a crusade incomparably more thorough-going and more truly revolutionary than the reformation of sport.
Far better, Wesley mediated spiritual forces which re-created the inner being ; he set his followers singing at their work ; he made familiar " the medicine of a merry heart."
Aye, more!
He opened to his people the windows of heaven, and let in a flood of healing and transforming light; he made even the most arduous and prosaic toil to assume a sacred dignity and purpose ; he linked men and women into such human fellowship as was to them.a veritable paradise on earth ; he enabled scores of thousands of humble, hard-working "' Methodists " to find more exhilaration and truer "' recreation "' in their daily duties and their Christian service, than soft, cynical, pampered idlers found in their " timekilling' play.
If the Methodists and Evangelicals gave little time to sport, time, assuredly, never " hung "' on their hands.
Pre-eminently were they a busy and a happy people.
Their high and holy '"' Enthusiasm " was not born of gloom ; rather was it the child of vision, energy and ecstasy.
Constantly by scoffers were these enthusiasts dubbed " fool optimists' : yet, perchance, even their foolishness was wiser than the wisdom of most of their critics.
Certainly, out of their poverty, they raised such voluntary funds for spiritual work, as England never before had known.
Again, repeatedly it has been objected that Wesley and the Movement he guided were hyper-emotional and manifested a sublime disregard for "' higher *? education.
As this is a criticism lurking usually in the tail of a hazy and generalised interpretation of the Revival, by those who have never deigned to study the documentary evidence involved, it would be well for such
THE
PERENNIAL
CRITIC
as harp on it to pause and ask' themselves a few questions.
If Wesley were averse to higher education, why was he made a fellow of Lincoln College?
Why did he spend some thirteen years at Oxford ?—most of them in the capacity of a resident don.
If suspicious of broad learning, why did he take pains to write grammars in five languages—not to mention histories and other texts—for his Kingswood seminary?
Why did he insist upon his itinerant preachers spending five to eight hours every day in concentrated study ? Why did he inform his local preachers that the only means whereby they could strengthen and deepen their sermons, was the mastery of deep, difficult books ? Why was he himself a prodigious reader of the widest range ?4 Why was he concerned to study the works of men so diametrically opposite to his outlook as Gibbon, Smollett, Dryden, Pope, Machiavelli, Mandeville, Rousseau and Voltaire ?
Why so frequently and so approvingly did he quote from the classics ? Why did he read all the literature he could find on electricity, and become a student of medical writings?
These scarcely are the marks of one opposed to higher education.
In sympathy, charity and regard for rugged honesty, Wesley was a man of truly Catholic mind.
Of all persecuting instinct he was completely free ; and Marcus Aurelius he believed certain of a place in heaven, whereas multitudes of professing Christians would be shut out.
His Protestantism, however, protested vehemently against all priestly domination of the individual conscience, and at many points he can only be described as a Christian rationalist, for his faith, he emphasised, required him to believe nothing which could do violence to his God-given reason ; while a similarly rational religious attitude he commended to all his followers.
Wesley was a logician to the bone, and reason he never would decry.
Whence then sprang the popular misconception in question ?
Its source, located in contemporary circumstances, is not difficult to trace.
Deistic rationalism in the eighteenth century —like Gnosticism in the first century and materialistic Secularism in the twentieth—-was putting on intellectual airs.
Humility it had quite disowned, and the self-hypnotism of pride, arrogance and conceit were carrying it to ridiculous lengths; it was intoxicated with the heady wine of its assumed superior sagacity.
As Butler complained, Christianity no longer was considered a subject even worthy of inquiry ; rather was it assumed to be
" fictitious."
And just here was Wesley's quarrel with the then current trend of " higher education."'
Much of it he believed a stilted and sterile process, offering stones for bread.
Faith 1 The number of books referred to and criticised in Wesley's Journal is quite remarkable.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
and revelation being sneered out of court, and frigid, isolated reason being elevated into a heartless deity, a false antithesis was established whereby the rational faculty was severed from other human faculties necessary to the upbuilding and sustaining of a healthy, coherent, harmonious personality.4
Religion, therefore, which to Wesley was the " supreme synthesis " of all true life, and which found incarnate expression in the person of Christ, was discounted or cast aside, while to the hungry souls of floundering men Deistic rationalism offered but a barren, intellectual husk.
Far, then, from opposing higher education, Wesley strongly favoured it, but he saw clearly that extended education divorced from Christian ethics and from spiritual values was really not ** higher " at all, but "lower"; for he perceived the latent powers of evil with which its materialism was fraught.
To Wesley all "' man-discovered " truth was equally " God-revealed "? truth.
He was wholly sceptical of the growing economic and " scientific "' doctrine of " enlightened self-interest.'?2
Though he desired not less higher-education but vastly more, he insisted that it be
— really "' higher," for he held to the truly Catholic doctrine that all knowledge and science should be tempered by a social, ethical, spiritual solvent—religious love—which alone, he believed, can refine knowledge into wisdom and provide the key to understanding.
'To what purpose ? " was the question Wesley would ask of all education.
And it is notable that since his day the students, the world over, who have received higher or professional education in institutions founded, financed and directed by his followers, can be numbered only in hundreds of thousands.
Nevertheless, the sort of Deistic rationalism against which Wesley revolted dies hard.
When, seventeen years ago, the present writer began his social researches into this period, neither the library of University College, nor that of King's
College, of the University of London, contained even a volume of Wesley's Journal—or any other publication from his hand.
The literati of his time, the politicians, the economists, the radicals, the Encyclopedists, the " philosophers" of the French
Revolution and the Utilitarians were all amply represented and allowed to speak for themselves.
The man who restored to a nation its soul, and started a Movement which has brought blessing to tens of millions of people in many lands, was allowed
1 See Professor Fred Tracy's Broken Lights, chapters viii and x, * This was the essence of the laissez-faire theory, which increasingly, even from Restoration times, was becoming the accepted economic gospel.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), far from creating laissez-faire, modified at many points its cruder expressions.
THE
PERENNIAL
CRITIC
no word on his own behalf.
Wesley at least read the works of those he criticised.
Moreover, are not our Universities supposed to implant a universal respect for Truth?
One is here reminded of the protest of a great Minister of Education, Augustine Birrell : '' Our standard historians,'' he complains, " have dismissed him curtly; the fact is, Wesley puts your ordinary historian out of conceit with himself."!
But if this is true of many historians, is it not more true of many tutors, lecturers and professors who, guarding jealously the scientific, economic or psychological deities of their own design, desire no " religious fanatic"? to disturb the spell of the doctrinaire creeds they propound ?
As for emotionalism, often has it been charged that Wesley turned the balance from the intellectual to the emotional side of Christianity.
This criticism is aptly answered by Dr. Parkes Cadman.
What Wesley " really did," says Cadman, " was to demonstrate the values of spiritual experience to such a degree that philosophy was compelled to acknowledge them.
That he did this unwittingly does not detract from its importance, and the latest modern thought has confessed that this movement reenthroned a religious consciousness which must be recognised and respected."?
Wesley's real conflict was with the frigidly non-moral and non-spiritual assumptions of a Deistic and pagan rationalism.
(ii) Further Attacks Another perennial thrust at Wesley and the Evangelicals, is that they were ultra-conservative and credulous.
And at certain points this judgment must stand.
In his attitude toward kingship, as we have seen, and in his Calm Address to our American
Colonies,? Wesley undoubtedly was ultra-conservative ; while also his habitual desire to discover and develop the best in people, made him at times unduly credulous.
Yet, this being fully admitted, in certain other respects he was a dauntless radical.
In his trenchant attacks upon slavery and the mercenary liquor traffic, in his withering condemnation of war as a final "' settlement " of international disputes, in his denunciation of the Government's policy in Ireland and of its system of press gangs; in his proposals regarding the leasing of land, the taxing of gentlemen's horses, and the restriction of luxuries; in his revolt against the scandalous tautology of legal documents
1 See Birrell's Appreciation, prefaced to Parker's abridgement of Wesley's Journal, p. xv.
, 2S. P. Cadman, Three Religious Leaders of Oxford, p. 375.
On this subject see also Wm. James's Varieties of Religious Experience.
3 See Chapter XII, (ii).
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
and his broadsides against bribery, smuggling and political corruption ; in his exposure of prevalent economic shibboleths and his castigation of pluralities and sinecures; in his abhorrence of " gentlemanly " idleness, his teaching regarding the use of wealth, time, property and privilege, together with his onslaughts upon vested interests in social iniquity—in all these matters, his moral and religious convictions made him (despite his theory of Government and his warm patriotism) a progressive radical, far in advance of his age, and, at some points, far in advance of his modern critics.
Moreover, as for his itinerant lieutenants and local preachers, including such of his spiritual " grand-children"" as Oastler,
Stephens, Wood, Sadler, Brotherton, Loveless and Standfield, some were considered so " dangerous " that they were pilloried, imprisoned, kidnapped by army press gangs, or even transported ;* while others laboured under the continual suspicion of the Home Office.
And it is a revealing fact that when, in 1818, Parliament voted £1,000,000 for the building of State churches, that expenditure was designed, at least in part, to wean the industrial population from the " too-radical " influence of "Methodism" and its increasingly co-related forms of Dissent.
As early, indeed, as 1792, the Mayor of Liverpool wrote to the Home Office enforcing this argument;
Arthur Young in his Inquiry into the State of Mind among the Lower Classes (1798) strongly re-enforced it ; and certainly the Government's expenditure for the new churches was defended, both in and out of Parliament, on this very ground.?
The charge again has been hurled against Wesley, as against most mighty leaders, that his colossal labours were motivated by personal ambition and a lust for power.
This is the insidious kind of attack so easily made without proof, and depending entirely upon the insinuations and assumptions of innuendo, for effect.
Of all Wesley's biographers, Southey, in this respect, is most blameworthy.
Repeatedly he hints at Wesley's inordinate ambition and his thirst for power, yet never does he substantiate his inference.
Indeed, it seems certain that he is but reflecting, however unconsciously, a deeply-rooted prejudice of his time and class.
Greatly is it to Southey's credit, nevertheless, that, years after the publication of his Wesley, he frankly admitted
1 For the story of Loveless and his fellow Tolpuddle ' martyrs," see Owen Rattenbury's Flame of Freedom (1931).
'Young's Inquiry stimulated existing official anxiety.
The Napoleonic wars, in turn, augmented it; so by 1818 it was not difficult to pass this
Church Building Bill.
The most Radical group of Methodists were the Primitive Methodists, who, under the leadership of Hugh Bourne and William Clowes, broke from the "' Wesleyans " in 1810. They were avowed
Democrats.
THE PERENNIAL CRITIG
he had been wrong.
The cause of his reversal of judgment was an essay by Alexander Knox, an intimate friend, but in no sense a follower, of Wesley.t After pondering this essay, Southey wrote : "' A long and intimate paper has convinced me that I was mistaken in supposing ambition entered largely into Wesley's actuating impulses."?
"In estimating John Wesley," says Knox, "I am not conscious of any partiality.
For his singularities as a public teacher I had no predilection.
I loved and revered him for his cheerful piety, his resistless amiability and his perfect superiority to every vulgar feeling and selfish motive.
. My conviction is that he never consciously swerved from what he considered his ' heavenly calling.' '"'?
At other points Knox, notwithstanding his High Church outlook, is equally emphatic.
'' Where the highest interests of men were concerned, Mr. Wesley," he affirms, "' made no account of precedent, or public opinion, or maxims of human or even ecclesiastical prudence.
The Church of England appeared to him to have fallen into a state of stupor like that of the ancient Jewish
Church ; and it was his persuasion that a kind of second John the Baptist, 'a voice crying in the wilderness,' was necessary to awaken it; to this duty he conceived himself providentially called, and he engaged in it with as firm a purpose as if he had been commissioned by a voice from heaven."*
Regarding '* pride, ambition, selfishness and personal gratification of whatever kind,'"? Knox records it as his
'"' deep impression" that 'since the days of the Apostles there has not been a human being more thoroughly exempt from all those frailties of human nature than John Wesley.''® Numerous other aspersions have been cast at Wesley.
Commonly it is averred, or assumed, that he was devoid of any grain of saving humour ; that the phenomenal physical manifestations frequently accompanying his preaching were nothing other than fanatical hysteria, and that his famous Primitive Physic represented sheer medical quackery.
Now if the charge that Wesley lacked humour means that he was not a comedian, striving sardonically to stimulate jocularity, it assuredly is well founded.
Too profoundly was he in earnest, to treat serious problems facetiously or to seek out causes of mirth ; but he had an allembracing interest in human affairs, and whenever he was confronted with a situation either amusing or preposterous, he
1 Knox for a very brief period had been attracted towards "' Methodism," but his instincts were all in the High Church direction, and he became a sort of forerunner of the Oxford Movement.
2 See Appendix to the 1903 abridgment of Southey's Wesley (p. 394).
8 Tbid., p. 365
4 Ibid., p. 370.
5 J. H. Overton, John Wesley, p. 91.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
was by no means immune from humorous response.
Indeed, contrariwise he often revealed a wit that was spontaneous, playful and sharp.
Some of his keenest satires are close akin to humour, and his Journal affords innumerable instances of a dry, droll, donnish pleasantry of mind.
He refers, for instance, to a certain " gentleman " trying to create confusion at one of his preaching services, as hailing from " another parish" and therefore under no obligations of civility or courtesy.
Recalling the outrages of a certain drunken rabble, he inquires what their victims had done to deserve such furious onslaughts, and dryly he answers :
"' Why, they were mad; they were Methodists.
So to bring them to their senses," the mob " would beat their brains out."1
The biographer of St.
Catherine, he says, " aggrandised her into a mere idiot," making her 'a fool of a saint."* Or picture a congregation of " two or three thousand people " listening "as for life," and note Wesley's delineation of a certain individual therein : "' Only one big man, exceeding drunk, was very noisy and turbulent, till his wife seized him by the collar, gave him two or three hearty boxes on the ear, and dragged him away like a calf.
But at length he got out of her hands, crept in among the people, and stood as quiet as a lamb.''8
Was the narrator of this incident devoid of humour ? Recall, too, his comment when informed that he may no more minister at Newgate Prison: he is kept from preaching at Bedlam, he sagely surmises, "' lest he drive the inmates mad," and at N ewgate
"lest he make them wicked."
Or finally, having declared that in Ireland fashion had " almost " as much to do " with medicine as with head-dress," he avers that, "' Now the grand fashionable medicine for twenty diseases is mercury sublimate |' and continues :
"' Why is it not a halter or a pistol ? They would cure a little more speedily ! "'4
The " fits of hysteria? which at times accompanied Wesley's preaching must be viewed in relation to their environment.
Constantly must it be remembered, that he was instrumental in effecting thousands of lasting conversions among notorious sinners.
The inner change accordingly which took place in the lives of those who once had been drunkards, robbers, blasphemers, adulterers, fornicators and scandalmongers, can only be described as catastrophic.
Is it surprising then, that catastrophic phenomena frequently accompanied the release of these poor victims from the clutches of bestiality and sin ?
Wesley's Journal records the evidence of more than one medical doctor whose preconceived mockery and wrath were hushed to * Journal, August 30th, 1766.
* Ibid., December 3rd, 1761.
® Ibid., June 12th, 1780.
* Ibid., June 14th, 1773.
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awe, by the manifestations whith met their eyes.
Were the proprieties of drawing-room deportment, however, to be expected when, under Wesley's restrained, realistic, compelling preaching, and in an atmosphere of prayerful reverence, even hardened criminals, convicted of sin, sought and found the releasing grace of God ?
As for Primitive Physic, its very compilation and publication bear eloquent testimony to Wesley's keen, practical interest in the problems of private and public health.
To him it was a religious duty to keep the body functioning up to the highest possible standards of efficiency.
The directing genius of the Evangelical Revival was not a doctor of medicine, but a minister of religion ; hence some of his prescriptions in Primitive Physw may, to physicians, seem crude.
Yet it is well to recall that this compilation—like his electrical treatment—was designed to help the suffering poor, whom the medical profession had so grossly neglected because they could not pay, and that the remedies therein prescribed were those which Wesley himself used, though rarely did he miss a night's sleep in sixty years.
Nevertheless, it is doubtful if all history can provide a parallel to the boundless labours and achievements, compressed by this saddle-bag preacher within a life's span.
Certain it is therefore, that if Wesley's medical remedies had any relation whatever to his indomitable spirit, his boundless energy and his awe-inspiring attainments, those remedies were not quite so crude, or so ridiculous, as some critics and satirists would suggest.
But be this as it may, one thing is certain: the most marked decrease in the death rate, and the most marked increase in public health known to British history, synchronised completely with the expanding influence of the Evangelical Revival.
Between the fourth decade of the eighteenth century and the second decade of the nineteenth, the mortality of London children under five years of age dropped from 74:5 per cent. to 31-8.
Various causes, admittedly, were at work in producing this salutary effect: but the greatest single cause, by far, was the moral reformation which the mighty Revival had wrought for the masses of England.
Laugh, if one will, at Wesley's Primitive Physic, the fact remains that wherever the spirit of the Revival spread, there also, with an intensity vital religion alone could provide, were spread the accompanying influences of temperance and abstemiousness, of cleanliness and sanitation, of sick-visitation and domestic hygiene, of self-respect and self-restraint, of personal purity and family sanctity, of gracious fellowship and sociability ; as well as the effects of a salutary thirst for knowledge, and a 1 Lancet, 1835-36, I, p. 692.
(T. R. Edmonds " On the Mortality of Infants in England." x
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hunger' for abundant life.t_ And this all contributed mightily to mental and physical, as well as spiritual health.
The Revival was both a "' moral bath'? and a civilising tonic to a pagan, vulgarised England, long floundering toward a spiritual abyss.
(iii) A Belated Assault One of the latest, and perhaps the most brilliant, of all the literary critics of the Evangelical Movement is Dr. es Es Hammond.
In his celebrated book, The Town Labourer, having dubbed this Movement "a storm in a tea-cup,"'* he says:
" It taught patience where the Trade Unions taught impatience.
The Trade Union movement taught that men and women should use their powers to destroy the supremacy of wealth in a world made by men; the Methodist that they should learn resignation amid the painful chaos of a world so made, for good reasons of His own, by God.4
It surely would be hard to conceive of a statement more abortive of the true spirit and meaning of that amazing Revival, than is contained in this colourful contrast.
Wesley assuredly was not a promoter of strife ; on the contrary, many great historians, from Lecky to Halévy, believe that the spiritual Revival he initiated and guided, saved England from revolutionary bloodshed.
But be that much-mooted point as it may, in a real sense the Revival was itself an effective ethical revolution—a revolution against the injustice, the unrighteousness, the immorality and the irreligion of the status quo.
To argue that Wesley taught "resignation amid the painful chaos" of a disordered world, is woefully to misunderstand and misinterpret the general tenor and trend of a silent, but mighty, leavening Movement.
Such a portrayal indeed is less than a caricature: it is repudiated not only by Wesley's life and teaching, but by a hundred purging, reviving, life-giving streams of influence, traceable, through manifold tributaries, to the same Spirit source.
Far from teaching " resignation " regarding the prevailing and selfish use of wealth, for instance, Wesley expounded a doctrine concerning the employment and function of money, more exacting and more deeply revolutionary in its social implications,
For a very great doctor's tribute to this influence, see Sir. Geo. Newman, Health and Social Evolution, p. 41f.
The phrase is that of Wm. James in the Preface to Varieties of Religious Experience.
* Op. cit., 'by J. L. and Barbara Hammond, p. 221.
4 Ibid., p. 283.
THE
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than any ever advocated by Trade Union organisations.
That doctrine, moreover, was cheerfully accepted and acted upon by Wesley himself, whose mode of life, as we have seen, was modest and abstemious to the last degree?: whereas Cobbett, the capable but bludgeoning, egotistical, quarrelsome and semi-revolutionary Trade Union firebrand, despite his pious Advice to Young Men and his flaunted altruistic airs, lived
(whenever possible) in comparative pomp, defended the enslavement of " niggers," ranted vociferously in his Political Register to advertise his own profit-making wares, and died leaving no mean estate.?
Do Wesley's vehement attacks upon slavery and all its promoters savour of " resignation' or " patience"?
? Is " resignation' an epithet applicable to his titanic bombardments of the liquor traffic, of bribery and smuggling, of legal, political and ecclesiastical corruption?
Was Wesley resigned to the status quo when he launched his piquant assaults upon war and all its barbarities?
Is '' resignation"? at all compatible with his caustic strictures on the fashionable and snobbish boarding-schools of his day ?4 Can " resignation" be applied to his repeated and piercing thrusts at the perverted administration of justice to the poor, or at the inhumanity and " falsity " of certain metallic economic maxims?*> Did " patience" with prevailing conditions or " resignation"? to the Powers-thatBe, inspire this incomparable leader, for more than half a century, to labour sixteen to eighteen hours a day, for the individual and social salvation of England and mankind?
Was it " resignation' that inspired his disciples, braving danger and death, to start a missionary crusade in every quarter of the globe?
Serenity of spirit and obedience to the will of God, the Evangelical Revival assuredly mediated in marked degree ; but these enabled it to battle with moral and social evils with greater assurance, persistence and power.
Real Evangelical serenity, was not that of apathy : it was, as Sir Josiah Stamp points out, " the serenity of utter warfare, of which the final issue is never in doubt, so vested is it in the justice of God."'® Only doctrinaire prejudice, or utter misconception, could
1 See, for instance, sermons on The Use of Money, The Good Steward, Wheels within Wheels, and various discourses on The Sermon on the Mount.
2 See Wesley's Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, p. 40.
3 No modern English or American magazine advertisements equal the superlative braggadocio splashed throughout the Political Register to advertise Cobbett's pamphlets, etc.
It certainly is no tribute to the type of mentality at which Cobbett aimed his appeal.
4 ¥ournal, April 6th, 1772.
5 ¥ournal, July 3rd, 1761 ; December 27th, 1744 ; February 8th, 1753 and Tyerman's Wesley, Vol. II, p. 160.
6 See Sir Josiah Stamp's Foreword to the cheap editions of the author's Lord Shaftesbury and Social-Industrial Progress, p. 6.
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delineate this Spiritual Awakening as born of, nurtured by, or tending toward, Resignation.
Never will " resignation " explain the labours of Wesley or the meaning of his Movement.
Indeed it would appear that Dr. Hammond's underlying objection to this "' new religion," as he styles it, is that it did not overthrow the selfishness of one social class and enthrone that of another and, as yet, wholly untutored class.
The Evangelical Revival was in fact a revolution : but it was a revolution which had at its heart love of humanity, not hatred of class.
True, this "peculiar people'? contemplated continually the love of God, the goodness of God and the purpose of God.
But their sublime faith in the Deity, far from reconciling them to the injustices of men, made those injustices the more intolerable ; for it provided them with an ever-challenging vision and prototype of what human society should, and might, be.
It made them faithful builders of a better social order ; for their supreme desire was to be co-labourers with the Great Artificer, in hastening the advent of that longed-for era, when the Divine will shall be done on earth, as in Heaven.
This movement, moreover, preceded any vital Trade Union movement ; and by its aspiration, its foresight, its Sunday and week-day schools, its class and band meetings, its lay and street preaching, its financial organisation, its democratic co-operation, its genius for fellowship and its boundless faith and energy, it laid the foundations of selfdiscipline, self-help and self-government on which the Trade
Union structure was itself largely built—foundations without which any worthy Trade Union development would have been wholly impossible.t New moral character, was the most pressing need of the new industrial age: that, this despised "" new religion " proceeded steadily, despite new difficulties, to build ; and it is no coincidence that many of the noblest Trade
Union leaders and industrial welfare pioneers, were themselves local preachers.
All laboured efforts, therefore, to place the Evangelical Revival in opposition to a sane Trade Union movement, result only in a forced and false antithesis.
In a memorable passage, Mrs. Sydney Webb Says:
"Tt? is assuredly to the credit of the English working man that numerous associations, both for trade union and industrial purposes, should have existed continuously for half a century with no other security but the personal honour of members and the personal honesty of officials."?
"The personal honour of members," "the personal honesty of officials !'?
Herein lay the crux and key of all early efforts for industrial emancipation.
See Jack Lawson, M.P., A Man's Life (chapter x, " Little Bethel s.r * Beatrice Webb, The Co-operative Movement, P52.
THE PERENNIAL
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And these sterling character qualities '' the gin-age,"" economically honeycombed and corrupted by the powerful, monopolistic, expanding slave-trade, intellectually dominated by a shallow, faithless Deism, and politically and ecclesiastically ruled by worldling, nepotistic cliques, could never on a considerable scale have produced.
Such character attributes are not the products of chance.
Nor are they—as often to-day is naively assumed—the inherent, exclusive possession of the '" working classes," as such.
Whence then came they?
And whence their influence on the workers' just aspirations?
Only one explanation is commensurate with the deepest underlying facts, and that is—the purging moral and spiritual influence which this
Baptism of Fire brought to the toiling masses.
Made conscious of their own eternal worth, and given the means of moral reformation, they first learned to rule their own souls; and that achieved, they gradually fitted themselves for the exercise of economic, social and political power, which subsequently could not long be withheld.
"To you," said Dr. Priestley in An Address to the Methodists, ''is the civilisation, the industry and sobriety of great numbers of the labouring part of the community owing.''?
So chagrined, however, is Mr. Hammond that this " storm in a tea-cup " won the support of the industrial population and thus averted a ruthless class war, that he complains:
"It diverted energy from a class struggle at a time when wise energy was scarce, and money when money was still scarcer.
It would be supremely interesting to know what sum was spent on this religion by a class that was thereby diverting its resources from a war for independence."* The present writer, as his book Lord Shaftesbury will prove,' offers no word .of apology for the dire miscarriage of social and industrial justice which Mr. Hammond so graphically depicts.
But when (true to the 1 As late as 1755, a Manchester philanthropist described the "' labouring poor " as possessed of "' an abject mind
. a mean, sordid spirit, which prevents all attempts of bettering their conditions.
'They are so familiarised to filth and rags as renders them in a manner natural ; and have so little sense of decency as hardly to allow a wish for it a place in their hearts."
(John Clayton, M.A., Friendly Advice to the Poor, and Luke Tyerman, Oxford Methodists, pp.
52-3.) Dr. D. George's researches point to similar conclusions relative to the first half of the eighteenth century.
Yet Mr. Hammond, by repeated inference, assumes this period, preceding 1760, to be a sort of industrial golden age.
2 Joseph Priestly, Original Letters to the Rev. Fohn Wesley, etc., pp. Xviixviii.
(Also Dr. W. J. Warner, The Methodist Influence in the Industrial Revolution, p. 175.) 8 The Town Labourer, p. 285 (the italics are ours).
4 See chapters xiii to xix and xxii.
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stereotyped Marxian thesis)! he comes to suggest that this Religious Revival perverted the progress and liberty of the industrial masses, has he not quite lost perspective, and is he not doing violence to Truth?
Revolution, or class war, initiated by the English "' workers' at the period in question, could have resulted merely in brutal suppression.
They lacked not only the sobriety, discipline.and articulateness, but also the coherence, organising ability and co-operative experience, without which their cause 'assuredly was doomed to failure.
Wesley and the Evangelical Movement, as Professor Elie Halévy in four monumental volumes of his modern History of the English
People repeatedly has emphasised,* brought all these qualities in more intense and abiding degree than any other movement
Britain has known.
They brought them moreover, at as small a monetary outlay as that at which any practical school has even been conducted.
True, the outrages of American Revolutionary mobs and the bloody " Terror" of the French Revolution, together with the flagrant, swashbuckling arrogance of Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine, Cobbett and the ilk, long made the Revival forces less progressive and more suspicious of the new
'" Democracy " than otherwise would have been the case.
But the substantial fact remains, that the Revival's character-building influence provided the solid foundation upon which the social and industrial emancipation of the English masses was reared, while also it gave to women their first extensive opportunities of serving the common weal.
The books most read by the more turbulent section of the industrial populace, in the later decades of the eighteenth century, were those of Tom Paine :* yet Paine, far from possessing self-control, himself died a drunkard.
The incredible moral degradation with which the» Revival was long confronted, including the bestiality of straw-littered, vermin-ridden, '"' drunkfor-a-penny " pubs, we have already explored.
Most of the workers' class-war agitation, however, was conducted in the stagnant, depraving environment of these mercenary, liquorvending, and gambling dens.
So long therefore as the industrial multitudes were thus stupefied with alcohol and excited with gambling, in the lairs of their wily, though unrecognised, foes,
1 Marx advocated not only relentless class war and revolution, but the abolition of all religion and all morality.
(See Manifesto of the Communist Party.) Again, "' Christian Socialism," says Marx, " is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart burnings of the aristocrat."
(Ibid., p. 30.) * See especially Vol. I, Book III (" Religion and Culture a ° See his Common Sense (1776) and Rights of Man (1791).
"See chapter viii, especially section (ii).
THE
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what hopes could they cherish for successful revolution?
Their very manner of life, evolved its own Nemesis.
They were as lambs bleating for Liberty, while all the time the paw of the lion was suspended over their heads : they were as opium slaves who dream of Paradise, only to awaken in Hell.
In all Mr. Hammond's brilliant work, notwithstanding, this vital character element is practically ignored.
Purporting to champion the workers' cause, scarcely a word has he to say regarding their half-depraved moral life when the "' Industrial
Revolution" began, and their incredible readiness to exploit their own children, often for the satisfaction of vitiated appetites and lusts.
Caricaturing and satirising Wilberforce and Hannah More, Mr. Hammond bemoans the money expended by the industrial toilers on the Evangelical Movement; but he is blind to the basic fact, that this money was largely rescued from the acquisitive 'capitalism' of distillers, brewers, crimps, gamesters, brothel keepers, bull-baiters, fakirs and exploiters of a hundred varieties, who, like guileful vampires, coquetted pertly with all the highest aspirations of industrial England, even as they sucked her life-blood.
He fails to perceive that this lamented money was not only diverted from the grinding coffers of the workers' subtlest suppressers, but that it was expended in creating and mediating the insight and idealism, the temperance and resourcefulness, the integrity and perseverance, the brotherly fellowship and organising ability, the powers of co-operation and agitation—the qualities, in short, of character and spirit—which alone could lead them from bondage into their Promised Land.
As Mrs.
Sidney Webb's statement suggests, personal character values were at the very heart of the workers' emancipation problem ; and the longmaligned Evangelical Revival did more to transfigure the moral character of the, general populace, than any other movement
British history can record.
1 It is significant and pleasing to note that in later writings, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have shown themselves much more sympathetic toward the Evangelical Revival.
See the new Preface and Appendix to the fourth edition of their Lord Shaftesbury.
Their criticisms have in these pages been focused upon, only because they represent a very large and influential school of thought, and because, in the opinion of the present writer, their attacks have secmed the most plausible as well as the most devastating.
ri 4 Bw
SOME FRUITS
OF FAITH
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
'"'Bur to understand the delight with which the emancipation of the negroes was greeted, the rejoicings which took place on a large scale throughout the entire country ... we must remember that the abolitionist campaign had been first and foremost a Christian movement.
What the liberal bourgeoisie of contemporary France failed to do for the slaves of the West Indies, the Evangelical middle class dared to accomplish in England.
Prorrssor Evi: Hartvy, D.Lirr., A History of the English People (Vol. 1830-1841), p. 85.
"7 peeve that this country (Britain) when it stands before history, will stand, when all else has passed away, not by her fleets and her armies and her commerce, but by the heroic self-denying exertions which she has made to put down this iniquitous traffic."
Lorp RoseBery (See Sir John Harris, A Century of Emancipation, p. 263.)
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
One of the turning events in the history of the world ''—is the designation applied by Professor George Macaulay Trevelyan to the success of the mighty agitation which freed the British
Empire first of the slave-trade and, twenty-six years later, of the monstrous " institution"? of slavery.
Pondering the centrality of that immortal achievement, Trevelyan avers:
"It was only just in time.
If slavery had not been abolished before the great commercial exploitation of the tropics began, Africa would have been turned by the world's capitalists into a slavefarm so enormous that it must have eventually corrupted and destroyed Europe herself, as surely as the world-conquest under the conditions of slavery destroyed the Roman Empire.''!
So emphatic is Dr. Trevelyan on this point that four times in his British History in the Nineteenth Century alone, does he revert to it.2_ If his verdict is correct, it follows that the Evangelical Revival not only saved Britain and the Empire, but actually averted the corruption and destruction of " Europe herself."
The suppression of the traffic and the " institution " which made chattels of multitudes of human beings was the indispensable foundation upon which any social development, worthy of the name, had perforce to be built.
Indeed the arch tragedy of the modern world is that the Industrial Revolution, which with its machine power transformed the face of Western
Europe, took place at a time when the economics of a revived slavery were colouring, if not actually controlling, the commercial and financial life of the most adventurous, inventive and influential peoples.
To assume moreover—as some schools of thought to-day do—that modern slavery became economically unprofitable and simply "' wore itself out," is to fly blandly in the face of Truth.
(i) The Far Flung Boon of British Emancipation On August rst, 1834, the Emancipation Act, passed twelve months previously, came into force throughout the British 1 Trevelyan's British History in the Nineteenth Century, p. 51.
2 Ibid., pp. 51, 116, 254-5, 411.
See also his History of England, p. 599.
332 ENGLAND:
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Empire.
In the West Indies it was a never-to-be-forgotten date, for then three-quarters of a million negroes were acclaimed
"' free men."
In England, for weeks following, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who, in 1823, had moved in Parliament " that the state of slavery is repugnant to the principles of the British
Constitution and of the Christian religion "! and ought to be abolished, waited anxiously for news of the vital day.
Troops and warships had been sent out " in case of disturbance."'
On September roth Buxton was in receipt of a "large pile" of letters from the West Indies ; and deep was his "' gratitude to God" for the intelligence they contained.
Throughout the Colonies, on the evening of July g1st, '"' the Churches and Chapels had been thrown open and the slaves had crowded into them."
As midnight approached, they fell on their knees, awaiting the solemn moment, "all hushed in prayer.'
On the first stroke of twelve from the chapel bells, " they sprang upon their feet, and through every island rang the glad sound of thanksgiving to the Father of all, for the chains were broken and the slaves were free."'?
From the Churches and Chapels in all the British West Indian Islands the emancipated negroes, in company with their beloved missionaries, proceeded directly to the highest hill-tops, "to watch for the sun to rise."
For its first rays would bear to them a sacramental significance, betokening the dawn of a new era to the whole negro race.
On that day of liberation and thanksgiving, "'the Churches and Chapels were thronged from eleven in the morning to eight in the evening"? ; and, according to the reports of Governors, Police Superintendents and magistrates, the conduct of the negroes was marked by order, temperance and "universal reverence."
All prophecies of insurrection and bloodshed, therefore, were falsified ; the despatching of troops and warships had proved but a waste of money.
'The festivities of August 2nd were almost as peaceful and orderly as the thanksgivings of August 1st: the muchmaligned and oft-persecuted Evangelical missionaries, who long had laboured heroically among the slaves, had prepared them for the reception of liberty.
True, in all save two of the islands, four years of semi-purgatorial '' apprenticeship " was to ensue, before the negroes' legal freedom should be complete.
But the patience, fortitude and courage of the negroes, under much cruel and callous provocation from many of their exowners, is a high tribute both to the potential qualities of their e 1 See Hansard (H. of C.), May 15th, 1823.
See Buxton's Life, by his son; also Sir John Harris, A Century of Emancipation, p. 52. f
THE ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY
race and to the Christian principles which had been engendered in their souls.
With sacramental thanksgiving in their Chapels, and with boundless hope on the hill-tops, the freed slaves of the West
Indies greeted the dawn of a new era for their long-tortured race.
But far overseas, in the jungles of unexplored Africa, the darkness comprehended not the Light which had dawned.
Few among the teeming millions of the ex-slaves' brethren in Africa '' understood or regarded"? what had transpired on August 1st, 1834.
'"' Yet it was that continent," Trevelyan rightly insists, "' whose future was most deeply affected.
Before its exploitation by Europe had well begun, it had been decided by the most powerful of its future masters that slavery should not be the relation of the black man to the white.''?
By one of the most humane and disinterested acts in the whole history of nations, the British people, through its Parliament, cheerfully paid £20,000,000 in advance, to the West
Indian planters to secure freedom for British slaves.
Nor was this all the money thus expended: £700,000 was paid by England to Spain and Portugal to gain even their wavering co-operation in suppressing the slave-trade.
The British Navy was enlarged and not a few of its vessels were engaged for years, at no small cost, in police work against slave-smuggling boats, and against the subterfuges of recalcitrant nations which persisted in profiting by the slave traffic.
After 1787, vast voluntary sums were raised throughout the country for the support of the epoch-making propaganda of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade; after 1823 again, vast sums were raised for the support of the Anti-Slavery Society ; and these were but the chief of many organisations of like intent.
The British Parliament, too, came finally to stand on guard against slavery ; British diplomacy was used to thwart it ; the Colonial
Office, under "' King Stephen," became its sworn foe; the numerous British Foreign Missionary Societies attacked it as the antithesis of all vital Christianity ; the better organ of the Press opposed it; the conscience of the nation at length was stirred to its depths, and all that was best in the British people cried out against "the accursed thing."
After Britain had abolished the slave-trade and purchased the emancipation of the Empire's slaves, a hundred ways were found of putting pressure upon France, Holland, Portugal,
1 Dr. W. L. Mathieson's balanced study, British Slavery and Its Abolition, makes it abundantly clear that the influence of the large number of Evangelical missionaries among the West Indian slaves was of cardinal importance to the final success of the British anti-slavery crusade.
See especially chapters iii and iv.
2 Trevelyan, op. cit., pp. 254-55.
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Spain and other slave-holding peoples.
Her command of the seas, her far-flung Empire, her mounting industrial power, her commercial supremacy, her inventive genius, above all her increasing moral stature and her expanding spiritual vision, won her a place of unique leadership among the nations.
She was hated, she was dubbed a Pharisee, she was cursed ; but more than any other great nation in the middle of the nineteenth century, she was worthy of world power; and nations which most maligned her, not only feared her, but secretly respected and envied her.
With Britain's abolition of slavery throughout her Empire, even the vast and deeply-entrenched "' Institution " of American slavery received a staggering blow.
Innumerable were the points of contact by which the victorious Emancipationists in England encouraged their fellow zealots in the United States.
And such encouragement, naturally, was little appreciated by the, slave-owning states.1
In 1853, for instance, two years after Lord Ashley, on his father's death, went to the House of Lords as the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, he headed a strong declaration of encouragement to the American Abolitionists.
By way of retort, a Southern newspaper, in the sublimity of its ignorance, burst forth : '' Who is this Earl of Shaftesbury ? Some unknown lordling ; one of your modern philanthropists suddenly started up to take part in a passing agitation.
It is a pity he does not look at home.
Where was he when Lord Ashley was so nobly fighting for the Factory Bill, and pleading the cause of the English slave?
We never even heard the name of this Lord Shaftesbury then.''?
(ii) Modern Slavery and the Forces Arrayed Against It The establishment of Colonial Slavery in Christendom, centuries after the slow and painful eradication of the deeplyrooted remnants of '' Classical slavery," represents the most tragic and monstrous aberration in the annals of the modern world.
At the very time when all the " liberated " intelligentsia of Europe were satirising the ecclesiastical tyranny of the '"' Dark
Ages" and glorifying the "' liberal culture" of the old Classic World—which economically was based squarely on slavery— the dragon's teeth of a new and awful tyranny were being sown.
With the dawning of the Modern World, ruthless * With the gradual awakening of the Social Conscience in England, it was increasingly recognised that she was originally responsible for the planting of American slavery in Colonial days, and therefore now was el bound to encourage the Abolitionists within the Republic to eradicate the curse.
Hodder's Shaftesbury, II, p. 439; Bready's Shaftesbury, Da4iae
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Nationalism was raising its head'; the statecraft of Machiavelli was guilefully at work in the counsel chambers of Statesmen and Kings ; the iconoclasm of the new and intoxicating " freedom " was subverting all Christian authority.
The flamboyant eulogy of pagan literature, philosophy and institutions, was creating an intellectual and political atmosphere highly favourable to the enslavement of weak and defenceless peoples.
It was no accident that the period of the Renaissance coincided with the introduction of modern slavery ; and far more than is generally recognised, must the licence and paganism of the Renaissance era be held accountable for encouraging the advent of the blackest tragedy which has befallen the modern world
—a tragedy which was to prove the nursing mother of a vast retinue of social and industrial ills.1
In passing it should be noted that, at the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great, in his struggle against the continuance of " ancient slavery,"' had declared that '' inasmuch as the Redeemer of men had taken upon himself Humanity, to restore us to liberty, so it becomes us to restore those men whom nature had made free, but the law of nations had made slaves, to their natural condition—namely, liberty."?
Moreover, when the gruesome institution of '' modern slavery " was beginning to manifest itself, Pope Leo X (1513-22) protested in a bull that, "not only the Christian religion, but nature herself, cried out against a system of slavery.''?
If Britain was the last of the great maritime powers of Christendom officially to sanction and organise the slave-trade, 4 after the Asiento concession of 1713 she became by far the most deeply involved in its guilt.
Nevertheless she it was who, under the inspiration of a mighty spiritual baptism, was to set in motion moral and humanitarian forces which finally would break the backbone of modern slavery. When English slavetrading began with Hawkins, in Elizabeth's reign, it was in the nature of a sporadic and semi-piratical adventure.
But under Charles I chartered African trading companies began to be formed ; and soon royal households, as well as commercial magnates, became vigorous propagators of this lucrative traffic in human blood.
For almost two centuries following the formation of the first African company, Britain's association with the slave-trade and slavery was to cast a contaminating influence
1 See articles on '' Slavery " in Ency. Brit., Ency. of Rel. and Ethics, and Cath. Ency.; also articles on "' Renaissance."
2 See C. L. Brace's Gesta Christi (seventh edition), p. 229.
3 Ency. of Rel. and Ethics ('' Slavery "').
; 4 Ancient slavery and slave-trading has never been suppressed in the Mohammedan world.
In Christendom it had been almost eradicated by the end of the tenth century, though the system of serfdom remained.
336 ENGLAND:
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over the whole economic and social fabric of the nation's life.
The honour of the initial corporate stand against slavery, both in England and in America, must of course go to the Quakers.
Even in the seventeenth century they began to protest against '' this negation of Christianity.""
In 1724, they passed a resolution condemning both the slave-trade and slavery :
"in 1758, in step with their: brothers in Pennsylvania, they proceeded to warn, and in 1761 to disown, all Friends who continued to participate in the Trade."
Richard Baxter, the Puritan, too, in his Christian Directory, had pronounced "' slavepirates"? the ''common enemies of mankind."
Defoe, the Nonconformist, both in verse and prose, had taken up the cudgels.
Godwyn, an Anglican clergyman, who had lived in Barbados, had predicted vengeance upon the " inhuman authors' of slavery; while in 1766 the redoubtable Bishop Warburton was to stigmatise from the pulpit " the infamous traffic."
Such isolated and occasional protests, however, represented but so many voices crying in the wilderness.
Britain was profiting tremendously from the slave-trade ; enormous and powerful vested interests were being established ; and so far, the conscience of the nation had scarcely been touched.
Indeed the mighty spiritual Revival which already was spreading quietly over the Kingdom, and which finally was to achieve the miracle of abolishing—without revolution or bloodshed— both the British slave-trade and British slavery, was not yet really awakened either to the nature and proportions of modern slavery, or to the moral and spiritual issues involved.
At this stage, early in 1772, Wesley noted in his Journal, that he had just read "a very different book," by an " honest
Quaker," depicting "' that execrable sum of all the villainies "
—the Slave Trade.
The book was by Anthony Benezet, and its effect on Wesley was overpowering.
'This British slavetrade, the peerless evangelist concluded, '' infinitely exceeded in every instance of barbarity what Christian slaves suffer in Mohammedan countries."?
With characteristic intensity Wesley now began to accumulate all the information he could, both concerning the slave-trade and slavery. Two years later (1774),
» appeared his Thoughts Upon Slavery.
That booklet proved to be perhaps the most far-reaching treatise ever written against slavery.
Wesley already was much the most beloved and influential religious leader in the world of that day. His own eyes had been opened with a shock by Benezet, and later investigations but increased his revulsion.
His Thoughts upon Slavery ?R. Coupland, Wilberforce, p. 77.
* See entry for February 12th, 1772.
No one who has pondered Wesley's Journal can fail to note his numerous contacts with Quakers.
THE ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY
was the Revival's Manifesto, declaring spiritual warfare against the '"'execrable sum of all the villainies.'
It immediately committed the thousands of his followers to active and sacrificial effort in the '"' holy cause."
But more: it was a trumpet call to every professing Christian, yea, toeverylover ofman.
Dared any honourable person stand neutral while Freedom, Justice, Mercy and Truth were being trampled under foot, for blood-stained gain?
Meet it was, moreover, that on this great issue the whole Evangelical Revival should have been influenced by the teaching and example of the Friends.
When, by the fifth decade of the eighteenth century, the spiritual power of the Revival began to manifest itself in every quarter of the realm, the Quakers, like the other Nonconformist denominations, were a dwindling body struggling desperately for life in the asphyxiating atmosphere of Deism ; but their remnant was vital.
And like the other Nonconformist bodies, they, too, began to experience new life, hope and vitality from the new faith which the Revival was shedding abroad, while, true to their peculiar genius for Christian Friendship, they expended their new-found power to the most practical ends.
Remarkable affinities indeed existed between the Revival and Quakerism.
Consecrated Jay leadership, including that of preaching, teaching and spiritual supervision, was at the heart of both.
Both gave a pronounced place to the initiative and peculiar gifts of women, opening up for them special avenues of leadership and service.
Both placed the strongest emphasis on Christian peace and forbearance, on Christian neighbourliness and goodwill ; and both insisted that Christian faith must always be tested by its ability to create the fruits of love.
Both, moreover, felt that their ultimate citizenship was in Heaven; yet both believed that Heaven could only be reached by striving faithfully to establish the Kingdom of God on earth.
But the Evangelical Revival, more than Quakerism, more than any branch of Puritanism, more indeed than any other religious movement the English-speaking world has yet known, emphasised the ' equal and priceless value" before God of "every immortal soul." The full implications of this central doctrine were not at first wholly apparent.
But from the beginning the movement entertained hope for the hopeless ; it proclaimed the sanctity of the humblest serviceable labour; it was possessed of a crusading missionary enthusiasm, and proclaiming the World as its parish," it could not discriminate against any colour or race among its parishioners.
When once the slavery question then was squarely raised, and fairly faced, the Revival could do none other than proclaim the negro a child of God, a brother-man, an immortal soul " for whom Christ a4
338 ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
died," that he might be free. The slave therefore was as worthy of Evangelical effort as any potentate or prince.
'' The Clapham Sect? was symbolic of something entirely new in English social and public life.
It represented a "lay brotherhood " of highly talented and privileged men who consecrated wealth, power and time to the things of the Kingdom of God ;! it became the nerve-centre of the epic movement against slavery ; it was a typical child of the far-reaching Evangelical Revival.
(iii) Abolitionists and Emancipationists The abolition of the British slave-trade in which for many years more than two hundred English ships were constantly engaged, was the first essential objective in the valiant and longprotracted struggle against modern slavery.
The progressive stages which led to the Abolition Act of 1807 are too well known even to be outlined here.
To recall but the names of the sacrificial leaders who through more than two decades bore the heat and burden of the campaign is itself suggestive.
As long as free men pay tribute to the champions of liberty, the names of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, of Granville
Sharp and Zachary Macaulay, of Henry Thornton and James Stephen, of Lord Teignmouth and Charles Grant, of John
Newton and William Cowper, of James Ramsay and Lady Middleton, of Hannah More and John Venn, stand assured of fame.
All derived their initial inspiration and their sustaining perseverance in the Abolition struggle from their Faith ;. most of them were '"' members" of the " Clapham Sect': all were within the fellowship of the Evangelical Movement.
From Wesley's preachers and leaders they derived the fullest support ; the Quakers quietly, but persistently, afforded them an arm of strength ; other Nonconformist bodies rallied increasingly to "this Christian Cause'? ; nevertheless most prelates of the State Church remained cold till victory was assured, while some, like the rigid Bishop Phillpotts, who, through the famous Gorham
Case was to strive doggedly to kill all Evangelicalism within "the Church,"? would actually remain slave-owners till "Emancipation " was finally forced upon them.®
1 See Sir James Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.
For Phillpotts and the Gorham Case, see Balleine's Evangelical Party, Pp. 222-7.
Bishop Phillpotts (Exeter) who owned 665 West Indian slaves, received from the Compensation Fund "about £11,000."
See Parliamentary Papers, 1837-8, Vol. XLIII, and Mathieson's British Slaver nDee 27s
(note).
The old S.P.G., too, was a slave owner on two West Indian estates.
It admitted to the use of the " driving whip " on its property as late as 1829.
See Sir J. Harris, A Century of Emancipation, p. 10, and Mathieson, op. cit., p. 216.
Dies
CABO LITTON
OF SLAVERY
A group of gifted Humanitarian Rationalists, too, rendered memorable aid in the work of abolishing the slave trade.
Pitt, in his early days, under Wilberforce's influence, proffered the cause yeoman's service ; though in later days, under Dundas's impact, his enthusiasm waned.
The Abolition question was specially upon Fox's heart when he died.
Grenville, as head of the Government, "in consultation with Wilberforce,''! introduced the final and successful Bill through the House of Lords.
To Sir Samuel Romilly's big heart this question was ever dear; while both Bentham and Gibbon rendered the movement no mean support.
But most Humanitarian Rationalists were under no delusion as to who initiated, organised, financed, sustained and really carried to victory, the epochmaking agitation against the slave-trade.
Jeremy Bentham, in this connection, once exclaimed:
'If to be an anti-slavist is to be a saint, saintship for me.
I ama saint!"* Again, Romilly's noble tribute to Wilberforce on that triumphant night in the House of Commons (February 23rd, 1807), when the Abolition
Bill was carried to victory, is applicable in no small degree to the untiring host of Christian zealots 'who upheld his hands :
"When I look," said Romilly, '' to the man at the head of the French monarchy, surrounded as he is with all the pomp of power and all the pride of victory, distributing kingdoms to his family and principalities to his followers, seeming when he sits upon his throne to have reached the summit of human ambition and the pinnacle of earthly happiness—and when I follow that man into his closet or to his bed, and consider the pangs with which his solitude must be tortured and his repose banished, by the recollection of the blood he has spilled and the oppressions he has committed—and when I compare with those pangs of remorse the feelings which must accompany my honourable friend from this House to his home, after the vote of this night shall have confirmed the object of his humane and unceasing labours ; when he retires into the bosom of his happy and delighted family, when he lays himself down on his bed, reflecting on the innumerable voices that would be raised in every quarter of the world to bless him, how much more pure and perfect felicity must he enjoy, in the consciousness of having preserved so many millions of his fellowcreatures.
2). .* 1 Coupland's Wilberforce, p. 336.
2 Halévy's English People in 1815, p. 510 (note) ; also Bentham's Works (Bowring edition), Vol. X, p. 508.
3 Romilly, nevertheless, was one of the many Englishmen who had greeted the dawn of the French Revolution with exuberant joy.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
In the valiant struggle leading to the Emancipation Act of 1833, the mantle of Wilberforce was cast directly upon the shoulders of that intrepid Evangelical Whig, Thomas Fowell
Buxton.
During the concluding ten years of this later crusade the conflict was herculean, but the final passage of the Emancipation Act was certainly accelerated by the enactment of the First
Reform Bill in the preceding year, which at one stroke had cut away the Rotten Boroughs—the special Parliamentary preserves of the slave-owning interests.
This preliminary victory had been won chiefly by Radical Whigs, but its deeper cause was the rapid creation of the great Middle Class of England ; and here again the Evangelical Revival had been mightily at work, for more than any other force that purging spiritual baptism had begotten or nurtured the education, the sobriety, the character, the self-discipline, the self-expression and the self-help which, working together with the new economic opportunities afforded by the Industrial Revolution, produced the sturdy, hard-working and capable Middle Class, henceforth
—despite all later abuse—to prove the backbone of Britain.
In preparing the way for the onslaught on the Rotten Boroughs and the success of the greatly extended franchise, the influence of the Revival was incalculable.
The vanguard roll-call in the struggle against slavery itself, is as suggestive as that against the slave-trade.
No single band of Buxton's supporters was more important than the heroic company of West Indian missionaries, all of whom were Evangelicals and half of whom were Methodists.t_
Richard Watson, Secretary of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, proved to the cause a tower of strength.
The indomitable William Knibb, who in common with a dozen of his fellow Baptist missionaries had his Church burned to the ground and his life threatened by infuriated planters, afforded titanic service both in the West
Indies and in England.
John Smith, a courageous Congregational missionary, was done to death for his heroism in the negroes' behalf; while Austin, the Anglican "' chaplain to the garrison at Georgetown," was hounded from the colony bécause he dared to give evidence in Smith's support.
It is memorable too that Sir James Stephen, Lord Glenelg, Dr. Lushington, Sir James Mackintosh, Joseph Sturge and the famous Governors,
Lord Sligo and Sir Lionel Smith, worked under the strongest compulsions of Evangelical religion ; while of the multitude of Petitions sent to Parliament nearly all were initiated by " the Saints," and most of the hundreds of thousands of signatures came from co-operating Evangelicals—Methodist, Noncon1 See Mathieson, op. cit., p. 111 ; Hansard (1823), IX, p. 315; and Edwards's Wesley, pp. 126-7.
THE ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY
formist and Anglican.
In Parliament, however, Emancipation owed no small debt to the brilliance of Brougham, the radical, and the eloquence of O'Connell, the Catholic.1
The boiling fulminations poured on the heads of the antislavery leaders by many of their contemporaries, make to-day strange reading for Anglo-Saxon people.
"I was bred in the good old school,' wrote Lord Nelson from the Victory, '' and taught to appreciate the value of our West Indian possessions, and neither in.the field nor the Senate shall their just rights be infringed, while I have an arm to fight in their defence, or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies."?
James Boswell, so full of eulogy for Dr. Johnson, addressed the following lines to Wilberforce :
Go, W- , with narrow skull, Go home and preach away at Hull.
No longer to the Senate cackle In strains that suit the tabernacle ; I hate your little wittling sneer, Your pert and self-sufficient leer.
Mischief to trade sits on your lip, Insects will gnaw the noblest ship.
Go, W- , begone, for shame, Thou dwarf with big resounding name.'* When men like Nelson and Boswell could sink to such vituperation, it is scarcely surprising that the _hireling pamphleteers of the '' West Indian Interest' fumed against the ' Pestilent doctrines of those hot-brained fanatics who, under the vile pretence of philanthropy and zeal for the interests of suffering humanity, preach up rebellion and murder to the contented and orderly negroes in our territories."'*
Cobbett's virulence against Wilberforce, his blind but sustained fury against the Methodists and Evangelicals as "the vilest crew
God ever suffered to infest the earth," his representation of the West Indian slaves as "fat and lazy" and "laughing from morning till night," and of their owners as "men as gentle, as generous and as good as ever breathed," together with his direct encouragement of the burning and demolition of West
Indian " conventicles,'' we have previously suggested.® Cobbett certainly would not have indulged all this vituperation had it not helped to sell his Political Register and his Twopenny Trash.
1The volumes of the Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, especially from 1831 to 1834, are highly illuminating on the whole Emancipation question.
2 Lady Knutsford's Life of Zachary Macaulay, p. 258.
3 Quoted in "A Lesson from History " (New Outlook, September 6th, 1933).
4 Sir John Harris, op. cit., p. 4.
5 Mathieson, op. cit., p. 137.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
He, perhaps above all others, was responsible for broadcasting the delusion that the state of the workers in England had nothing whatever to do with the slave-trade or colonial slavery.
In 1832, nevertheless, when victory was certain, '' he gratified his political hatred'?! by temporarily joining the Emancipationists and, as though bereft of memory, proceeded to state that :
"these slaves are in general the property of the English boroughmongers .
. and that the fruit of the labour of these slaves abroad, has long been converted into the means of making us slaves at home."'* In that moment of unguarded insight, Cobbett, though denying the settled policy of his life, gave expression to a poignant truth.
(iv) America's Emancipation Problem The paradoxes and difficulties associated with the overthrow of American slavery, were both numerous and involved.
The "Institution" of slavery in the Southern States had been established under British rule, and for generations it had been fed by the British slave-trade.
Washington, commander of *" the armies of Liberty " and " Father of his Country," was a Southern planter and slave-owner ; while the traditions and myths which gradually entwined themselves around his name, tended unfortunately to attach enhanced respectability to the Institution of slavery.
The sacrosanct American Constitution, moreover, by its ample latent concession to the slave-owning
States, became itself a stumbling block to Emancipation, many good and godly citizens believing that this solemn instrument of Union had guaranteed the foundation of slavery, in all States where previously it existed.
Hence to have joined direct issue with the slave interest on this question would, they feared, have threatened the solidarity of the nation: and the astute political leaders of the " Confederate States" were not slow to exploit such fears.
Indeed, for long the Southern politicians: wielded a quite disproportionate power in formulating the national policy of the young republic.
Not a few of the slave-owners were men of leisure, social prestige and substantial wealth ; they were skilled in the subtleties and casuistries of partisan politics and diplomacy; and they finally represented slave property valued at " over two thousand millions of doliars."?*
The power attending this enormous wealth, accordingly, was colossal.
Prominent statesmen, prior to Lincoln, shrank from open combat with the greatest vested interest in the realm.
So pervasive, 1 See Halévy, op. cit. (1830-41), p. 82.
* Political Register, August 4th, 1832.
% Brace's Gesta Christi, p. 378.
RE SAE OL PT VON
Si AV ERY
343, in truth, was its pressure that-it divided even great religious bodies, compelling them to temporise or to compromise.
Not till the cupidity of the slave interests began to force "' the Institution'? upon new and free-labour territories, did many of the friends of freedom realise that their hands at last were unbound ; for then only was it wholly apparent, that their
Charter of Liberty " was being wantonly prostituted into an engine of slavery.
Wesley's direct influence in America furthermore, particularly in heated political circles, was long curtailed and discounted because of the outspoken and unflattering character of his Calm
Address to Our American Colonies on the outbreak of revolution.
He therein had revealed himself as too much of an Englishman to suit the American mood, and his Thoughts Upon Slavery never received a national hearing in the United States, as it did in England.
Again, the persistent English crusade against slavery was all too easily lampooned in the eyes of innumerable Americans, because England long was remembered by them as their old overlord and oppressor.
The British anti-slavery campaign, consequently, was decried as guileful humanity-mongering, a mere cloak with which to cover " child slavery" in English factories ; a club with which first to browbeat the "' defenceless "'
West Indian planters and then to force British Imperial policy upon weaker peoples, outside the Empire.
And such Englishmen as Cobbett, furnished the American slave interests with abundant grist for this busy mill.
The American expression of the Evangelical Revival, moreover, though finally it was to affect profoundly the whole republic's life and destiny, was, on the whole, far more individualistic in character, than was the case in England.
True, the heroic labours of such tireless Methodist pioneers as Asbury and Coke were to leave an abiding concern for righteousness within countless souls throughout the land ; true, too, in the United States as in Britain, the Revival kindled spiritual fires which profoundly influenced all Protestantism, including Unitarianism.
But this spiritual fervour was commonly far too denominational in expression, and the rampant demon of American slavery could never be laid low, save by the cooperative endeavour of all the moral and spiritual forces within the realm.
It was unfortunate that the Evangelical Revival in America was long in producing anything comparable to the moral, spiritual and social leadership afforded in England, on a non-party and interdenominational platform by the " Clapham Sect."
The deplorable fact, too, that Whitefield had owned slaves for the running of his Georgia Orphanage proved a dire tragedy to the abolitionist cause.
It afforded an argument that
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
a man might be a veritable prince of God, and yet a slaveowner: and the argument was worked to the full.
Slave planters did not bother to explain that Whitefield had died in 1770, before the ghastly truth about the slave trade and slavery was generally known, and before the social conscience of the Revival had yet been quickened against it. They conveniently forgot that as early as 1739 he had attacked certain inhumanities which he had learned of the slave trade,! that he was a bitter foe of all harsh treatment of slaves and an advocate of their religious education, and that his orphanage slaves were both given religious instruction and treated as servant-members of a large Christian household.
Whitefield, in brief, had held the popular delusion that the savage natives of Africa would profit finally by being brought within the influence of Christian lands, wherein ultimately they would purchase their freedom by special faithfulness.
He did not reckon with a central fact of history, that slavery, by its very nature, tends spiritually to enslave the enslavers.
Such considerations, however, meant nothing to the American slave interests.
Enough that Whitefield, the revered evangelist, had owned slaves for the running of a great Christian philanthropy.
The " Institution" of slavery, therefore, they argued, was indubitably both Christian and humane.
Nevertheless, despite all the paradoxes, difficulties and disappointments confronting American Abolitionists, the constant and tireless pressure of the unwarped Christian conscience finally prevailed ; for increasingly it was felt by truly religious people that where the Spirit of Christ is, there must be outward and visible, as well as inward and invisible, Liberty.
In 1823 for instance, when the slave interests were trying to foist their "' Institution "' on Illinois, '' at one meeting of the Friends of Freedom in St. Clair County, more than thirty preachers of the Gospel attended and opposed the introduction of slavery into the State."?
" The pulpit," says a contemporary authority, 'thundered anathemas against the introduction of slavery.
The religious community coupled freedom and Christianity together, which was one of the most powerful levers used in the contest."
Indeed, "the clergy of Illinois," says the biographer of Governor Coles, '' were almost without exception opposed to the Convention (which favoured the making it a Slave State)," and they "exerted great influence in securing
the rejection at the polls."'8
1 See Tyerman's Whitefield, Vol. II, p. 132; Coupland's Wilberforce, p. 77.
The Political State, in 1739, published letters from Whitefield attacking cruelties too commonly inflicted upon slaves.
2 Washburne's Governor Coles, p. 136.
3 Jbid., p. 171.
THE
ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY
It was shortly after his return from the first of his three visits to England, that William Lloyd Garrison, following the British
Evangelical example, founded in 1833 the American AntiSlavery Society.
And if, in the ardour of his righteous crusade, he was at times to grow weary of ecclesiastical prudence, caution and compromise, there can be no doubt that it was a simple
Evangelical faith in Christ which upheld and sustained him.
call upon the spirits of the just made perfect in heaven," cried Garrison in 1832, '' upon all who have experienced the love of God in their souls here below, upon the Christian converts in India and the isles of the sea, to sustain one in the assertion that there is power enough in the religion of Jesus Christ to melt down the most stubborn prejudices, to overthrow the highest wall of partition, to break the strongest caste, to improve and elevate the most degraded, and to equalise all its recipients."*
Garrison's appeal is here more explicitly directed to Christians, than was Wesley's appeal in his Thoughts Upon Slavery fiftyeight years earlier ; and the reason for this, marks a pronounced
Christian advance.
Again, when we come to the execrable Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the "tremendous defiance" of that great liberal Evangelical preacher of Plymouth Congregational
Church, Brooklyn, is suggestive of the rising tide of righteous wrath which everywhere, outside the slave-ridden areas, was possessing the mind of American Evangelical Protestantism.?
"But as for those provisions," protested Henry Ward Beecher, '' which concern aid to fugitives—may God do so to us, yea, and more also, if we do not spurn them as we would any other mandate of Satan!
If, in God's Providence, fugitives ask bread or shelter, raiment or conveyance at my hands, my own children shall lack bread ere they ; my own flesh shall sting with cold ere they shall lack clothing ; and whatsoever defence I would put forth for my own children, that shall these poor, despised, persecuted creatures have at my hands and upon the road.
The man who would do otherwise, who would obey this law to the peril of his soul and the loss of his manhood, were he brother, son or father, shall never pollute my hand with grasp of hideous friendship, nor cast his swarthy shadow across my threshold.''
1 Johnson's Life of W. L. Garrison, p. 106.
2 Unitarian ministers, too, like Channing, played an important part in the American struggle for emancipation.
But most of them, at this time were as Evangelical in spirit, as those who professed a Trinitarian creed.
3 See Metaphors, Similies and other Characteristic Sayings of H. W. Beecher, p. 10.
346 ENGLAND: BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
Little wonder that Lincoln pondered Beecher's sermons !
And what need be said more?
That most vitally effective of all novels, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published serially in 1851, was no "' art for art's sake " production: rather was it a creative Evangelical treatise exposing the total incompatibility of slavery and Christianity.
The same may be said of Whittier's numerous and effective anti-slavery poems : what Cowper was to the negroes' cause, in England, that, later, was Whittier to the negroes' cause,.in America.
As for Abraham Lincoln, there is no understanding his life apart from the practical values of vital Christianity which the Evangelical Awakening had so largely revived and diffused throughout the English-speaking world.
The first influences which moulded his boyish mind, were his mother's reverent Scripture reading and her simple Evangelical piety, together with the occasional ministrations of Methodist and Baptist itinerant preachers, which he never failed to attend, despite the mud, slush or snow of frontier trails, through which so often he had to trudge.
The Bible, throughout life, remained to Lincoln "the Book of Books.'
Always, was it on his Presidential desk ; daily, he perused its pages ; his spiritual outlook was formed and coloured by it ; his great heart was warmed by its prophetic utterance ; his tender human sympathies were kindled at its sacred fires : and who would deny that the clear, tense, glowing imagery of his trenchant speech, derived from this intimacy with Holy Writ?
Lincoln was as much a product of the Revival's impact in America, as was Wilberforce of its impact in England.
Not yet, is slavery completely banished from the face of the earth.
The "Mui Tsai" system in China, under guise of "adoption," still holds in its toiis some two million Chinese girls, as domestic and often as sexual slaves.1
Prior to the Italian subjection of Abyssinia, on the disinterested evidence of the most trustworthy witnesses, nearly a fifth of her 10,000,000 inhabitants were undisguised and saleable slaves.
Even apologists of the late Abyssinian Empire, admitted the existence of "about a_ million" slaves—Abyssinians enthralled by Abyssinians.?
In Arabia, slavery survives as '"' a normal social institution," not less than a tenth of her 7,000,000 inhabitants being thoroughgoing slaves, while in Mekka, her holy city,
For much information on '"' Mui T'sai," see issues of Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines' Friend (quarterly), 1935-8; also Harris, op. cit.,
See Max Grihl, The Citadel of Ethiopa (1932); Sir Arnold Hodson, Where Lion Reign.
THE ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY
human chattels are actually "displayed for sale.'
Liberia, founded in 1847 as a free African Republic for freed negroes, is another culprit state.
Though only negroes vote, Liberia, as the 1931 International Commission of Inquiry under the League of Nations proves, has degenerated into a land exercising a slave economy.?
Again, the peonage system of the more backward republics of South America, under cover of " labour for debt,"? is but one remove from positive slavery, the peon being subjected. to abysmal ignorance and a brutish existence, as well as being bought and sold with the land on which he toils. *
Nevertheless, despite these revolting facts, the truth remains that Britain's Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807 and her
Emancipation Act of 1833, together with Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation of January ist, 1863, and the thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1865), outlawing all slavery within the Union, forecast the end of modern slavery.
With these epochal humanitarian victories, the final doom of the " dehumanising institution' was sealed ; for they proved both the foundation and the Magna Charta of innumerable liberating movements.
Yet, the sorry fact that far into the twentieth century this mocking monster can still rear its head and show its poisoned fangs, betokens the tragic tenacity of man's inhumanity to man; it demonstrates challengingly that constant vigilance is the price of progress.
That vigilance, however, is now increasingly being organised on a world scale such as earlier generations, for lack of adequate communications, found impossible.
All the great missionary organisations of Christendom, Protestant and Catholic, are to-day steadfastly set against slavery.
The British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, co-operating with like organisations in other lands, stands constantly on guard against the exploitation of defenceless races and peoples.
While, however incomplete and maladjusted has proven the membership and working of the League of Nations, and however lamentable in many respects have been its practical failures, its International
Labour Office, nevertheless, has done, and is doing, excellent work in striving to rally the conscience of all civilised peoples against the surviving remnant of slavery.
Indeed, if Faith remains among men, and the rapidly increasing means of modern communication can be so consecrated as to create a really intelligent public opinion, is it too much to hope that peacefully, by international effort, the last lingering remnants of this cardinal social plague shall speedily be uprooted from the earth?
1 See E. Rutter, Holy Cities of Arabia; Harris, p. 254.
2 Besides the League's Report, see Sir Harry Johnston, Liberia.
8 For a general survey of surviving slavery, see Lady Simon, Slavery.
A ude VON yeaa tne Ge A @ ?
GHAPTER XIX
THE FOUNDATIONS OF POPULAR EDUCATION
A STRIKING tribute to the sterling qualities of selfhelp and religious earnestness which were so characteristic of the Early Victorian period
Encyclopedia Britannica, ** Education (England) "' concerning the Newcastle Commission's Report on the State of Popular Education in England (1861).
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GHAPTER xix
THE FOUNDATIONS OF POPULAR EDUCATION
As long as the slave trade and slavery were permitted to flourish and expand, so long all efforts for social reform in other spheres were doomed to abortiveness.
Wesley had not overstated the case when he pronounced slavery, '' the execrable sum of all the villainies !"*.
By reducing men and women to marketable chattels, it cheapened all human life ; by its system of forced and unpaid labour under the lash, it vulgarised and degraded all labour ; by offering fortunes to the unscrupulous, it con_taminated all economic and financial relationships; by its monopoly purchase of Rotten Boroughs, it multiplied political bribery and corruption ; by its crucifixion of the basic decencies of civilised society, it tended both persistently and consistently to poison the milk of human kindness, and even to dehumanise human nature.
This degradation by '"' Christian '' peoples of millions of their fellow-humans, had a baneful and tragic reflex on every aspect of the social and industrial structure.
To strive, therefore, for any measure of creative social reform while leaving the slave trade and slavery to mock at all the sanctities of a Christian society, was simply to beat the air.
Slavery affected the social problem per totum.
So manifold and so subtle, moreover, were its impacts that nothing save a regenerated social conscience could challenge its domain: and the regenerated social conscience, in turn, waited upon the Baptism of Fire which gave it birth.
But when once the spiritual renewal had come, and slavery finally began to be adjudged the diabolical perversion it was, then the marks of the lesser thraldoms, which it bred or fed, were seen in perspective : and man, independent of colour, race or tongue, being now increasingly recognised as an immortal soul, the humanitarian cause began gradually to advance on many fronts, including that of popular
© education.
(i) Lll-omened Backgrounds In the late fifteenth century, as we have seen, under the *' free morality '' of the Renaissance influence, modern slavery began to establish itself within the outskirts of Christendom :
1 See chapter vi (i).
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BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
' in the early eighteenth century, under the "naturalism" of Deistic Rationalism, the slave traffic leapt to such proportions that it diseased the very vitals of Christendom.
During this latter period, English popular education sank to its nadir, and the reasons will now be obvious.
The Anti-Puritan purge and the expulsion of Non-Jurors had muzzled both Puritan and Old Catholic culture.
Roman Catholicism was held at bay.
And the much-vaunted " natural philosophy "' of Deism resolved itself chiefly into shibboleths and pretty prattle, without sincerity or soul.
Nepotism became as dominant within the Church as in politics, and was there more easily disguised.
The new gospel of '" Natural Rights," being emphasised apart from " natural duties," degenerated rapidly into a cloak for unnatural cupidity and lust.
The curse of sinecures and pluralities, with their accompanying non-residence, honeycombed the whole
National ecclesiastical system.
Parish livings, like rotten boroughs, were advertised for sale.
The '" higher " clergy were the worst pluralists, and many of the prelates were worldlings.
The Church, while boasting that it was conquering Deism ' with its own weapons " and " on its own ground," had become almost as deistic as the Deists.
Its distinctively Christian message had been rationalised into a frigid paganism : it had become a choice preserve of the ruling caste, a stern and unbending guardian of the staius quo.
This State Church, indeed, was the most extensive, the most jealous and the most assuming of all the privileged " chartered companies "' of the eighteenth century ; yet in its hand was the key to the problem of popular education throughout the nation.
Is it surprising, then, that the era of Deistic religion and slavetrade economics, saw the morality and culture of the common people of England sink to its lowest ebb ?
Before the impact of the Evangelical Revival began to make itself nationally felt, the only vehicles for the general education of the populace were charity schools, privately endowed schools, dames' schools and a few struggling institutions run by Nonconformists to save their faith and independence from utter extinction.
All alike, suffered from the soul-paralysis of the prevailing Zeitgeist.
The Charity Schools were designed for only the poorest of the poor.
They were under the control of the Church and were staffed generally by half-starved and half-illiterate teachers.
'Their curriculum was simple reading and ciphering (which few youngsters mastered), the unintelligible droning of the Catechism by heart, and stereotyped lessons on the " docility " and "' deportment "' of the poor before "their betters."
Though numbered in hundreds and distributed in different parts of the land, their total annual income
SOME GREAT CHRISTIAN LABOUR LEADERS
Thomas Burt Joseph Arch Keir Hardie Ramsay MacDonald Arthur Henderson
'FOUNDATIONS
OF POPULAR EDUCATION
was less than that of certain single hierarchical families who had mastered the then current art of ecclesiastical nepotism.
Endowed schools commonly fell easy prey to sinecure hunters, who pocketed the endowments and let the schools degenerate into perversions of their true intent.t| Dames' Schools were private ventures conducted in private houses, sometimes by spinsters in genteel poverty, but more often in poverty not genteel.
The few surviving Nonconformist schools struggled valiantly to preserve some standard of education and of faith, but they had to row desperately against the stream and were losing heart.
The rich and privileged, on the other hand, educated their children either by private tutors at home or at one of the great boarding institutions known as '"' Public Schools,'' which perhaps were the most exclusively '' private' on the face of the earth.?
To understand the real foundations of England's popular educational system, no less than six separate and distinct stages of advance must be clearly defined.
These are represented by the Sunday School movement, the Royal Lancastrian Institution which developed into the British and Foreign School Society, the National School Society, the Factory Schools, the Ragged
School Union, and finally the famous Board School Act of 1870 which, supplemented by the Acts of 1876 and 1880, established universal and compulsory education throughout the land.
To the brief exploration, therefore, of these successive pioneering endeavours, we needs must turn.
(ii) The Initial Advance "The Sunday schools' established by Mr.
Raikes of Gloucester," says John Richard Green, '' were the beginnings of popular education."?
Robert Raikes's Gloucester Sunday school, however, established in 1780 with the help of Rev.
Thomas Stock, was not the first experiment in the education of neglected children on Sundays.
Hannah Ball, eleven years previously, with Wesley's backing, had established a flourishing
Sunday school in conjunction with her day school in High Wycombe, and Silas Told, the life friend of criminals, had on Sundays long taught poor children at Wesley's Foundery, London, to read the Bible.
Nor had either of them established a precedent.
Isolated enthusiasts, both Catholic and Protestant, in different lands, had from time to time instructed needy
1 See Yohnson's England, Vol. I (introductory chapter).
2 The above conditions do not apply to Scotland, where since 1696 all but universal popular education had prevailed.
8 Short History of the English People, p. 740.
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BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
children on Sundays.
Yet Raikes is an historic character.
When he opened his Gloucester Sunday school, the Evangelical Revival had already created an atmosphere favourable to the rapid national reception of the educational enthusiasm that warmed his own heart.
Being a prominent newspaper proprietor, moreover, and a man of influence, Raikes, by the success of his scheme, attracted public attention; and backed not only by the weight of Wesley's organisation, but also by the mighty influence of Wesley's voice and pen,? the Sunday
School Movement, which at first taught both reading and writing as well as Bible knowledge, was soon on the high road to national and even international significance.?
Raikes's first teachers were paid ; but the Evangelical Revival quickly embracing the whole Sunday school plan, zealous voluntary teachers were soon forthcoming, and the amazing development of the Sunday school system affords one of the most wholesome and creative romances in the whole history of education.
As early as 1784 Wesley reports that he finds these schools springing up "' wherever he goes," and certainly his much coming and going was to them a source of encouragement and strength.
In 1785 the London Society for the Establishment of Sunday Schools was formed, with the famous philanthropists,
Henry Thornton and Jonas Hanway, on its managing committee ; while in 1803, the movement being already nation wide, a Sunday School Union was created for the whole of England.
Meantime, so well had the soil been prepared, that by 1786 no less than 200,000 English children were regularly attending
Sunday schools.
the movement was planted in America.
In 1831, when Lord Shaftesbury unveiled a statue to Raikes, it was claimed that already in Great Britain alone
1,250,000 children were attending Sunday schools.
When the Sunday School centenary was celebrated in 1880 the movement had taken root in every continent, and its voluntary teachers far exceeded a million.® Not yet, has the debt been fully realised which English-speaking democracies owe to the great army of young men and women, who received their first training in Christian and social service as teachers in Sunday schools: many of them, have been the salt of the earth.
Nor again is it commonly remembered that, quite independent of Rousseau, such capable Sunday school enthusiasts as Sarah Trimmer, Hannah More and Mary 1 Wesley not only wrote in his Arminian Magazine, supporting the founding of Sunday Schools, but also he opened its columns to Raikes himself to explain the movement.
2 See A. Gregory, Robert Raikes.
3 See '' Raikes,' in Dict. of Nat. Biog.; also "' Sunday Schools " in Ency. of Rel. and Ethics and in Ency. of Education.
FOUNDATIONS
OF POPULAR EDUCATION
Sherwood created the beginnings of a splendid English literature for children.
(iii) "* British and Foreign"? and "* National"
School Societies The central character associated with the second stage of popular education in England, was the impulsive and adventurous Joseph Lancaster.
Born in a fervent Evangelical home, he was intended for the Nonconformist ministry ; but his restless nature would not wait for training.
Mature beyond his years, and burning with missionary zeal, at fourteen he secretly left home and made his way to Bristol, bent on sailing for Jamaica '' to teach the poor blacks the Word of God.''?
At Bristol, the stripling found his plans frustrated for lack of funds.
Six years of variegated adventure ensued ; but the impulse to teach could not be suppressed, so in 1798, having meanwhile become a Quaker, he opened a small school where he began experimenting with '"' new methods" of education.
Then, in 1801, he took "'a large room in Borough Road,"
London, over which he inscribed the somewhat humorous notice:
'All who will may send their children and have them educated freely, and those who do not wish to have education for nothing may pay for it if they please."
Lancaster's novel methods, including the monitorial system of pupil teachers and a complex scale of "' honours and humiliations," attracted wide attention.
By them, he claimed, " one master could teach a thousand, or even a greater number of children, not only as well, but a great deal better, than
. by the old methods, and at an expense of less than five shillings a year for each."'?
Here, it was contended, was an educational invention comparable to the wondrous " labour saving "' factory machines : not only would it educate children wholesale, but also it would turn out teachers for the entire countryside.
Soon young Lancaster had a duke and a lord among his patrons.
Then, to crown all, in 1805, George III sent for him and became both a subscriber and a patron, the interview being concluded by the King's famous statement:
"It is my wish that every poor child in my dominions, should be taught to read the Bible."
This royal patronage was the beginning of Lancaster's undoing.
A reckless financier, he now extended beyond his means, and 1 See T. Bernard, Education of the Poor, p. 112 ff. ; also Roberts's Memoirs of Hannah More.
2 Dict. of Nat. Biog. ('" Joseph Lancaster "') ; also Lancaster's Life, by Wm. Corston.
3 Edinburgh Review, '' Education of the Poor" (November, 1810).
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with the close of the year 1807, despite his "' economical system," he found himself £3,000 in debt.
Supporters, including the Quakers, William Allen and Joseph Fox, came to the rescue, took over the finances, and organised the Royal Lancastrian Institution.
This Institution quickly expanded, producing many " teachers "' for provincial schools ; but Lancaster was an autocrat, and could not brook committees.
His peremptory methods and extravagant expenditures caused endless friction ; so in 1814, his directors and chief supporters, despairing of controlling him, ejected him, forthwith rechristening the whole organisation, the British and Foreign School
Society.
This important educational instrument was _ interdenominational in its conception and range.
The new Evangelical Nonconformity was the soul of the whole movement ; but, as in the fight against the slave-trade and slavery, certain eminent radicals, including Bentham, James Mill, Place and Brougham, joined the good work.!
The Lancastrian Institution and its successor, the British Society, used the Bible as an obligatory reading text; but no doctrinal exposition was permitted, nor was any catechism allowed.
Indeed, it was the boast of this historic organisation that its schools, which soon mounted to thousands, were 'schools for all,'"? and not simply for Churchmen or Nonconformists of any particular brand.
Yet just here, to most High Churchmen and to not a few Anglican Evangelicals, was a rock of offence.
Wilberforce who, in high emotion, persuaded Pitt to scrap his drafted Bill against the Nonconformists, and who was one of the creators of the very practical and truly educational Society for Bettering the Conditions and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor,? refused, after prolonged consideration, to accept the Vice-Presidency of the Lancastrian Institution.
He remained friendly toward it, but to him its moral and religious teaching was too intangible, too nebulous.
It was, however, chiefly to aggressive '' Church " suspicion of this dominantly Nonconformist organisation, that the third advance of popular education owed its being.
Mrs.
Sarah Trimmer, kind soul though she was, began denouncing Lancaster as "the Goliath of schismatics."
Coleridge, who had swung around from practical Unitarianism and become the High Church philosopher, in a public lecture, after reading a paragraph from a treatise by Lancaster, denounced his schools as "prison stations," and contemptuously flung his booklet on the floor.
The Episcopate, if more discreet, was * Halévy, Formation du Radicalisme Philosophique, Vol. Il, p. 247ff.
See Reports of this Society (1798-1808), five vols.
Quarterly Review ('' Bell and Lancaster's System of Education "), October, 1811.
FOUNDATIONS OF POPULAR EDUCATION
like-minded.
So, in 1811, was created the National Society Sor the Education of the Poor in accordance with the Principles of the Church of England.
The dominant character behind the National Society was a Scotch Anglican, Dr. Andrew Bell, twenty-five years the senior of Lancaster.
In 1787 he had sailed, almost penniless, as a chaplain to India: soon he was holding eight chaplainships concurrently, while at the same time he was Superintendent of the Madras Male Orphanage Asylum, where, prior to Lancaster in England, he had introduced a form of monitorial teaching.1.
Thanks to pluralities, plus Scottish business acumen, Bell, within ten years, was back in England with a fortune of more than £25,000.
The enormous growth of the Lancaster schools and the rising suspicion of '' the Church," caused Bell's hour to strike.
Given a rich sinecure, and proclaimed the 'real founder '' of the monitorial method, he was made the virtual Director of the National Society, with a roving commission to found Church schools throughout the land.
How much the officialdom of the Established Church had awakened from its century of gout and slumber, is symbolised by the fact that in the twenty years between the formation of the National
Society and the burial of Andrew Bell in Westminster Abbey, in 1831, nearly 13,000 '' National "' schools had been formed.?*
(iv) Factory Schools and Ragged Schools The fourth landmark in the long educational march must be recorded not because of its direct educational attainment, but because, by State legislation it forced upon the " captains of industry " some personal responsibility for the mental, moral and social status of the factory child.
The 1833 Factory Act—the first of far-reaching significance— was, by common consent, a forced measure.
The Government, to side-track Lord Shaftesbury's comprehensive Bill, simply brought forward, on their own behalf, the irreducible minimum of his demands.
Nevertheless more was achieved than Lord Althorp, who introduced this Government sop, desired to concede.
Disinterested and efficient factory inspection was henceforth established in English industry.
Children under nine were protected from factory employment, thus giving educational institutions a free hand to work for their welfare.
No child under thirteen was permitted to toil in the " key industries "
1 Bell published his Experiment in Education in 1797, the year before Lancaster opened his first school. wets 2 See Ency. Brit., and Dict. of Nat. Biog. ('' Bell") ; 'also Meiklejohn's
An Old Educational Reformer.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
more than nine hours in a day, or more than forty-eight hours a week.
And during these working hours, school facilities had to be provided by the factory owners, whereby two hours of education was afforded daily to all employees under thirteen.
Factory Schools, at best, were but sorry educational institutions, and not a few factory owners strove to make them ludicrous.
Yet Britain was richly blest by the fact that for fifty years following the passage of this 1833 Act, the trusted
Parliamentary leader of the industrial workers was a prince among men.
The hero of the classic succession of emancipating Factory Acts, was not only a non-party statesmen who repeatedly refused Cabinet Office and other lucrative posts, the better to serve his '' Cause"' ; he also was an unfaltering and passionate advocate of the mental, moral and spiritual culture of the humblest toilers in the land.
" If there is one man in England more devoted to the interests of the factory people than another," said an official delegate of the Workers' Committees in 1836,
"it is Lord Ashley (Shaftesbury)—we may always rely upon him as a ready, steadfast and willing friend."
Shaftesbury saw to it that the factory inspectors, introduced in 1833, were men of character, integrity and independence.
He saw to it also, that the principle of daily education even for the humblest factory child, as conceded by Althorp's Act, was kept constantly before Parliament and the nation.
But, all important, he piloted the epic succession of legislative enactments which, freeing the industrial child from the early tyranny of factory, workshop and mine, gave Education its chance.
Indeed, the sheer majesty of Shaftesbury's achievements in this regard, has commonly blinded historians to the fact that he also was a valiant pioneer in educational schemes.?
Two principles central in Shaftesbury's incomparable crusade of social reform were, (1) that women should be freed from the tyranny of industry, and educated to raise home-making to the standard of a Christian art, (2) that children should be likewise freed, and educated nobly to take their place as intelligent, useful, healthy and happy citizens in a Christian State.
Fifth in the succession of pioneer educational movements, comes the Ragged School Union, a direct offshoot of Sunday
School endeavours.
Its purpose was to catch, befriend and educate, "human eels in the mud."
As early as 1798, in Southwark, London, Thomas Cranfield, a pious tailor, branched from orthodox Sunday School work into special efforts, Sunday and week-day, for slum-ridden children too ragged to attend
1 Manchester and Salford Advertiser, July oth, 1836. of S Bready's Shaftesbury, chapter xi ('"' The Problem of Popular Education "'),
FOUNDATIONS
OF POPULAR EDUCATION
Sunday Schools.
But though he founded several schools for such urchins and was supported by Rev. Rowland Hill, his work was not destined to continuity.
The same was true of the godly Portsmouth shoemaker, John Pounds, whose heroic efforts among ragged youngsters might have been quite forgotten had not Dr. Thomas Guthrie eulogised his memory.
Again, the London City Mission, founded in 1835, soon established several schools, '' exclusively for children raggedly clothed."
But it was not till 1844 that a group of forty voluntary '"' ragged school "' teachers banded together into the Ragged
School Union, and urged Lord Shaftesbury to become their president : which gladly he did.
From that moment, ragged schools were assured of continuity.
The Union became a unique educational force, and in time the mother of certain of the most Christian and most creative social-welfare movements modern Britain can boast.
Theoretic educational treatises are disposed, on professional grounds, quite to ignore the Ragged Schools: indeed, many of the authors of such treatises—though continually idealising the nebulous sentimentalities of Rousseau, who left his own children to be reared in orphanages while he preached
" natural" affection—are apparently wholly ignorant of their work.
Yet consider some of the national characters who worked in, or for, Ragged Schools.
Besides Lord Shaftesbury, were Dr. Barnardo and Quintin Hogg, General Gordon and " Rob Roy"
Macgregor, Judge Payne and the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Charles Dickens and Samuel Smiles, Archbishop Sumner and Dean Farrar, Canon Barnett and Dr. Parker, Dr. Guthrie and Charles Spurgeon, Lord Aberdeen and Sir Thomas Chambers,
Judge Hughes and Sheriff Watson, Sir Robert Carden and Professor Leone Levi, Newman Hall and Hugh Price Hughes.
What group of completely secular school boards or school masters, can be compared with this group ? Nevertheless, the genius of such men co-operated freely with the labours of thousands of humble religious enthusiasts, in creating that Christian '"' Democracy of Service'? which gave both spirit and body to Ragged Schools.
The programme of the Ragged Schools, when not ignored, has often been subjected to the passing sneers of superior critics.
Certainly, from purely academic standards, their attainments were modest ; but, to grapple with the peculiar social conditions for which they were created, they were uniquely adapted.
And later, State schools in slum areas, though always loath to admit their debt, had to learn the social and humanitarian aspect of their task from these despised institutions.
For its more orthodox educational purposes, the Ragged School Union
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
conducted day and Sunday schools for small ragged children, evening and Sunday schools for youths and adults engaged in daily occupation, women's classes '' for improving character and extending domestic usefulness,' and industrial classes which taught both tailoring and shoemaking.
But it was through its humane and experimental efforts, that the Ragged School Union made its most original contribution.
Never was it, in Shaftesbury's phrase, " stiff, starched and in buckram."
By virtue of its elasticity of organisation and its sensitivity to need, it established boys' institutes, youths' clubs, cripples' aid parlours, mothers' meetings, coffee-rooms, playing fields, recreational classes, bath houses, facilities for distributing food and clothing to the destitute, holidays in the country for sick children, annual " treats," maternity centres, temperance guilds, garden clubs, flower shows, efficiency prizes, and numerous other social activities.
Nor was its economic interest less than its social.
Besides its craftsmanship classes, it founded employment tests, Colonial emigration schemes, emigration farms, mercantile training ships, shoe-blacking brigades, allotment gardens and industrial tests ; while to such were added, penny banks, soup-kitchens, coal, clothing and shoe clubs, as well as cooking, sewing and knitting instruction.
The soul of the Union, however, was its religious and cultural work.
The Bible was its central text: the larger schools each evolved a Ragged Church; all had Sunday Schools, Bible classes, mission services, prayer meetings and Bands of Hope.
Early the Union created its own Magazine ; lending libraries, reading-rooms and public lectures, were part of the common programme ; choral singing, children's choirs, drum-and-fife bands, and general concert parties, were objects of the Union's pride ; while the Christian spirit and influence, permeated everything the Ragged Schools undertook.!
(v) The State Fills the Gaps * The sixth and final stage, in the long and circuitous route to universal Education in England, is too well known even to be outlined here.
In W. E. Forster's own words, the purpose of the Board School Act (1870) was, "' to complete the voluntary system and fill up the gaps," but "not to supplant the voluntary system"; and Gladstone, under whose Administration the Act was passed, consistently took the same attitude.
For the fullest treatment of the Ragged Schools, see C. J. Montague, Sixty Years in Waifdom; for a brief, but fully documented, treatment, see the author's Shaftesbury, chapter xii.
FOUNDATIONS
OF POPULAR EDUCATION
The initial "voluntary system," in truth, was expressive of the new genius which had penetrated British blood, and it was closely related to the Evangelical Revival.
Rivalry, experimentation and some animosity, entered into the making of England's popular education ; but faith, nonetheless, was its guiding star; and slow as was its evolution, it was a natural growth, rather than a bureaucratic system imposed from above.
Which fact, has saved England from the robot educational methods prescribed by some modern states.
The famous Newcastle Commission (1858-61) in its '' Report on the State of Popular Education in England "' found that about 2,500,000 children were already receiving some kind of daily education, which meant that nearly one-seventh of the entire population was attending day schools.
In France the proportion was one-ninth ; and in Prussia, where compulsory education was already in force, one-sixth.
Much of the English voluntary education, admittedly, was open to criticism : nevertheless, the Encyclopedia Britannica is expressing but sober sense when it pronounces the Newcastle Commission Report, 'a striking tribute to the sterling qualities of self-help and religious earnestness, which were so characteristic of the early Victorian period."
Again, Sir Thomas Chambers, after the advent of Board Schools, asked:
'' Who are they that have brought about this marvellous improvement in the amount of Education given, and in the Educational machinery involved?
Who but the members of all the Evangelical Churches throughout the country ? Who have filled the Sunday Schools, and the Ragged Schools, and the British and Foreign Schools, and, to a great extent, the National schools, with teachers?
Who but the men who have acted from religious motives, and whose conduct has been influenced by the teaching of the Gospel ? ''!
Both Utilitarianism and Rationalism contributed to the broad and winding stream of England's popular educational system, but the main source and chief sustenance of the system, was the persistent, creative, adventurous impact of vital, practical, Evangelical religion.
Moreover, certain remarkable social and cultural movements remain to-day, as impressive witness to the spiritual values which inspired popular education.
The Sunday School movement now has no less than 33,000,000 scholars the world over; its schools number 350,000, and its voluntary teachers and officers 3,600,000.2
The present Shaftesbury Society and Ragged School Union, the lineal descendant of 1 Montague, op. cit., p. 310.
2 These figures are from the Report of the International Sunday School Convention, 1928.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
the original Union, is to-day one of Britain's noblest social philanthropies : while again, both Barnardo's Homes, whose beneficient child-welfare influence has extended to every continent, and the Polytechnic Institute, the parent of technical education throughout the Empire, were born in humble Ragged
Schools.
Practical religion not only pioneered the movement for popular education in England: it injected purpose, power and poise into the very concept of education.
CHARTER xx
PARALLEL CREATIVE VICTORIES
"THE anti-slave trade movement was the first successful propagandist agitation of the modern type, and its methods were afterwards imitated by the myriad societies and leagues—political, religious, philanthropic and cultural—which characterised Nineteenth Century
England."
GrorcE MacauLay TREVELYAN, O.M., History of England, p. 599.
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GHA PTER) XX
PARALLEL CREATIVE VICTORIES
Epmunp Burke, in his noble Guildhall Speech (Bristol, 1780), when exposing certain anomalies and injustices of the penal code as it affected debtors, paid memorable tribute to the unique endeavours of John Howard.
"I cannot name this gentleman," said Burke, '' without remarking that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind.
He has visited all Europe—not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples ; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art ; not to collect medals, or collate manuscripts—but to dive into the depths of dungeons ; to plunge into the infection of hospitals ; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression and contempt ; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries.
His plan is original; and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity.
It was a voyage of discovery ; a circumnavigation of charity.
Already the benefit of his labour is felt more or less in every country .. ."} (i) The Humanising of the Prison System Howard certainly was among the most heroic of the eighteenth century products of the Revival.
In his Evangelicalism, as was the case with Wilberforce, and many other vital characters, the influence of Dissent, Methodism and Anglicanism coalesced in marked degree.
Born in a pious Independent home, he himself continued a Nonconformist ; but he had no enthusiasm either for denominationalism or dissent, as such: he was a zealous disciple of Wesley and a warm supporter of the Revival's work ; yet married twice, both his wives, to whom he was in 1 This speech is printed at length in Professor G. R. Carpenter's Model
English Prose, p. 323.
366 ENGLAND: BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
turn devoted, were "Church" women.
And though a Dissenter till death, Howard revered vital, practical Christianity Protestant or Catholic—wherever he met with it; while so great was his appeal to the soul of the British people, that his was the very first statue admitted to St. Paul's Cathedral.*
And it was raised by public subscription.
In reminiscent vein, Howard once made known to a group of Wesley's preachers the challenge and lasting inspiration he had derived from a sermon preached by Wesley at his seat in Bedfordshire on the text, '' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."?
After an interview with Wesley in Dublin, he related to Alexander Knox how satisfying and sustaining he found the fellowship and conversation of his great friend.
About to set off on one of his prolonged tours of prison inspection, he called on Wesley to present him with an inscribed copy of his famous book and to say good-bye.
It was a "profound disappointment" to him to learn that the evangelist had left London, en route for Ireland, not long before he arrived at his rooms.
Wesley's admiration for Howard, moreover, was equally keen.
Following an extended conversation with him in 1787, he expressed the belief that the heroic prison reformer was surely "one of the greatest men in Europe.''§ Howard's immediate precursors, as friends of the debtor, the felon and the murderer in their enforced haunts of wretchedness and despair, were those of spiritual outlook much akin to his own.
As, during the worst years of the Persecuting Code, hundreds of Quakers and other Puritans died in vile gaols,* the Nonconformists naturally developed a sympathetic interest in the welfare of prisoners; but under the blighting spiritual conditions of the early eighteenth century, that interest soon lagged and waned.
Wesley, too, as we have seen, was a constant friend of prisoners; Newgate, London, he considered, the nearest possible earthly approach to hell; he raised money to procure clothing and blankets for the French prisoners of the Seven Years War, detained in English gaols ; and he encouraged all his preachers, when they were permitted to do so, to visit and to minister to the needs of prisoners.
Charles Wesley expended much tender and gracious effort upon prisoners ; Silas Told, one of Wesley's most heroic teachers and preachers, served them faithfully all his life; and Mr. Dagge, who transformed the face of the Bristol Newgate years before Howard
1 Dict. of Nat. Biog. (' John Howard "'), This fact was verified for the author by the librarian of St. Paul's.
2 Wesley's Yournal (June 28th, 1787) (see note, Standard edition).
3 See Edward's Wesley, p. 150.
4 Graham's William Penn, p. 172.
PARALLEL CREATIVE VICTORIES
began his life-work, was one_of the earliest products of the Revival, converted under the preaching of Whitefield.?
Nevertheless it was left to the moral chivalry of John Howard the country gentleman, whom Green pronounces
" the most energetic and zealous of reformers,"' so to challenge the emerging social conscience as to make sanitary, humane and redemptive prison conditions a matter of public concern.
Prisoners, next to slaves, are the most hapless of mortals ; and being confined from public scrutiny, their lot, especially in a society dominated by factions or oligarchies, may easily degenerate into a condition of living death.
When Howard in 1773, after his appointment as high sheriff of Bedfordshire, began the investigation of English prisons, he found the whole system of confinement a wilderness of cruelty, immorality and graft.
Few jail keepers got any stated stipend: hence, being dependent upon guile and extortion for their livelihood " fees," they commonly represented the basest type of manhood.
County jails alone, were under the control of sheriffs, while on all sides sections of counties, municipal corporations, liberties, franchises and even private individuals ran jails : some of them old towers or castles, some the dungeon-rooms under court-houses or town-halls, some even the dark, filthy cellars of public houses: and the insecurity of many of these incarceration quarters, afforded nominal excuse for the use of irons, strait-jackets and chains.'
Men, women and children frequently were huddled together in common dens of despair ; disease, prostitution, drunkenness and general debauchery, were rife ; semi-starvation was common ; and sometimes only the generosity of felons, who legally could claim "' county bread," saved luckless debtors from actual starvation.
Indeed, the chief hope of the prisoner lay in the fact that, owing to the over-crowding of jails, the Legislature frequently was " obliged to make a general arbitrary gaol-delivery, and at once to set open, by its sovereign authority, all the prisons in England."
It was well for the cause of prison reform that spiritual fire had possessed the soul of a county gentleman, a man of social position, financial independence, physical hardihood, indomitable will and amazing pertinacity of purpose.
If Howard was both a teetotaller and a vegetarian—an odd creature in the age of gluttony and gout—he nevertheless was a country squire, and, as such, had to be respected.
Hence, though when Wesley 1See Annual Register, 1761, p. 61; also Bebb's Nonconformity and Social and Economic Life, 1660-1800, p. 153.
2 See S. Webb, Prisons Under Local Government, pp. 2-9 ; Howard, State of Prisons in England and Wales, p. 20.
3 Edmund Burke, op. cit., p. 322.
368 ENGLAND: BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
and his itinerant preachers criticised prison conditions, they, in many quarters, could be laughed out of court as " ranting fanatics,' with Howard the case was different!
He, moreover, had access to many gaols from which they were completely excluded, and when once the challenge presented itself, he was in a position to make prison reform an exclusive mission, and to finance his own life-crusade.
Early in his investigations, Howard discovered among the most pitiable inmates of English prisons, persons languishing for months without even having been brought to trial, persons in court declared " not guilty," persons whose prosecutors had failed to appear, and persons against whom grand juries could lay no charge.
They were detained because unable to pay the jailer's: ** fees:"?
Rising commonly about three a.m., four times during his seventeen years of solitary crusade, did Howard inspect the jails of the entire United Kingdom.
Repeatedly, amidst incredible travelling difficulties, he visited, note-book in hand,
' the principal prisons, hospitals, lazarettos and workhouses of a dozen European countries, though in more than one quarter admission was gained only by disguise.
Before Howard, on January 20th, 1790, died of malignant fever at Kherson, in Southern Russia, he had travelled more than 50,000 miles in the prisoners' cause ; refusing Government assistance, he had expended some £30,000 of his own fortune; he had shut himself up in dingy dungeons that he might experience something of the anguish of his fellow creatures ; without reserve, he had given his time, his talents, his means, his all: he had made sensitive souls in many lands to feel for the criminal a new sympathy as a fellow mortal, who, by humane treatment, practical education and spiritual guidance, might be reclaimed to an upright and useful life.
In a unique sense, Howard remains the father of all modern prison reform.
For his '' humanity and zeal,'' he received the official thanks of the House of Commons.
As a direct result of his labours, different reforming Acts were placed on the Statute Books! ; and scores of decently constructed prisons were reared to take the place of previous dungeons and dens.?
Yet so great were the "interests? and contradictions involved, that effective prison reform remained, for many decades, a crying problem: nor even to-day is it quite achieved.
Howard's labours were the immediate inspiration of Jeremy Bentham's "' Panopticon'' scheme; and if that mechanical contrivance was to prove futilitarian rather than utilitarian, it was for no lack of ardour on Bentham's part.
One of his many 1 See 14 George III, c. 20 and c. 59.
2 Webb. op. cit., p. 51.
FOUNDERS OF CREATIVE MOVEMENTS
General Booth .Sir George Williams Doctor Barnardo David Nasmith Rev. Benjamin Waugh Frances Willard
PARALLEL CREATIVE
VICTORIES
Panopticon tracts opens thus,:
'' Morals reformed, health preserved, industry invigorated, instruction diffused, public burdens lightened, economy seated as it were upon a rock, the Gordian knot of the poor laws not cut but untied, all by a simple idea of architecture."
Bentham assuredly was over optimistic regarding the possibilities of his circular institutional structures, wherein warders seated in the administrative centre could "'see all, without being seen.''
Nevertheless so sincere was the humanitarian desire for prison reform, that Bentham's scheme won thé warm support of such influential characters as Wilberforce and William Allen, the Quaker proprietor of the Philanthropist.
Finally, too, so great became the political prestige of his Utilitarian school, that under the constant pressure of James Mill and Sir Samuel Romilly, Bentham in 1813 became the personal recipient from Parliament, on its abandonment of his Panopticon scheme, of the seemingly extravagant sum of £23,000 as indemnity for losses incurred.
Despite all his theoretic talk of the summum bonum and of " the greatest happiness to the greatest number," the Utilitarian Bentham was much more money-minded, than the Evangelical Howard.!
The real successor to Howard was of course the Quaker minister, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry.
Though a daughter of John Gurney, Quaker banker at Norwich, as a girl she " loved gaiety ' and eschewed all religious enthusiasm ; but under the influence of William Savery, an American Quaker preacher, she began to thirst for spiritual life.
On becoming a Quaker minister, at twenty-nine, she experienced such '' incomings of love, joy and peace" that all doubts fled her soul.
Already the mother of several children and finally to be mother of eleven, she nevertheless found time for works of mercy on every hand.
But not till 1813, when thirty-three years old, did she launch forth upon the heroic labours that have immortalised her name.
If the French " Terror'? and the ensuing Napoleonic wars, retarded all social reform in England, prison reform it specially retarded.
When a nation believes that it is fighting for its very being, its well-being is forgotten.
All prisoners-—-male or female— who can serve the State are commonly released and put to *' national' tasks.
War-time prison inmates, accordingly, are reckoned incorrigible enemies of society—traitors unworthy of mercy or care.
Such was the case when Elizabeth Fry, in 1813, was introduced to Newgate, London, the most notorious prison in the realm ; indeed to read certain of her records one might imagine that during the long succession of war years, the good effects of 1 See Bowring's Life of Bentham in collected Works; Halévy, op. cit.
(1815), p. 503f. ; Dict, of Nat. Biog. ('' Bentham '').
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Howard's life-work had been almost obliterated.
She concentrated upon the care of women prisoners, many of whom were desperate and depraved, and the results of her courage, sympathy, patience, faith and far-sighted plans, afford one of the most beautiful manifestations of Christian grace.
"I have seen the greatest wonder in England,'' observed an American visitor ; ''I have seen Elizabeth Fry in Newgate, and I have witnessed there the miraculous effects of true Christianity upon the most depraved of human beings.""
As Mrs. Fry read the Bible and prayed with the women of Newgate, the hardest and most impervious criminals melted into reverence and love.
But not only did she teach these abandoned women that they had souls, and were capable of aspiration and worship, she opened for them successful prison schools; she had matrons appointed instead of male superintendents; by her example and precept, she inspired the '' Association for the Improvement of Female Prisoners in Newgate"; she created the '' Ladies Association for visiting Gaols"?; she interested different Christian statesmen, including Wilberforce, in the great problem ; and she sowed the seeds of an order of "' nursing sisters "' which Florence Nightingale later carried to such rich fruition.
The Evangelical Revival created a noble succession of practical women saints, and Elizabeth Fry was one of the noblest in that truly Apostolic line.1
(ii) The Reform of the Penal Code If in the heroic struggle for prison reform the Evangelicals took the lead and the humanitarian rationalists fell into line, in the protracted campaign to reform the penal code it was chiefly the humanitarian rationalists who led the march, while the Evangelicals accompanied with stalwart support.
But here again, the French Revolution was the deadly stumbling block.
Prior to that prolonged holocaust, humanitarian reform in England was gaining headway on many fronts.
Indeed thousands of high-minded Englishmen, like Wordsworth, greeted the dawn of the Revolution with exuberant joy, but after the blind blood-bath of the Reign of Terror, turned from it with loathing unutterable.
This revulsion completely obsessed Pitt ; it incited Wilberforce, in utter sincerity, to agitate for the miserable Combination Laws (1799 and 1800), fearing that Trade Combines would degenerate into secret revolutionary societies ; it was the immediate cause of making still more fearful an already ferocious criminal code.
In fact the only * See Elizabeth Fry, Observations on .
. Female Prisoners; Life, by her daughters ; Janet Whitney, Elizabeth Fry, Quaker Heroine (1937).
PARALLEL CREATIVE
VICTORIES
redeeming grace was that, though the " hanging laws" were temporarily increased, the actual number of persons hanged was on the decrease: for, despite the revolutionary psychology of fear, spiritual and humanitarian values were still at work, and all that was best in the nation shrank from enforcing a blood-thirsty code.
P Arthur Young, in his Autobiography, records a conversation he once held with Edmund Burke in which the political philosopher said that : '' Gibbon was an old friend of his, and he knew well that before he died, he heartily repented of the anti-religious part of his work for contributing to free mankind from all restraints on their vices and profligacy, and thereby aiding so much the spirit which produced the horrors that blackened the most detestable of all revolutions."!
When Gibbon came to feel thus, is it surprising that many landed squires and hireling lawyers, who cared little for spiritual Christianity, turned to the ceremonies of formalistic religion and to the repressions of a sterner criminal code, to combat the revolutionary spirit?
With the more robust humanitarian Radicals and with the thorough-going Evangelicals, such was not the case; and as sanity gradually reasserted itself, these groups worked steadfastly, side by side, to rationalise the chaos and to remove the inhumanity of a vicious and tyrannical penal code.
Nor was such co-operation limited to this particular issue.
Both Professor Graham Wallas and Professor Halévy do well to remind us that for long there existed "' the tradition of a working alliance between the two forces."?
On doctrinal matters they agreed to disagree ; each recognised in the other admirable practical qualities ; and when pressing humanitarian work was to be done, both stripped off their coats and put their shoulders to the wheel.
And so doing, they manifested characteristics which fortunately were becoming increasingly typical of Englishmen at their best.
In codifying, rationalising and humanising the criminal law the names of Bentham, Romilly and Mackintosh stand rightly to the fore.
All were great lawyers and, what does not always follow, great hearts.
For a generation they struggled valiantly to bring order, sanity, justice and mercy, into a bewildering jungle of legal entanglement ; and notwithstanding all hoary prejudice and die-hard resentment, their efforts finally were crowned with success.
But what is commonly forgotten is that such philanthropic Evangelicals as Wilberforce, Thornton,
Allen and Grant, despite their already wide range of 1 Op. cit. (edited by Bentham Edwards), p. 258.
2 See Halévy, English People (1815), pp. 507-11 ; and Wallas's Introduction to same volume, pp. Vi, Vil.
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humanitarian interests, rendered them yeoman support.
'' The barbarous custom of hanging,' wrote Wilberforce as early as June, 1787, "' has been tried too long, and with the success which might have been expected from it.'1
Every time Romilly brought forward in the Commons the abolition of the death penalty for an offence," says Halévy, '* Wilberforce intervened in the debate to support Romilly's proposal with his influence."?
In 1817, supporting Romilly's attack on the Game Laws, Wilberforce declared it '"' unjust' to punish so severely '' an act, which it was contrary to the natural feeling of mankind to say was, in itself, a crime and which men could never be brought to think a crime merely because there were legislative provisions against it."® Repeatedly, Wilberforce inveighed against '' our bloody laws"? and '' our murderous laws."'
After Romilly's tragic death, in 1818, he was urged to don his friend's mantle, but he pointed to Mackintosh as Romilly's most competent successor.
He was a member of Mackintosh's Select Committee on "' death penalty for felonies,"' and to Mackintosh he rendered as consistent and sincere support as he had rendered Romilly.4
In view of the incessant attempts to paint Wilberforce as a hopeless reactionary in "' home "' affairs, such facts should not be overlooked.
He was representative of the Evangelical Revival in general, and of the Clapham Sect in particular.
It was with the help of sons of the great Spiritual Awakening, that the " bloody criminal code" was at last swept into the limbo.
But more pertinent, it was the new spiritual value which that Awakening attached to "' man as man," which began to make inoperative, long before its deletion from the Statute Books, the blood-thirsty taint of the English criminal code.
Nor was this truth altogether hidden from the great Radical legal reformers.
Romilly's admiration and love for Wilberforce, we have already observed, and Bentham's feelings toward him were equally warm.
But Bentham's admiration for the spirit of the Revival in general, is little known.
'' Townshend," he wrote, " was once what I had liked to have been, a Methodist, and what I should have been, had I not been what I am.''5
1 See Life of Wilberforce, by his sons, Vol. I, p. 131.
op. cit., p. 397; Wilberforce's Life, Vol. III, pp. 440, 444, 504.
3 Coupland's Wilberforce, Pp. 430.
For Romilly, see his Observations on the Criminal Laws of England (1810), and his Speeches in Parliament (two vols., 1820).
> Bentham's Works (Bowring edition), Vol. X, p. 92.
PARALLEL CREATIVE VICTORIES
(ili) The Origin and Significance of Protestant Foreign Missions Even when the Evangelical Revival was busy creating the spirit, the leadership, the organisation and the financial sacrifice, which finally redeemed the British Empire from the pollution of the slave trade and slavery ; when it was engaged in civilising a benighted populace, and laying the foundations of popular education throughout a nation ; when it was injecting mercy and sariity into a tortuous, revengeful prison system ; when it was helping gallantly to rationalise a chaotic penal code—even at the same time, it was mediating the international sympathy and vision, which mothered that remarkable series of Christian societies, whereby was established and nurtured the whole Protestant Foreign Missionary Movement, throughout the world.
It is a peculiarly poignant fact that, neither the Reformation in the sixteenth century, nor Puritanism, in the seventeenth century, was possessed of any real world outlook or foreign missionary zeal.
The reasons are obvious.
Both the Reformation and the Puritan eras, were times of ecclesiastical warfare, and, amidst the dust and passion of battle, vision and universal sympathy usually are shut out.
Luther and Zwingli, Calvin and Melancthon, Knox and Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, were too utterly absorbed with perplexing problems at their door, to see far afield.
'Theological controversies, national complications, the principles of religious liberty, the clarifying of the Reformed Faith and the organising of the Reformed
Churches—these questions occupied their every waking hour.
And if Loyola, Xavier and other leaders in the Jesuit CounterReformation, succeeded in initiating a mighty revival of missionary fervour within the Roman Catholic communion,! their very success enforced upon the Protestant reformers the necessity for consolidating their home-base.
The same was largely true of Puritanism. A study of the lives of Milton and Bunyan, of Baxter and Fox, of Hampden and Marvell will reveal no urge to foreign missionary effort.
Puritanism knew itself to be a determined minority, struggling desperately against weighty vested interests for its very life.
During its brief tenure of power, it failed to convert the nation to its manner of thought and faith. As a movement, English Puritanism made an epochal stand for liberty, justice, equity and fraternity ; but it was at least as political as it was religious, and never did it rise to the vision of the Kingdom of God over all the earth.
1 See '' Missions (Roman Catholic),"' in Ency. of Rel. and Ethics ; also in Ency. Brit.
374 ENGLAND:
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Such generalisations, however, demand some modification.
Erasmus, who himself represented a halfway house between Roman Catholicism and the Reformation, was an enthusiast for foreign missions.
In his Art of Preaching, calling for men to address themselves with " fearless minds" to the glorious task of foreign missionary labour, he proceeds:
"It is hard work I call you to, but it is the noblest and highest of all.
Would that God had accounted me worthy to die in such a holy work.
. No one is fit to preach the Gospel to the heathen who has not made his mind superior to riches or pleasure, aye, even to life and death itself."
Lord Bacon, a century later, referring to the inevitable preamble prefacing foreign trading charters, to the effect that merchants should seek to " spread the Gospel among the heathen with whom they traded," sagely remarked that, "' what was first in God's providence, was but second in man's appetite and intuition."
Bacon here was extremely urbane; for such preambles were really a farce.
Nevertheless Cromwell, with his penetrating plans and undoubted Christian zeal, did capture something of a missionary vision, for, in his later years, he was devising a scheme for Protestant missionary endeavour which, he believed, would rival that of the Congregation of Propaganda of the Roman
Catholic Church.
His scheme, however, was never completed, and at his death it fell to earth.2
The Mayflower, of course, was destined to contribute powerfully to Protestant missionary achievement, but that contribution was wholly indirect.
The Pilgrim Fathers established New England not as missionaries, but as refugees, prepared, for conscience sake, to face all the rigours of a wilderness, that they might establish new institutions according to their faith, in Liberty.
To a Pilgrim Father, nevertheless, must go the honour of originating the first real Protestant foreign missionary endeavour ; for, when, in 1646, John Eliot began his Nonantum mission among the Indians, preaching to them in their own tongue, establishing settlements for them, and translating the Bible and other religious works, he was a pioneer indeed.*
Nor must the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts, founded respectively by Dr. Thomas Bray in 1698 and 1701, be wholly overlooked.
During the reign of Queen Anne, these High Church Societies flared into a feeble enthusiasm ; but under the chilly pressure of Deism, their zeal was quite quenched, and were it not for the ensuing Baptism of Fire
? See L. Creighton, Missions, their Rise and Development, pp. 47-8.
See '' Missions (Modern Protestant),"' Ency. Brit.
3 See Caverby's Life of John Eliot.
PARALLEL CREATIVE' VICTORIES
they soon would have died.
As it was, the S.P.G. fell into "the unfortunate position of being a slave-holder" on two
West Indian estates! ; while some of its representatives, being sheer adventurers, were anything but a credit to their profession.?,
In no real sense, can either of these Societies be reckoned a precursor of the Protestant foreign missionary movement.
With the German and Danish Moravians, however, the case was different.
Despised products of the despised Pietist Movement, they began in 1732 a foreign missionary effort which ever since has continued.
First in Georgia, later in London, and finally in Germany, on the eve of his worldstirring crusade, Wesley was profoundly influenced by these humble, simple emissaries of the Gospel of Christ.
Before the middle of the eighteenth century, the much maligned Moravian Brethren had missionaries labouring as far afield as among the slaves of the West Indies and the Eskimos of Greenland.
They were the true harbingers of the Protestant missionary movement.
the eighteenth century opened, and for many years to come," says Professor Halévy, '"' there was not a single Protestant missionary in the entire world with the exception of the small German group of the Moravian Brethren."?
That statement is substantially, if not absolutely, correct.
The Moravians were the forerunners of Protestant missions, but their efforts were far too sporadic, too isolated, too ill-organised, and too ill-supported by any strong home base, to entitle them to be considered the founders of Protestant missions.
Indeed, without the impact of the Revival, Moravian missions very probably would have been short-lived.
That the Evangelical Awakening both founded and established the far-sighted world
Protestant foreign missionary movement, is a fact no student of the period can doubt.
Nothing is more characteristic of Wesley's outlook, than his constant dicturh, "The world is my parish!"
Yet never. after his conversion, did he find time to cross the sea.
Whitefield traversed the Atlantic thirteen times ; more than a third of his life mission was devoted to the American Colonists, and he died, at work, in New England; but Wesley, the guiding spirit and genius of the whole Revival, exercised his world influence from English soil.
Restoring to Britain her soul, and rekindling her spiritual vision, he became the centre of that Pentecostal renewal which not only created the basic missionary societies of Protestantism, but, through its heralds,
1 W. L. Mathieson, British Slavery and Its Abolition, p. 216.
2 See Reporter, I, p. 193.
3 The English People in 1815, p. 389.
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WESLEY caused men and women of a thousand tongues to understand the common language of the Love of God, the Leadership of Christ, and the Brotherhood of Man.
Not long after the arrival of Moravian missionaries, certain of Wesley's converts began preaching the Gospel among West Indian slaves, and when in 1786 Dr. Coke, who meanwhile had become Wesley's chief missionary lieutenant, officially established
"' Methodist missions "' in those Islands, they soon grew to such proportions as, indirectly, to become the most vital local influence in the great Emancipation cause.1_ The " Methodist Societies "? were from the beginning missionary institutions; but with the expansion of the Revival, as its spirit began to possess Nonconformity, to leaven the Church of Scotland, to call forth the Clapham Brotherhood and to permeate whole strata within the National Church, the pulsing passion for world missionary endeavour demanded the creation of new vehicles of expression.
And those new vehicles, became the parent missionary societies of the Protestant world.
Even as Dr. Coke, with indefatigable zeal, was establishing his Methodist missions in the West Indies, and as Francis Asbury, with apostolic heroism, was blazing the trail for a mighty
Church, which finally was to affect profoundly the whole American Republic—simultaneously this Evangelical enthusiasm broke forth into a world illuminating flame.
The dates of the pioneer Protestant foreign missionary societies, are themselves highly revealing.
In 1792 William Carey and his associates founded the Baptist Missionary Society ; in 1795 came the interdenominational London Missionary Society? ; in 1796, the Scottish Missionary Society ; in 1799, the Church Missionary Society, which emphasised its desire for "' cordial relations with Nonconformists"*: in the same year appeared the Religious 'Tract Society ; while in 1804, came the classic and interdenominational British and Foreign Bible Society, through whose agency more than seven hundred of the thousand different translations of Scripture have been achieved.
These Evangelical societies were the noble and heroic parents, from which sprang the whole Protestant foreign missionary world movement.
This Movement has made mistakes: but, taken for all in all, it has represented, perhaps, the most humane and most
Dr. Coke's History of the West Indies, Vol. II, p. 441f.; and Mathieson, op. cit., p. 111. a oie Society was later to come under the control of the Congregational urch.
* See Stock's History of the Church Missionary Society, Vol. 1.
4 See G. Smith's Short History of Christian Missions.
PARALLEL GREATIVE
VICTORIES
soulful of all the impacts of the West upon the East.
The mercantile, military, political and imperial interests of the West in the East, have left much of which Christendom may well be ashamed.
Loud, vulgar advertisement, crass materialism, duplicity and deceit, cupidity and profanity, stupid arrogance and swashbuckling assumptions of superiority, have far too frequently been the paving stones of their trail.
Christian missionaries, contrariwise, have preached and lived a Gospel of Love ; they have proclaimed the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.
For many primitive peoples, they have created both an alphabet and a grammar ; they have planted in their trail both schools and colleges ; they have translated not only the Bible, but many other of the finest literary and inspirational books of Christendom.
They have established hospitals, which annually treat hundreds of thousands of needy patients ; they have introduced to many backward races the elemental laws of health and sanitation ; they have consecrated scientific, professional, industrial and agricultural knowledge to the needs of the most underprivileged peoples.
Everywhere, they have raised the status and increased the dignity of woman, thereby enriching both home and community life; whilst persistently, amidst colossal difficulties and much misrepresentation, have they striven to mediate the spirit of international co-operation and understanding, and to abridge the yawning gulfs of colour, caste and race.
Their key emphasis has been, that God hath made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and that in Christ all races are brethren.+
The purpose of Christian Missions, both Protestant and Catholic, has been to mediate the spirit and Gospel of Christ.
This task, moreover, has generally been interpreted in a wide sense.
Missionaries persistently and perseveringly have opposed the ravages of the opium and liquor traffics ; often at the cost of life, they have struggled against cannibalism, slavery and forced labour ; consistently have they toiled to put down tribal raids and wars ; while untiringly, have they kept in the van to protect the integrity of native lands, against encroachment or appropriation by exploiting interests, whether commercial, national or imperial.
The causes of education, health, sanitation, co-operation and peace, have been greatly furthered by them ; while among the most backward and benighted peoples, they have been the supreme civilising force.
No less critical an observer than Charles Darwin, after careful examination of the conditions prevailing in the Fiji Islands, before and after the 1 See Robt. E. Speer, Missions and Modern history (two vols.) ; International Review of Missions (quarterly) ; J. C. Lambert, The Romance of Missionary Heroism.
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work of emissaries of the London Missionary Society, says :
They had abolished human sacrifices and the power of an idolatrous priesthood, a system of profligacy unparalleled in any part of the world, and bloody wars, and had greatly reduced dishonesty, intemperance and licentiousness.''4
1, Creighton, op. cit., p. 68.
CHAPTER XXI
BULWARKS OF SOCIAL LIBERTY
"The finest gentleman I ever knew was a working miner in England, whose gentleness, absolute fairness, instinctive horror of anything underhand or mean, or anything that was not the strictest fair-play, gave him a character that enabled him to rise to the position of Privy Councillor."
Ear Grey, as Governor-General of Canada, concerning Thomas Burt.
(Aaron Watson, A Great Labour Leader, p. v.) "The first fighters and speakers for unions, Co-op.
Societies, political freedom, and improved conditions, were Methodist preachers.
That is beyond argument.
And the Gospel expressed in social terms has been more of a driving power in northern mining circles than all the economic teaching put together."
Jack Lawson (M.P.), A Man's Life, p. 67.
CHAPTER XXI
BULWARKS OF SOCIAL LIBERTY
In the centre of Piccadilly Circus stands one of the most beautiful and most remarkable memorials in the world.
Most Londoners to-day know it only as the "' Eros Monument"; and that is unfortunate, for it has profound significance.
Built chiefly by the tons of consecrated pennies collected in factory, workshop and mine throughout the kingdom, it depicts the deep devotion of the emancipated workers of England to their great friend and tribune, the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury.
It is the tribute of the freed operatives of Britain to their Emancipator—the British Lincoln.
For Shaftesbury was as much the emancipator of England's "' industrial slaves" as was Lincoln of America's negro slaves.
That memorial, too, is a constant rejoinder to the gospel of class-hatred so solemnly, so ponderously and so vituperatively elaborated by Marx.
It betokens the active affection of a liberated and liberty-loving industrial populace, for a gallant and godly peer.
But this Shaftesbury fountain has also a memorable mystic symbolism.
Its famous sculptor, Sir Alfred Gilbert, was peculiarly fond of sprightly, allegorical elusiveness.
So he conceived the idea of a play on the name Shaftes-bury.
Taking the physical beauty of Eros, the Greek god of love, he strove to inject into it the essence of Christian love (aya77), as expressive of the great reformer's soul. Hence, mounted on the pinnacle of the memorial, is the transfigured and now Christian Eros, bow in hand, "' burying-the-shaft " of Christian love in the heart of the Empire, from the busiest spot in the Empire, the nervecentre of the Metropolis.
The pun, if scarcely obvious, is keenly suggestive.
Shaftesbury profoundly influenced the social welfare not only of the British, but of all English-speaking peoples ; he was a thorough-going Christian ; yet his parentage was pagan.
Around the base of this Shaftesbury memorial is a raised inscription, composed by Gladstone, reading thus: "* During a public life of half a century he devoted the influence of his station, the strong sympathies of his heart and the great power of his mind to honouring God by serving his fellow-men—an
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AND AFTER WESLEY
example to his order, a blessing to his people, and a name to be by them ever gratefully remembered."
(i) The Emancipation of Industrial England What Wesley was to the dormant social conscience of the early eighteenth century, what Wilberforce was to the negro slaves, what Howard was to prisoners, what Carey was to the outcasts of India, that Shaftesbury was to the " factory slaves" of England.
He, like his predecessors, in an epic succession of humanitarian achievements, became an emancipator of his fellows because he himself had been first emancipated by Christ, and because having thus entered into the spirit of vital, practical
Christianity, he was a sincere lover of God and man.
Lord Shaftesbury, albeit, was raised in a godless home.
His father, though for forty years Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords, was a haughty, hard-drinking remnant of eighteenth-century Deism ; his mother, a descendant of the proud Marlborough family, was a society worldling.
Fortunately for the future of England, there was in the Shaftesbury household a remarkable Christian nurse—Maria Millis.
She was Shaftesbury's spiritual mother ; and though she died when the coming reformer was but a lad, she had moulded his character for life.
Till death, he carried the watch she left him, and daily he repeated prayers learned at her knee.
In the year of Waterloo, when fourteen, and a student at Harrow School, Shaftesbury witnessed a pauper funeral wherein drunken pallbearers, trying to turn a corner, tumbled in a heap, the coffin crashing to earth and cracking.
That ghastly spectacle was to the Emancipator of Industrial England what the auction of the negro girl in New Orleans was to the Emancipator of America's slaves.
There and then, before God, the young peer pledged his life—to the uplift of the wretched, the degraded and the oppressed.
How well, was that pledge fulfilled ?
To understand the social problems Shaftesbury faced, it must ever be remembered that both the Commercial Revolution, with its insatiable monetary cupidity, and all the most revolting exploitations of the Industrial Revolution, had already come
into being under the influence of the slave trade, and under the impacts of colonial slavery.
Following the Asiento concessions, and for many years before the conversion of Wesley, every economic perversion which later was to manifest itself on the titanic stage of the factory system, was present in the economic and industrial fabric of English society.
The slave trade and slavery had contaminated every branch of commercial and financial organisation.
The South Sea Bubble itself, was but
BULWARKS
OF SOCIAL LIBERTY
383. symptomatic of the pervasive and almost universal moral collapse.
What with godless Deism and slave-trade economics, all human life had been cheapened and all ethical foundations undermined.
The first imperative of social emancipation, therefore, was the renewal of spiritual life ; the second was the suppression of the slave trade which, by its manifold repercussions, defiled all trade.
Without these preceding achievements, Shaftesbury's intrepid life-work would have been impossible.
Nor is it any accident that his soul's awakening led him into the same spiritual succession, as his mighty forerunners in social reform.
Repeatedly, he described himself as '" an Evangelical of Evangelicals."
How well, then, did Shaftesbury fulfil his vow, made under the shadow of Harrow School, in 1815?
When twenty-one, he came down from Oxford with a First Class in Classics ; when twenty-five, he entered Parliament; when twenty-seven, under Wellington, he tasted the power of office, to find his independence largely curbed.
Repeatedly, under Conservative and Liberal Governments, he rejected Cabinet portfolios, high posts at Court, and both the Lord Lieutenancy and the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland.
For years, braving even the Queen's displeasure, he declined the exclusive distinction of being made a Knight of the Garter ;! and: on his death-bed he refused interment in Westminster Abbey, though his name was first on Dean Stanley's
List, among those most worthy of burial in the National Shrine.
Fifty-seven of the sixty years of Shaftesbury's public career were given without a penny of pay.
For long, though his tastes were simple and his habits abstemious, he had to borrow money to educate his ten children.
Yet to the end, his father, who— most inconsiderately—lived till the great reformer was fifty, continued not only to oppose his reforming labours, but to embarrass him financially.
At one period, for seven years on end, he refused him admission (even at Christmas) to " St.
Giles,' the family estate of which he was heir.
The Sixth Earl blusteringly contended that his zealous Christian son was teaching the common people to aspire '' beyond their station."
He continued to cling to the aristocratic eighteenth-century assumption, that the poor should be left "ignorant, drunken and stupid " in order that they might be " kept under."
Had Shaftesbury during his long public career achieved nothing else than the famous Ten Hours Victory he would have merited historical immortality.
That victory, however, requires a word of explanation.
Popularly it is associated, almost exclusively, with the Factory Act of 1847.
In reality, it includes 1 When finally, in 1862, Shaftesbury did accept the Garter, his fatherin-law, Lord Palmerston, paid all the expenses.
384 ENGL'AND: BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
also the Factory Acts of 1833, of 1844 and of 1850; while the industrial Extension Acts, of 1864 and 1867, practically universalised the application of the principles and provisions of that epochal advance.
Shaftesbury's dedication of life and ceaseless labours, provided the inspiring, impelling and sustaining force behind every one of these Acts.
Albeit, they were among a score of important legislative enactments, which his ceaseless humanitarian endeavours placed on the Statute Books of Britain ; while, as for Royal Commissions of social investigation, he fathered more of them than any other private Parliamentarian in British history.
Shaftesbury's revolutionary Mines and Collieries Act (1842), which henceforth freed all women and young children from underground " slavery " in British mines, is described by Hutchins and Harrison, in their classic History of Factory Legislation, as '' perhaps the most high-handed interference with industry enacted by the State in the nineteenth century."?
His Chimney Sweep Acts completely closed a barbarous chapter in our social history.
The second of his Lodging House Statutes (1851) was pronounced by Charles Dickens " the best Act ever passed by an English Legislature.''?
His far-sighted Lunacy Acts transformed the whole status and treatment of the insane, from that of prisoners to patients.
His Agricultural Gangs Bills protected the children of the countryside, from a thraldom scarcely less cruel than had been the lot of urban youngsters in factories ; while his labours on the first
National Board of Health, and his repeated Parliamentary attacks on the mercenary entanglements of the liquor and opium traflics, had far-reaching effects.
; Outside Parliament, Shaftesbury's labours were only less important than within.
He it was, who both aroused in the Prince Consort his intense interest in social reform, and opened up for that interest wide avenues of service among the poor, thus creating a new tradition for British royalty.
The '' Shaftesbury Estate," with its many hundreds of neat working-class homes and gardens, laid out in what was the centre of Battersea's vilest slums, marks the initial move toward " decent housing "' for the labouring populace.
Shaftesbury, too, was the archpromoter of public parks, playing fields, gymnasia, gardening allotments, workmen's institutes, public libraries, night schools, choral societies, debating societies and all manner of self-help media.
He was President of the Ragged School Union, of the world Y.M.C.A., of the British and Foreign Bible Society, of the Religious Tract Society, of the Pastoral Aid Society, of the Protestant Alliance, of the National Refuges and Training Ships,
1 Op. cit., p. 82.
* E. Hodder's Shaftesbury as Social Reformer, p. 138.
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of the Costermongers' Mission, and many other humanitarian associations.
At the unique National Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey on October 8th, 1885, nearly two hundred social, religious and philanthropic institutions were officially represented,
"with all of which Lord Shaftesbury was more or less directly connected."
Fully ninety per cent. of Shaftesbury's outstanding colleagues, in the epic effort to emancipate the " industrial slaves" of England, were as much products of the Evangelical Revival as he himself.
John Wood, the great cotton-mill owner, who largely financed the Ten Hours crusade, was a keen student of the Bible, and gave unstintingly of his means, as to a holy mission.
Richard Oastler, "the Factory Children's King," whose eyes were opened to factory cruelties by his friend, the said John Wood, was the son of a local preacher, who, " disinherited by his father for his Methodism," had become an ardent campaigner against slavery.
On Wesley's very last visit to the Oastler home, he had taken the infant Richard in his arms and " blessed "? him—a fact of which Oastler was always proud.
In truth, it was Oastler's immediate connection with the Revival and with the anti-slavery crusade, that caused him to coin the phrases "' factory-slave," "* white-slave,"' " industrialslave," etc. ; while, on his personal confession, it was his own
Christian faith that sustained him in the arduous struggle to the end of his days.
The indomitable J. R. Stephens, who " had sworn allegiance to the Children's King," and who suffered eighteen months' imprisonment because of the unparliamentary character of his popular agitation, was an ordained Methodist preacher and the son of a President of Conference.
Though dismissed from the Wesleyan ministry Fecause of his too vitriolic politics, he remained till death a preacher of the Gospel in his own independent chapel.?
Michael Sadler, instigator of the famous Sadler's Report on factory conditions (1831-32), was the superintendent of a large Sunday school in Leeds.
So spiritual was his conception of his task, that he wrote religious poems, including The Factory Girl's Last Day, to stimulate popular sympathy.
The intrepid Rev. G. S. Bull was an Evangelical Anglican.
Philip Grant, the capable editor of the Ten Hours Advocate, was a fervent Bible Christian ; while Joseph Brotherton,
Sir Andrew Agnew and Lord Kenyon, all of whom rendered 1 Dict. of Nat. Biog. ('' Richard Oastler'"').
A magnificent statue of Oastler, with two factory children, stands in the heart of Bradford.
It was unveiled by Shaftesbury in 1869.
2 See "' Alfred'? (Benjamin Kydd), History of Factory System, Vol. I, a Eta Lol atke's Life of #. R. Stephens.
In Stamford Park, Stalybridge. stands a noble public memorial commemorating Stephens's life work.
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yeoman service, were staunch Evangelicals.
John Fielden, too, in youth, had been a Sunday school teacher, and though later he became a Unitarian, who can study his life and fail to recognise that he was a gracious, zealous Christian to the end ?
Such were Shaftesbury's principal colleagues in the valiant industrial struggle.
Not all were possessed of his statesmanlike sagacity and restraint, but all conceived the campaign as a sacred mission.
And under Shaftesbury's sustained, sacrificial leadership, it came to be recognised as the accepted policy that the inevitably long struggle for the comprehensive Ten
Hours Programme, should be conducted without violence of speech or action.
Strikes, lock-outs, mob tactics, intimidation and threats, were to be avoided.
Vituperative, provocative language was sternly discouraged.
And if, at times, the volcanic energy, the burning sympathy, the infectious enthusiasm and the excited, though honest, passions of the great field lieutenants
Oastler and Stephens overflowed these accepted bounds, nevertheless, on the whole, balance, restraint, patience and good humour prevailed.
The justice, the humanity and the essentially Christian character of the programme, were always the cardinal emphases.
Public opinion was educated and converted, not brow-beaten and coerced.
The Faith of Shaftesbury and his colleagues endowed them with a sense of serenity, even tranquillity, in the midst of "utter warfare," for they were fighting with the Sword of the Spirit.
They could endure passing rebuffs and apparent defeats, because they knew the final issue of their conflict was never in doubt, so vested was it in the justice of God.
This same religious spirit, permeated even the humblest ranks of the crusade.
Shortly after the passage of the 1847 Factory Act, a great national conference of operatives' delegates was convoked in London, and there this Resolution was unanimously passed :
"That we are deeply grateful to Almighty God for the success which has hitherto attended our efforts, and now that the object of our labours for the last thirty years is about to be brought to a happy consummation, we pledge ourselves to promote by every means in our power THOSE RELIGIOUS
AND SOCIAL BLESSINGS which it was the object of the Bill to extend to the factory workers.''® The Ten Hours Acts, together with Shaftesbury's celebrated
Mines and Collieries Act, represent the Magna Charta of the industrial workers' liberty.
They closed the factories at ? See Sir Josiah Stamp's Foreword to the Cheap Editions of Bready's
Shaftesbury, pp. 5-6.
* See Halifax Guardian, May 22nd, 1847.
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6 p.m. and kept them closed till 6 a.m., thus suppressing the guileful practice of "shifts" and " relays," stopping night work, and guaranteeing evening leisure.
They established practical immunity from Sunday labour, and enforced a weekly day of rest; they prohibited the iniquitous " Truck System * with its cruel exploitations, and suppressed the whole vicious practice of the "'free"' use of women and children as " fodder for industry."
They initiated the practice both of compulsory education, and of State inspection of industry.
Again, as early as 1850, and long before any other country had even dreamed of such a boon, they won for British operatives the Saturday half-holiday, thus providing a prolonged weekly period for recreation and sport.
Indeed, by the provision of all this " Shaftesbury Legislation,' the factories and mines of Britain were humanised, socialised and largely Christianised.
The indirect consequences of the Ten Hours Victory, however, were not less epic in their significance, than were the direct consequences.
That victory, by its humane, rational control of factories, workshops and mines, and by its encouragement and protection of human dignity, laid deep the foundations for a hundred self-help and co-operative movements which to-day are taken for granted like the air we breathe, but which, nevertheless, form the warp and woof of all that is most abiding in Anglo-Saxon democracy.
The social-industrial legislation which resulted chiefly from Shaftesbury's leadership, and which was directly inspired by a Christian conception of the spiritual destiny of man, prepared the way—especially through the Ten
Hours Acts—for general education (juvenile and adult), for innumerable friendly and benefit societies, for recreation and temperance guilds, for literary and debating societies, for Workers' Institutes and for the sane, self-governing British Trade
Union Movement, the like of which never before had been known in any land.!
Was it not, indeed, futile even to dream of successful Democracy, till the soul of man had been awakened to its spiritual potentialities, till the curse of slavery had been abolished, till leisure had been provided for "' self-help,"' and till at least the elementary lessons of co-operation and organisation had been learned by the populace ?
Such truths, the industrial operatives, the Parliamentary legislators and the general population of England, came gradually to recognise.
If the operatives showed their appreciation of Shaftesbury's life and spirit by raising the noble memorial in Piccadilly Circus, his fellow-legislators showed theirs, by erecting the superb statue at the west door of Westminster Abbey ; while the devotion of the general population, is reflected by the large
1 See Halévy, op. cit. (Vol. 1895-1905), p. 212.
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number of places, streets, districts, missions, institutions and schools—the Empire over—which bear hisname.
There is more — than humour in the words of George Jacob Holyoake, the pioneer of the Co-operative Movement : " Should England one day be accounted among extinct civilisations, and some explorers arrive to evacuate its ruins, they will come upon so many stones deposited by Shaftesbury and bearing his name, that report will be made of the discovery of the king of the last dynasty.'
Certainly no king has ever been so dear to the toilers of England as was "' the People's Earl.''?
Certain analogies in the lives of the two social emancipators of the English-speaking world, are highly revealing.
The sterling characters of both, were early moulded by godly women ; both not only were deeply religious, but were life students of the Bible, which to them was a unique Revelation ; both experienced a "call" to their life-work in a soul revolt against spectacles of wretchedness, symbolising the misery of a multitude ; both, through their call, became men of unified personalities ; both, in supreme dedication, gave their all, without reserve, to liberate the oppressed ; both struggled with herculean endurance, in the teeth of slander, contumely and contempt; both finally became mighty emancipators, who profoundly affected not only the destiny of a race, but the course of history.
Certain contrasts, nevertheless, are also revealing.
Shaftesbury's life struggle was less dramatic, less spectacular than Lincoln's : yet, in a vital sense, the achievement of the Emancipator of Industrial England was even more majestic than was that of the Emancipator of America's Slaves.
For without a civil war, without protracted strike or lockout, without, indeed, the loss of a single life, Shaftesbury freed his " slaves "? entirely by constitutional and Christian means.
The spread of knowledge and sympathy, the quickening of conscience, the conversion of public opinion, the persuasion of Parliament and the enactment of just, humane legislation, were the means of his conquest.
No legacy of resentment, therefore, no smouldering hate, was left behind ; but rather a firm foundation, on which succeeding social attainments could securely be built.
One pertinent fact, however, was all in Shaftesbury's favour. The previous abolition of British slavery, had made possible the quiet majesty of his far-reaching achievement.
1G. J. Holyoake, Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. I, p. 148.
For the detailed record of Shaftesbury's life, see the author's Lord Shaftesbury and Social-Industrial Progress.
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(ii) Religion and British Trade Unionism "The story of the trial and transportation of the Dorchester labourers,' say Sidney and Beatrice Webb in their History of Trade Unionism, ''is the best-known episode of early Trade Union history."1
Popularly the victims of this "' atrocious sentence " are known as " the Tolpuddle Martyrs," and so dear has been their memory to British Trade Unionists that, in 1912, there was erected by them in Tolpuddle village a memorial arch, unveiled by the Rt. Hon. Arthur Henderson.?
The thrice-told story of these six "' martyrs" need not be here retold.
Often, however, it is forgotten that three of them, George and James*® Loveless and Thomas Standfield, were local preachers ; that John Standfield and James Hammett were active
Christian workers and members of the Tolpuddle Methodist Chapel ; and that James Brine, who when transported had no religious conviction, was so influenced by the character of Thomas Standfield with whom he slaved in a " convict gang " in Australia, that, on return, he married his daughter and, migrating to Canada,* became an Enthusiast and " for many years a Sunday school superintendent."
Often, too, is it forgotten that James Hammett, who himself had no connection with the formation of the Union and who was arrested by mistake for his brother John, heroically insisted on concealing the error, in order that his brother might not be torn away from his wife, who very soon was expecting the birth of a child.
These humble '"' martyrs' were all sober, intelligent, hardworking and respectable agricultural labourers.
They and all their fellow "' farm-hands" around Tolpuddle, because of an agreement among the local farmers, had found their wages gradually depressed to the bare subsistence level of seven shillings a week.
So under the leadership of the able, sincere and godly George Loveless, they decided, for the protection of their families, to form an Agricultural Trade Union ; and following the prevailing Union custom in industrial areas, they bound all members by a secret oath.
Here accordingly was a loophole through which the authorities entered to apply an antiquated law.
These men had been guilty of no violence, no insurrection, no outrage, no intimidation.
They had not so much as hinted, at a strike.
'They simply had dared to form a friendly Agricultural 1 Op. cit. (1920 edition), p. 144.
2 See Henderson's Foreword to Owen Rattenbury's Flame of Freedom.
3 The Webbs, incorrectly, refer to fohn Loveless as the brother of George, instead of James.
; 4 Five of these six '' martyrs "' finally settled in Southern Ontario, Canada.
See Preface to second edition of Rattenbury's Flame of Freedom.
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Union to counter the combined coercion of their employers, and, in so doing, they inadvertently had administered a " secret oath."
That was enough!
The antiquated and long-dormant statute was called into play.
Despite the fact that the magistrate in question, and the Home Office, in conjunction with which he laid his trap, knew well that Masonic and other Fraternal
Lodges regularly administered 'secret' oaths, at daybreak on February 24th, 1834, the said six labourers were all bundled from their houses and marched off to the Dorchester jail.
After the " briefest of trials,' conducted by a new judge, John Williams, who harangued against the labourers as though they were arch-conspirators, all were subjected to the '' monstrous sentence of seven years' transportation."!
Before March goth, "the prisoners were in the hulks,"' destined for Botany Bay ; and Lord Melbourne, the then Home Secretary, voiced the opinion, that the law had "in this case been most properly applied.''?
With the execution of this ferocious sentence, it was predicted by the forces of repression that the whole Trade Union cause would be stunned into inaction.
Such was far from the case.
In prison, George Loveless wrote his Hymn of Freedom :
"God is our Guide ! from field, from wave, From plough, from anvil, and from loom, We come, our country's rights to save, And speak the tyrant faction's doom ; We raise the watchword ' Liberty.'
We will, we will, we will be free !
"God is our Guide!
No swords we draw, We kindle not war's battle fires, By reason, union, justice, law, We claim the birthright of our sires ; We raise the watchword, ' Liberty,'
We will, we will, we wili be free | °'8
Loveless's Hymn of Freedom was smuggled from prison to friends without.
It was expressive of the spirit of the rising Trade Union movement.
The London Observer (August 29th, 1937), paying tribute to that '' monumental study of nineteenthcentury England " by the French professor, Elie Halévy, says :
"No one got so thoroughly under the surface of political labels or made a more telling demonstration of the interaction of economic, religious, and other forces.
England has never found a truer interpreter."
Yet this same penetrating interpreter, in the first volume of his '' monumental " history, boldly avers :
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 146.
* Lord Melbourne's Papers, p. 158.
See, too, Geo. Loveless, Victims of Whiggery.
See Frontispiece to Rattenbury, op. cit., for the music to this song.
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"The majority of the leaders of the great trade union movement that would arise in England within a few years of 181 5 will belong to the Nonconformist sects.
They will often be local preachers, that is, practically speaking ministers.
Their spiritual ancestors were the founders of Methodism."
The purport of Halévy's observation, is apparent in this connection.
Far from these transportation sentences intimidating Trade Unionism, they caused it speedily to prove to a lethargic
Government that, already it was becoming a power in the land —a power inspired by high ideals, disciplined by self-control, and set on the attainment of Justice and Liberty by pacific, co-operative action.
Scarcely had the cruel verdict been pronounced, when a strong petition of protest was circulated under Union auspices.
Soon it.contained " over a quarter of a million signatures."* And despite the disgruntled pronouncement of Lord Melbourne, that he would neither receive a deputation nor a petition from a procession, a great demonstration was arranged to bear the petition to the Home Office.
On April 21st, 1834, on the admission of The Times, which feverishly opposed the procession, not less than 30,000 organised workers, bearing thirty-three trade banners, marched from Copenhagen Fields to Whitehall to present the petition.?
It was the first great Trade Union demonstration England had seen, and it was thoroughly peaceful and orderly.
At the head of the procession, wearing full canonicals, including the scarlet hood of a Doctor of Divinity, rode the " chaplain to the Metropolitan
Trades Unions," Rev. Dr. Arthur S. Wade.
Religion, sincerely and purposely, was symbolised as leading the union cause.
Nor did the petition and procession represent the end of this matter.
A London-Dorchester Committee forthwith was set up, and, throughout the country, an unceasing agitation was maintained.
Even in Parliamentary debates, the '' Dorchester Labourers"? became first familiar, then heroic, characters.
Indeed, the day soon arrived when Lord Melbourne wished heartily that he had never heard of the village of Tolpuddle, or of its six Trade Union " martyrs."
For if, as Home Secretary, he had encouraged their arrest and sanctioned their sentence, two years later, as Prime Minister, he was compelled by the pressure of growing public opinion to remit their sentence, to sanction their pardon, and to find public funds wherewith to effect their return.
Though, owing to official blundering, both in England and in Australia, it was not till early in 1838 that 1 History of the English People (1815 volume), p. 372.
2 Webb, op. cit., p. 148.
3 The Times, April 22nd, 1834.
'Trade Union accounts claim that fully 100,000 took part in the procession.
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the transported men arrived home, where, to their surprise, they discovered that fellow-workmen had collected £1,300 to give them a fresh start in life.1
Moreover, although the future of all save one of these " martyrs"? lay in Canada, it is significant that their true successor, Joseph Arch, founder of the National Agricultural Labourers'
Union, was also a _ local preacher. ?
If, then, in the first great episode of the British Trade Union drama, the influence of the Evangelical Revival is so apparent, in the second, when Unionists found themselves directly represented by their own members in Parliament, the same permeating influence is scarcely less pronounced.
'The earliest Trade Union M.P.s were returned as Liberal-Labour members ("' Lib-Labs "') with the General Election of 1874.
They were but two in number, Alexander Macdonald and 'Thomas Burt.
The former, and considerably the elder, was a typical product of thrifty, Puritan Scotland.
When eight, he was initiated into the life of a miner, but by frugal, temperate habits and force of character, he prepared himself for Glasgow University, which he entered in 1846.
While still at the University (though continuing work in the pit during vacations), Macdonald '' became known as a leader of the miners all over Scotland."
In 1863, on the formation of the National Union of Miners, he was elected president, and such he remained till death, in 1881.
Alexander Macdonald, therefore, enjoyed but seven years of Parliamentary representation ; nevertheless, because of his devotion, sagacity and tenacity, those seven years proved a boon to the Trade Union cause.
Emphasising always that essentially Christian principle, the " sanctity of personality over property,"' he insisted, as an axiomatic moral tenet, upon the "compulsory maintenance of the workmen's Standard of Life.''3
The latter of these original Labour pioneers in Parliament, Thomas Burt, who continued to sit as '' Lib.-Lab. "? M.P. for Morpeth for forty-four years without a break, sprang from a family of Primitive Methodist local preachers and class leaders. 4
He himself was early enlisted as a Sunday school teacher, and honorary temperance lecturer.
For eighteen years, Burt laboured 1 The fullest account of the '' Dorchester Labourers " is in Owen Rattenbury's Flame of Freedom (" 'The Romantic Story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs 2)
See, too, A Narrative of the Sufferings of James Loveless ; H. Brooks GEBS):
Six Heroes in Chains; and George Loveless, Victims of Whiggery.
2 Arthur Clayden, Revolt of the Field, p. 6; Howard Evans, Radical Fights of Forty Years, pp. 36-7; also F. S. Attenborough, Life of Joseph Arch, passim.
5 Webb, op. cit., p. 300 (note) and pp. 301-7; also Dr. Baernreither, English Associations of Working Men, p. 408.
Aaron Watson, A Great Labour Leader, pp. 7-8.
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as a miner.
For forty-eight years (1865-1913), he was elected Secretary of the Northumberland Miners' Association.
In 18g0, he was sent, as a leading British representative, to the Berlin Labour Conferences.
In 1891, he was elected President of the great National Trades Union Congress.
From 1892 till 1895, he was Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade.
In 1906, he was made a Privy Councillor.
When, in 1918, at eighty-one years of age, he retired from public life, he was the " Father of the House of Commons."
Increasingly, during his long Parliamentary career, had he won the affection of his constituents and the respect of all parties in Parliament.
Burt's winsome character, his open-mindedness, his capacity for toil and his unimpeachable honesty, had made him a true leader of men.
He had: proved conclusively that a Union miner, deprived of all youthful opportunities for academic attainment, could rise creditably to take his place among the legislators of an Empire.
Never was he a pedant or a doctrinaire.
His faith endowed him with a broad human sympathy, with boundless patience, with a passion for fairness, and with a deep understanding of men.
Pride, jealousy and pettiness were foreign to his nature.
He loathed the gospels of Class-Hatred and Class-War.
His culture, which was both real and gracious, derived from the School of Life ; and his guiding texts in that school were the Bible, the great poets, and the great historians.
Earl Grey, on a public occasion, as Governor-General of Canada, once said of Burt : "' The finest gentleman I ever knew was a working miner in England, whose gentleness, absolute fairness, instinctive horror of anything underhand or mean, or anything that was not the strictest fair play, gave him a character that enabled him to rise to the position of Privy Councillor."
Charles Fenwick, elected as "' Lib.-Lab.'' M.P. for Wansbeck in 1885, was a man of similar mould to Burt, and, like Burt, was early a local preacher.
For thirty-three years, till his death in 1918, Fenwick continued to represent the same constituency in Parliament.
As with Burt, practical religion, rather than economic theory, was the source of his strength.
From nine till thirty-five years of age, he himself toiled in the pit as a common miner, during which years, because of his strength of character, his fairness of mind and his genius for team-work, he was elected to various responsible posts by the Northumberland Miners'
Association.
Fenwick entered Parliament, therefore, a practical workman, a thorough-going Unionist, and a representative of Labour.
But, like Burt, Macdonald and other early Labour Members, as a " Lib.-Lab.", his general political outlook—
1 Aaron Watson, op. cit., Preface.
See, too, Thomas Burt's Autobiography (with supplementary chapters by W. Burt).
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aside from complete independence on Labour questions—was Liberal.
Fenwick was the first Labour M.P. ever to preside over the House of Commons in Committee.
For years he was elected Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress.
In 1911, he was made a Privy Councillor.
Though a tireless advocate of the aspirations of the labouring world, his life was devoid of bitterness or shibboleth worship ; and, if in Parliamentary circles, he was first coldly tolerated and then stiffly patronised, long before his death, by his disinterested integrity, he had won the admiration and honour ofall high-minded men.
says of these "' pious Methodists and local preachers," Burt and Fenwick, that they were " universally respected for their earnestness and virtues.''!
From a dozen angles, the study of this much-neglected impact of the Evangelical Revival upon the Trade Union Movement of England, might be profitably pursued.
Nowhere is it more dramatically conspicuous, than when British Unionists enter into international conference with the leaders of Organised
Labour on the Continent.
In 1910, for instance, 260 English Trade Union delegates visited the industrial city of Lille, in the north of France.
Public parades, as well as conferences, were part of the arranged programme.
The English deputation, like their comrades, carried the socialist flag and many trade emblems.
They also carried a banner reading : '' We represent 500,000 English workmen!"
This all was excellent.
But one thing dumbfounded the Continental Labour leaders.
They also carried banners, reading:
'' We proclaim the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man!" and " Jesus Christ Leads and Inspires us!"''
In conference, moreover, some of the veteran English leaders, quoting freely from the Bible, declared stoutly that, their Christianity had made them trade unionists, co-operators and socialists. ?
This same truth, from another angle, is emphasised by Mr.
Lloyd George.
"The movement," he says, " which improved the conditions of the working classes, in wages, in hours of labour, and otherwise, found most of its best officers and noncommissioned officers, in men trained in the institutions which were the result of Methodism.
I never realise the effect which Methodism has had upon the national character so much as when I attend international congresses.
It has given a different outlook to the British and American, from the outlook of the Continentals.
. John Wesley inaugurated a movement that gripped the soul of England, that deepened its spiritual instincts,
* Op. cit. (Vol. 1895-1905), p. 214.
See Professor Walter Rausckenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, p. 109.
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trained them and uplifted them; and the result is that, when a great appeal is made either to England or to America, there is always the response, and it is due to the great religious revival of the eighteenth century.
The same thing applies to peace.
When you preach the Gospel of Peace and say, ' Let us have peace,' they say, ' What is England after?
Trade?
What is it?
She is after something.'
The idea that she is preaching Peace because it is the supreme message of her Faith, never enters their head.
That is why it is difficult to interpret the outlook and the appeal to those who have not had the same training, as those subject to the influence of the great Evangelical
This leavening influence of practical Christianity upon the Trade Union movement of Britain, is not so strong to-day as once it was.
Various doctrinaire groups and organisations, bidding strongly for the control of Labour, have striven subtly to undermine it.
Nevertheless, it was during the years when that Christian influence was strongest, that the British workman's standard of life rose with a persistence never known before or since.
Even Professor Bowley and G. D. H. Cole, admit that the '"' real wages"? of the English worker were practically doubled, during the latter half of the nineteenth century.2, And these were the years when the work of Shaftesbury, of Ruskin, of the Christian Socialists and of the Evangelical
Trade Union leaders, were most vitally active.
Yet, despite the efforts of all the theoretic and economic materialists, this spiritual heritage is by no means exorcised from British Trade
Unionism to-day.
Witness the first-hand account of the " stayin" strike at the Nine Mile Point Colliery, Wales, in October,
1936.
The strikers, "' nearly a mile underground," had "no proper food for a week."
Living " in the stables all the time," they slept on boards procured by " breaking up the stalls."
For recreation, they organised quoits matches, played with " metal cones' stripped from blast pipes.
But their deeper emotion, craved and found deeper expression.
'"' Religious meetings," reports one of their number, "and concerts were held.
'Two miners conducted the religious meetings.
One of them is being ordained next week.
We sang hymns, ' Lead, Kindly Light,'
' Abide with Me,' and others.
There were beautiful prayers— as good as any preacher in the land could give."* The day, too, has not yet passed when the tens of thousands gathered at 1 From a speech made in London, June 2oth, 1922.
(Sir Kingsley Wood in the chair.) 2 See " Charts and Figures" in Cole's Short History of the British
Working-Class Movement, Vol. II, p. 196ff.
3 Observer (London), October 2oth, 1936, p. 21.
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a great British football match—many of them Trade Unionists— will break spontaneously into the singing of a hymn.
Nor has the day passed, when the National Trades Union Congress fails to appreciate the prayers offered for the guidance of its deliberations, in thousands of churches throughout the land.1
In striking contrast to the sour philosophy of Marx, and to the " pedantic fanaticism "' of certain later theorists, who hope to superimpose their materialistic panaceas on Labour, stands that remarkable story, A Man's Life—the autobiography of Jack
Lawson, M.P., a practical and leading Trade Unionist, who held office in the first Labour Government of 1924.
Maintaining that the Evangelical Revival "saturated the industrial masses with a passion for a better life, personal, mental, moral and social,"' he pronounces the Chapel their "' first social centre," where "they drew together, found strength in their weakness and expressed to each other their hidden thoughts and needs."
Here," says Lawson, '"' men first found the language and art to express their antagonism to grim conditions and injustice."
To the modern " intellectuals'? who " curl the lip " and sneer at " the Little Bethel," Lawson answers that, " the most powerful force for the mental and moral elevation of the workers during the industrial era, has been this contemptuously called ' Little
Bethel.' "
" The so-called intellectuals," he continues, '" speak of these as 'reactionary.'
In truth the gentlemen who speak so, know as much about the real living history of the people of this land, as pigs know of aeroplanes.''?
Lawson's language here seems strong ; but as one who toiled in the bowels of the earth for twenty years, as a life-long Unionist and a practical Labour leader, he knows the influences of which he writes.
'' Methodism," he says, '' took the ' nobodies? and made the most humble and hopeless 'somebody' '': while, recalling the warmth and fellowship of the particular Little
Bethel in which his own spiritual life was inspired and nourished, he avers that there radiated from it, "a spirit of camaraderie among the young people I have never seen equalled."
Indeed, deploring the historical neglect of the influence of the thousands of Little Bethels throughout Britain, Lawson stoutly contends that, "the Gospel expressed in social terms has been more of a driving power in northern mining circles, than all the economic teaching put together.''* 1 See Halévy, op. cit. (Vol. 1895-1905), p. 211.
* Lawson, op. cit., p. 66.
5 Ibid., p. 67.
See especially chapters x and xx of this book ; but it is worth pondering throughout.
BULWARKS
OF SOCIAL LIBERTY
(iii) The Independent Labour Movement and Workmen's Aspirations The early Labour M.P.'s., like Burt, Macdonald, Fenwick and Arch, were " Lib-Labs," forced by the pressure of Trade
Union strength upon the reluctant Liberal Party machine.
But the pioneer Trade Unions, like the effective Short Time Committees behind the Ten Hours campaign, had derived not only their moral virility but also their organising ability, through the Spiritual Awakening.
Indeed Halévy, referring to the Anti-Corn Law League agitation, says:
'' Every Englishman since Wesley's time who had organised a campaign of propaganda, had copied intentionally or unintentionally the Wesleyan model."?
In the case of the early Trade Union and Labour movements, the impact of this influence is inescapable.
Scarcely is it surprising therefore, that the man who inspired and led the movement for the complete independence of Labour from both
Conservative and Liberal parties—which respectively were almost dominated by the vested interests of Land and Industry
—was an ardent product of the continuing Baptism of Fire.
Keir Hardie, is one of the most romantic and intriguing characters of modern history.
The Encyclopedia Britannica refers to his '' strong personality, his unquestioned honesty and his lovable character,"' as notably fitting him for his life work ; while the Webbs remind us, that his "' kindliness and integrity of character endeared him to all who knew him."'?
Born in 1856, Hardie, when eight, began to earn his living as a "' message boy " in Glasgow.
Leaving Glasgow when ten, he laboured in the collieries at Newarthill, and for the next twelve years pursued the life of a miner by day and a student by night.
"' Brought up an atheist," in 1878, when twenty-two, he was " converted to Christianity."
His conversion, due largely to the impact of Ruskin and the study of the Gospels, unified his every faculty, intensified his humanitarian zeal, and made him a dynamic leader of men.
Henceforth he was to be an apostle, a crusader, an evangelist proclaiming a Message ; and that message centred in the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of man and the things appertaining to the Kingdom of Christ on earth.
Even the titles of his popular social pamphlets commonly assumed a religious mould as, for example, Can a Man be a Christian on a Pound a Week ? and My Confession of Faith in the Labour Alliance.
The year following his conversion, Hardie was elected Secretary of the Ayrshire Miners' Association.
In 1887 he started the Miner, later to develop into the Labour Leader.
'The same year, on his first appearance at the Trades Union Congress, 1 History of English People (Vol. 1830-41), page 340.
2 History of Trade Unionism, p. 681 (note).
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he proposed the. creation of an independent Labour party, maintaining that too frequently the workers had been "' befooled and betrayed " by the old parties.
A few months later, at a by-election at Mid-Lanark, he was nominated to run as a representative of Independent Labour against both Liberal and Conservative candidates. Despite an offer from Liberal
Agents of a " safe seat' at the " first opportunity," if only he would wear the Liberal badge, Hardie never so much as wavered.!
He polled only 619 votes, but he had begun a movement of far-reaching effects.
Forthwith he established the Scottish Labour Party ; in 1892, he was elected M.P. for West
Ham (London)—the first "' Independent " Labour representative to sit in the House of Commons.
Next year, at a small conference in Bradford, he founded the "' Independent Labour
Party," into which the " Scottish" was merged.
In 18g9, he induced the Trades Union Congress to authorise the formation of a Labour Representation Committee to work in conjunction with the "I.L.P." and other co-operating bodies, for the purpose of '' promoting legislation in the direct interest of labour."
In 1906, he became the leader of the newly formed "Labour Party" in the House of Commons.
Always he stood firmly for peace, temperance, education, justice and social equity, based squarely on what he conceived to be obvious
Christian principles.
His integrity, his perseverance and _ his humanity, were unassailable: but, the failure of " civilised peoples"? to prevent the World War broke his heart, and hastened his end ;_ he died in 1915.?
Any man who rises to the dizzy height of being three times Prime Minister of England, will have many political foes; and if the circumstances surrounding his premierships be analagous to those experienced by J. Ramsay MacDonald, such foes will be peculiarly clamant and virulent.
This is not the place to attempt judgment upon the conduct of the first Labour Prime
Minister, in the various crises of his highly difficult and highly dramatic career.
Around that subject, debate will long and furiously rage.
But one thing is beyond debate.
Moral and spiritual forces have been uppermost, in shaping all that is most attractive in the life of Mr. MacDonald.
Born of labouring parentage in Scotland (1866), his latent abilities were discovered
by the minister of the local kirk, who procured for him a post as '' pupil teacher.""
When eighteen, he was a clerk in London earning only 12s. 6d. a week, but slaking his thirst for education by attendance at night classes and by incessant reading.
In 1 History of Trade Unionism, p. 682 (note 2).
For Hardie, see D. Lowe, From Pit to Parliament ; and W. Stewart, J. Keir Hardie.
BULWARKS
OF SOGIAL LIBERTY
1894 he joined the I.L.P., where force of character, pronounced organising ability and high ideals, marked him for special leadership.
When thirty, he married that noble, capable, Christian woman, Margaret Gladstone, niece of Lord Kelvin.
In 1899 he was made Secretary of the Labour Representation Committee ; in 1906 he was elected M.P. for the industrial city of Leicester ; by 1911, he was leader of the Labour Party.
His pacifism, during the war, caused him to refuse Office and made him the target of much vitriolic attack.!
From 1918 till 1922, he was without. a seat in the Commons ; but, returned again to Parliament in the latter year, he was chosen by his colleagues as Opposition Leader.
In 1924, he became Britain's first Labour Prime Minister ; in 1929 he formed his second Labour
Ministry ; in 1931, to grapple more effectively with the perplexing conditions of the world economic depression, he sank party interest and headed a National Government.
MacDonald's public career and his writings alike, show that consistently he has opposed the way of violence.
War and revolution were equally repulsive to him.
Though a thoroughgoing Socialist, the materialism, the economic-determinism, the class-hatred, the atheism and the final world cataclysm of Marx's doctrinaire dogma, have always repelled him.
His books, Parliament and Democracy and Parliament and Revolution are vigorous, logical apologetics for Democratic government: but to him such government must always postulate freedom of thought, speech and institution, must be based squarely on moral principles, and must proceed from the untrammelled consent of the governed.
MacDonald's '"' Foreword" to Dr. Belden's book, George Whitefield, reveals clearly his belief in the dependence of true Democracy upon vital Christianity.
"The Free Churches,'"? MacDonald pronounces, '' one of the pure sources from which free Democracy came."
'It was by the dynamic of free religion,'' he avers, "' that the masses were inspired to escape from the quagmire of misery and injustice "' ; while again, he maintains that the Christian faith " preserved the masses from becoming soulless things, obedient to the convenience and advantage of economic forces.''?
"Democracy," in Britain and America, MacDonald contends, has already '' conquered the foothills."
The baffling summit towers challengingly before its view.
'' Can it afford ? " he asks, "' now to dispense with that ardour and devotion which only profound religious belief and stern ethical principle can
1See C. W. Mullins, The Patriotism of Ramsay MacDonald and Others (1916); H. Tracey, From Doughty Street to Downing Street (1924) ; his biography by his wife (1912).
WODN Cit, Ps LL:
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provide ?'' Then coming to that "Common Baptism in one Free Faith,' mediated by those intrepid modern apostles, Wesley and Whitefield, he points out that it "' gave men selfrespect and pride, and did not merely arm them with claims for sharing in this world's goods."
'' The problem is still unsolved,'' MacDonald continues, '' how to make man his own master.
It never will be solved by rectifying difference in status, or in material possessions.
Class conflicts will only mislead us, and give victories which will be barren of results.
. The generation' which loses the spirit of life loses everything worth having.
Let us not pride ourselves that we are progressing, if we let go the interests and inspirations which brought the Free Churches into being.''+
If Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald were the central figures in making the Labour Party an independent force, the Labour leaders who have left the next deepest impress upon the popular mind are Arthur Henderson and George Lansbury ; the former a life-long local preacher, the latter a zealous Christian crusader combining in his own person many of the most attractive aspects both of the Evangelical and the AngloCatholic approach.
Born of humblest parentage, in 1863, Henderson as a boy served apprenticeship as a moulder in Newcastle.
Soon practical Christianity and constructive TradeUnionism became his consuming interests.
His education was self-acquired : his driving motive was the peaceful application of Christian principles to the solution of personal, civic, national and international problems.
While yet very young, he rendered excellent service on the Newcastle city council.
In 1903 he became Mayor of Darlington, and the same year at a by-election won a seat in Parliament.
From 1908 to 1910, he was Chairman of the National Labour Party, a post to which he again was elected in 1914.
In the Coalition war Ministries, both under Asquith and Lloyd George, he held Cabinet stations: in the Labour Government of 1924, he was Home Secretary and in that of 1929, Foreign Secretary.
Always a man of peace, his labours after the war centred in that field, and he was chosen
President of the Disarmament Conference, held at Geneva in 1932.
Lansbury, born in 1859, did not enter Parliament till he was fifty-one.
His training for Parliamentary service, like that of Henderson, was through municipal experience.
Till 1892, he had been an " ardent Liberal" ; then, converted to Socialism, he became a flaming apostle and ceaseless propagandist of "Labour " doctrines.
Long and intimate contact with municipal 'Op. cit., pp. xii and xiii; see Professor Ernest Barker's Oliver Cromwell for a penetrating elaboration of this same theme.
VITAL BUILDERS IN THE NEW WORLD
Bishop Francis Asbury Dr. Egerton Ryerson
BULWARKS OF SOCIAL LIBERTY
affairs enabled him, in 1909, to render signal service as a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law.
In 1910 he was elected M.P. for Bow, East London, and two years later resigned his seat, to vindicate his advocacy of women's suffrage.
In 1912 he began editing the Daily Herald, thus giving "' Labour "' its first daily paper.
In 1919-20 he was Mayor of the London borough of Poplar, and in 1921 his policy of " generous relief to the unemployed"? won him a short term of imprisonment.
In 1924 he refused Office in the first Labour Government.
From 1925 to 1927 he published Lansbury's Labour Weekly, and from 1927 to 1928 was Chairman of the national Labour Party.
First Commissioner of Works in the second Labour Government (1929-31), he vastly improved and expanded the parks and playing fields of the land, adapting them especially to the needs of children and to the requirements of wholesome games and recreations.
Finally he rose to be Opposition Leader in the House of Commons, but, for conscience sake, relinquished that Office.
The Christian World expressed but sober truth when, after suggesting that 'often'? he may have been ** politically wrong," it continued:
'"' Everyone feels that all George Lansbury's actions and decisions are inspired by an utterly unselfish and high-minded motive.
Such men, whatever their party allegiance, are the glory of our public life.
Lansbury's career was crowned by an action which, in a sense, ended it.
He resigned the leadership of his party because, as an absolute pacifist, he could no longer accept office in any
Government committed to preparation for war."!
After resignation, as an apostle of '' Christian peace,' Lansbury chivalrously carried his evangel to the private ears both of Hitler and of Mussolini; while in September, 1937, presiding at a 'National Convention of the Parliamentary Pacifist Group," he said:
'We refuse to accept the ghastly doctrine that only massed force can bring peace to a distracted world.''?
Furthermore, dismissing in toto, as "absurd futility," the arbitrament of the sword, he frankly declared:
'' We should be willing to accept international organisation of the world's undeveloped territories and non-self-governing peoples."*
These Labour giants, however, stand not as isolated individuals.
Despite all the efforts of Marxian atheists and ideological rationalists, to capture control of the British Labour movement, practical Christian influences have remained its saving salt.
The historical backgrounds of the Movement, have made it wary of doctrinaire dogmatists and "cure-all" political 1 See issue of September 2nd, 1937, p. 3.
2 Observer, September 19th, 1937.
3 Ibid.
See Lansbury's My Life (1928).
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adventurers.
Continental organs often have dubbed the Labour party " the Salvation Army of British politics" ; but the country's working masses have not been perturbed by the jibe.
The very name of Labour's chief educational centre, Ruskin College, Oxford, is indicative of the social-evangelical forces that have inspired the Labour crusade.
Moreover, when the names of such characters as Will Crooks, Philip Snowden, Margaret Bondfield, James Hudson, Jack Lawson, Professor
Lees Smith and A. V. Alexander are placed alongside those of Burt, Fenwick, Arch, Hardie, MacDonald, Henderson and Lansbury, it will be seen how deep are the ethical-religious springs at which this political movement, expressive of the British workers' humane aspirations, has been fed.
Nor dare one suggest that the same spiritual influences have been absent from the Conservative and Liberal parties.
Both have passed many measures of high humanitarian value.
Both, through the days of Wilberforce, Buxton and Shaftesbury, to those of Gladstone, Lloyd George and Baldwin, can point to many noble characters whose disinterested championship of high causes, would have enriched the public life of any State.
The purging Baptism of Fire affected not only the personal, educational and social life of the British people, but also its political and national life.
Even the pathetically meagre application of Christian principles, has proven the chief inspiration and sustaining bulwark of that measure of social liberty the British people already enjoy.
CHAPTER XXII
CREATIVE SOCIAL SERVICE
HeNcE freedom of association proved in the end the restriction of individual freedom and the authority of custom replaced and almost superseded the authority of law.
And this is modern England.
. In the vast work of social organisation which is one of the dominant characteristics of nineteenth-century England, it would be difficult to over-estimate the part played by the Wesleyan revival."
Err Hattvy, A History of the English People (1815 vol.) p. 372.
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CHAPTER XXII
CREATIVE SOCIAL SERVICE
In no previous age, and among no other peoples in the modern age, has the expression of voluntary benevolence, co-operation and social service reached such proportions or exhibited such virility, as during the last century and a half among the AngloSaxon peoples.
This, moreover, is no accident.
Nor is it the result of any superior natural humanity, or inalienable virtue, resident in the Anglo-Saxon character.
Indeed, the deeper and more exhaustive the research into the earlier half of eighteenth-century Britain, the more inescapable becomes the conclusion, that the British people were in no degree exempt from what theologians once were wont to designate, " original sin."
On the contrary, the wanton torture of animals for sport, the bestial drunkenness of the populace, the inhuman traffic in African negroes, the kidnapping of fellow-countrymen for exportation and sale as slaves, the mortality of parish children, the universal gambling obsession, the savagery of the prison system and penal code, the welter of immorality, the prostitution of the theatre, the growing prevalence of lawlessness, superstition and lewdness ; the political bribery and corruption, the ecclesiastical arrogance and truculence, the shallow pretensions of Deism, the insincerity and debasement rampant in Church and State—such manifestations suggest that the British people were then perhaps as deeply degraded and debauched, as any people in Christendom.
Whence, then, this pronounced humanity ?—this passion for social justice, and sensitivity to human wrongs?
'There is but one answer commensurate with stubborn historical truth.
It derived from a new social conscience.
And if that social conscience, admittedly, was the offspring of more than one progenitor, it none the less was mothered and nurtured by the Evangelical Revival of vital, practical Christianity—a revival which illumined the central postulates of the New Testament ethic, which made real the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of men, which pointed the priority of personality over property, and which directed heart, soul and mind, toward the establishment of the Kingdom of Righteousness on earth.
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(i) Christian Liberty in Action Nothing in modern Britain, perhaps, better illustrates the principle of Christian liberty in action than her extensive voluntary hospital system, wherein the poorest receive the best medical and surgical treatment free.
The British hospital system is too well known to warrant any elaboration here.
Nevertheless, it should be remembered that this is the only major hospital system in the world supported almost exclusively by the freewill gifts of an appreciative public.
And that phenomenal generosity is closely associated with the spirit of personal sacrifice and public service, engendered by the modern Baptism of Fire.
Such hospitals as existed in England prior to the Great Revival, were used largely for healing the wounds, mending the limbs and maintaining the general physical fitness of soldiers and sailors of the Crown.
The early eighteenth-century Charity Sermons and Reports, make that fact abundantly clear. Wesley it was who started the first free medical dispensary in England ; he established the first centres offering free electric treatment to the poor; he emphasised constantly the sanctity of the human body as the temple of the living Spirit of God, urging the Christian duty of keeping it pure and healthy ; while also, his widely circulated Primitive Physic helped largely to make the care of the body a matter of religious and social, as well as of personal, concern.
As Sir George Newman has observed, an unprecedented improvement in public health accompanied the progress of the Revival ; and the splendid voluntary hospital facilities of modern England (so generously supported by religious organisations) came to be more closely associated with a spiritual than a materialistic conception of life.
If, however, the voluntary hospital system is the best known of all the voluntary-humanitarian services of Britain, it is but symbolic of a unique heritage of modern social service organisations, in the creation of which nineteenth-century England led the world.
Even the briefest survey of some of the characteristic humanitarian movements at work in Britain to-day, will evince their close relationship to the Baptism of Fire which purged and enlarged the soul of England.
'The spiritual awakening which abolished the slave trade, which laid the foundations of popular education, which humanised the prison system, which established a world missionary movement, which emancipated
England's " industrial slaves," and which raised up a valiant leadership both in Trade Unionism and the Parliamentary
Labour Movement—that same awakening inspired also the 1 See Encyclopedia Britannica (" Hospital '').
CREATIVE SOCIAL SERVICE
modern philanthropic and social service movement, which extended its sympathy not only to all sorts and conditions of human beings, but even to the lower creatures of creation.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded in London in 1824, is not only the largest but the oldest animal protection society in existence.
In Great Britain it has more than 2,000 branches and employs 230 full-time and well-trained inspectors.
Every year it offers free veterinary service to over a quarter-million mute creatures.
Not only has it promoted much animal-protection legislation and created an organisation which guarantees its effective enforcement, but, more important, it has circulated much knowledge regarding bird and beast life and has mediated kindness toward all dumb, defenceless creatures, particularly those domesticated as helpmeets of man.
Prizes offered by this Society draw forth, every year, hundreds of thousands of competition essays from British school children, all dealing with the habits and rights of, or man's duties toward, the beast and bird world ; while also the Ladies' Committee of the Society, which specialises on child education, spreads influences which predispose the nation's children to kindness toward all the lower animal creation.
Scarcely is it surprising to discover that Arthur Broome, founder of the R.S.P.C.A., which now has mothered " many hundreds of kindred societies all over the world,'? was an obscure Evangelical clergyman, who resigned his living that he might give all his time to conducting a mission for the Christian treatment of defenceless animals.
Neither is it surprising, on examining the records of this Society, to find that at its inaugural meeting the great Evangelical emancipator,
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, was in the chair, and that both William Wilberforce and Sir James MacKintosh were present as supporters? ; while all three of these humanitarians, along with Richard Martin, M.P., and other enthusiasts, were on the initial Committee of the infant organisation.
Again it is pertinent that the Ladies' Committee of the R.S.P.C.A., was founded by that remarkable Evangelical leader the Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, while she it was also who, in 1869, laid the foundation stone of the present headquarters of the Society in Jermyn Street, London.
Nor was this Evangelical manifestation of kindness toward animals, disassociated with the earliest teaching of the Revival.
No one had more sternly opposed 1 For a vivid historical record of the work of the R.S.P.C.A., see Edward
Fairholme and Wellesley Pain, A Century of Work for Animals (second edition, 1934) ; also see Annual Reports and pamphlets of the Society.
2 Facts and Figures about the R.S.P.C.A., p. 2.
3 Fairholme and Pain, op. cit., p. 54.
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the "sport" of baiting animals than Wesley.
He made it a fixed rule moreover among his itinerant preachers, that never after a journey should they seek food or rest themselves, tll they had seen to it that the horse, which shared their labours, had been properly fed, brushed, rubbed down, bedded and, if necessary, blanketed.
So deeply interested in animals was Wesley, that he even believed they had souls : while Cowper, the classic poet of the Revival, wrote :
""T would not enter on my list of friends, (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.'
The famous London City Mission, even more emphatically than the R.S.P.C.A., was conceived and nurtured in the immediate spiritual succession of the great Revival.
David Nasmith, its founder, was born of poor but pious Glasgow parents, in 1799.
At fourteen, he became secretary of the Glasgow Youths'
Bible Association.
When but sixteen, he was a most successful Sunday School teacher.
When eighteen, his religious fervour impelled him to volunteer as a missionary candidate for Africa ; and sore was his disappointment when he learned that, for lack of sufficient educational background, his application had been unsuccessful.
Nevertheless, if secular employment was still to demand much of his time, a missionary he had to be, wherever a door would open.
When nineteen, he became honorary-secretary of the Glasgow Bridewell Association, giving unsparingly of his time to work among prisoners.
When twenty, to his great delight, he was appointed, at £60 a year, to the assistant-secretaryship of Religious and Charitable Institution House, Glasgow, a post which sharpened his organising abilities and revealed to him the deeper needs of the slum-dwellers of his city.
When _ twenty-seven, Nasmith launched upon his real life work.
Resigning his secretarial post, he founded the Glasgow City Mission, and having established it upon interdenominational foundations of service to the most needy, proceeded in 1828 to Dublin, where he founded a similar Mission.
The year 1830 found him in North America, where he created not only the New York City Mission but also Missions in a score of the larger centres of the U.S.A. and Canada.
In 1832, after much effort, he established a City Mission in Paris; while in May, 1835, came the crowning success of his life, the founding of the London
City Mission.?
1 Cowper, The Task, Book vi, 1, 560f.
For Nasmith's life, see Dr. John Campbell, Memoirs of David Nasmith ; also London City Mission Magazine (January to September,
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CREATIVE SOCIAL SERVICE
The co-operation of all willing Christians, of whatever denomination, upon which these Missions were founded, would have been unthinkable aside from the leavening influences of the Evangelical Revival.
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton became the first Honorary Treasurer of the London City Mission ; and the co-labours of '' Enthusiasts," Anglican and Nonconformist, made possible its marked success.
Within twenty-two months of its founding, the L.C.M. was commanding the full-time, paid services of sixty-three missionaries in the most neglected purlieus of London, together with the voluntary efforts of many helpers.
From the beginning, it entered into fullest co-operation both with the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious
Tract Society.
No sooner was it on its feet, than it established its own Magazine, and never since has that organ missed its monthly publication.
To-day the L.C.M. has 270 full-time missionaries, ministering to the most unfortunate strata of the World Metropolis, not only through the medium of the English tongue but through twenty other languages as well; while this regular staff is assisted by some 2,000 Sunday School teachers and other voluntary workers.
Every year, the L.C.M. missionaries pay more than a million-and-a-half home visits among those the Churches but slightly touch: to scores of thousands of struggling people—especially poor mothers—they act as guides, counsellors and friends.
At the sick bed, in hospitals and lodging houses, among criminals and prisoners, they are ministering angels.
In their own Halls, they care for 20,000 Sunday School children; they conduct Temperance Guilds, Bible Classes, Mothers' Meetings and Young People's Societies of Christian Endeavour.
They preach too in the open-air, distribute Bibles and Christian literature, provide thousands of free beds and tens of thousands of free meals, while also they annually send multitudes of poor children for a " day's outing," in the country or by the sea.
And all this is made possible, by freewill gifts of about £75,000, which Christian people yearly bestow upon the Mission.+ Next, among the memorable permanent organisations that grew up in the spiritual succession of the Revival, was the Y.M.C.A., founded by George Williams in 1844.
William's parentage, was as humble and obscure as Nasmith's.
Following a schooling little above the average, he was apprenticed, when fourteen, to Mr. Holmes, a draper in Bridgwater.
Holmes, being himself a regular attendant at the local Congregational Chapel, insisted that all his apprentices attend service there, on Sunday mornings.
'This at first, to Williams, was an irksome duty.
But gradually, the quiet personality and earnest teaching 1 See Annual Report of L.C.M., June, 1937.
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of the minister, Rev. Evan James, grew upon him ; and he began attending the evening service also—by choice.
When sixteen, on a winter Sunday evening in 1837, Williams experienced his soul's awakening.
Sitting alone, in the back seat of the little Chapel, his being was pierced to the quick by the minister's sermon.
Christ, he knew, was pleading for the lordship of his life.
That night, he knelt in fervent prayer "' at the back of the shop "' and arose a "' new creature.''?
Henceforth, the onetime "careless, thoughtless, godless, swearing young fellow "! was a staunch disciple of Christ.
Shortly after Williams's conversion, he read two books by the then-famous American evangelist, Charles Finney—Lectures to Professing Christians, and Lectures on Revivals.
These books fanned his new-found spiritual life into a consuming fire, and made him a ceaseless missioner among his daily associates.
Before his apprenticeship was over, he had the joy of seeing the atmosphere of the Holmes Drapery establishment completely changed.
Every one of his immediate business associates in that Bridgwater shop, he had led into a personal
Christian experience and into active discipleship.
Such was the youth who, when twenty, procured a post, at £40 a year, with the great metropolitan drapery house of Hitchcock.
When Williams came to London, in 1841, the working conditions of drapers' assistants were peculiarly bad.
Already Shaftesbury's epic campaign had begun to restrict the hours and improve the conditions of factory operatives: but so far,
" black-coated workers" behind counter and desk had found no relief; and the Short Time Committees were not yet.
By common consent, the drapers' assistants were the worst "slavies " of all the white-collared toilers in London.
Competition in their ranks was keen ; daily hours of labour, ranged from twelve to fifteen; by ancient custom, they lived and slept over their master's place of business; and none, had a bed to himself.
In these circumstances it was difficult to nurture spiritual life, though profanity, smutty stories and scandal-mongering, found fertile soil.
Among the one hundred and forty assistants in the Hitchcock firm, Williams, on arrival, found but one professing Christian.
These two, immediately becoming friends, began a campaign of prayer and personal evangelism, inviting their closest associates, one by one, to come and hear their favourite preachers and attend a Bible
Class of which they were members.
It was all surprisingly ingenuous, and they at first were the recipients of many a jibe and rebuff ; but soon a prayer and Bible study group was meeting daily, in one of the bedrooms over the Hitchcock
1 J. E. Hodder Williams, Life of Sir Geo. Williams, p. 17.
GREATIVE SOGIAL SERVICE
establishment.
Finney's books were introduced to this tiny nucleus.
Conversions followed'; and at the end of a year, about a dozen of the assistants were utterly committed to the service of Christ.
Before the end of the second year, temperance, mutual improvement and missionary meetings, besides those for prayer and Bible study, were part of the regular programme.
Even the head of the firm, now was one of the converts: the Enthusiasts were transforming the whole aspect of a great business house, while it, in consequence, was contributing workers to Sunday Schools, Missions, Temperance Guilds and Churches, throughout London.
George Williams's third year in London, marks the origin of the Young Men's Christian Association.
The moral and spiritual influences started in Hitchcock's, spread to the West End drapery house of W. D. Owen, where the principal assistant,
James Smith, supported by Mr. Branch, a London City Missionary, began similar efforts.
Williams successfully co-operated with them.
Then the thought began to possess him: Why not a comprehensive Association of Christian young men, to mediate spiritual and moral influences in all the drapery houses—indeed, in all the business firms—of London?
The zealot prayed and pondered ; he discussed the project with his most intimate helpers; and finally, on June 6th, 1844, an inner circle of twelve young men assembled in Williams's bedroom, and formed themselves into an Association pledged to attempt this high purpose.
Thus, in "an upper room," over a great city business firm, inspired by the faith and vision of a mere stripling from the country, was born the Y.M.C.A.
At that historical meeting, however, the name had not been determined, the immediate designation being "' The Drapers' Evangelical Association."
It was in a later consultation, that the now-famous name was agreed upon.
Then, a carefully worded circular letter was sent to the leading business houses of London.
This drew forth many encouraging replies.
The mission spread.
New zealots were forthcoming.
Lord Shaftesbury, whom Sir George Williams was later wont to style '' our Moses," was procured as President.
And so from that Upper Room where twelve young clerks, aflame with missionary fire, bound themselves into a committee for definite Christian advance, evolved a movement which, spreading to every Continent, has affected millions of young men for good.'
1J E. H. Williams, op. cit. (passim.), but especially chapter v ; Sir Arthur Yapp, The Romance of the Red Triangle ; 1936 Y.M.C.A. Report
(Our Message is Christ).
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AND AFTER WESLEY
(ii) ~The March Continues Something of the work of the Ragged School Union, as a distinctive pioneer in the struggle for popular education in England, we have already observed.
'That Union was founded in the same year as the Y.M.C.A., and by persons who drank from the same spiritual springs., After the passing of the Board
School Act (1870), the Union manifested no little genius in adapting itself to changed conditions.
Relieved by the State of most of its secular educational tasks, it became under Shaftesbury's guidance more and more a medium for wider social service to childhood and youth.
For decades now, this Union has been known as The Shaftesbury Society, Lord Shaftesbury being, from its inception in 1844 till his death in 1885, its active, devoted President.
To-day the Shaftesbury Society has well over 6,000 voluntary workers who, together with 150 trained and paid Missioners, Deaconesses, Teachers, etc., labour in the most needy sections of Britain's industrial cities.
It has almost 200 Local Branches and affiliated Missions, conducting most comprehensive programmes ; it operates a score of Seaside and Country Homes, Camps, humane Residential Schools and Hostels, Fresh Air Retreats and Sunshine Camps ; it has 440 Companies of Scouts, Guides and other Brigades ; it runs more than a score of Infant Welfare Centres, Medical
Missions, Day Nurseries and Nursery Schools.
For the Deformed, it affords 90 Cripple Parlours, thus engendering joy and fellowship in some 7,500 lives which otherwise would be lonely and bleak.
Every year, this Society sends scores of thousands of underprivileged children for an outing by the sea, or in the country ; it distributes myriads of garments, toys and pairs of boots ; while also it lends out hundreds of surgical appliances and invalid carriages.
The essence of its being, however, is represented by its Gospel Services, Sunday Schools,
Bible Classes, Prayer Groups, Bands of Hope, Institutes and Clubs.
Annually, apart from all local support, and all gifts in kind, the British people contribute more than £80,000 to the central funds of the Shaftesbury Society.1
Lecky, as we have seen, pronounced the eighteenth century liquor traffic '' the Master Curse " of English Society.2_
A curse that traffic remains.
But no mean campaign has been waged against it; and the power and persistence of that campaign have derived chiefly from the unquenchable moral enthusiasm engendered by Evangelical Christianity.
Wesley, his itinerant * See Two Cities in One (Annual Report of Shaftesbury Society, 1937).
2 See chapter viii (ii).
CREATIVE SOCIAL SERVICE
and local preachers, his class leaders and all his official standard bearers, were confirmed opponents of intoxicating beverages.
Temperance in all the social, educational and moral endeavours of the " Clapham Sect " was a central plank.
So pronounced too was the temperance emphasis of Whitefield, Asbury, Coke and their spiritual successors in America, that, by 1833, the United States alone had over one million members of Total
Abstinence organisations, united in 6,000 local societies.
In England, in 1831, inspired almost entirely by Evangelical zeal, the British andForeign Temperance Society sprang into life.
Four years later, the Independent Order of Rechabites was established, and spread rapidly to America.
In 1853 came the powerful and interdenominational United Kingdom Alliance, which began to press the temperance cause in politics ; while in 1862, followed the Church of England Temperance Society.
Such orders and organisations, moreover, as the Good Templars, The Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Band of Hope Union, are immediate products of the sustained
Baptism of Fire ; and notwithstanding all " interested '' ridicule, they have been the means of inestimable good.
Nor can the Prohibition movement of the U.S.A. ever be understood apart from the same Spiritual Succession.
If not the child, it unmistakably was the grandchild of the Great Revival.
The ** Noble Experiment" was fraught with not a few mistakes.
It became too legalistic, too coercive, too intolerant, too politically-minded. Temporarily it is under a cloud. But the true temperance movement behind it, is not dead; nor will it die, while high moral enthusiasm and the yearning for clean citizenship, survive.
Again, the lives of the great temperance leaders no less than the origin of the great temperance movements, bespeak their common relationship to vital, vigorous Christianity.
Who can explain the endeavours of John B. Gough, of Frances Willard and of Sir Wilfred Lawson, apart from the sustaining inspirations of their Evangelical Faith ? Nor is the case of that intrepid
Roman Catholic temperance leader, Father Mathew, widely different.
His burning moral and temperance enthusiasm of course expressed itself through the medium of his own Church, wherein he wrought inestimable good.
But not a little of the vision, zeal and technique of his marvellous '' Missions,'' he had learned from the impact of the world's greatest Protestant
Revival.?
1 See articles on '"' Temperance " in Ency. Brit., Ency. of Rel. and Ethics, and Daily Express Ency.
2 See Gough's Life, by C. Martyn; Frances Willard's, by Florence White ; Mathew's, by F. J. Matthew ; also Lawson's Law and the Liquor
Traffic.
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Some sophisticated persons still sneer at the Salvation Army.
Their sneer is the sneer of ignorance.
Who can read Hugh Redwood's God in the Slums, without realising the unobtrusive efficiency of its Emergency Relief Corps?
Yet that is but one of a hundred vehicles through which these Soldiers of the Cross render vital service, amidst desperate situations.
To-day the Salvation Army is organised and labouring in eighty-three countries.
Its efforts are guided by 32,460 officers and officials, controlling 15,304 centres of activity.
It commands the services of more than 35,000 bandsmen and over 63,000 songsters.
Nevertheless, these represent but a fraction of its voluntary workers, consecrated to "' the service of humanity, in the name and spirit of Christ."
It seeks to form an unbroken chain of sacrificial love, throughout the shadowed places of the earth.
Sanctified sanity '' motivates its toil.
Besides all its moral and spiritual teaching facilities, the Salvation Army conducts an amazing retinue of social services.
Its Hostels and Shelters, provide scores of thousands of free beds for the homeless and forlorn.
Millions of free meals are annually given to the hungry, through its Kitchens and Canteens.
Employment is found for large numbers out of work.
As for criminals, prisoners, and their dependents, the " Army" annually assists many thousands of these, with a tenderness and an understanding no state institution could emulate.
It provides many companies of trained nurses and midwives, in quarters where their services are a '' God-send."?
It runs Maternity Homes, Hospitals, Créches, Industrial Homes, '"' Eventide Homes," Seaside Camps, Land Colonies, Migration Centres,
Slum Sisterhoods, Prison Visitation Corps, and most winsome Rescue Homes for unmarried mothers ; for, uncompromising as is their morality, never do Salvationists look upon young unmarried mothers as prostitutes.
Even educationally, the Army does '' its bit."
In India alone, it conducts 648 Day Schools and several Boarding Schools.
Recently, the Punjab's Minister of Education, on opening a new Salvation Army School, said :
The Salvation Army in this country puts our own people to shame.
The work that should be done by Indians, has too often been done by the European Officers of the Salvation Army.
But for their great sacrifice, these children, who will be housed in one of the best school buildings the Province possesses, would probably have roamed about committing offences."'!
William Booth, founder of this Christian "' Army," was an ordained Methodist minister.
In 1864, to reach "' the hopeless,"'
1 Glorious Quest (Annual Report of some of the Salvation Army's Worldwide Work—1936), p. 27.
'The above facts are gleaned from fully a dozen different pamphlets and reports.
CREATIVE SOCIAL SERVICE
he created the East London Revival Society.
That Society, in 1878, was re-organised and christened the Salvation Army.
So it also, is a lineal descendant of the mighty Spiritual Awakening !2
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is another voluntary organisation in the same succession.
'Throughout the country, it has some 300 Branches, supported by nearly 3,000 Ladies Committees and other auxiliary bodies.
No district in the Kingdom is without a local Committee pledged to the guardianship of childhood.
But as Rev. Benjamin Waugh, its first Director, often said:
'The Inspector is the Society."
Of these trained and uniformed inspectors (men and women), the N.S.P.C.C. has no less that 270, permanently stationed in allotted areas.
With local clergymen, school masters, Sunday School superintendents, magistrates, policemen and others interested in child welfare, they keep in closest touch.
Hence, with the backing of Committees, Branches and Headquarters, a salutary supervision of child life is always in progress.
The purpose of the Society is protective, not punitive.
True, in dire necessity, it does not shirk resort to the Courts ; but for one case of prosecution, it records several scores of conference, advice and warning.?
Education, social illumination and the sensitising of conscience, are its chief avenues of expression.
Not only does it help irresponsible parents to realise their duty towards their offspring ; it also helps refractory children to appreciate their duties towards their parents,
The Child's Guardian, the Society's official organ, enjoys a circulation above 100,000: its other publications render high service.
Yearly, too, the N.S.P.C.C. sponsors thousands of public lectures, lantern talks and films, to further the home and community interests of the Child.
'To this Society again a grateful public annually donates about £150,000.
The immediate British forerunners in this field, were Thomas Agnew and Rev. George Staite, both passionate lovers of children and both religious Enthusiasts.
By their efforts, a child protection society was founded in Liverpool in 1882.
Local enthusiasts in Birmingham and Bristol, followed suit.
Soon the Baroness Burdett-Coutts and Hesba Stretton, the religious authoress, investigated the Liverpool essay.
The upshot was that Mr. Agnew was invited to London to confer with that noble zealot, Benjamin Waugh, a Congregational minister 1See Life of William Booth, by St. John Ervine; also Life by Harold Begbie.
Soanoial Report of the N.S.P.C.C. (1936-37) p. 3.
3 Tbid., p. 35.
'This is independent of Scotland, which has its own co-operating organisation.
4 Already certain American cities, led by like enthusiasts, had formed Child protection societies.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
who, as author of The Gaol Cradle:
Who Rocks it? as Editor of the Sunday Magazine and as a member of the London School
Board, had wrought conspicuous service to children.
They, forthwith, were introduced to Lord Shaftesbury, who at once advised the formation of a National society.
In deference to the three local societies aforementioned, and mindful of precedents in certain American cities, this advice was not acted upon : but arrangements quickly were made for the establishment of a strong London Society.
On July 8th, 1884, at a packed meeting in the Marision House, Lord Shaftesbury proposed the resolution which gave birth to that Society.
Among his supporters, along with Waugh and Agnew, were the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, the Earl of Aberdeen and Dr. Barnardo.
These all were avowed Evangelicals, but they had sought and won the co-operation of those representing other schools of thought ;
Cardinal Manning was on the first Executive.
— Inevitably Shaftesbury was elected President, and Waugh, Honorary Secretary.
Shaftesbury then was 83, with but fifteen months to live.
Waugh was 45, and only approaching the zenith of his powers.
With crusading fervour, this parson threw himself into his task.
His contagious enthusiasm soon bore fruit.
Aid Committees sprang into being: in less than five years there were thirty-one, labouring in the larger cities of England and Wales.
So in May, 1889, this London society was transformed into the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Waugh led it from strength to strength.
He, too, belongs to that ageless and saving succession of practical saints, to which the modern " Baptism of Fire "? added so valiant a band.?
(ili) Opportunity for the Destitute Child Many are the voluntary Anglo-Saxon organisations and associations, through which pulse the power of Christian liberty in action.
The foregoing, are but representative.
What the French Revolution was to the moral, social and_ political development of half Europe, the Evangelical Revival was to the development of England and the English-speaking peoples ; it was the modern water-shed of Anglo-Saxon history.
As Professor Halévy repeatedly has hinted, Wesley was the Napoleon of the English-speaking world ; and the fact that his weapons were Christian and spiritual, not pagan and carnal, has profoundly affected the whole subsequent development of the 1 Occasional Papers of N.S.P.C.C. (edited by Sir Robert Parr), XV, p. 11.
2 For a good survey of the history of this Society, see Fubilee Report (1933-4), pp. 10-19; aiso Benjamin Waugh, by Sir Robt. Parr.
CREATIVE SOCIAL SERVICE
British Empire and the United States.
Democracy in these commonwealths became a spiritual ideal, closely associated with a hundred organised manifestations of social service and selfhelp: it became rooted moreover in a Christian conception of the meaning and purpose of life.
The Evangelical Revival is more central to the understanding of the modern heritage of the English-speaking peoples, than is the Reformation: and the more exhaustively it is examined, the more inescapable becomes the conclusion, that it was infinitely less marred by human alloy." Though headed by an incomparable clergyman, it primarily was a religious awakening of the people ; and through it the people found its soul.
Returning however to the observation of creative social service, it should be noted that the Boy Scout and Girl Guide movement, founded by Lord Baden-Powell in 1908, owes much to the same spiritual succession.
Of the four million members of this world organisation, the great majority are in areas profoundly influenced by Evangelical Christianity.
Protestant Evangelical Churches indeed have been the chief organising centres of the movement, while its pledges;
'I will do my duty to God and my country "' ; " I will do my best to help others, whatever it costs me"; and the commitment to do a " good turn" daily, are surely expressive of practical
Christianity.1
Numerous, too, are the Friendly Societies and Mutual Aid Fraternities, which owe their life to the new springs of fellowship and humanity, opened up by this unparalleled
Revival.
But of all its later humanitarian achievements, few are more beautiful than its creations on behalf of orphaned, homeless and destitute children.
Miiller's Homes, Stephenson's ('' The National"), Quarrier's (Scotland), Spurgeon's, Fegan's, and the Homes of the Waifs and Strays Society? are all traceable to the same fountain head.
The greatest and most romantic of all such remarkable Homes, however, are those established by Dr. Barnardo; and their unique pioneering importance merits some detailed attention.
In his middle-teens, Thomas John Barnardo was a priggish and rather parading Agnostic.
Five weeks before his seventeenth birthday, on May 26th, 1862, during a memorable Irish revival, he experienced a thoroughgoing conversion.
'The scoffer was transformed into a zealous Christian, who soon was devoting five evenings a week to voluntary service in the vilest
Dublin slums.
When twenty, Barnardo heard an appeal by '1 For the origin and growth of the Scout and Guide movements, see
S. K. Wade, The Story of Scouting.
2'The Waifs and Strays Society (Church of England), ee ae ee by E. de M. Rudolf, Waugh's associate secretary of the N.S.P.C.C.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission; and so searching was its effect upon him, that the same day he volunteered as a missionary candidate for China.
; A few weeks later, the young enthusiast had resigned his Dublin business post and was settled in London, training for medical missionary service.
But scarcely had he discovered his bearings, when he discovered also the missionary needs of East London's slums: so forthwith, at his own expense, he started the '"' Donkey Shed"?
Ragged School.
And there it was, On a wintry night, in 1866, he confronted Jim Jarvis, his first homeless waif.
Barnardo, when closing his school for the night, heard a sound by the fireplace ; and there, curled up by the dying embers, but hidden by a box, lay a gaunt, tattered urchin, who pleaded piteously to be allowed to sleep in the school all night.
The youngster had no underclothing, no cap, no shoes or stockings : his coat and trousers were ventilated by a score of rents ; and though he said he was ten, his appearance betokened a badly nourished lad of seven.
Soon Jim Jarvis was seated at a "' feast " in Barnardo's " digs."
On cross-examination, he insisted that he had no home, parent or friend.
He was one of a tribe of street urchins, living nowhere and sleeping anywhere—beyond the reach of the police ; and that tribe he maintained, was more numerous than he could count.
The meal over, and the crossexamination concluded, a coin was placed in Jim's hand and the two sallied forth in dead of night, in search of a "lay" sleeping out.
Well over an hour, they trudged, peered and peeped, in vain.
Barnardo began to think his companion was hoaxing him.
But the waif was persistent:
'Don't stop, gov'nor ;_ we'll find 'em a'right!"
At last, in a blind alley, they climbed a wall ten feet high ; and there, on a metal roof, covered only with rags and tatters, lay eleven human waifs.
From that moment, China was challenged by East London.
Before many days, other "lays"? were discovered ; and the Ragged School teacher, with missionary intensity, bombarded all his Christian friends.
'Then an unexpected situation arose.
Barnardo, as a foreign missionary candidate, was seated on the platform of a great missionary meeting in the Agricultural
Hall.
The speaker advertised, was an eminent public man ; but, at the last minute, came a message that he had been taken ill and could not appear.
Dr. Thain Davidson, the chairman, was one of those to whom Barnardo already had related his discoveries.
In his extremity, he turned to the missionary student, and warned him to " collect his thoughts? : he must speak in the great man's stead.
Without polish or rhetoric, Barnardo told of the waifs he had
CREATIVE SOCIAL SERVICE
discovered, and challenged the Christian conscience on their behalf.
He intended to speak' only twenty minutes: but the response of the audience carried him on.
Almost for an hour he electrified their interest.
Among those who came up to him after the meeting, was a little servant-girl who timidly confided that she had been saving her farthings, to '' help the missionaries abroad."
Then, pressing a small bag into his hand, she explained:
"Surely to help these homeless lads, is missionary work!"
The bag contained 27 farthings ; it was Barnardo's first '' public ** assistance.
Next day, Barnardo's speech was featured in the Press.
Jealous defenders of London's social institutions published letters in reply, accusing the young Irishman not only of exaggeration but fabrication.
Shaftesbury, as President of the Ragged School Union, at once determined to know the truth ; so he invited Barnardo, his accusers, and certain disinterested social workers, to a dinner party athishome.
There Barnardo's whole story was challenged.
So, at midnight, cabs were summoned ; and Shaftesbury's guests proceeded from West
London to East End "' dives.""
The upshot was that the young missioner showed his companions, not eleven, but seventy-three boys—sleeping out.
That "find * Barnardo always considered providential ; it was the largest, by far, he ever discovered.
His critics were utterly disarmed.
'The veteran reformer was dumbfounded.
Before the party returned westward, Shaftesbury intimated to the foreign missionary volunteer, that " his China" probably would be East London.
With the good Earl's blessing, Barnardo forthwith established the East End Juvenile Mission, one aspect of whose endeavour was to find Christian homes for homeless waifs.
Its founder never was to see China, the land of his dreams.} But out of this humble Mission evolved the world-famous Dr.
Barnardo's Homes, which, since 1866, have mothered, fed, clothed, educated, industrially trained, placed out in positions and followed up with parental care, more than 120,000 oncedestitute boys and girls.
While, by provision of food, shelter and clothing, by discovery of interested relatives, by finding employment, etc., they have casually befriended nearly a halfmillion more.
The scope of Barnardo's work is amazing.
Rightly is their fellowship pronounced, "the Largest Family in the World."
Exclusive of all boarding-out centres, the Homes to-day have nearly 200 separate Cottages, Households and Branches, and 1'The author's book, Dr. Barnardo, Physician, Pioneer, Prophet, has recently been produced in a Chinese version, and seventy 'thousand copies have already been circulated.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
constantly they are rearing about 8,500 children.
In any of their fourteen Ever Open Doors, situated in the largest cities of England and Northern Ireland, any destitute child will be received at any hour of any day or night.
Their Girls' Village Home, in Barkingside, has been acclaimed by the famous artist,
Sir George Frampton, "' the most beautiful village in England" : while such centres as the Boys'
Garden City, Woodford Bridge ; the William Baker Technical School, Goldings, Hertford ; the Watts Naval Training School, Elmham, Norfolk ; the Russell Cotes Nautical School, Parkstone, Dorset ; and the Babies' Castle, Hawkhurst, Kent, are scarcely less alluring— all of them located in charming country-side environments.
Barnardo's, furthermore, have two excellent Children's Hospitals and several specialised Hospital Homes.
They have Créches, Cripples'
Homes, Convalescent Homes, Isolation Homes, Musical Homes, Vocational Homes and Employment Offices, together with excellent Distributing Homes, both in Canada and Australia.
The success of the Barnardo "family" is phenomenal.
Walter Reynolds, for many years Director of Music for all the London Parks, has affirmed that he " owed everything " to these Homes which reared him.
The Hon. James Page, for long Chief Whip in the Federal Government of Australia, was a child thief on London's streets before Barnardo's received and transformed him.
Two per cent. of all Canada's British stock are Barnardo children and their descendants, among whom have been Cabinet Ministers, University professors, clergymen, school principals, doctors, dentists, engineers, managers of great businesses—men and women, in fact, who have adorned every art, calling, profession and craft.
Not two per cent. of the Largest Family in the World have been failures.
These Homes, furthermore, have had a marked impact on legislation.
Repeatedly, Barnardo fought his way through the Courts to protect "his children" from vicious exploitation.
Most memorable of these legal struggles, were those of 1889 and 1890.
In the latter year, acting as his own barrister, he pushed two separate cases through the Court of Appeal.
And in one of these, pleading before three Lord Justices, and opposed by three barristers, he continued for three days on end.
In both cases, on the letter of the Law, a legal verdict had to be given against him ; but in both the Judges went out of their way to pronounce a moral verdict in his favour.
Indeed, certain of the Judges, after hearing all the evidence, sent first subscriptions
1 This includes the children of the' Marchmont Homes; which always co-operated with Barnardo's, and which long since became part of Barnardo's.
CREATIVE
SOCIAL:SERVICE
to his Homes.
Barnardo further appealed to the House of Lords ; and meantime, public opinion became so stirred that the Legislature was spurred to action.
Before the cases could come up for ultimate hearing, there was passed, in March,
1891, the famous Custody of Children Act, which thereafter made impossible the monstrous exploitation of children by depraved, designing parents.
'That statute, to this day, is commonly styled "the Barnardo Act.'
Not only have Barnardo's Homes affected legislation, they also have affeeted profoundly the Poor Law system of England.
The memorable Local Government Committee appointed in 1894, to investigate the whole question of rearing Poor Law and Charity children, sat two years and published a Report of 1,200 quarto pages; the Chairman was the Rt. Hon.
Anthony J. Mundella and his chief deputy, the Rt. Hon. Sir John Gorst, both of whom—on their own confession—approached their problem with a bias for State institutions.
After the investigation, Mundella declared:
''I came to the opinion, which was shared, I think, by all my colleagues, that we could wish that in the Local Government Board there was a department for .
. the ' Children of the State,' and that we had a Dr.
Barnardo to place at the head of them.
. Most of the reforms that the Committee has recommended, Dr. Barnardo had anticipated and put into practice...
. We owe him much for what he has done .
. we owe him more for the example he has set us of how to do it."
Gorst, summarising his impressions, concluded:
''In doing this public work, for the public and on behalf of the public, Dr. Barnardo did it in a manner which is an object-lesson, not only to the authorities in England, but to the whole world."
Nor do such expert judgments stand alone.
The Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, in his inimitable Life and Labour of the People in London (1902), said of Barnardo's work :
"Tt is, beyond question, the greatest charitable institution in London, or, I suppose, in the world, and its success has been deserved."'?
Barnardo always conceived his task as a missionary project.
For many years, despite all other duties, he preached twice every Sunday to thousands in the Edinburgh Castle, a one-time burlesque hall and pub, which he acquired and transformed into a Church.
When Barnardo died, in 1905, at sixty years of age, he had reared 60,000 once-destitute children.
London Opinion but expressed a universal sentiment, when it said of him :
"The man was great; the milk of human kindness flowed 1 See Bready's Dr. Barnardo, chapter xii:
'' Litigation and the Barnardo Act."
2 See Vol. II, series 3, pp. 46-7.
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BEFORE AND AFTER
WESLEY from him as dews from heaven: nor creed nor colour, caste nor kind, had weight with him.
His lofty soul reached beyond the bounds of nationhood, girding the world with love."
That same fervent Evangelical spirit animates Barnardo's Homes to-day.
Many feared that with their founder's death they would decline.
Instead they have increased in strength and fame.
The Council of Christian gentlemen who now guide them are all voluntary workers who, in kindness and love, give of their best, as to friends.
Nor does the British public fail them.
Cheerfully it entrusts to them nearly £600,000 a year, for the support of their famous family.
And so it is that their gracious charter—NO DESTITUTE CHILD EVER REFUSED ADMISSION—is steadfastly maintained.
Most historians have quite ignored the origin, development and influence of such voluntary bodies as this chapter has outlined.
In the author's judgment, a knowledge of them is essential to any balanced understanding of the working of the predominantly Anglo-Saxon Democracies.
For in spiritualised tradition, custom and humanity—not in coercion and regimentation—is to be found the cardinal genius of the English-speaking peoples.
That genius furthermore has been nurtured largely in voluntary organisations and associations which, though 'deeply religious, are in no sense ecclesiastical.
And the creation, management and support of such bodies has not only kept sweet the milk of human kindness, but has engendered the abilities and adaptabilities without which so intricate and delicate an instrument as Democracy hardly could hope to succeed.
It is the " voluntary principle," as reflected in such spiritual-humanitarian institutions, that has nurtured and sustained in the typical Anglo-Saxon a deeply-rooted abhorrence of all revolutionary methods, a pronounced sympathy with the underprivileged, and a profound respect for disinterested
Religion, Law and Order—which he regards both as essential vehicles of Liberty and Justice, and as indispensable media of any Good Society.
For the full history of Barnardo's work, see J. Wesley Bready's Dr.
Barnardo, Physician, Pioneer, Prophet, fourth and cheap edition (Preface by A. A. Milne).
CHAPTER XXIII
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
If the spiritual oxygen which has kept alive the attachment to Liberty and self-government in the minds of the people becomes exhausted, will not the flame burn low and perhaps flicker out? ... Without Faith nothing is accomplished, and Hope is the mainspring of Faith.
Throughout the course of history every winter of despondency has been followed by a joyous spring time of hope."
ViscOoUNT BRYCE, Modern Democracies, Vol. II, pp. 663 and 670.
A century earlier John Wesley had defeated Voltaire.
Would he defeat Karl Marx?"
Evie HAtLEvy, A History of the English People (1895-1905 Vol.), p. 360.
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CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND ?
Tue mind and spirit of the transfigured Wesley are accurately mirrored in his oft-reiterated aspiration:
'The World is my parish."
Whitefield's catholicity of interest is reflected in his numerous Atlantic crossings and in his ceaseless journeyings up and down the wildernesses of the New World—sometimes in a state of such exhaustion, that he had to be lifted on and off his horse.
'Though a priest of the Church of England, Whitefield directly inspired the founding of many congregations within other denominations ; for always unity of Christian spirit and service—not conformity of creed and ritual—was his guiding principle: and dying in America, he was buried, at his own request, in a Presbyterian Church in New England.!
Again, it is significant that Dr. Thomas Coke, the first ** Superintendent"?
Wesley ordained, crossed the Atlantic eighteen times, and died in the Indian Ocean, on a missionary tour to Ceylon.
But the Evangelical Revival not only overflowed particular denominational and national barriers; it was impelled by an aspiration to sow the seeds of the Kingdom of God all over the earth ; and those seeds, it believed, could be sown by all groups and organisations of faithful souls, who strove diligently to fulfil the will of Christ.
(i) The Revival and the United States As long as the origin and evolution of American institutions are studied by free men, so long the Mayflower, the Pilgrim
Fathers and Colonial Puritanism will represent key influences, which no cynic or iconoclast can brush aside.
Lord Bryce, Professor Ernest Barker and other balanced scholars, have repeatedly emphasised the close connection between the little
1 Whitefield's body lies immediately beneath the pulpit in Old South Church, Newburyport, Mass.
2 Wesley ordained Coke as "' superintendent," while he, in turn, was to ordain Asbury to the same office.
But this term was unfamiliar, and both men came soon to be known as Bishops.
Hence the origin of the great Methodist Episcopal Church.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
democracies of the New England Congregational ('' Independent') Churches, the winning of American Independence, and the overthrow of the old, corrupt Monarchy of France.
Religious self-government among these Colonists, prepared the way for political self-government; and the success of the American War of Independence probably achieved more than all the writings of Rousseau, Voltaire and the Encyclopzdists, in nerving the French people to break the yoke of their Bourbon oppressors.
'The contribution of the Pilgrim Fathers, moreover, to popular education was far-reaching.
Puritanism was a book religion, demanding a first-hand knowledge of the Bible ; while autonomous government in Church and community, demanded a trained intelligence : hence the necessity for schools.
From the first, therefore, the Pilgrim Fathers established a system of "common schools."!
And it is but emblematic of their thirst for knowledge, that within sixteen years of the sailing of the Mayflower, they had founded a College destined to world fame.
Within two years of its founding, came its first important legacy.
The Rev. John Harvard, dying childless (1638), bequeathed all his books and half his estate to this new college, which thenceforth bore his name.
Nor did these builders of New England forget their debt to certain venerable institutions of Old England.
The community cradling the infant Harvard University was called Cambridge, in memory of the alma mater of several of its founders ; for not a few of the early Pilgrims were University men, who cherished fond memories of youthful days at Cambridge and Oxford.?
But not only did these fathers of a mighty nation lay the rock foundations of liberty, self-government and _ universal education.
Though their existence was long threatened, both by the Indians and the French, and though for many years they forced a rugged soil for scanty bread, they finally conquered a wilderness, and made it to bloom as a garden.
They were courageous, adventurous men—these pioneers ; men of vision and moral rectitude, conscious of a destiny, and living for to-morrow rather than to-day.
Their task however was so titanic and they were so staunchly in earnest, that they had little appreciation of the subtler shades of life. Colours to them were white and black; moral problems, Yea! and Nay !
As soldiers scaling a mountain citadel, they had little time for speculation or debate.
Their theology, too, though singularly direct, vivid and sustaining, was over stern and legalistic ;
Dr. John Fiske, History of the United States, p. 96; W. H. Hudson and I. S. Guernsey, The United States, p. 164.
2See Tyler's History of American Literature during Colonial Times, Vol. I, p. 98; Fiske, op. cit., pp. 96-7.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
at some points indeed it was grim, sombre and terrible.
The blacker shadows of Calvinistic logic, long dominated their doctrinal outlook.
Their conception of the Sovereignty of God tended to be rigid, predestinarian, overpowering, almost merciless ; for too often it was little influenced by the compassion and love of Christ. Hence the '" witchcraft "? obsession inflamed by Cotton Mather, and the persecution of Quakers.
These New World Puritans had all the faults of their qualities.
Occasionally they were as stubborn and Old Testament minded, as the later South African Boers.
But this, despite the modern avalanche of cynicism and iconoclasm, must in fairness be added.
For all the iron in their blood, never would their collective conscience permit them to countenance slavery ; and sufficient
Christianity underlay their Legalism, to cause them—when once they perceived the horrors of persecution—to recant their cruel, mistaken attitude both towards "* witches "' and Quakers.
Only against the backgrounds of Colonial Puritanism, can the amazing impact of George Whitefield on America, be fairly gauged.
'True, the thirteen weeks of his first American sojourn, in 1738, though confined to Georgia, were richly successful.
But it was not till his second Colonial tour (October, 1739, till January, 1741), when he came into contact with Pennsylvania and New England, that he began to stir the New World.
And how comparatively congenial he found the Promised Land of the Pilgrim Fathers, his own words made clear : "' On many counts it certainly exceeds all other provinces in America ; and for the establishment of religion all other parts of the world.
Every five miles or perhaps less you have a meeting house . . .
I like New England exceedingly well.''?
Admittedly, too, it was in Georgia, despite the protestations of Benjamin Franklin, that Whitefield founded his famous Bethesda Orphanage, which for so many years was to offer a home for from 80 -to 140 destitute or abandoned children.
That Orphanage, however, was located in Georgia, because Georgia was the centre of such need.
Whatever the shortcomings of the Puritan settlements, they not only educated their children, but they left none of their orphans to suffer the pangs of starvation and nakedness.
The neighbourliness of the Puritan parishes obviated such inhumanity.
Nevertheless, all was not well with the Puritan commonwealths when Whitefield began his momentous mission.
The influence of that great but awful theologian, Jonathan Edwards, radiating from Northampton,
1 Lowell's treatment of American Puritanism in Among My Books (first series) is balanced and fair; see, too, Tyler's Provincial America.
Hawthorne's attitude is somewhat hostile and exaggerated.
2 Dr. Belden's Whitefield, p. 100.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER
WESLEY Massachusetts, was still considerable; but already reaction was at work.
The relentless predestinarianism of the man who could write, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, was certain to alienate many sensitive souls ; while those who concluded they were damned, concluded, with equal consistency, that they might as well earn their damnation, by indulging the pleasures of sin while yet opportunity remained.
The gigantic physical exertions, moreover, of the initial Pilgrim Fathers, now no longer, were equally imperative; leisure was less scanty ; and not a few of the characteristic vices of Old England had become all too apparent in New England.
Drunkenness was on the increase ; cock-fighting was becoming popular ; gambling in some quarters approached an obsession ; material standards of success were undermining the earlier fraternalism ; and the tares of monetary cupidity were choking the wheat of spiritual attainment.
The protracted impact of Whitefield on America was the very thing needful, to save Colonial Puritanism from its legalism, its rigidity, its mounting individualism, and its increasing danger of self-righteousness.
His gracious adaptability, his marvellous imagery and his spontaneous, overflowing eloquence went straight to the heart of the New World.
The man whose pulpit appeal could extract from the then-hostile Franklin, all the copper, silver and gold in his pockets, was no ordinary preacher, no common mortal.
Whitefield was not a little influenced by what was best in New England, and some aspects of Edwards's teaching left a permanent stamp on him ; but he brought to this dominant religious outlook in America a complimentary message which was invaluable.
His enthusiasm and compassion, his universal charity and selflessness were as gentle, fructifying showers on parched soil. His central emphasis was not the majesty, but the Love of God ; he proclaimed not divine wrath, judgment and retribution, but divine mercy and patience, divine pardon and grace.
It is peculiarly poignant that from Northampton, where so many souls were seared and scorched by the threatened fires of judgment, Whitefield reports : " I found my heart drawn out to talk of scarce anything besides the consolations and privileges of the saints and the plentiful effusion of the Spirit upon believers.'"?!
Whitefield's theology was cast in moulds of a mild Calvinism, but his ministry always was tender, healing, inspiring.
In pushing the logic of theory, he soon learned where to stop, and if to the end his preaching implied "' the decrees," that implication was merely an attempt to vindicate the omniscience of God.
It was his friend John Wesley, the unflinching advocate of " free will,'
* Belden, op. cit., p. 113.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
4.29 whom he desired to preach his funeral sermon in his great Tabernacle, London.
'To him, the conscious unity of heart and spirit superseded all disagreements on doctrine.
Not yet, has the historical importance of Whitefield's labours been sufficiently appreciated.
In Scotland, with its Calvinistic backgrounds, his influence was immense ; in America, the land of his special devotion, it was strategic.
Sir James Stephen, in his famous Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, says:
" If ever philanthropy burned in the human heart with a pure and intense flame, embracing the whole family of man in the spirit of universal charity, it was in the heart of George Whitefield.
He loved the world that hated him; he had no preferences but in favour of the ignorant, the miserable and the poor."
Again, the free-thinking Benjamin Franklin, who at first was annoyed with Whitefield because he could not persuade him to plant his Orphanage in Philadelphia, finally said of him: "I knew him intimately upwards of thirty years.
His Integrity, Disinterestedness and Indefatigable Zeal in prosecuting every good work I have never seen equalled, and shall never see excelled:*'* Whitefield not only awakened the existing Churches in America to a new enthusiasm, a new vision and a new tolerance.
His missions, being instrumental in establishing scores of new congregations within half a dozen different communions, diffused a new consciousness of evangelical unity; while thousands of those who, in religious things, could not previously " discern between their right hand and their left,' began to hunger and thirst after righteousness and to seek diligently the things of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Even provincial Governors embraced him in deep emotion as he departed out of their midst.
Franklin, to satisfy his curiosity, made a mathematical calculation of ' the size of the Philadelphia multitude hanging on Whitefield's words, and, to his own amazement, determined that 35,000 souls were at one time listening to the Evangelist's message.
The financing of Whitefield's Orphanage was itself, in those days of sparse money, no slight undertaking ; albeit this was but one of many Good Works for which Whitefield raised such voluntary collections as never before had been heard of on American soil.
Even in education, Whitefield's contribution to American development was phenomenal.
With the origins of two now famous Universities, he was directly connected.
Princeton University, wherewith the name of President Woodrow Wilson is so closely connected, issued from the " Log College" started
1 This tribute is engraved on one of the panels of the magnificent statue of Whitefield in the dormitory triangle of the University of Pennsylvania.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
at Neshaminy by Gilbert Tennent and his father.
That humble institution, with the support of Governor Belcher, a warm friend and follower of Whitefield, soon was transferred to Princeton, New Jersey, where, as '' Princeton College," it became the recognised centre for the training of Presbyterian ministers in six colonies, viz. New York, New Jersey, Pennsy]lvania, Maryland, Virginia and Carolina ;! and in Princeton it expanded into the now world-known university.
In the nursing days of this centre of learning, Whitefield was to the Tennents and Belcher a tower of strength.
Gilbert Tennent often accompanied Whitefield on his preaching missions, and on both sides of the Atlantic the evangelist raised for the struggling College—" the parent of every Presbyterian College and theological seminary in America "*—substantial support.
Whitefield was one of the first men upon whom " Princeton " conferred its M.A. degree.* With the origin of the University of Pennsylvania, Whitefield's connection was even more intimate.
In 1740, his '' New Building" was erected in Philadelphia by warm supporters, including Franklin.
To it the "' Awakener " insisted on adding a Charity School, for " the instruction of poor children gratis, in the knowledge of the Christian religion and in useful literature."
That Charity School evolved first into an academy, then into Philadelphia College, and ultimately into the University of Pennsylvania.
When, in 1914, on the Bicentenary of Whitefield's birth, a noble statue of the evangelist was raised by the University, this statement was read:
' The inspirer and original Trustee of the Charity School of 1740, the forerunner of the University of Pennsylvania, he solicited the first donations to the Library of the University
. guided the new school of learning by his godly counsel, heartened it by his masterful preaching, and inspired it with his noble life.?'4
"Zealous advocate and patron of higher education in the American colonies," is one of the inscriptions on the pedestal of this memorial.
But the man who, taking two continents under his wing, spent more than two years of his life upon the Atlantic, fostered education on both sides of the water.
For Charity Schools in England, he raised such popular collections as never previously had been known; to Dr. Dodderidge's Nonconformist Academy, he proffered yeomanly assistance ;
Dartmouth College was equally indebted to him; while, after + Tyerman's Whitefield, Vol. II, p. 323; see also Hodge's Presbyterian Church in the United States (opening chapters).
* E. Ninde, Whitefield—Prophet and Preacher, p. 139.
* Belden, op. cit., p. 209.
' Tbid., p. 237.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER
BOUND?
the destruction of Harvard's Library by fire, he secured fresh gifts of books from England.
Nor did he forget the American Indians.
Notwithstanding prevailing prejudice against the education of that fierce people, the Boston Gazette reports a single occasion when he collected £120 for Mr. Wheelock's
Indian School, in Lebanon, New England.?
Whitefield was a man of heart and soul too big, to be understood by the swarm of little critics, who buzzed so busily to besmirch his name.
Franklin's unvarnished tribute will stand the tests of timre.
Dr. Abel Stevens, in his History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, says :
"The Congregational Church of New England, the Presbyterians and Baptists of the Middle States, and the mixed colonies of the South, owe their later religious life and energy mostly to the impulses given by Whitefield's powerful ministrations ... the New England Churches received under his labours an inspiration of zeal and energy which has never died out.
He extended the revival from the Congregational Churches of the Eastern to the Presbyterian Churches of the Middle States.
In Pennsylvania and New Jersey .
. he was received as a prophet from God ; and it was then that the Presbyterian Church took that attitude of evangelical power and aggression which has ever since characterised it.
. The stock from which the Baptists of Virginia, and those of the South and South West have sprung, was also Whitefieldian.
And, although Whitefield did not organise the results of his labours, he prepared the way for Wesley's itinerants.
When he descended into his American grave, they were already on his track.
They came not only to labour, but to organise their labours ; to reproduce, amid the peculiar moral necessities of the new world, both the spirit and the method of the great movement as it had been organised by Wesley in the old.''?
The post-Whitefieldian development of the Evangelical Movement in America is a subject too expansive in range, too epic in consequence, to permit even of outline here.
Francis Asbury, Wesley's master-builder in America, was a characteristic product of the Revival.
His " Theological College" as Dr. Curnock puts it, "was his Mother's Class Meeting."
From infancy he imbibed the Evangelical spirit ; when eighteen he undertook the labours of a local preacher ; when twenty-one,
1 Belden, p. 212.
2 Quoted in Belden, op. cit., pp. 115-16.
8 Wesley's Journal (Standard edition), Vol. VI, p. 2 (note).
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER
WESLEY he was appointed by Wesley as an itinerant, and for five years (1766-1771) he laboured zealously and effectively on four different circuits, in England.
Then, when twenty-six, the year following Whitefield's death, he volunteered for America, where for forty-five years, till his demise in 1816, he toiled with a constancy and selflessness rivalling that of Wesley himself.
Asbury was endowed with none of Whitefield's dramatic, spectacular gifts ; but attaining a much riper age, he laboured nearly four times as long on American soil, and being par excellence a conciliator, an organiser and a builder, he was singularly adapted to follow the fiery Awakener.
Scarcely had Asbury landed in America, when friends importuned him to confine his labours to the more populous centres.1_
They knew not their man ; Asbury, above all, was a trail-breaker, a frontiersman, a pioneer. From the first, he determined that even the most isolated settlers must enjoy the privileges and inspirations of an organised religious life: his passion, like that of Wesley, was to serve the most neglected.
Hence, decade after decade, despite the perils of the Revolutionary War, despite extreme changes of climate and extreme fury of elements, despite the lurking dangers of untracked forests, quicksand bogs, turbulent torrents, bridgeless rivers and stern, forbidding mountains, he rode regularly some 5,000 miles a year? ; winning wherever he went devoted followers who became local leaders ; and creating wherever he went, Class Meetings, Societies, Sunday Schools,
Circuits and finally Conferences.
This Staffordshire peasant became perhaps the most creative religious statesman the North American continent has yet known.
Owing nothing to the schools of his day, he was entirely the product of religion : love, sympathy, vision, courage, faith and prayer made him great.
For thirteen years before Dr. Coke arrived to ordain him, he had been to the wilds of America their chief shepherd of souls.
His ordination therefore but proclaimed him what already he was—a superintendent, a bishop, over the far-separated flocks of Christ, which his own ministrations had so largely led into the fold.
Other of Wesley's leaders, including Philip Embury, Barbara Heck and Captain Webb, were at work in America long before Asbury arrived.
Dr. Coke, his fellow ' Superintendent," with his scholarly and executive powers, rendered memorable service.
But to the saintly Bishop Asbury must go the honour of being the "Father in God" to the largest and most indigenous Protestant Church the New World knows.
His life was a marvel—almost a miracle—of consecration and attainment.
1 Curnock, ibid, * 'W. H. Fitchett, Wesley and His Century, p. 265.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
Like Wesley, he rose habitually at four a.m.; and like Wesley again, he strove to account for every moment of every day.
Self-taught, without fixed abode, a man of the roads, he made it his rule to read one hundred pages of good literature daily.
He taught himself Latin, Greek and Hebrew.
Always his saddle-bags were packed with books which he himself had mastered ; and many of these he persuaded not only his preachers and Class-leaders but thousands of his humblest followers, to buy and read.
MHouse-to-house visitation, fieldpreaching, barh-preaching and countryside camp-meetings in vast tents, were among his chief means of establishing contact with new pioneer communities: and always his converts he organised into Classes and Societies, thus nurturing local leadership.
Log schools and Churches, accordingly, reared by the co-operative "' bees " of settlers who hungered for understanding and righteousness, rose up as beacons of light wherever this holy man went.
The salary of this inimitable missionary, '"' for the greater part of his life was under £20 a year."!
Money to him, like time and life, was a trust from God : and this spirit he breathed into the whole heroic band of his '' co-workers in the Gospel."
In the formative days of the young Republic's life, these apostolic missioners outmarched the prospectors and goldhunters; they out-toiled the homesteaders and _ ranchers.
What Lincoln came to mean to the social and political life of the United States, that, Asbury before him, meant to her moral and religious life.
Indeed, aside from the Bible and spiritual influences mediated by Asbury and his fellow " Enthusiasts," there is no understanding Lincoln.
Bishop Asbury could claim ** Apostolic Succession" only through Wesley, the " Baptism of Fire' and the Gospel of Christ.
Often his episcopal status has been ridiculed.
Yet, if by their fruits they are known, he was a Bishop indeed!
In the single decade, 1780 to 1790, the American Methodist circuits increased from 20 to 114, and their Church membership from 8,504 to 57,631.2_
This amazing achievement represented the first harvest of Asbury's valorous sowing; and it successively became the seed of mightier harvests ahead.® The most obvious legacy of the Evangelical Revival to the United States is the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Apart from its many vigorous adherents, that Church to-day has 4,670,000 active members.
Its places of worship number 27,000, and its ordained ministers and missionaries 18,000.
In its Sunday 1 W. H. Fitchett, Wesley and his Century. 264.
2C. E. Vulliamy, fohn Wesley, p. 335.
3 See Strickland's Life of Asbury.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
Schools, staffed by 379,000 voluntary officers and teachers, it regularly imparts Bible, moral and religious instruction to 4,000,000 children.
Its Epworth Leagues have 552,000 young people in various stages of training for Christian Endeavour.
Its foreign missionary efforts—including medical and educational —reach out to every Continent; while within the United States, its influence is enormous.
In the sphere of higher education, it controls famous universities, colleges, professional schools and vocational institutes, with a faculty, in 1936, totalling 4,378, and a student body of 76,524.
The properties committed to this higher educational work are valued at over $85,000,000, and its endowments exceed $91,800,000.
That Church's hospitals, old age homes, orphanages and co-related institutions, moreover, are hardly less imposing, representing, as they do, an estate of $64,000,000, and caring annually for some
750,000 persons.
The entire properties of the Methodist Episcopal Church, including its '' foreign field equipment, are valued at $700,000,000: while in 1936, notwithstanding the pinch of prolonged depression, $57,000,000 was bestowed by loyal supporters upon this great voluntary Christian Communion. } Such, are certain of the tangible symbols of a spiritual, and therefore largely intangible, movement.
The Methodist Episcopal Church, however, is but one of sixteen Methodist Churches in the United States.2
It is quite distinct from the great Methodist Episcopal Church South, and from the Methodist
Protestant Church ; while also it is equally distinct from the strong African Methodist Episcopal Churches, organised and run by the American negroes.
These Churches now are all taking steps towards union, and, when united, will make a might
Methodist Communion.
They all are direct children of the Evangelical Revival.
Yet Methodism, strong as it is, represents but half the influence of that epochal Awakening upon the United States.
The older Protestant Churches—especially the Baptist, Presbyterian and Congregational—derived from it a new vision and a new infusion of Christian vitality.
They became, in fact, missionary and truly evangelical Churches.
Nor did this influence stop there.
The revivals of Finney and of Moody were later expressions of the same great Movement : and all the Communions now co-operating in the vigorous
These facts and figures are drawn from long and careful analysis specially prepared for the author by Dr. Thomas P. Potter, Assistant Editor of the General Minutes of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
See Christian Advocate (New York), December 2nd, 1937, Pp. 14-15.
(The Church in Figures, by Dr. Potter.) * See Ency. Brit. ("' Methodism in the United States ys
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER
BOUND?
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America! owe a priceless debt to the mighty Baptism of Fire.
Indeed, even the Roman Catholic Church, little as it may recognise the fact, has not been untouched by this purging, democratising influence.2.
Lord Bryce's conclusion is deeply significant :
"It is in English-speaking countries only, that the Roman Church has frankly embraced democratic principles, declaring that she has no complaint against popular government.
Enough, however, has already been said to suggest the debt of popular government, in Anglo-Saxon commonwealths, to the character-building influences of voluntary associations engendered by the Evangelical rebirth of vital, practical Christianity.
In the United States, as in Britain, popular charitable, benevolent and social-service organisations are very extensive, and have reached a creditable level of attainment: while, being of and for the people, they are loved by the people.
Their close historical relationship to Evangelical Christianity, though unmistakable, is a subject beyond the compass of this study.
In one sphere of social attainment, however, America easily leads Britain and all the rest of the world.
Her great and numerous Colleges for the higher education of women are without a peer: yet the heralds of that extensive emancipation movement, such as Mount Holyoke, Oberlin and Elmira, Vassar,
Wellesley and Smith, together with Bryn Mawr and Goucher, were rooted and grounded in the soil of Protestant Evangelical
Faith.
(ii) Impacts on the British Empire If the influence of the Baptism of Fire on the United States was thus pronounced, its influence within the British Empire was hardly less permeating.
Professor G. M. Trevelyan, after pointing out that the strength of the Evangelical Movement,
"like that of the earlier Puritanism, was always among the laity," says:
'' Evangelicalism brought rectitude, unselfishness and humanity into high places, and into the appeal to public opinion."
"The strongest type of English gentleman in the new era," Trevelyan further avers, " whether Whig or Tory, was often Evangelical.
The army knew them with respect, and India with fear and gratitude.
Their influence on Downing Street and in the permanent Civil Service, through families like
1 See Biennial Report (New York, 1936) for a masterly survey of the aims and scope of this Council.
2 Maximin Piette, a Franciscan Father, in his careful, sympathetic study, Yohn Wesley, practically admits this fact.
His book recently was translated into English.
3 James Bryce, Modern Democracies, Volsvl map 100.
436 ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
the Stephens, gravely affected our Colonial policy on behalf of the natives of Africa and the tropics.
. on the whole for the great'good of mankind."'!
In India, the names of such valiant pioneer missionaries as Carey and Martyn, will ever be associated with the development of all that is best in that great land.
Charles Grant, the first avowedly Christian Chairman of the East India Company, backed by the great banker Henry Thornton and all other fellow-members of the Clapham Sect, succeeded in imparting even to that hardened commercial corporation, some sense of conscience and trusteeship.
As for the Government of India, Lord Teignmouth, also a member of the Clapham Sect, and first President of the British and Foreign Bible Society, strove zealously, during his five years as Governor-General, to impress upon all Departments of the Administration their stewardship both to God and the people of India.
Later, too, Shaftesbury and other Commissioners of the India Board of Control emphatically took the position, that unless Britain secured for the whole Indian people a fuller measure of happiness and education, a truer equity and justice, and a more abiding peace and prosperity, than they possibly could achieve for themselves, she then was but an intruder and a usurper within that country.
The new sense of service and humanity injected into the British Administration of Indian affairs, was an immediate product of the new conscience, created by the Evangelical Revival.
As for the heart of Africa, the labours of those dauntless missionaries, Livingstone and Moffat, emblemise the highest contribution of Christian civilisation to the most primitive peoples.
The name of "' Gordon of Khartoum," too, is synonymous not only with selfless chivalry, but equally with uncompromising Christian opposition to the slave-trader, the tryant and the exploiter.
Or follow the enthralled African to his new habitation in the West Indies, and there again the labours of such courageous missionaries as Knibb and Smith, together with the devotion of such dedicated laymen as Sturge and Sligo, were the harbingers of Hope and Life.
In the self governing Union of South Africa, furthermore, the Evangelical emphasis on the brotherhood of all mankind and the sanctity of all personality, has proven the most salutary and effective influence in restraining the Whites from over-reaching themselves in their relationships with the Blacks.
In the autonomous British Commonwealths of Australia and New Zealand, Evangelical Christianity has been too strong to permit the domination of any hierarchical or oligarchical factions or cliques.
There, also, it has been a sobering, educating, 1G. M. Trevelyan, British History in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 53-4.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
inspiring and democratising influence, which contributed bountifully to the formation of the character and institutions of the people.
In Canada, the same was true.
So vital, indeed, were certain impacts of the Revival in establishing the liberty
. and culture of that expansive Dominion, as to warrant some little detail.
At the American " Christmas Conference" of 1784, when the Methodist Episcopal Church was organised, a call was made for three volunteer foreign missionaries, to serve in Nova Scotia and the adjacent Maritime districts of Canada.
At once, this challenge was answered by three sturdy young preachers, and a special offering of £50 was forthwith collected for their initial expenses.
Thus began the organised impact of the Revival upon what then were the isolated Canadas.
But a later step was destined to more far-reaching significance.
In 1790, Asbury and Coke commissioned a youthful American preacher, William Losee, to "range at large"? in Upper Canada, then the special preserve of those redoubtable Royalists and Tories, the United Empire Loyalists.
Losee's task was far from easy, for none of the exiled Loyalists desired to learn anything either from the young Republic or her Citizens.
His mission, nevertheless, was a pronounced success.
Losee was a preacher of the Gospel, and in no sense a politician.
Following the Asbury example, he rode constantly through the forest from settlement to settlement and homestead to homestead, praying with and exhorting the settlers, and establishing, in many rude cabins, family altars around which Bible reading, sacred-song and prayer became hallowed devotions.
When Losee arrived in Upper Canada, its population was about 20,000, and its whole vast area was served by only six ordained ministers, most of them Anglicans, who considered themselves State officials, and who were bent above all else on establishing a State Church within the Province.
Nor was their ambition without political support.
By certain notorious clauses of the Constitutional Act of 1791, one-seventh of all unoccupied lands was granted for the support of a " Protestant clergy," generally understood to mean Anglican ; while power was given "to erect parsonages or rectories according to the establishment of the Church of England."
In fact shortly after 1791, '"' lands to the extent of nearly 2,400,000 acres in Upper Canada, and approaching a million in Lower Canada," which was dominantly French and Roman Catholic, were thus set apart.2
Yet, notwithstanding the vested power of 1 George Bryce, L.L.D., Short History of the Canadian, People, p.329.
2 Tbid., pp. 329-39.
438 ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
the Clergy Reserves and the expanding assumptions of the Family Compact, the despised "' saddle-bag preachers " steadily gained ground.
The names of most of them are now forgotten, but they were a heroic band ; and such of them as Losee, Case,
Ryan and Torry were among the truest foundation builders of English-speaking Canada.1
Thirty years after Losee first crossed the St. Lawrence, instead of six ordained ministers in Upper
Canada there were ninety-nine, of whom a full third were Methodists, to say nothing of the 112 local preachers and exhorters who augmented their work.
Already, the Methodists were the most numerous people in Upper Canada: yet, so great was the power of the ruling and assuming junto in Church and State, that their Conference had as yet no legal status ; and for another nine years, their ministers were not even allowed to solemnise marriage among their own people.?
Such, was the measure of religious liberty granted to Nonconformists in Upper Canada, in 1820.
Baptists, Quakers and Lutherans felt the grievance as well as Methodists.
Nevertheless, the smaller became the proportionate numbers of the Family Compact, the more obdurately and unscrupulously did they cling to the seats and symbols of power.
With their political corruption and their Clergy Reserves, they were the immediate cause of the famous "' Mackenzie Rebellion."
The real hope and salvation of Canada, however, lay not in rebellion, but in deep, sane plans for the religious, educational and political freedom of the country.
And before the decade, 1820 to 1830, had run its course, the most creative leader in that emancipating movement already was looming large on the public horizon.
Egerton Ryerson, "the recognised champion of religious liberty and equality in Upper Canada,"* was born on March
24th, 1803, in Charlotteville, Ontario.
Of Dutch Huguenot descent, he was the sixth and youngest son of Colonel Joseph Ryerson, a fervid, militant Empire Loyalist, who after the American Revolution settled first in New Brunswick, but soon followed the trek to Upper Canada, where, as a Loyalist officer, he was granted 2,500 acres of land.
Ryerson's mother was a deeply religious woman of warm heart and open mind.
As the Methodist and Baptist itinerant preachers were the first to visit and labour in their community, she was glad to take her
For the great saga of the early Methodist Societies in Canada, see John Carroll, Case and His Contemporaries (Vols. I and II).
* Sir J. P. Bourinot, Canada, p. 346.
Presbyterians, as representing the Established Church of Scotland, were thrown a few crumbs.
See Dr. Bryce's Canadian People, pp. 330-1.
See Preface to Professor C. B. Sisson's Egerton Ryerson, His Life and Letters, Vol. I, 1937.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER
BOUND?
children to profit by their services, while she herself was not a little influenced by their Bible exposition, their sincerity and their devotion.
But to his mother's own teaching, Ryerson owed his deepest boyhood debt.
His Story of My Life, confesses that in "the religious instruction, poured into my mind in my childhood by a Mother's counsels, and infused into my heart by a Mother's prayers and tears,"'! germinated the guiding aspirations of his career.
When twelve, in the year of Waterloo, Egerton Ryerson experienced a conversion which, crowning his mother's teaching, brought with it a vital "change of heart.'?
When eighteen, he formally joined the Methodist Church: whereupon his peremptory father issued the command that he " must leave the Methodists or leave his house."?
Choosing the latter alternative, Egerton next day procured a post as "' usher," or student teacher, in the Grammar School of the London district.
When twenty-two—his father meantime being reconciled—he was accepted as a Methodist preacher ; and within the next four years the Rev. Dr. John Strachan, soon to be first Bishop of Toronto, together with all his satellites in the Family Compact, was compelled to take notice that a new, brilliant and highlydisturbing luminary had burst into the sky.?
As early as 1826, this '' Boy Preacher"? began powerfully to expose the inaccuracies and inconsistencies of Dr. Strachan's famous " Ecclesiastical Chart," and its supporting '' sermons."'
But the first crying need of the colony was a free, just, upright and Christian press: and this Ryerson, backed by all the " saddle-baggers " of Methodism, determined to provide.
Initial capital of $2,000 had to be procured.
Undaunted, the preachers themselves raised a full half of that sum; their followers, mostly backwoodsmen struggling resolutely for meagre sustenance, raised the other half.
The Christian Guardian was born in 1829; its growth and evolution represent one of the most pleasing romances in the whole Empire's development.
Within two years of its founding, it '' had achieved a circulation greater than the combined circulation of the thirteen other newspapers at that time published in Upper Canada."*
From 1829 till the formation of the United Church of Canada in 1925, The Christian Guardian never missed an issue under that title ; since Union, having coalesced with the papers of the old Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of the Dominion, it continues publication, in its previous home, as The New Outlook.
1 Op. cit. (edited by Geo. Hodgins), p. 27.
2 Sisson's Ryerson, Vol. I, pp. 5-9.
2 See J. L. Rutledge, Victoria's First Hundred Years (in New Outlook, June 17th, 1936).
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
The Ryerson Press, now the property of the United Church, and by far the largest and best-housed of all the publishing companies in Canada, is the lineal descendant of the little press created well over a century ago by Egerton Ryerson and the "outback"? preachers.
With the origin of The Christian Guardian, the handwriting of religious, educational and political freedom for Canada was on the wall; but so blinded by prejudice and self-importance was: the Family Compact, that it was unable to read.
The second crying need of the young colony was an institution of higher learning, open to all. As far back as 1819, the " saddlebaggers " had appointed a committee to '' take into consideration the important subject of a seminary " ;! but for ten years it had to be shelved by more pressing problems.
Now, however, with the genius of Ryerson in an editorial chair, the matter soon was revived.
Constantly did The Christian Guardian keep this matter before its readers.
It called for an academy which would provide ''a good English and classical education,"? and wherein 'the stream of educational instruction shall not be mingled with the polluted waters of corrupt example."
The dream of Ryerson and his supporters was liberal and truly catholic: they envisaged a college where " scholars of every religious creed will meet with equal attention and encouragement."
And when finally their dream was realised, it was laid down in the governing rules that : "* All students shall be free to embrace and pursue any religious creed, and attend any place of religious worship which their parents or guardians may direct."'?
At the Upper Canada Methodist Conference of 1830 definite plans for the college were formulated, and the staggering problem of finance was faced.
As with The Christian Guardian, the preachers themselves took the lead, and returned to their people for support.
So encouraging was the response that on June 7th, 1832, the corner stone of Upper Canada Academy was laid, amidst beautiful wooded surroundings, in Cobourg ; and building proceeded apace.
But unforeseen difficulties were ahead.
Soon it transpired that the ambitious scheme would cost substantially more than $40,000, and meanwhile an economic depression had settled as a black cloud over the province.
Market value of farmers' produce dropped to low levels, and many subscribers found themselves utterly unable to fulfil their commitments.
When the 1834 Conference met, it was warned by its College Committee that the unfinished buildings were in * Carroll's Case and His Contemporaries, Vol. II, p. 217.
See Dr. Jesse Arnup, '' The Old Ontario Strand " (in New Outlook, October 21st, 1936).
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER
BOUND?
danger of being sold for debt.
Then it was that the " saddlebaggers "? made their superlative effort.
Despite all they previously had done, and though their salaries averaged barely over $200 a year, fifty of them came forward and signed promissory notes for $100 each—more than some of them then possessed.
Nor did even that half-year's salary represent the full measure of their devotion.
Having won the right to solemnise marriages in 1829, they determined also, for the next four years, to throw all marriage fees into the College Fund. Against such devotion,
Family Compact and clergy-reserve religion could never prevail.
Here, 4,000 miles from England, and wholly unobserved by the Mother Country, the spirit of the Evangelical
Revival was asserting itself against the lingering and stagnant assumptions of the eighteenth-century '"' Establishment," in Church and State.
A little earlier, when the Methodist Conference, through Ryerson, petitioned their Governor, Sir John Colbourne, on behalf of their educational plans, that gentleman in reply had the effrontery to jibe at '' the limited views of the leaders of societies, who perhaps have neither experience nor judgment to appreciate the value or advantages of a liberal education.''}
Later, when it applied for a royal charter for the academy, the law officers of the Crown in Upper Canada replied tersely, that "the Methodist Conference was unknown in law."?
A Royal Charter, nevertheless, these pioneer preachers were determined to have; so Egerton Ryerson was despatched to England to plead their case.
The difficulties Ryerson there encountered were numerous and colossal; but ere he returned, the charter had been promised, and some little financial assistance through the Colonial Office as well.
On June 18th, 1836, Upper Canada Academy was officially opened with an initial enrolment of 120 students—both men and women.
On October 12th, of the same year, its hard-won charter was formally granted.
It was the first Nonconformist College in the whole British Empire to receive a Royal Charter.
More than 3,000 pioneer Methodists in Upper Canada subscribed to the building of this Academy, their subscriptions averaging about $16. And if the superior critics who so glibly assert that the Evangelical Revival was a benighted, retrogressive movement will condescend to learn anything from facts, they well might remember that on one of the preserved
"' Subscription Books"? appear about 1,000 contributors, only one of whom was unable to sign his name in full.
In the New 1 See Chancellor Edward Wilson Wallace, '"' Methodist Cavalry " (New Outlook, September 23rd, 1936).
2 See Dr. Jesse Arnup, article cited above.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
World, as in the old, the Revival was an illuminating and educating, as well as a character-building, movement.
Six years after its founding, Upper Canada Academy changed its name to Victoria College, thus designating its loyalty to, and admiration for, the young Queen.
When it opened Faraday Hall it provided the first building in Canada devoted " exclusively to the teaching of the sciences."
On moving from Cobourg to Toronto, the rapidly expanding capital of the Province, its utility and its fame increased.
To-day it is a great University, still holding it own Charter and granting its own degrees, though now under the control of the United Church of Canada, and affiliated with the great State University of Toronto.
In October, 1936, Victoria University, before thousands of its alumni and friends, assembled from every continent, celebrated the Centenary of the reception of her Royal
Charter.
Among the eminent men upon whom she then bestowed her distinguished Doctor of Divinity degree was
Canada's Governor-General, Lord Tweedsmuir, so well known and loved as John Buchan.
Addressing Convocation on behalf of his fellow-recipients of that degree, and pledging " loyalty and devotion to the great University of which we are now a part," Lord Tweedsmuir observed :
"I find myself among eminent theologians who represent various communions of the Christian Church, an example of the ecclesiastical broad-mindedness which is so pleasing a feature of Canadian life.
There is another feature of Canadian life which I heartily approve.
I do not know any country where the Church and the world—or shall we say the better side of the world—walk together so harmoniously."
During the continued celebrations of Victoria's Centenary, Canada's renowned Governor-General made this further declaration : " The Christian religion alone gives the warrant for that high evaluation of the human soul, which is the meaning of humanity.''?
Far more than is commonly realised, did that " ecclesiastical broad-mindedness "' and that leavening influence of Christianity upon Canada's work-a-day life, which Lord Tweedsmuir so warmly admires, derive from the saddle-bag preachers who rode the rough and often snow-drifted trails of Upper Canada. Over a century earlier they, as firmly as Canada's present GovernorGeneral, believed that vital Christianity alone could inspire
See " This is Victoria's Day " (Centenary Number of New Outlook, October 21st, 1936).
2 Ibid., p. 978.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
and sustain '' that high evaluation of the human soul," which brings to humanity meaning, vision, hope and power: and in that Faith they built.
These trail-blazers established " the first Missionary Society in connection with any church in Canada."'!
By their struggle for liberty, their broad tolerance, their deep charity and their evangelical zeal for the things of the Kingdom of God, they were the initial forerunners of the great Church Union movement which, in 1925, resulted in the formation of the United Church of Canada.
The most eminent of those trail-blazers, Egerton Ryerson, not only founded and edited the most influential newspaper in Upper Canada ; he became first principal of Victoria College, and later "founder of the Educational System of Ontario."'?
With the magnificent system of public schools now possessed by Ontario," says the French-Canadian historian, Sir J. G.
Bourinot, '' must always be associated the name of Dr. Egerton Ryerson, a famous Methodist, the opponent of Mackenzie's seditious action, and for many years the superintendent of education."'* In 1844 Ryerson was appointed Chief Superintendent of Schools for Upper Canada.
He visited the New England States, the British Isles, Germany and other Continental countries, and learned from them all—in some cases what not to do.
The Education Acts of 1846 and 1860 were both drafted by him.
His statue in front of the Toronto Normal Training College recalls the fact that he initiated Canada's excellent system of Teachers' Training Colleges.
'' During the thirty-three years of his superintendency," says the Encyclopedia of Education,
'' Dr. Ryerson built broadly and well the foundation of the present system of common school education in Ontario."
That system has left an indelible impress on the whole educational structure of Canada, while its reflex on various other lands, within and without the British Empire, has not been small.
It is a logical consequence of Ryerson's work that Ontario, for many years, has had compulsory public education till sixteen years of age.
So this also is a product of the "Enthusiasm" engendered by the Revival of vital, experimental
Christianity.
Nor was the expression of inspiring, adventurous Christianity in Canada confined to the Methodist frontier-breakers.
The heroism of Roman Catholic missionaries is inextricably woven into much of the romance of Canada's development.
Moreover, the great English Revival which created Methodism and 1 Dr. Arnup, " Old Ontario Strand."
2 Professor Sissons, op. cit., Vol. I, p. of.
3 Bourinot's Canada, p. 368.
4See Dr. Nathaniel Burwash, Life of Egerton Ryerson, and History of Victoria College ; also Nat. Dict. of Biog. (" Egerton Ryerson da
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
initiated the Protestant world missionary movement, affected profoundly all the pioneer Reformed Communions in the premier British Dominion.
The: frontier work of the early Presbyterians was scarcely less magnificent than that of the Methodists, and from the earliest times these churches learned to co-operate.
The same harmonious spirit increasingly permeated the Baptist, Lutheran and Congregational Churches, though they represented much smaller numbers.
As for the Anglican Church, it too, when once it freed itself from the shackles of the Family Compact and dropped its stiff, assuming airs, captured this missionary fervour and became a splendid pioneering force.
The moral, social and educational history of Canada, is bound up with the heroic evangelising efforts of these voluntary religious bodies ; and what such missionary zeal accomplished in Canada, it accomplished also in other parts of the British Empire.
(iii) Is Christianity Effete ?
In the ponderous elaboration of his "' economic determinism " and materialistic '"' philosophy," Karl Marx, to establish his case, assumes throughout that all religion is humbug—a priestconcocted anodyne, a pernicious opiate, designed to stupefy the masses into passive subservience, that they may the more easily be exploited by the usurping capitalist tyrant, as beasts of burden.
Morality and law, Marx dashes overboard in the same grandiose style.
' Law, morality, religion," reads the Manifesto of the Communist Party, are to him (the Communist) so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurks in ambush just so many bourgeois interests."
As for the ideal of the Christian family, Marx, for all his top-heavy learning, has no clearer conception of what it is, or means, than a Hottentot.
So around it also, he thrusts his ever-present " bourgeois " blanket, and casts it contemptuously aside.
"Our bourgeois," he writes, "not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.
"Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common. .. ."2
The man who solemnly could prescribe to the " proletariat " such patent falsehood, such pernicious poison, as an inherent
1 Op. cit. (first published in 1848), p. 19 of authorised English translation (1933 edition).
® Ibid., p. 25.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
part of his revolutionary " science,"? had great need to dismiss all religion as a soporific.
That dogma, was essential to his purpose : his very hypotheses compelled him to beg the case.
Consequently he will hear of no relation between Christianity and social justice.
For instance, '' Christian Socialism," avers the Manifesto, 'is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat."1
In Marx's monumental and belaboured work, Das Kapital, the same attitude is equally pronounced.
Pride, hatred, jealousy, revenge and flagrant atheism parade through every chapter; while, by inference, Marx substitutes his economic, materialistic and '* scientific"? omniscience for God.
Much of his argument, moreover, Voltaire fashion, reduces itself to assumption, aspersion and innuendo, as when glibly he asserts that "' The Anglican
Church will more readily pardon attacks upon thirty-eight of its thirty-nine articles than upon one thirty-ninth of its income.''?
Yet this is but representative of many of the " facts" adduced in support of the economic-revolutionary " proposition," which Engels, Marx's collaborator, predicts "is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology."®
Pure religion embodies the highest, most ennobling and most sustaining aspiration known to man.
But that " the highest," if prostituted, may degenerate into an unlovely and nauseating thing, exhibiting many of the properties of an opiate, who will deny?
Furthermore, that religion, including certain expressions of Christianity, has, at some times and in some places, been so prostituted, is surely beyond dispute.
It may be that the economic and atheistic "' gospel of Communism," through its loud cry for social justice, will yet prove a thorn in the side of Christianity to spur it to greater unity, higher purpose and more Christ-like expression of its Faith.
But such speculation is beyond our field.
The backgrounds, origin and evolution of the Evangelical Revival, as well as certain of its fruits, we now have briefly surveyed.
If the religion mediated through that revival is to be designated an opiate, then all relationship between cause and effect has departed, the meaning of words has gone, and logic is dead.
But sinister, revolutionary and devastating as have been the assaults of Karl Marx's Class-Hatred and No-God disciples, the barren, negative assumptions of those who have long been posturing as the inéelligentsia of Christendom, have injected into current society a still more blighting and paralysing infection.
Thus far, the twentieth century has been dominated by a 1 Op. cit., p. 30.
P ag ; 2 Marx's Das Kapital ('"' Everyman " English edition), Vol. II, pp. 864-5.
8 Preface to Communist Manifesto, p. 8.
446 ENGLAND: BEFORE AND AFTER
WESLEY soulless rationalism and an agnostic humanism which, conjointly having usurped the seats of authority, have striven to impose an intellectual dictatorship over the minds and spirits of men: and already their fruits are manifest.
'' Emancipated " man, in his worldly wisdom knowing not God, has endeavoured to establish himself "' as God," and having mastered the laws of many scientific phenomena, has succeeded in conjuring into being many amazing gadgets, devices and "' things."
But now these " things" are threatening destruction to their maker.
Increasingly, " civilised' society has been finding itself in the position of a reckless sorcerer—unable to control the powerful robots which, by the wand of science, it has called forth from space to do its bidding.
Secularism, rationalism and humanism have penetrated and mastered not a few mysteries of the physical world.
Mechanisms they have enormously enlarged and improved.
Man's reach, they have so extended as almost to make plausible the fabulous Magic Carpet and Seven League Boots; but his grasp on ultimate reality, they have almost paralysed.
Glutting the body, they have starved the soul : hence the inevitable Nemesis.
As they pause and ask themselves: "Is not this great Babylon that I have builded?" a taste of dust and ashes rises in the mouth.
As they behold their unfinished Tower of Babel, whose top was to "reach unto heaven," they are becoming conscious not only of a confusion of tongues, but of a confusion of spirit.
Already, they seem to hear a cracking in the foundations.
Science, which they enslaved to their ambitions, to make them a name, is working overtime, not to create the means of happiness and culture, but the contraptions of fear and death.
And paradox of paradoxes, all this is being done by rationalised, secularised, humanised peoples for the mutual defence of the " civilisation " which they have builded.
When man denies God and sets about to exalt himself, he is but tugging at his boot-straps, and so sinks the deeper in the mire.
Kant, having in his Critique of Pure Reason demolished all the " rational "? arguments for the existence of God, later, as a practical man, postulated the existence of God, the immortality of the Soul, and the freedom of the human Will.
For these, spiritually, are the Bread of Life.
Modern sophisticated rationalism, which, like eighteenth-century Deism, increasingly has issued in cynicism, frustration and failure, might well contemplate the insight of Cowper, the initial poet of the Evangelical Revival :
" Learning itself, received into a mind By nature weak, or viciously inclined, Serves but to lead philosophers astray, Where children would with ease discern the way."
* See Kant's Critique of Practical Reason.
2 See Cowper's Progress of Error.
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
Contemporary humanistic Secularism, for all its once vaunted powers and lurid promises, has sailed a rudderless course.
In its dashing youth, it quite failed to distil understanding from the minutie and experience of the past: now, facing a premature old age, it lacks the faith, hope, love and vision, without which men and nations perish.
Communism and Fascism are its children, the one turning Left, the other Right ; and they are furiously at war.
Secularism dislikes and disowns its violent, uncouth progeny: loneliness and disillusionment possess its household ; arid it is bereft of hope beyond the grave.
'"* Vanity of vanities '' will be its epitaph.
Yet, had it been teachable in its youth, it soon would have discovered that its brilliant ** naturalistic' philosophy was none other than a revived, embellished and camouflaged edition of Deism.
Denying God, it placed its trust in abstract, deified man; and behold its ** educated," " scientific " grandchildren are risen up to proclaim man—" a parasite, crawling on the vertebre of the pigmy among the planets."
The seething disunity, animosity and strife; the rampant hatred, distrust and fear; the recrudescence of crass, tribal nationalism ; the ghastly, accelerating race in the production of the armaments of mutual destruction: these unsavoury current phenomena indicate not that Christianity is bankrupt or effete, but that the rationalistic ideologies which temporarily have pushed God, Christ and Revelation from the centre of cultural influence, are devoid of the spiritual vision and vitality which alone can save mankind.
Reason, divorced from Faith, has afresh been proving itself but a critical, destructive faculty.4
Modern Secularism, therefore, now faces the ago-old dilemma : without God, whence cometh Hope, Unity or Purpose into the world ? Without Revelation, where are to be found the corner stones of morality?
Without Faith, where is man's guiding star?
'If the spiritual oxygen," writes Viscount Bryce, "which has kept alive the attachments of Liberty and selfgovernment in the minds of the people becomes exhausted, will not the flame burn low and perhaps flicker out?
. Without Faith nothing is accomplished, and Hope is the mainspring of Faith."
Hope, however, has survived many seemingly fatal assaults, for Bryce adds:
'' Throughout the course of history every winter of despondency has been followed by a joyous springtime of hope.''?
x * * x 1 For the development of this thesis, see Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution
(1894).
2 Bryce's Modern Democracies, Vol. II, pp. 663 and 670.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
In this year of Grace, 1938, two momentous Centenaries will be thankfully and reverently celebrated throughout the Englishspeaking world, and far beyond.
One is the four hundredth anniversary of the official and general circulation of the Bible in their own tongue among the people of Britain, thus opening to them a vivid, direct and unique Revelation of the things of God and His Purposes for man.
The other is the two hundredth anniversary of the Conversion of the priest, John Wesley, which transfigured him into the most vitally effective prophet, leader and saint the English-speaking world has yet reared.
To emphasise the influence of the English Bible upon the character and development of the Anglo-Saxon and Englishspeaking peoples, would be utterly superfluous. The richest and best in English literature has been fed from its springs.
The noblest British and American poets have been inspired by its beauty and its imagery, by its prophecies, its aspirations and its ethics.
The English Bible was the rock foundation upon which all that was most practical and most magnificent in English
Puritanism was builded.
It has been to Anglo-Saxon civilisation not only the Biblos, the " Book of Books " ; it has been the chart and compass of their moral and spiritual life.
He who would assume to interpret the achievements of British and American character and culture without an understanding knowledge of the Bible, is like a drunken man fumbling at a locked door, without the key.
The two hundredth anniversary, now to be commemorated, represents a development and a fulfilment of the four hundredth.
It was as Wesley, the rigid sacerdotalist, listened in a Moravian meeting to the reading of Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, that the central message of the New Testament broke with overpowering illumination and conviction upon his soul.
Henceforth the Bible became to him a book of new inspiration, new revelation.
But the later Centenary, though dependent upon the earlier and inextricably connected with it, commemorates an advance of more thorough-going and far-flung significance.
When once Wesley's heart was " strangely warmed " and the divine sonship of Faith possessed his being, he initiated and moulded a movement which applied the central principles of the Reformation, as never before had they been applied.
"Salvation by Faith"? now became a vital and personal experience, not a doctrinal dogma ; the " Priesthood of all Believers'? once more, as in Apostolic days, constrained every faithful convert to become a missionary, which was not the case in the Reformation Century ; while again, the "* Open
Bible," whose key was the Gospel, became a guide to daily life and conduct such as neither the Reformed Churches of the
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER BOUND?
sixteenth century nor the Puritans of the succeeding century had quite dared to make it.
"It is scarcely an exaggeration," says Lecky, the great rationalist historian, 'to say that the scene which took place in that humble meeting in Aldersgate
Street forms an epoch in English history.
The conviction which then flashed upon one of the most powerful and most active intellects in England is the true source of English Methodism."'1
Had Lecky been writing a history of nineteenth as well as of eighteenth century England, and had he investigated the deeper significance of the whole Evangelical Revival, he soon would have realised that Wesley's conversion resulted in something still greater than an "epoch in English history.'
It is highly dubious if any spiritual leader since that matchless Missionary to the Gentiles, has exercised such wide-spread, creative and beneficent influence upon the souls of men.
In the seventeen centuries intervening between St. Paul and Wesley, the achievements of St. Francis of Assisi alone compare with those of the great Protestant Evangelist.
But whereas St. Francis quickly won the approval of the Pope and the support of the whole Catholic Church, Wesley, in a then vulgarised, slave-trading, Deistic England, faced bitter ridicule and animosity—ecclesiastical and oligarchical—for more than three decades.
He lived to an age however which doubled that of St. Francis ; his personal crusade was almost three times as long; each succeeding year, his zeal and his influence increased ; and so solidly did he build, that by far his greatest victories were won after his death.
But if the world achievements of St. Francis and Wesley are comparable, Wesley remains incomparably the greatest of all Protestant leaders, and the initial medium of the most powerful spiritual movement the English-speaking world has yet known.
That the Evangelical Revival developed the fairest flower and fruit of Reformed Christianity, is indubitable.
In the early eighteenth century it seemed as though Protestantism was dying of sheer spiritual paralysis and moral anemia.
Puritanism, by iniquitous legislation, had been bullied, tortured and coerced.
A priggish Deism had descended on England as a stagnant, poisoning atmosphere.
In the name of " naturalism," men and manners were corrupted; beneath a polished, tinsel surface, abysmal ignorance was rampant ; the slave-trade was flourishing and expanding ; the Bible, discredited and mocked at, was little read ; the Gospel was treated asa myth.
Wesley, defying the " new philosophy," and penetrating to the heart of the New Testament, finally changed the entire scene.
Dr. John- , son once said of the mighty evangelist:
'' The dog enchants 1 Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. II, p. 558. pad
450 ENGLAND: BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
you with his conversation, and then breaks away to visit some old woman."
It was just at this point, that both Dr. Johnson's "High and Dry" and Sydney Smith's " Low and Slow" schools of contemporary England, equally failed to understand either Wesley or the Evangelical Revival.
The " Old Woman " had a soul; so too, had the humblest labourer ; and so also had the worldling, the drunkard and the prostitute.
The Revival sought to make them soul-conscious, through Christ, 'in God.
It represented a new revelation of "© Love to the loveless shown, That they might lovely be."
Furthermore, it made its converts co-labourers together with God, to bring nearer that "ce . one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves."
The popular modern notion that the Evangelical Revival was an irrational, inhibitive, "' joy-killing "' movement, is but a sophisticated delusion.
A constraining enthusiasm for righteousness imparts joy and gladness: and these, the Revival abundantly mediated.
Wesley, from the day of his conversion, knew no depression of spirit.
'' Sour godliness is the devil's religion," was one of his favourite epigrams and a cardinal article in his daily creed.
If certain pleasurable bypaths the Revival closed, it was that the Highway of Peace and Righteousness might be opened and maintained.
In a hard, materialistic and individualistic age, to the outcasts of England, to those starved of spiritual religion, Wesley brought fellowship and love, joy and hope; he brought also vision, radiance, power and holy inspiration.
The Revival led its followers first into peace with God, then into brotherhood with man.
Individual and moral redemption, it used as a lever to social and humanitarian redemption.
Inward holiness, it insisted, must express itself in outward righteousness ; faith must be judged by its fruits.
Yet, as the converts sought righteousness, even in the performance of the humblest daily duties, the blue bird of happiness sang in their midst.
Wesley not only was one of the happiest of men ; he also was one of the most truly rational.
Sanity and faith he always combined, even as religion and joy.
Reason he ever considered a priceless gift from God ; and his interpretations of Revelation always were rational.
But never did he permit reason to put on airs.
Wesley triumphed because of the purity of his soul, the majesty of his message, the singleness of his purpose, and the sheer magnificence of his moral
CHRISTENDOM—WHITHER
BOUND?
and spiritual stature.
He won England again for Christ, for the Gospel, and for sane Biblical religion.
His faith and vision compelled him to claim the world for his parish ; and one of the rich fruits of the Revival was the creation of the whole
Protestant World Missionary Movement.
Another was the creation of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Hence, on this year of vital Quatercentenary and Bicentenary celebrations, it is pertinent to remember that this incomparable Society has translated the Scriptures, in whole or part, into over seven hundred languages and dialects, and has circulated hundreds of millions of copies.
It was Wesley and the Evangelical Revival, therefore, that made the Bible a world-known Book.
In two brief, memorable sentences, Elie Halévy, the great French historian of modern England, points a poignant challenge :
"A century earlier," he writes, " John Wesley had defeated Voltaire.
Would he defeat Karl Marx? "'1
In these words are focused the very essence of the world's elemental problem to-day.
John Wesley and Karl Marx, unmistakably, are the two most influential characters of all modern history.
The former revived and spread vital, practical Christianity ; the latter formulated and mediated the gospel of revolutionary Class-Hatred, based on economic materialism.
The two men are at the opposite poles of human endeavour and social reform: they are as Love and Hatred ; they represent the thesis and antithesis of modern thought and action.
Wesley was concerned with every aspect of man's welfare.
Often he used the motto:
'"' Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."?
But he believed that human welfare was attainable only by faith in God, and by the direction of all material powers toward the development of abundant spiritual life.
Marx, contrariwise, denying God, denied the existence of the spiritual life, and incited the proletariat to world revolution, by bloody means.
Wesley's crusade represented the epitome of spiritual power ; Marx's crusade, the epitome of material force.
In the eighteenth century, as Halévy reminds us, the master Evangelist defeated the master iconoclast.
In the twentieth century, will he defeat the master materialist ? Wesley versus Marx, is the crux of the modern problem: and progress no longer is deemed inevitable.
Christendom—whither bound ?
1A History of the English People (1895-1905 Volume, English translation), p. 360. é 2 This motto, for instance, he attached to his famous medical treatise.
INDEX A Baldwin, Lord Stanley, on Wesley, 181, 184, 402 Ball, Hannah, 268, 308, 353 Barker, Prof. Ernest, 425 Barnardo, Dr. Thomas John, 306; Abolition Act (of 1807), 338 Abolition Committee, 225 Abolitionists, 338f.
Adam, 57, 290 Addams, Jane, 306 Addison, Joseph, 19, 41, 67, 150, 156, 163 African Slaves, Chap.
VI (i); Chap. XVIII; 282 Aislabie, 111 Aldersgate Street, 192, 280 Allen, William, 356, 369, 371 Almack's Club, 155 America, 90, 230, 281 American Civil War, 110 American Constitution, 342 American Revolution, 102, 108, 213, first article of his Will, 306-7; 359; origin and scope of his work, 418ff.; Rt. Hon. Charles Booth on, 421; Life of, 422 (note) Barnardo's Homes, 362, 410f.; Mundella's tribute to, 421 ; their Charter, 422 Baxter, Richard, 21, 199 Bebb, Dr., 293 Bedlam, 93, 249 Beecher, Henry Ward, 307, 345 Behn, Aphra, 164 Bell, Dr. Andrew, 357 Benson, Bishop, 146 Bentham, Jeremy, 56; his prison reform schemes, 368-9; 371,
Bentley, Richard, 37, 55 Berkeley, Bishop, '' Discourse to Magistrates," 19, 29, 37, 41, 53; 85,199 _ Bernard, Saint, 234 Berridge, 57, 282, 290 Besant, Sir Walter, 135, 159, 163 Bible, The (or Scriptures), 40; in Welsh, 182; 204, 258, 261, 262, 266, 206, 305, 3773. fourth centenary of English, 448; 449,
Bible Societies, 293, 376, 408 Bible Study, 58, 296, 346, 412 Biddulph, 57 Birrell, Augustine, 136; on Wesley, 180; 317 Blackburn, Archdeacon, 56 Blackstone, Sir William, 90, 104, 105, 125, 127 Blake, William, 168 Bland, Sir John, 156 Blunt, Sir John, 111 Bohler, Peter, 190, 191-2, 193, 280, 231, 233, 326, 426, 432 American Women's Colleges, 435 America's Emancipation Problem, 342-46 Anne, Queen, 28, 45, 69, 70, 142, 183, 374 Annesley, Dr. Samuel, 21, 25, 185 Anti-Corn Law League, 397 Anti-Puritan Code, 20-24 Anti-Puritan Purge, 2o0f, 352 Anti-Slavery Society, 347 Apostolical Succession, 94 Arch, Joseph, 392, 397, 402 Archbishops of Canterbury, 45ff.
Arminian Magazine, 267 Asbury, Bishop Francis, 173, 281, 307, 373; his early life, 431-2; his mighty work, 432-5; comparable with Lincoln, 433; 437 Asiento, 100 Asplin, Samuel, 68, 69, 95 Atterbury, Bishop, 53, 70, 82 Auckland, Lord, 48 Australia, 436 B Bacon, Lord, 54, 374 Baden-Powell, Lord, 417
INDEX Bolingbroke, Lord, 19, 28, 33, 36, Cartaret, 150 Catholic Emancipation, 298 Cartright, Major John (note), 135 Cecil, 57 Challenor, Bishop, 179 Chambers, Sir Thomas, 361 'Change Alley, 112f., 114 Charity Schools, 167, 168, 352 Charles I:
("'deicide"') 65; 68; picture of death of Charles and Christ, 68 (note) ; 70, 75, 76, 231 Charles II, 20, 22; re Declaration at Breda, 24; Restoration Sermons on, 68f.; 74, 77, 93, 119,
40, 91, 125, 150, 172 Booth, General Evangeline, 306, 414 Booth, General William, 306; life of, 414-15 Borlase, Dr., 207 Bosanquet, Mary, 282 Boswell, James ; re Wilberforce, 341 Boy Scout Movement, 417 Bradford, Joseph, 284 Bradshaw, 20
Brickleband, Elizabeth, 106 British Constitution, 37 British and Foreign Bible Society, 124, 164 \€harterhouse School, 186, 279, 312 296, 376, 384, 409; its seven hundred Scripture translations,
British and Foreign School Society, Chatham, Lord; re Dissenting ministers, 52; 172, 302 Chester, Bishop of, 70 Chesterfield, Lord, 125, 150, 172 Christian Guardian, 439-40 Christian Socialists, 395 Church Missionary Society, 61 Cicero, 91 City Road Chapel, 279 Clapham Sect, 302-4; 338; 372,
Clarke, 37, 290 oe Thomas, 102, 282, 306, 353, 353-6 Broome, Rev. Arthur, 407 Brown, P. A., 293 Bryce, Lord, 141, 423, 435, 447 Buchan (Lord 'Tweedsmuir), 442 Buckingham, Lady, 178, 211-12 Buckinghamshire, Duke of, 28 Bull, Rev. G. S., 215, 385 Bunyan, John, 199, 373 Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, 359, 407,
Burke, Edmund, 36; Reflections, SO ras, 120,01 725) SOSiseOn) Howard, 365 ; 371 Burns, Robert, 150, 272 Burrington, 145 Burt, Thomas (M.P.), 392-3; Earl
Clive, Robert, 172 Cobbett, William, 100, 178, 265, 267, 268, 273; his abuse of Wilberforce, 302 ; 304, 314, 326, 341-2, 343 Coke, Dr. Thomas, 45, 173, 213, Grey, re, 393 ; 402 Bute, Lord, 122 Butler, Bishop, 19, 38, 53, 172, 178, 281, 307, 343, 376, 425, 437 an G. D. H., 267, 395 199, 280, 291 Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 103, 173, ollins, Anthony, 33, 34, 36, 55, 172 Colman, George, 164 '
Communism, 255, 256-7, 447 Compton, Sir Spencer, 119 Confucius, 91 Congregational, 292 Conventicle Act, 22, 290 Convocation, Suppression of, 26f.
Conybeare, 37 Coram, Thomas, 143-4 Cornwallis, Archbishop, 46 ; letters 306; letters re Emancipation, 332; 402, 407, 409 C Cadman, Dr. Parkes, 317 Calamy, 21 Calvin, John, 373 Calvinist, 285 Cambridge Modern History ; Wesley, 180 :
Cambridge University, 54, 55, 291, to Newcastle, 47; letter ve, from George II to, 48; 95, 213 Cornwallis, Bishop ; letters to Pitt, on 51-2 Corporation Act, 20 Cowper, William, 52, 58, 88, 173,
Canada, 230 Carey, William, 173, 307, 376, 436 Carlyle, Thomas, 41, 76, 272, 305 Caroline, Queen, 121 290, 408 ; re learning, 446 Craggs, Secretary, 111, 114 Cranfield, Thomas, 358
INDEX Epictetus, 91, 92 Episcopal Bench, 63 Epworth, 26, 279 Erasmus ; ve royalty, 65; 374 Establishment, 289, 290 Evangelical Missionaries, 332, 333, Cromwell, Oliver, 20, 68, 69, 76, 87,.
199, 374 Cudgel play, 153-4 Cumings, E. D.; re horse racing,
373-78 ; Charles Darwin's tribute to, 377 3 443, 451 Evangelical Movement, Chap Xff ; D 199; opposition of prelates to, 291 ; 296; wide impact of, 305-8 ; the Hammonds' attack on, 322-27 ; blamed for averting a " classstruggle,"
325; saved Europe, 331; contribution to popular education, 353-60; influence on prison system, 365-70 ; on Trade Unionism, 389-96; Lloyd George re its influence on the nation, 304-5 ; created great voluntary movements, 405ff.; produced fairest flower of Protestantism, 44of.
Evangelical Revival; McGiffert's statement, 39; 45, 72, 179, 184, 222, 266; its gift of sacred song, 272-4; spreading influence of, 289-95 ; 295; 299f.; 305; impact on literature, social reform, missionary effort, etc., 305-8 ; its salutary effect on national health, 321-2; a belated assault upon, 322ff. ; its character transforming influence, 327 ; 354, 417 3 impact on U.S.A., 427-35, 441; made the people soul-conscious, 450 Evangelicals, 94; relative strength among clergy and laity, 290-1 ; G. W. E. Russell on, 295 ; missionary leaders among, 307-8; their educational pioneers, 308 ; their leadership in abolishing slave-trade and slavery, Chap.
XVIII; worked with Radicals, 371; their foreign missionary achievements, 373-6; labours for better industrial conditions, 382ff.; 386; their influence on Trade Unions, 389ff.; Jack Lawson on their work, 396; created social conscience, 405; founders of mighty voluntary movements, Chap. XXII; world outlook of, 425; debt of English-speaking peoples to, 435; their impact on British Empire, 435ff.; in India, 436; in Canada, 437ff.; their " saddle-bag " preachers, 441 Dagg, Mr., 366 Daily Advertiser, 151 D'Alembert, 62 Dale, Dr. R. W., 292 Dartmouth, Lord, 58, 173; Wesley's remarkable letter to, 230;
Darwin, Charles ; tribute to Christian Missions, 377-8 ; 445 Davidson, Archbishop ; on Wesley,
Davidson, Dr. Thain, 418 Defoe, Daniel, 19, 92, 144, 159, 163, 169-170 Deism, 33ff., 124, 195, 294, 325, 352, 383; and modern Rationalism, 446 ; 449
Deistic Rationalism, 53, 125, 205, 315, 352 Deists, 36, 39, 40, 41 Democracy, 54, 70, 265, 326, 387, 417, 435 Dickens, Charles, 305, 384 Diderot, 62 Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), 53 Dissenters, 24 Divine Right of Kings, 26, 68f.
Dodd, Rev. Dr., 132 Dodderidge, Dr., 299, 430 Dodds, A. E., 265 Dodington Budd, 136 Drake, Admiral, 111 Dufour, Judith, 146 " Dying Speeches," 128
E East India Company, 58, 106 Eddie, W., 108 Edinburgh Review, 62, 178 Edwards, Jonathan, 183, 427, 428 Elizabeth, Queen, 100, III, 335 England ; when Wesley began his crusade, 189 ; see Chapters I-IX,
INDEX Goldsmith, Oliver, 41, 150, 157, 163, F
Gordon, General, 359, 436 Gough, J. B., 306, 413 Grant, Charles, 58, 173, 291, 298, Factory Acts, 357, 383f., 386 Factory Schools, 357, 358 Fairburn, 265 Fascism, 447 Faustus, Dr., 179 Fenwick, Charles (M.P.), 393-4, 402 Field, Ann, 154 Fielding, Henry, 19, 41 ; ve Parson 304, 371 Grant, Philip, 215 Gray, (the poet) re Hume, 133-4 Greece, 245 Green, J. R., 19; ve Puritan Expulsion, 22 ; 76, 180, 353, 367 Gregory the Great ; re Slavery, 335 Grey, Earl: re Burt, 379 Grieve, Mrs., 157 Grimshaw, Thomas, 57, 207, 282, Adams, 55; 129, 139, ve gin, 1463 150, 163, 165 :
Fielding, Sir John, 146, 148 (note) Finney, Charles, 410 Five Mile Act, 23 L#letcher, John, 57, 282, 290
Guthrie, Dr. Thomas, 307, 359 Forster, W. E., 360 Foundling Hospital, (note) 143 Fox, Charles James, 126, gambling mania, 157 Fox, George, 199 Foy, Captain, 215 France, 90 France, Anatole, 237 Francis, Saint, 218, 237, 449 Franklin, Benjamin, 108, 122, 148, 150; H Halévy, Elie, 133 ; on theatre, (note) 165 3 179, 293, 326; says Abolition of Slavery was a "' Christian
Movement," 329 ;_ 371, 372,375; 390; ve Trade Union leaders, 391; 394, 397; re Wesley and Marx, 451 Hallam, 41 Hammett, James, 38of.
Hammond, J. L.., and Barbara, 100 ; 269; 427; influence of Whitefield on, 428; 429, 431
French Revolution, 46, 90, 126, 134, 205, 316, 326, 370 Froude, Hurrell, 307 Fry, Elizabeth, 247, 306; her life and work, 369-70 Fugitive Slave Law; (Beecher on), attack on Evangelical Movement, 322-27 ; blame Revival for diverting energy from "' class-struggle,"'
325; their changing attitude to Revival, 327 (note) Hampden, John, 199
G "' Hanging Shows," 127
Hanway, Jonas, 139, 142-5, 161, 168, 173, 354 Hardie, Keir, 397-8, 400, 402 Harley (Earl of Oxford), 28 Harris, Howell, 182 Harris, Sir John, 329 Harvard University, 426 Hastings, Warren, 172 Hawkins, Sir John, 100, 111, 165, Gardiner, 77 Garrick, David, 41, 166 'Garrison, William Lloyd, 345 Gay, John, 19, 163, 170, 172 George I, 25, 28, 45, 199, 171 George II, 56, 57, 119, 159, 171, 258,
George III; letter to Cornwallis, 48; 54, 89, 90, 91, 121, 122-3, 126, 243, 261, (note) 291, 355 George, Dr. M. Dorothy, 106, 107,
Hazlitt, William, 265, 267, 304.
Henderson, Rt. Hon. Arthur, 389 5 123, 133, 149, 241 Gibbon, 39, 54, 157, 265, 371 Gibson, Bishop, 37 " Gin Age," 145f.
Gladstone, W. E., 291, 360, 381-2, life and work, 400; 402 Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 33 Hernhuth, 194, 105 Herring, Thomas, 45, 95 Hervey, 290 Hickes, Bishop, 29
Glenelg, Lord, 304
ai, INDEX _ Jones, Griffith, 182 Hitchcock Drapery Firm, 410-11 Jones, Thomas, 57, 290 Joseph Andrews, 130 Hoadly, Bishop, 29'
Hobbes, Thomas, 33 Hogarth, 41, 145 Hogg, Quintin, 359 Holy Club, 279 Hopkey, Sophy, 279 Horse Fair (Bristol), 212, 280 Horsley, Bishop, 91 Hough, Bishop, 80-1 Howard, John, 59, 130, 132, 133, "* Judaisers,"' 60
Judas, 95 K Kagawa, 308 Kant, E., 446 Kapital, Das, 445 Keble, John, 61, 307 Keller, Helen, 305 Ken, Bishop, 25, 27 Kennett, Dr. White, 69, 95 'Kingswood, 204 173, 249, 3065 Burke's tribute to, 365; 366-70; his debt to Wesley, 366; heroism of his work, 368 Howe, 21 Hughes, Hugh Price, 359 Hume, David, 34, 39, 133, 134, 172, Kingswood School, 212, 268, 312, Si5 Kipling, Rudyard, 305 Kirk, Sir John, 306 Kirkby, John, 177 Knibb, Rev. William, 436 Knight (Treasurer of South Sea Company), 114 Knox, Alexander, 366 178, 265 Humphrey, Dean, 37 Hunt, Leigh, 265, 304 Huntingdon, Lady Selina, 48, 58, 173, 183, 211, 263, 281, 289, 290 Hurd, Bishop, 50 Hutton, Matthew, 46 I L Independent Labour Movement, 399ff.
Independent Labour Party, 398 Independents, 23 India, 230 Industrial Revolution, 54, 110, 166, Laissez-faire, 23 Lancaster, Joseph, 355, 356 Lansbury, oo life and work of, 400-01 ; Laski, Prof. Pest: 256
Lavington, Bishop, 71, 95, 177, 273 Law, John, 110, 113 Law, William, 25, 37, 83, 164 Lawrence, Jack; re Methodist preachers, 379; re "Little Bethel," 396
Lawson, Sir Wilfred, 413 League of Nations, 347 Lecky, W. E. H., 19, 100, 119, 120, 331, 382 Ireland, 212, 295 Treton, Henry, 20 Jacobites, 29 James II, 22, 24, 119, 211 James, Rev. Evan, 409-10 Jarvis, Jim, 418 Jeffreys, Judge, 22 123, 134, 145; on Restoration Theatre, 165 ; 169, 180, 241, 412 ; re epoch in history, 449 Levi, Prof. Leoni, 359 Jesuits, 205 Jeudwine, J. W., 107, 117, 121, 122 Jew, 200 Jews, 167 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 19, 38, 41, 50, "" Lib-Labs," 392f.
Lincoln, Abraham, 306, 346 ; compared with Shaftesbury, 388 Liverpool Advertiser, 97, 105 Livingstone, David, 307, 346 Lloyd George, David ; on Wesley, 51; re patriotism, O3%3.
123%5 re public executions, 129 5 130, 131 5 his London, 161; 163; in Life Ol t05)= 92325233) 200,208, 2021; re Wesley's conversation, 449-50 181 ; 184; re Evangelical Revival and the National Character, 394-95 3 402
INDEX Melbourne, Lord, 391 Methodism, 71, 178, 179, 184, 237, Locke, John, 33, 34 London Chronicle; Wesley's letter in, re Bristol Newgate, 131 London City Mission, origin and 289, 291, 340 Methodist, 177, 179, 187, 264, 290, 325, 372, 392 Methodist Episcopal Church ; proscope of 408-09, 411
London Evening Post, re riots, 210 Louis XV, 134 Loveless, George, 306, 318, 388, 390-91 Loveless, James, 388f.
Lowth, Bishop, 72 Lucas, Robert, 83, 86 Luther, Martin, 192, 193, 235, 373, portions and scope of, 433-34; allied American Methodism, 34-35 ..
Methodist Societies, 184, 261, 290 Millis, Maria, 382 Milner Brothers, 57, 290 Milner, Isaac, 60, 173, 291, 299 Milton, John, 23, 125, 199, 373 Missionary Societies (Protestant), 59 Mississippi Company, 111 Mitchell, Thomas, 218 Moffat, Robert, 307, 436 Mohammedan, 218 Mohammet, 91
Lutheran Church, 194, 438 M Macaulay, Lord, 19; ve Simeon, 0; 7 Macaulay Zachary, 58, 173, 290, 303, 338 Macdonald, Alexander, 392, 393 MacDonald, Rt.
Hon.
Ramsay ; life and work of, 398-99; _ his tribute to Free Churches, 399—- 400 3 402 McGiffert, Prof. A. C., 39 Machiavelli, 114, 120 Mackenzie Rebellion, 438, 443 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 438, 443 Mackford, 207 MacKintosh, Sir James, 371-72,
Malthus, 54, 251 Mandeville, 40, 120 Manifesto of the Communist Party, '* Mohocks," 149
Monmouth's Rebellion, 22 Montesquieu, 125 Moody, D. L., 307 Moore, John (Archbishop), 45, 47, 48 ; his self-seeking, 49 ; 59, 95,
Moravian Brethren, 183, 375, 448 Moravian Communities (Germany), 194f; 280 Moravian Missionary effort, 280, 375, 376 ore, Hannah, 58, 173, 291, 302, 304, 327, 354 Morley, Lord, 40 "Mui Tsai," 346
Muralt ; re "" Hanging Shows," 128.
Murray, Grace, 282
Mann, Sir Horace, 102, 155, 171 Mansfield, Lord (Chief Justice), 105,
Marienborn, 194, 280 Marlborough, Duchess of, 125 Marlborough, Lord, 49, 172 Marshalsea Prison, 247 Martin, Richard (M.P.), 407 Martyn, Henry, 173, 436 Marvell, Andrew, 199 Marx, Karl, 126 ; his teaching comN Napoleon, 181 Nasmith, David ; life and work of, 408-9 N ee Church, 84, 86, 88, 94, 185,.
National School Society, 6Natural Rights, 352 a) 528 Sam Nelson, John 218 Nelson, Lord, 341 Newcastle, Lord, 47 Newgate, Prison, 93, 128, 247, 3609.
Newman, Cardinal, 307 Newman, Sir George, 269, 406 New Outlook, 439 Newton, Bishop, 50, 70, 71 pared with Wesley's, 255-57; 326, 381, 396; re religion, 444;
Masefield, John, 305 Mathew, Father, 413 Mathieson, Dr. W. L., 61 "Maxfield, Thomas, 217, 218 Mayflower, 374, 425
INDEX
Newton, John, 57, 173, 290, 299 New Zealand, 436 Nightingale, Florence, 306, 370 Nonconformist, 88, 94, 167, 278, 292, 302, 353, 365 Nonconformity, 58, 166, 185, 289; _ Phillpotts, Bishop, 338 Pilgrim Fathers, 374, 426, 427 Pitt, William, the Younger ; letter to Cornwallis, 51; 52, 150, 290, 300, 308 ; effect of French Revoluton on, 370
Place, Francis, family history, 169 ; decline of, in early eighteenth century, 292 Nonconformity ('The New"), 292-3, 356; in Canada, 438 Non-Jurors ; expulsion of, 24; 25, 273, 304 Plague (the Great), 22 Plato, 92 Plimsoll, 306 " Political Arithmetic," 94
Pope, Alexander, 19, 36, 125, 172 Potter, John, 45, 95 Pounds, John, 359 Presbyterians, 23, 63; in Canada, s) .
North, Lord, 48, 122, 230 Northington, Lord, 178 N.S.P.C.C., history and work of, 415-16
Press Gangs, 107 Pretender, 28, 205 Price, Dr., 52, 88 ; Love of Country, O Oastler, Richard, 215, 306, 318, 385 O'Connell, Daniel, 341 Occasional Conformity Act, 28 Oglethorpe, General, 130, 132 Old Sarum, 124, 246 Olivers, Thomas, 219 Ormonde, Duke of, 28 Orsman, 306 Ostrogorski, re Evangelical Revival 89-90 Priestley, Dr., 269, 325 Primitive Methodist, 392 Princeton University ; Whitefield's influence on, 429-30 Pulteney, 123, 150 Puritan, 21, 126; strain in Wesley,
Puritanism, 61; Green on, 76; 93, 199, 222, 293, 337, 425.
Puritanism ("' New ''), 298, 373 Puritans, 69, 366; in America, 425-27;
Pyle, Dr., 46 in his La Democratie, 252 Overton, J. H., 19, 59, 75, 93, 124, 179, 180, 206 Owen, Robert, 273 Owen, W. D. (Drapery Firm), 411 Oxford, 22, 202-3 Oxford Movement, 61, 62, 296, 307 Oxford University, S45 St. Edmund Q Hall, 60; pictures of deaths of Charles I and Christ, 68 (note) ; Quakers, 229, 259, 292, 302; and the Evangelical Revival, 337; educational support, 356; in jails, 366; 438 Quakerism, 337 Queen Anne's Bounty, 29 183, 185, 186-87 ; Lincoln College, 187; 258, 279, 383
Page, Hon. James, 420 Paine, Tom, 265, 268, 273, 304, 326 Paley, William, 54, 91, 95 Paris, 'Treaty of, 99 Pascal, 38 Pattison, Mark, 93 Pelham, 150 Pericles, 92 Perronet, 282, 290 Perry, Canon, 46 Petrie, Sir Charles, 43 Philip II, 231 R Ned oee Schools, 358-60; the Bible in,
School Union, 353, 358; aren programme of, 359-60 ; 361, 4 Cid teabert: 38, 268, 308, 353, eee 19, 76 Rebellion of 1745, 129
INDEX Rechabites, 413 ; Reform Bill (of 1832), 298 Reformation, 22, 53, 373, 374, 417; St. Paul, 92 Salvation Army ; origin and scope of, 414-15 Sancroft (Primate), 25 Scotland, 212, 281, 293; Whitefield in, 429 Scott, Thomas, 57, 290, 307 Scott, Sir Walter, 85, 164, 305 Secker, Dr. Thomas (Archbishop),
Rehoboam, 231 Relton, 124 Renaissance, 335, 351 Restoration, 26, 33, 67; Sermons on, 68ff.; 80, 145 Revelation, 447, 448 Revolution of 1688, 26, 73ff., 89, 29, 30, 46 "' Second Reformation," 297
Secularism, 446, 447 Seneca, 92 Septennial Act, 119 Seven Bishops, The, 26 Seward, William, 218 Shaftesbury, Lord, 62, 215, 254, 298 ; inspiration of his crusade, 306; 325; Southern newspaper on, 334; 354; his pioneer education work, 357-60; his Memorial, 381 ;_ the emancipator of Industrial England, 382-7; labours outside Parliament, 384f. ; his colleagues, 385; compared with Abraham Lincoln, 388 ; 395, 402, 411, 416, 419, 436 Sharp, Granville, 105, 282, 338 Shelley, 54 Sheridan, Richard, 163 Sheridan, Thomas, 166 Sherlock, Bishop, 53 Sherlock, Dr. William, 74 Simeon, Charles, 57, 60; " blackballed" by S.P.C.K., 173; 282,
Slave Trade, Chap. VI (i), 226-9 ; 119; theatre of, 165 Rhymer, Dr. Thomas, 70 Ricardo, 251 Richardson, 163 Ritchie, Elizabeth, 229, 279 Robertson, Sir C. Grant, 19, 97, 287, 291 Robinson, Archbishop, 219 Roe, S., 179 Rogers, James, 229 = * Rogers, Prof. Thorold, 19, 127, 180,
Romaine, William, 57, 60, 290 Roman Catholic, 26, 167, 248, 352; missions, 377; Lord Bryce on, 435; 437; in Canada, 443; 449 Roman Catholicism, 26, 352, 374 Roman Empire, 331 Rome, 245, 248 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 339, 369, 371 Rosebery, Lord, 329 Rotten Boroughs, 340 Rousseau, 205, 265, 326, 354, 426 Rowden, A. W., 45, 46, 50, 53 Rowlands, Daniel, 182 Royal Lancastrian Institution, 353 " Royal Martyr," 69
R.S.P.C.A.,
origin and scope of 407-8 Ruskin, John, 305, 395, 397 Russell, G. W. E.; re Evangelical chap. XVIII Slessor, Mary, 307 Smith, Adam, 124, 172 Smith, Sydney, 56, 62, 178, 265, > 289, 302 Smith, Dr. William, 149 Smollet, 163, 178, 450 Snape, Dr. Andrew, 70 Solemn League and Covenant, 20, 21 South Africa, 436 South Sea Bubble, 110-115, 1 34 South Sea Company, rioff., ri 5 Southey, 54, 218, 237-8, 318
Sport, perversion of, rsoff.
Spurgeon, 307 Stamp, Sir Josiah, 323 Stavordale, Lord, 156 Steele, 19, 41, 163 Stephen, James, 290, 303 religion, 295 Ryan, 438 Ryerson, Egerton, 308; early life, 438-9; founds.
Christian Guardian, 439; and Upper Canada Academy, 44o0ff.; Sir J. G. Bourinot on, 443 Ryder, Bishop, 59, 60, 298 Ss Sacheverell, Henry, 27, 28 Sadler, Michael, 215, 219, 220, 318,
St. John, 92
INDEX Trade Union Movement, 324, 389Stephen, Sir James, 173 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 19, 33, 36, 93, 396, 406 Trades Union Congress, 398 Trelawny, Bishop, 50 Trevelyan, G. M., 19; ve AntiPuritan Code, 23; re Universities, 55, 1703; re turning event in world history, 331 ; 363, 435 Trevelyan, Sir G. O., 157 Trimmer, Sarah, 354, 356 Triple Tragedies, 29, 33 Turk, 200, 245 Tweedsmuir, Lord (John Buchan), 199, 222 Stephens, Rev. R. J., 215, 227, 306, 318, 385 Sterne, Lawrence, 19, 163 Stevens, Dr. Abel, 431 Stinton, Dr., 49 Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 305, 346 Strachan, Bishop, 439 Strong, Jonathan (slave), 105 Sumner, John Bird (Archbishop), 61, 62, 96, 298, 359 Sunday Schools, 57, 58, 59, 81, 84, re religion in Canada, 442 Tyburn, 20, 127, 128, 129 86, 268, 312, 353; pioneer contribution to education, 353-5; * _ 359, 412 Sutton, Archbishop, 59 Swift, Dean, 19, 28, 36, 413; re " mounting ecclesiastical ladder,"
Sydney, W. C., 165, 171 U Uncle Tom's Cabin, 103 Uniformity Act, 21 Unitarian, 386 United Empire Loyalists, 437ff.
United Kingdom Alliance, 413 United States, 103, 334 University of Pennsylvania; its debt to Whitefield, 430 Upper Canada Academy, 440ff. ; its i Tawney, Prof. R. H.; re DemocRoyal Charter, 441 ; later changed to Victoria University, 442 Utilitarian, 361, 369 Utilitarians, 316 Utrecht, Treaty of, 41, 99 racy and Nonconformity, 17; 101 (note), 114, 258 Teignmouth, Lord, 58, 173, 290,
Telford, John, 221 Temperance Movement ; origin and work of, 411-13 Temperley, H. W. V., 19, 141 Ten Hours' Bill, 215 Tenison, Thomas, 45 Tennison, Lord, 305 Thackeray, W.
M., 50, 56; re Wesley and Whitefield, 57; re Sterne, 67; 305 Thirty-Nine Articles, 27 Thornton, Henry, 58, 173, 290, 298, Vv Vasa, Gustavus, 229 Venn, Henry, 282 Venns, The, 57; 290 Venus, 57 Versailles, Treaty of, 100 Victoria, Queen, 308 Vienna, Treaty of, 99 Virginia, 108 Voltaire, 135, 265, 326, 426, 451 Voluntary Hospital System, 406 "' Voluntary Principle," chap XXII ; 302; amazing generosity, 303 ; 371, 436 Thornton, John, 58, 173, 290 Tillotson, Archbishop, 34 Tindal, Matthew, 35, 36 Toland, John, 34, 35 Told, Silas, 308, 353 406ff.; English-speaking Democracies debt to, 422
Vulliamy, C. E., 206 Toleration Act, 23, 292 Tolpuddle Martyrs, 38of.
Townley, Rev. James, 147 Toynbee, 306 Tracy, Prof. Fred, 95 (note), 287 Trade Unions, 372ff. ; 380f., 395-6, WwW Wade, Rev. Dr. Arthur, 391 Wake, William (Archbishop) 46 Wakefield, Gilbert, 102
INDEX Walker, 57, 290 Walpole, Horace, 102, 122, 129, 156, Wesley, John—continued. on Legal, Political and State affairs, 244-48; re tautology of lawyers, 245 ; no party politician, 246 ; on Economics and Religion, 248-252 ; re the poor, 249; summary of his ethical and social teaching, 251; his teaching and outlook compared with Karl Marx's, 255-57; re clothes and true Social status, 257-60; on robes of George II, 259-60 ; George III's tribute to,
(note) ; on True Nobility, 261-64 ; his Address to George Il, 261; his Constructive Social Work, 265-74; created a Democracy of Service, 266; his Christian Library, 267; free medical treatment, 269; his industrial experiments, 270-71; his Benevolent Loan and Strangers'
Friend Societies, 271 ; encouragement of sacred song, 272-74; a description of his appearance, 2775 his spiritual triumph, 278; his Final Retrospect, 278-82; marvellous vigour in old age, 277-78 ; his wife, 282; his self-denial, 283 ; last days and death, 282-84 ; funeral instructions and will, 284-85; body "in state" at City Road Chapel, 285; burial by torchlight at 5 a.m., 285); heritage he left behind him, 285 ; compelled to license preachinghouses, 290; Sir C.
Grant Robertson's tribute to, 292; his influence in Scotland, 2903-04 $ influence in Ireland, 2905; two maxims of, 297 ; in contrast with certain modern writers, 305 3 criticisms of Wesley and Evangelical Revival, Chap.
XVII; his wide reading, 316; attitude to higher education, 317; Birrell on Wesley and historians, 317):
Southey's central criticism of, and Alexander Knox's answer, 318-19; his wit and humour, 320; his Primitive Physic and its significance, 321-22; the Hammonds' attack on his Movement answered, 322-27; his Revival blamed for averting a " classstruggle," 325 ; his Thoughts upon Slavery, 336-37 ; friendship with John Howard, 366; his constant 159, 171 Walpole, Sir Robert, 19, 114, 115, 119, 120; his drunkenness, 147 ; T7t, i725 178 Walsh, Thomas, 295 Warburton, Bishop, 37, 53, 71, 79, 83, 85, 273 Washington, George, 342 Watson, Bishop, 50 Waugh, Rev. Benjamin, 415-16
W.C.T.U., 413
Webb, Sydney, 389 Webb, Mrs. Sydney, 324, 327 Wesley, Dr. Bartholomew (greatgrandfather of Wesley), 21 Wesley, Charles, 127, 135, 190, 205, 217, 219, 230, 261; his great contribution of sacred song, 272-74; 281, 366 Wesley, John (grandfather of Wesley.), 21
Wesley, John, 21; ve Charles II, and Queen Mary, 24; 45, 63, 92; re Bedlam and Newgate, 93 ; re Marshalsea Prison, 117; 13031, 135; influence over masses, 136-37; on theatre of his day, 164; re plundering vessels, 170 ; Cambridge Modern History on, 180; Augustine Birrell on, 180 ; his parentage, 185; Epworth Rectory, 186; at Charterhouse School, 186; Oxford and Holy Club, 186-87; Southey on his " reasoning power," 187; failure in Georgia, 188; groping for light, 188; his transfiguring experience, 18o0ff.; " Spiritual Birthday "'
(May 24th, 1738), 190; Béhler's influence over, 190f.; Aldersgate Street, 1092; first field sermon, 196 ; Character of a Methodist, 200 ; on "' Gospel Sermons," 202; at St. Mary's, Oxford, 202-3; his Rules for Societies, 203-45; opposition to, 205f.; ve " Gentlemen," 208-9 ; his directing genius, 212-14; his Class Meetings, and local and itinerant preachers, 214-22; on education and books, 220; on Liberty, 223 ; re Slavery, 225-29 ; his last letter (to Wilberforce), 229; re War, 229-34; re money and privilege 234-38 ; re liquor traffic, 241-44; his letter to Pitt, 243 ;
4 463 INDEX Whittier, John Greenleaf, 305, 346 Wesley, John—continued.
Whole Duty of Man, 79, 87-8 Wilberforce, William, 58, 100, 101, dictum, 375; Lloyd George re | effects of his work, 394-95; Halévy ve his influence on later movements, 397; MacDonald re Wesley, 400; 403; his temperance influence, 412-13; the Spiritual Napoleon of modern world, 415-16; defeated Voltaire, 423; his followers in the U.S.A., 431-35; second Centenary of his Conversion, 448 ; new influence of Bible over him, 448 ; compared with St. Paul and St. Francis, 449; deep significance of his life-work, 450-51 ; defeated Voltaire—will he defeat Marx ?, 451 Wesley's Yournal, 190, 193 ; re first 173, 228, 282, 290, 298, and Clapham Sect, 298-304; conversion and life of, 298-302 ; his Practical View, 301; his generosity, 301-2 ; 306, 327, 338, 356; effect of French Revolution on, 3703; 371, 372, 402, 407 Willard, Frances, founder of
W.C.T.U., 413
William and Mary, 23, 27 William III, 24, 73 Williams, Sir George, life and work of, 409-11 Wilson, 57 Winstanley, Prof. D. A., 54-5 Woffington, Peg, 166 Wood, John, 215, 318, 385 Woolf, 279 Woolston, Thomas, 35 field preaching, 196; 206; re riots, 207-8 ; re the poor, 249-50 ; on the King and his dress, 259-60; declines Judge's invitation to dine, 262; G. D. H. Cole on, 267; 271; 275; re eightyfifth birthday, 278; in praise of a drama Wesley saw acted, 315; re Benezet's book on slave-trade,
Wesley, Samuel (father of W.), 25, x Xavier, St. Francis, 373 x4 55, 185-86 Wesley, Susannah (mother of W.),
Y.M.C.A.,
its founder and early history of, 409-11; Bible influence on, 410-I1 Young, Arthur, 159; on Burke and 25, 185-86, 187, 279 Whig Oligarchy, 121f.
White, Rev. George, 207 Whitefield, George, 88, 92, 135, 177; Gibbon, 371 182, 183, 195-96 ; 205, 213, 217, 261, 263, 280, 281, 285, 293, 308; 343-44; 375; MacDonald on, 399-400; 425; his great work in America, 427-31 ; his Orphanage, 429 Whitehead, Dr., 279, 285 Z Zeitgeist, 99, 160, 168, 172, 195, 352 Zinzendorf, Count, 190-91 Zwingli, 373
Bready, John Wesley, 1887England: before and after Wesley; the evangelical revival
— and social reform, by J. Wesley Bready .,.. London, Hodder and Stoughton, limited ,1938, 463 p. front., plates, ports, 21 cm, "First printed, May 1938; reprinted, May 1938."
1. Gt. Brit—Church history—Modern period.
2. Gt. Brit.—Soc. condit, 3. Wesley, John, 1703-1791, 4, Evangelical revival.
Title.
88—33022 Library of Congress BR755.B7
cC 0050/e dra