Biers alone successively ordained Bishops. 99 35 John Wesley and Modern Religion The Archbishop's reference was to the presbyters of Alexandria, according to Jerome's account—a classic reference for this matter. In the eighteenth century, after Queen Anne, the bishop "retained much of the former respect, but it was not quite of the kind it had been when the belief in episcopacy as a divinely appointed constitution remained comparatively unimpaired." °° Archbishop Manning thought that the Revolution of 1688 "greatly weakened in the Anglican Church the hold of episcopacy as a divine institution." And a writer who died in 1770 testified that "in my younger days, to deny the divine succession of bishops was rank atheism."
It may be well to look more closely at some statements of Stillingfleet and King in the books which so much influenced Wesley that he threw over a doctrine he had held from his youth and adopted the one to which he was faithful for the remainder of his life.
The whole design of Stillingfleet's book, according to his own statement, was "to prove that the form of church government is a mere matter of prudence, regulated by the word of God." ** He thinks a great proof of this is, that "after episcopal government was settled in the church, yet ordination by presbyters was looked upon as valid." ** King says that a presbyter is ""a person in holy orders, having thereby an inherent right to perform the whole office of a bishop; but being possessed of no place or parish, not actually discharging it, without the permission and consent of the bishop of a place or parish." *® These views are based upon the assumption that bishops in the Primitive Church were presbyters in charge of a church, —
Wesley's Doctrine of the Church and that there were as many bishops as churches. Indeed, King likens the relations of bishops and presbyters in the Primitive Church to that existing in the Church of England between rectors and curates.
Both have the authority of the Church to the full ministry of the Church, but jurisdiction in a particular place lies in the bishop.*°
Here is a distinction between spiritual power and jurisdiction. Into the first, according to King, the deacon and the presbyter, or bishop, using presbyter and bishop to mean the same "order," are inducted by ordination, "the grant of a peculiar commission and power, which remains indelible in the person to whom it is committed, and can never be obliterated or rased out, except the person himself cause it by his heresy, apostacy, or most extremely gross and scandalous impiety." 'Now this sort of ordination," adds King,
"was conferred only upon deacons and presbyters, or on deacons and bishops, presbyters and bishops being here to be considered as all one, as ministers of the church universal." *t The question is not now whether King was correct but what he taught in the book which convinced John Wesley that bishops and presbyters are of the same order.
The convictions which had come to him through Lord King's book, later confirmed by reading Stillingfleet, Wesley held for thirty-eight years before he acted upon them. In 1784 he set apart Richard
Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as elders and Dr.
Thomas Coke as superintendent for the American Methodists, events concerning the meaning of which reams of good paper and no little ink have been
John Wesley and Modern Religion expended. Later, he ordained several other men, most of them for Scotland, but at least three for England, one of these latter being Alexander Mather, who was also "'set apart"' as superintendent. If Wesley had not set apart Coke, and later Mather, as superintendents, there would be no question as to what he had done.
It would be accepted that he had acted upon his belief that presbyters have the right to ordain, that he had, as Whatcoat said of his own case, "formed a presbyter" and ordained his preachers deacons and presbyters. But what was he doing when he "set apart"
Coke as superintendent?
For the High Churchman of the present day, the answer is easy. Wesley, in his enthusiasm—or in his senility—violated a fundamental law and attempted to confer a higher order of ministry than he himself possessed. There is no more succinct statement of this view than Charles Wesley's doggerel:
Wesley his hands on Coke hath laid, But who laid hands on him?
Others, reacting from such a view, have contended that Wesley meant nothing in particular and everything in general by thus setting apart a superintendent. He was merely appointing Coke to look after the American Methodists in place of Wesley himself.
Or, the answer is expanded by saying that Wesley - meant nothing by any of his ordinations. He had come to the conclusion that ordination is merely official appointment. But before deciding on any explanation of Wesley's conduct, the student of Methodism should
Wesley's Doctrine of the Church recall certain facts concerning Wesley's attitude and intentions.
In the first place, Wesley's sole aim, kept constantly before his mind, if we are to believe his own words, was "'to promote, so far as I am able, vital, practical religion; and by the grace of God to beget, preserve and increase the life of God in the souls of men."*?
This he said in 1756, and this he continued to say until his death, his depreciators themselves being judges.
In the name of his high purpose, he had violated the customs, if not the laws, of the Church of England; and he had expressly said that he would violate them further, if necessary for the gospel's sake.
This intention of Wesley was aided, in so far as matters of government were concerned, by his belief that no form of church polity was ordained of God or provable by Scripture as the sole, valid mode. His conclusions, ratified by much modern scholarship, were those of his instructors, Bishop Stillingfleet and Chancellor King, that, in the Primitive Church, there were different forms of government, and the rule determining polity was that of prudence.
But it must be remembered also that Wesley had a predilection, fostered by his training and by all his sentimental associations, for the Church of England.
In 1785, he wrote that he was as firmly attached to the Church of England as ever.** In 1756, he declared "the Episcopal form of Church government to be both scriptural and apostolical." "I mean," he added, "'well agreeing with the practice and writings of the Apostles. But that it is prescribedin Scripture
I do not believe." ** A quarter of a century later, he John Wesley and Modern Religion reiterated that he preferred episcopal ordination to any other, "where it can be had." This is understandable not as a prejudice but as Wesley's conviction growing out of his high respect for the ministry of the Church. That he could ever have thought the setting apart of a ministry by the Church of no importance is an impossible conclusion for any remembering his high estimate of the sacraments and of the ministry of the Word. Again, let it be repeated, that to him, the sacraments were not magical; there was in them no opus operatum. But they were real means of grace, and the Christian or the seeker after God neglected them at the peril of his soul. But these sacraments could be administered only by authorized ministers of the visible Church.
Once more, one must reckon with Wesley's belief in the church-type of Christianity. As much as he was devoted to his societies as voluntary associations for the promotion of holiness, he never for one moment thought of substituting a loose, edifying, disciplinary institution for the Church with its ministry and its sacraments. True, he was not bound by a narrow ecclesiasticism. He once employed a layman to help distribute the cup, but he defended his action by appeal to the Early Church. And he believed that the divine commission was more important than any visible calling by the Church. But he was too much the practical Englishman, as well as too much the son of a great tradition, to envisage an amorphous Christianity long enduring without the visible Church.
This is the explanation of his famous '"'Korah" sermon, preached in 1789, which many have taken as a Wesley's Doctrine of the Church recantation of his ordinations.*° What Wesley was actually doing was to denounce those preachers who had taken upon themselves the authority to administer the sacraments simply because they had the authority to preach. Lay-preaching was allowed by Wesley because he thought it a necessity and agreeable to the principle of the Church; but lay-administration of the sacraments he did not so consider, and he would have none of it. This was not ecclesiasticism but a sense of the value of institutions which it was part of his mission to bring over from the older world into the new. If his followers have at any time imagined that he was but a preacher of a spiritual Christianity without institutional ties or social duties, without corporate worship or the means of grace efficacious to the believing soul, the fault is not Wesley's. He repeated his fundamental doctrines often enough.
Wesley was a practical administrator, one of the greatest executive minds of his century. His own experience had taught him what his close acquaintance with the Anglican Church would have given him otherwise: an appreciation for the jurisdictional side of the Church. His constant criticism of the English bishops was that their superintendency was not effective for practical godliness. Modern analogies must not be allowed to warp Wesley's idea here.
Present-day churches, especially in America, have more and more separated certain phases of administration, after the fashion of business, into the hands of "boards"; but no such analogy will help to the understanding of Wesley's mind. In the eighteenth century, the spiritual work of the Church was not so John Wesley and Modern Religion | divorced from administration. What he would have said about modern church organization is not to the point here, nor is it perhaps a subject for meditation by the pious. The parish priest had certain administrative work to do, and the English bishop, in addition to his "'spiritual" duties of confirmation and ordination, had large executive and administrative tasks.
The idea of administration as part of the work of the ministry was perfectly familiar to Wesley by tradition and temperament, and this work was connected in his mind, not with semi-clerical postions, but with the ministry of the Church.
Remembering then Wesley's primary purpose, his conviction that government is of the bene esse but not of the esse of the Church, his predilection for episcopal polity, and his deep sense both of the importance of the spiritual and of the administrative work of the ministry, one may contemplate what actually happened in 1784.
Wesley knew the American people and what was going on in America better than most people in England knew them. His own experience in Georgia had given point to his warning to Lord Dartmouth and — to Lord North, in 1775, that the Americans were not to be trifled with and that they were devoted to liberty. In England, he had for years been forced to withstand the importunities of his preachers for ordination, and he knew that the Americans, with less patience and with more excuse, were clamoring for a ministry competent to administer the sacraments.
All this he set forth in the letter to the American Methodists which he sent with Coke and his helpers.
Wesley's Doctrine of the Church He had explained the necessity of the case to the Bishop of London, asking his help. But the bishop "peremptorily refused," and other bishops agreed, saying they had nothing to do with America. 'Then,' said
Wesley, "I saw my way clear, and was fully convinced what it was my duty to do."
In Drew's Life of Coke, it is said, and in quotation evidently from Coke himself, that Wesley conferred privately with the Doctor in 1784, telling him of the plan tosettlea Churchin America. Drew (or Coke?) declared that Wesley, "keeping his eye upon the conduct of the primitive churches in the ages of unadulterated Christianity, had much admired the mode of ordaining bishops which the church of Alexandria had practiced. That to preserve its purity, that church would never suffer the interference of a foreign bishop in any of their ordinations; but that the presbyters of that venerable apostolic church, on the death of a bishop, exercised the right of ordaining another from their own body, by the laying on of hands. and finally, that being himself a presbyter, he wished Dr. Coke to accept ordination from his hands, and to proceed in that character to the continent of America, to superintend the societies in the United
States." Did Wesley suggest all this to Coke in that first interview? *° There is no need at this late date to discuss the character of Dr. Coke. He was a great missionary, fearless and apostolic in his ministry; but he was a man who wanted to be a bishop. That he later suggested union with the newly formed Protestant Episcopal Church in America proves nothing. Wesley
John Wesley and Modern Religion might have doubted the wisdom of such a union, but it was consonant with his own intention. But Coke also offered, towards the end of his life, to return to the Church of England, if he were made a bishop in India. Moreover, in the letter which he wrote Wesley in August, 1784, it looks as if Wesley had first suggested that Coke go to America and ordain the preachers there by virtue of the authority which Coke already had, that of a presbyter of the Church of England, the same status as Wesley's own. This seems probable from Coke's urgent tone to Wesley. He may "want all the influence in America" which Wesley can give. He goes on to urge his claims for trust and to suggest even the details, the house in which the ordination could take place. "I shall entreat you to ponder these things," he ends.** To say that Coke did not truly interpret Wesley's meaning in the first conversation in February, 1784, is not to say that Coke lied. Wesley did keep his eyes on the Primitive Church, and he did admire the example of the venerable, apostolic church of Alexandria in ordaining bishops by the hands of presbyters.
It is highly probable that, as Coke said, Wesley gave him Lord King's book to study and several months to decide. But the conference had afterward appointed
Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey to America, although they disagreed with any proposal to ordain them.
The matter is not certain. Wesley himself brought it up at the Conference, and Pawson thought that Wesley's mind was made up. Nevertheless, Coke's letter looks as if a little urging were yet necessary before Wesley took the step.
Wesley's Doctrine of the Church However this may be, on the second of September, Wesley "set apart as a superintendent, by the imposition of my hands, and prayer, (being assisted by other ordained ministers,) Thomas Coke, doctor of civil law, a presbyter of the Church of England." Tyerman's judgment is well known: "Wesley meant the ceremony to be a mere formality likely to recommend his delegate to the favour of the Methodists in America: Coke, in his ambition, wished, and intended it to be considered as an ordination to a bishopric."
That Coke so intended is undeniable. In America, he asserted as much in his sermon at the ordination of Asbury to be superintendent. Wesley disavowed any responsibility for what Coke said, and Henry Moore declares that Wesley had solemnly warned Coke not to use the title of bishop. But what had Wesley meant to do?
The words, "'set apart," have been taken as support for Tyerman's view; but Wesley's Diary would seem to deprive this of force. His entries for the days in question are:
"Sept. 1. 4 prayed, Ordained R. Whatcoat and T.
"Sept. 2. 4 prayed, Ordained Dr. Coke!" *° Whatever he chose to say in public, in his Diary he said simply that he had "ordained." Nor do the terms which he used give much information; for he liked his own nomenclature. In Acts xx. 28 he had translated "bishops" as "overseers." In his certificates for - Whatcoat and Vasey and in the Sunday Service for America, he changed "'presbyters" to "elders." There is no reason to think he may not have done likewise
John Wesley and Modern Religion with "bishop," simply substituting "superintendent."
The word was well known: it was used for Lutheran bishops, and Thomas Jackson quotes a work of 1698 by an English Churchman who prefers the same term." Moreover, "superintendent" expressed Wesley's preference as against a diocesan episcopate, for which he thought there was no scriptural authority and little practical justification.
Contemporaries seem to have thought that Wesley meant to ordain a bishop. This was Charles' brokenhearted conclusion. Certainly Coke and Asbury thought so. But no better testimony can be adduced than that of Henry Moore, whom Wesley later ordained a presbyter for England. Moore says roundly, that Wesley, "being peculiarly attached to every rite of the Church of England, he afterwards ordained
Dr. Coke a superintendent...." And Moore explains Wesley's feelings about the word "bishop" in thorough consonance with what is otherwise known of Wesley's attitude: "But the association in his mind, between the assumed title, and the display connected with it in the later ages of the church, was too strong. He could not, at that moment, separate the plain, laborious —
Bishops of the American Societies, where there is no legal establishment, from the dignified Prelates of the mighty Empire of Great Britain. That our brethren who are in that office, are true Scriptural Bishops," added Moore, "I have no doubt at all; nor do I wish that the title should be relinquished, as it is grown into use, and is known, by every one in the United
States, to designate men distinguished only by their simplicity and abundant labours." °' Moore was with Wesley's Doctrine of the Church Wesley when the latter wrote to Asbury rebuking him for using the title, bishop, and there is no reason to doubt that Wesley expressed himself at this time concerning his reasons.
To Charles' accusations, John entered no denial of the fact. He contented himself with denying any intention to separate and by declaring that he believed himself a scriptural episcopos. It is hard to believe that Emory's conclusion is not right, that, if Wesley had not intended to make Coke a superintendent, in the sense of an episcopos, he would have said so. And it is hard to avoid Emory's other arguments.°? Wesley wrote to Asbury that he, Wesley, was "father of the whole family," and "in a measure, provide for you all." Asbury was an elder brother; Wesley was the father.
Did Wesley then intend to make Coke a bishop?
Yes, in Wesley's meaning of the word. He did not intend to convey any sacerdotal powers. But he never intended that in any ordination, for he did not thus think of the ministry. Nor did he intend to confer upon Coke any ministerial power of ordination, whatever Coke thought.' That power Coke already had, according to Wesley's theory, by virtue of his ordination as a presbyter of the Church of England. But in ordaining Coke he intended to do something, and something different from that which he did for Whatcoat and Vasey.
What that something was it is impossible to discover unless one is willing to take Wesley at his word.
He had said, and repeatedly said, that he considered bishop and presbyter to be of the same order. He John Wesley and Modern Religion could not have meant the same sacerdotal, sacramentarian status; for Wesley did not hold to that conception of the ministry. Coke was a presbyter after his ordination, as he was before, having the same spiritual functions, the power of administering the sacraments and of ordination. But by his ordination
Wesley sought to set Dr. Coke apart as a scriptural and primitive bishop, according to Wesley's idea of that office; and he defined the function by his translation of the title, "superintendent." He conferred no new spiritual character but an administrative authority. There is nothing vague or amorphous in this, except as it is made so by sacramentarian notions or by modern analogies. It is doubtful whether Wesley used the words "order" and "office" to distinguish between spiritual and administrative functions; but if the words are used in this sense they describe what he meant. The distinction is as old as the first century, and Wesley was not ignorant of it.
Both spiritual and administrative functions were in the ministry, and, therefore, it was by ordination, solemn setting apart by prayer and laying on of hands
(which Augustine said meant prayer), that Wesley gave to Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey their respective orders and offices. As to their spiritual powers, the three were pares. A superintendent, in Wesley's sense, had no confirmation or ordination as his special privilege. But as to their administrative, jurisdictional function, Coke was primus inter pares. Wesley never forgot King's analogy. In his comment on Acts xx. 17, Wesley had written of the elders of Ephesus:
'These are called bishops in the 28th verse, (rendered Wesley's Doctrine of the Church overseers in our translation.) Perhaps elders and bishops were then the same; or no otherwise different than are the rector of a parish and his curates."
And Wesley believed that presbyters have the power to ordain bishops, that is those who have the spiritual power of presbyters and the administrative authority of superintendents.
One of Wesley's dominant ideas was always the Church, which is visibly a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments duly administered. But there must be organization also; and, although no single polity is de jure divino, Wesley preferred the model of the Church of England. This model was to be shorn of the pomp of power, the ostentation of Anglican episcopacy. His ideal was that which Henry Moore expressed as the common understanding in America of Methodist bishops, "men distinguished only by their simplicity and abundant labours." Dean H. N. Bate characterized Methodist episcopacy as 'Presbyterian in origin, tripartite in function, mon-episcopal in practice." °* The first two express the facts, so far as Wesley is concerned. It is possible that Wesley might have agreed with the third.
But, in America, the Methodists must be in a Church. There is reason to think that he anticipated the breaking away in England also and tried to provide for it by ordaining Henry Moore and Mather as superintendents. But it was not the way for English
Methodists. For America there could be no other path, and Wesley would not have his people tied to loose societies, however helpful, deprived of the sacraJohn Wesley and Modern Religion ments and a settled church life. His models were in the Scriptures, the Primitive Church, the Church of England; but, more than anything else, he would have the spiritual life of his followers, engendered, cherished, fed within a Church to which everyone might belong who had a desire to flee from the wrath to come and to be saved from their sins, and to seek the company of the people of God to assist them in working out their salvation. His spiritual children must not be deprived of their Christian heritage, membership in a Church that is "'a catholic seminary of divine love."
CHAPTER XI INDIVIDUALISM AND EMOTION IN WESLEY'S RELIGION THROUGH this study of Wesley's religion and theology attention has been called to the tension between two elements in his experience and thought. On the one side, are his predilection for clear and distinct ideas; his appreciation of the moral struggle; his belief in the values of a disciplined life; and his devotion to the Church and to the means of grace. On the other side, are the individualistic character of much of his religion; the place given to emotion in the religious life; and 'his recognition of variety and growth. It will be helpful at this point to look more closely at these latter elements in Wesley's teaching.
That Wesley's appeal was individualistic is too well known to need any further stress. Not that he differed in this from large sections of the Christian
Church then and now, for there has always been a strongly individualistic tendency in Christianity. It is Customary to refer to Wesley's individualism as an inheritance from seventeenth-century nonconformity; but this is an unjustifiable narrowing of his background. Wesley insisted that there had been in the Church throughout the centuries Christians who believed and practiced a "spiritual" faith. He won- "ls John Wesley and Modern Religion dered, indeed, if these were not mainly those who were called heretics by rich and powerful Christians, and he introduced strange names into his company:
Montanus and Pelagius are spoken of in high terms.
Wesley recognized the power of the Reformation and of the efforts of the earlier Puritans; but he thought the latter declined in spirituality when they came to power in the Commonwealth. For his own work,
Wesley found the beginnings in William Law. Infidelity increased after the Restoration until about 1725, "when Mr. Law published his 'Practical Treatise on Christian Perfection, and, not long after, his
'Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.' Here the seed was sown, which soon grew up, and spread to Oxford, London, Bristol, Leeds, York, and, within a few years, to the greatest part of England, Scotland, and Ireland."*? In High Churchmen like William
Law, as well as in the early Puritans, Wesley recognized a worthy type of personal religion.
In the conclusion of his sermon on ""The Circumcision of the Heart," which Wesley preached at St.
Mary's, Oxford, January 1, 1733, he quoted from "those children of God" who, "being dead, still speak tous." The paragraph is a mosaic of quotations, but the sum of all is that personal piety which is not confined to the classical mystics but belongs to the Church Universal. ' "Desire not to live but to praise
His name,' "' quoted Wesley; " 'let all your thoughts, words, and works tend to His glory. Set your heart firm on Him, and on other things only as they are in and from Him. Let your soul be filled with so entire a love of Him that you may love nothing but for His —
Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion sake.' 'Have a pure intention of heart, a steadfast regard to His glory in all your actions.' 'Fix your eye upon the blessed hope of your calling, and make all the things of the world minister unto it.' For then, and not till then, is that 'mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus'; when, in every motion of our heart, in every word of our tongue, in every work of our hands, we 'pursue nothing but in relation to Him, and in subordination to His pleasure.' " ?
Reference has been made in an earlier chapter to what has been taken as evidence of the painful selfcenteredness of Wesley before his "conversion," that he went to America to save his own soul. In his letter to Dr. Burton, in October, 1735, Wesley wrote, that his "chief motive, to which all the rest are subordinate, is the hope of saving my own soul." His second motive was his belief that he could do "more good in America." But Wesley's motives never changed. In 1788, he wrote that "I have only one thing to do, to save my own soul and those that hear me." * Not only are the motives unchanged, but neither is their order. In 1788, as in 1735, Wesley sought to save his own soul and the souls of others.
The truth is that Wesley believed religion to be personal, and an individualistic religion must seek the salvation of individual souls. In these pages, it has been contended that Wesley thought the Church necessary and would have nothing of "solitary" religion; but one must keep in mind that there have always been those who have united devotion to the Church with a fine type of individualistic piety. There is no contradiction here. The High Churchman of 1735
John Wesley and Modern Religion preached an individualistic religion; Wesley the Methodist of 1788 did likewise. The Christian lives within the framework of the Church and in the societies which are included in it;-but religion is the experience of the individual, and to the individual must appeal be made. This is why Wesley's sermons were so effectual; they appealed directly to men. When John
Nelson, afterward one of Wesley's most useful preachers, first heard him, it seemed to the stonemason that the preacher was speaking to him alone.* "Call upon thy God," cried Wesley in a characteristic paragraph in one of his sermons, "'till He make His 'goodness to 'pass before thee'... cry unto Him day and night, who 'while we were without strength, died for the ungodly,' until thou knowest in whom thou hast believed, and canst say, 'My Lord, and my God!' Remember, 'always to pray, and not to faint,' till thou also canst lift up thy hand unto heaven, and declare to Him that liveth forever and ever, 'Lord Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love
Thee.' " ® Wesley's appeal was for concrete, individual experience. Concerning the varieties of individual experience Wesley was continuously curious. He was always interested in the different ways by which men might come to the love of God and the different ways in which that love might manifest itself. The best known of his collections of such data is that of the autobiographies of his preachers which have been published more than once. But his letters also are a storehouse of materials, revealing as they do his inquiries into the minutiz of individual experience.
Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion On one side of his mind, Wesley distrusted dreams and visions and the more exotic type of experience, and he warned his followers against them. But he showed an unusual interest in such matters, even when he expressed cautious judgments about them.
Indeed, his doctrine that God expresses himself in the most minute details of life, supporting not only the Universe but also looking after the least things concerning his children, made for a willingness to listen at least to any story, however improbable. Wesley certainly kept alive a sense of wonder, and this was no doubt responsible for many of the excesses among the early Methodists.
If religion is primarily a concrete, individual experience, there must be variability. Although Wesley warned against relying on uncommon experiences or seeking unusual ones, nevertheless he recognized what he called the "irreconcilable variability in the operations of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men."
No one formula could cover them all. But Wesley tried to reduce this "irreconcilable variability," so far as he could, not to uniformity in detail, but within such limits as would protect a reasonable and an ethical faith. He would restrict the ambitions of his followers, therefore, to increase of love. They were in danger of forgetting that "love is the highest gift of God; humble, gentle, patient love; that all visions, revelations, manifestations, whatever, are little things compared to love; and that all the gifts above-mentioned are either the same with, or infinitely inferior to, it." "There is nothing higher in religion," he added; '"'there is, in effect, nothing else; if you look
John Wesley and Modern Religion for anything but more love, you are looking wide of the mark, you are getting out of the royal way....
Settle it then in your heart, that from the moment God has saved you from all sin, you are to aim at nothing more, but more of that love described in the thirteenth of the Corinthians. You can go no higher than this, till you are carried into Abraham's Bosome."
To this concrete, individual experience appeal is made for convincing evidence of the truth of religion. | What we ourselves have felt and seen With confidence we tell, And publish to the sons of men The signs infallible.
But this experience involves the irrational side of man's nature, and Wesley thought of religion as rooted in this side of man's life. As early as 1726, he had seen "that giving even all my life to God (supposing it possible to do this, and go no farther) would profit me nothing, unless I gave my heart, yea, all my heart, to him." He saw that simplicity of intention, and purity of affection, that is, "one design in all we speak or do, and one desire ruling all our tempers," are indeed "the wings of the soul" by which it ascends to the mount of the Lord. He desired the mind of Christ, although he conceived religion (circa 1729)
"as an uniform following of Christ, an entire inward and outward conformity to our Master."' In 1733, in the sermon on ""The Circumcision of the Heart,"
Wesley defined religion in terms with which he agreed Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion nearly half a century later. Religion, which here is called the "circumcision of the heart," is "'that habitual disposition of soul which, in the sacred writings, is termed holiness; and which directly implies, the being cleansed from sin, 'from all falthiness both of flesh and spirit'; and, by consequence, the being endued with these virtues which were in Christ Jesus; the being so 'renewed in the spirit of our mind,' as to be 'perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.' " Later in the sermon he spoke of love toward God as "the one perfect good" which is to be the ultimate end of every Christian.* In a sermon which he preached at Savannah in 1736, Wesley was yet more explicit. The chief sense of the words, "though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor .... and have not love, it profiteth me nothing," he conceives to be nothing less than the following: "that whatsoever we do, and whatsoever we suffer, if we are not renewed in the spirit of our mind, by 'the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us,' we cannot enter into life eternal. None can enter there, unless in virtue of the covenant which God hath given unto man in the Son of his love." ® When Wesley, then, declared that the real root of religion is "in the hidden man of the heart," he was not making a new discovery; he was but developing an idea which had been in his preaching before 1738. It may be wearisome to repeat constantly that, after 1738, Wesley's change was mainly a change in emphasis, owing to his intense realization of that which he had previously preached; but it is necessary to make clear that Wesley did not, in 1738, suddenly
John Wesley and Modern Religion perceive the importance of "attitude," of the disposition of the heart, of love. But, undoubtedly, he came to see more clearly the place of love in religion.
Love, he saw, drives out evil, is the motive of obedience to God and service to mankind.
To root religion in the irrational nature of man was in accordance with the drift of the age. Shaftesbury had based his ethical theory on natural benevolence, although he had, of course, guarded his theory by positing the necessity of social good and of a wellbalanced individual. The notion that goodness is rooted in good nature was becoming popular; Fielding's highest praise seems to have been to say of a man that he had a "benevolent heart." In this view, which was developing during this period, it is true that "conscience ceases to be a power that sits in judgment on the ordinary self and inhibits its impulses. It tends, so far as it is recognized at all, to become itself an instinct and an emotion." *° How did Wesley's idea of religion as love fit into the growing romantic tendency to exalt the instincts and emotions of man?
In the first place, it must be remembered that Wesley thought of love, in the religious sense, as the gift of God. Man in his natural state, unassisted by the divine grace, is incapable of the love of God or of his neighbor in any truly religious way. The love of God is called out by the perception that God loves us, and that perception is faith. Man sees that God has, for Christ's sake, forgiven his sins and does now love him; "we love Him because He first loved us." Then is the love of God shed abroad in man's heart by the Holy Spirit. Now this may seem a o Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion gesture to theological necessity; but it is, in reality, a true expression of Wesley's belief that religious love is not a natural instinct, not simply the overflow of "natural benevolence," but a response to a perception, or an experience, of the love of God. There is here an objective reference which cannot be ignored if one is to understand Wesley's meaning. 7
Moreover, he sometimes equates love with holiness.
This is because Wesley conceives of love as active good will and as the intention of man's innermost being.
Nothing but God is the religious man's desire and goal; and this intention of the heart, supplemented by active good will, at once cleanses and energizes. As has been said, Wesley meant by love, not simply an emotion, but a "sentiment," a complex of emotions.
Love is not mere feeling but the whole direction of life. The significance of "the love of God shed abroad" in the heart is stated clearly in Wesley's heaven is opened in the soul, that the proper heavenly state commences, while the love of God, as loving us, is shed abroad in the heart, instantly producing love to all mankind; general, pure benevolence, together with its genuine fruits, lowliness, meekness, patience, contentedness in every state; an entire, clear, full acquiescence in the whole will of God, enabling us to 'rejoice evermore, and in everything to give eanks, °°"
But there is undoubtedly a tone of feeling in love so defined. It may vary from the strange warming of the heart which was perhaps Wesley's own most
John Wesley and Modern Religion emotional experience of religion, to the Beatific Vision which is the lot of the saints above:
The flame of angelical love Is kindled at Jesus's face; And all the enjoyment above Consists in the rapturous gaze!
The religion of love, as preached by the Wesleys as well as by their followers, was oftentimes an intensely emotional religion. Joy and peace, as well as love, are the fruits of the Spirit; and men can feel these. But, in addition to these, the man who hears the gospel is subject to other emotions.
The sinner confronted with his lost estate was normally supposed to be stricken with the danger of his situation.'? And there was further the melancholy of those who regarded life as a vale of tears. One of the first editions of the Methodist hymn book carried a hymn which for lugubriousness equals the best efforts of the "Graveyard" poets.
Thou wretched man of sorrow, Whose eye all day o'erflow, Indulge thy grief and borrow The night for farther woe; In ceaseless lamentation Thy solemn moments spend, And groan in expectation, That pain with life shall end.
Till then in fix'd despair Of all relief I live, My utmost burden bear, And now retire to grieve; Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion To taste my only pleasure, In secret sighs complain, Augment my mournful measure And aggravate my pain.
This suggests that some of the Methodists enjoyed their sorrow; and, while these lines cannot be charged to John Wesley, it is well known that he had no little fondness for Young's "Night Thoughts," a poem marked by a melancholy approaching self-pity. Wesley believed, as he once wrote to one of his correspondents, that "it is a blessed thing to sorrow after a godly sort." * Such an attitude was fostered by the ascetic element in Wesley; his fear of worldliness caused him to forbid much that would have contributed to the merriment of his people. And there was in him something akin to melancholy also. In describing the religion of love, Wesley quoted Pope's lines:
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind; Each prayer accepted, and each wish resign'd; Desires composed, affections ever even, Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heaven.
Nevertheless, John Wesley was not given to lowness of spirits, and one of his preachers asserted that Wesley tempted him to levity. Certainly, if Wesley could not at times escape the fashionable melancholy, normally he was for cheerfulness and joy. Of some of his brother's hymns, John Wesley wrote: "some still savor of that poisonous mysticism, with which we were both not a little tainted before we went to America. This gave a gloomy caste, first to his mind, and then to many of his verses. This made him freJohn Wesley and Modern Religion quently describe religion as a melancholy thing. ..." ™
While it is impossible now to tell exactly which hymns were written by John and which by Charles, it may be inferred from the above that John Wesley preferred songs in which the joy of religion was set forth.
And certainly the Methodist hymnbook contained many of the sort. On his birthday, the Methodist could sing:
The glad morning appears When an heir of salvation was born!
From Jehovah I came, For his glory I am, And to Him I with singing return.
At any time, Wesley's follower could sing of the fruits of the Spirit:
We who in Christ believe That He for us hath died, His unknown peace receive, And feel his blood applied:
Exults for joy our rising soul, Disburden'd of her load, And swells unutterably full Of glory and of God.
How happy are they, Who the Savior obey, And have laid up their treasures above, Tongue cannot express The sweet comfort and peace Of a soul in its earliest love.
In the heavenly Lamb Thrice happy I am; My heart it doth dance at the sound of Thy name. emsfreSa Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion There is no question as to the intensity of the emotional reactions manifested in the Methodist meetings.
The most violent occurred only during the first two years and largely in certain areas. Davenport thought that these manifestations were owing to the ignorant character of the people to whom the Methodists came in these areas and during these years.'° At any rate, the "scenes" did not recur after that time under the preaching of the Wesleys themselves. One or two quotations will illustrate the more extreme type of experiences.
"As my mother bore me with great pain [wrote one], so did I feel great pain in my soul in being born of God. Indeed I thought the pains of death were upon me, and that my soul was then taking leave of the body. I thought I was going to Him whom I saw with strong faith standing ready to receive me.
In this violent agony I continued about four hours; and then I began to feel the 'Spirit of God bearing Witness with my spirit that I was born of God.' Because I was a child of God He 'sent forth the Spirit of His Son into me, crying, Abba, Father.' For that is the cry of every new-born soul. O mighty, powerful, happy change! I who had nothing but devils ready to drag me to hell, now found I had angels to guard me to my reconciled Father; and my Judge, who just before stood ready to condemn me, was now become my righteousness. But I cannot express what God hath done for my soul. ...I loved. The Spirit cried strong in my heart. I trembled: I sang: I joined my voice with those that 'excel in strength.' " *®
In these early meetings men and women were John Wesley and Modern Religion struck down; and strong crying and tears, followed by shouts of joy, excited the wonder of some and the ribaldry of others. One such scene may serve for many which occurred in the years immediately succeeding 1738. In Baldwin Street, Bristol—the date is April, 1739—-Wesley expounded the fourth chapter of Acts. "We then called upon God to confirm
His word. Immediately one that stood by (to our no small surprise) cried out aloud, with the utmost vehemence, even as in the agonies of death. But we continued in prayer till 'a new song was put in her mouth, a thanksgiving unto our God.' Soon after, two other persons (well known in this place, as labouring to live in all good conscience towards all men) were seized with strong pain, and constrained to 'roar for the disquietness of their heart.' But it was not long before they likewise burst forth into praise to God their Saviour. The last who called upon God, as out of the belly of hell, was J[ohn] E[llis], a stranger in Bristol. And in a short space he also was overwhelmed with joy and love, knowing that God had healed his backslidings." *7 Attention has been frequently called to the psychological conditions evoked by the Wesleys in the setting and conduct of their meetings. Interest was aroused by early morning meetings or by the spectacle of a clergyman in canonicals preaching on the street or in the fields. Sometimes the place was such as to affect the emotions, and the sight of a great crowd listening intently or joining lustily in song was itself moving. "I cannot say I have ever seen a more awful sight," wrote Wesley of such scenes, "than when
Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion on Rose-Green, or the top of Hannam Mount, some thousands of people were calmly joined together in solemn waiting upon God, while They stood, and under open air adored The God who made both air, earth, heaven, and sky.
And, whether they were listening to his word with attention as still as night, or were lifting up their voice in praise as the sound of many waters, many a time have I been constrained to say in my heart, 'How dreadful is this place! This' also 'is no other than the house of God! This is the gate of heaven.'
The hymns and the tunes to which they were sung also contributed to the psychological conditions. As Dimond says, "the mental condition desired in the congregation is akin to that induced by the romantic poet, who seeks to create in the minds of his readers
'that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.'" 1? In this condition, the crowd was suggestible to a high degree.
There is evidence that the hymns created in many the surprise and interest which is necessary if the state of "poetic faith" is to be attained. The hymns also offered an opportunity of emotional expression for the congregation. In words which were usually understandable and with tunes sometimes taken from popular songs and at all times singable, the people could express their penitence, their resolutions, their fears, their sorrows, and their joys.
One must not forget, too, the often demonstrated power of the Christian story over the minds and hearts of men. The elemental drama of the life and John Wesley and Modern Religion death of Jesus has for centuries been the most deeply affecting of all of mankind's stories. If Wesley, unlike Whitefield, did not make use of dramatic methods in his preaching, he presupposed always the saga of the Cross. And he and his brother reinforced the power of the sermon with their emphasis upon the sacraments, especially the Lord's Supper, ancient symbol of the broken body and of the shed blood. With hymns written for these dramatic observances, the Wesleys reinforced the emotional appeal of the symbol. In this manner they dramatized the Christian
Year and the Christian life. The Wesleys published, for example, Hymns on the Lord's Supper, Hymns for the Nativity, Hymns for our Lord's Resurrection,
Hymns for Ascension Day, Hymns on the Great Festivals, Hymns for New Year's Day, Hymns for Times of Trouble, Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving,
Funeral Hymns, Hymns for the Watchnight, Hymns of Intercession. And within these and other collections were hymns for every Christian mood.
There was another way in which Wesley uncovered the sources of deep feeling. He taught his followers to regard the disinherited with sympathy. In this there is no little of what the eighteenth century called "'sensibility."" Wesley advised Lady Maxwell of his doubt that anyone can have too much sensibility of human pain "unless it unfits one for duties of life," 2° and he wrote Hannah Ball that sensibility is not too great unless "it hurts the body or unfits you for some part of your duty." ** This sensibility —
Wesley would increase by contact with the poor. He advised ladies of his acquaintance to visit the poor, Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion overcoming their repugnance to "dirt and an hundred disgusting circumstances." ?? For this reason he advised carrying relief rather than sending it: so doing one comforted the poor and helped oneself, "'as it is far more apt to soften our heart, and make us naturally care for each other." * While Wesley devised some meritorious social plans, such as lending money to workmen so that they might buy their own tools, on the whole his approach was individualistic. He endeavored to create sympathy, to arouse a sense of brotherhood for all the poor children of God. If one reads Wesley's tract, "Thoughts upon Slavery," ** the method by which he did this becomes evident. The Negroes are first described in their African home. Wesley had learned that the North American Indian was not the idyllic savage, but he yet believed that the Negro was. He quotes from a Frenchman's account of parts of Guinea:
"Which way soever I turned my eyes, I beheld a perfect image of pure nature: an agreeable solitude, bounded on every side by a charming landscape; the rural situation of cottages in the midst of trees; the ease and quietness of the Negroes, reclined under the shade of the spreading foliage, with the simplicity of their dress and manner: The whole revived in my mind the idea of our first parents, and I seemed to contemplate the world in its primitive state." 'These
Negroes were a reasonable, peaceable people, civil and courteous, practicing justice, mercy, and truth above the Europeans of the eighteenth century. But from this Eden on earth the Negroes were taken with every cruelty and sold in America. There, "banished
John Wesley and Modern Religion from their country, from their friends and relations forever, from every comfort of life, they are reduced to a state scarce any way preferableto that of beasts of burden." In his terse way Wesley sketched a horrible picture of life in slavery. "In general, a few roots, not of the nicest kind, usually yams or potatoes, are their food; and two rags, that neither screen them from the heat of the day, nor the cold of the night, their covering." '""The time they work in the West Indies is from day-break to noon, and from two o'clock till dark; during which time, they are attended by overseers, who, if they think them dilatory, or think anything not so well done as it should be, whip them most unmercifully, so that you may see their bodies long after wealed and scarred usually from the shoulders to the waist." "Did the Creator intend that the noblest creatures in the visible world should live such a life as this?
"Are these thy glorious work, Parent of Good?"
In the same way, Wesley pictured the horrors of war. Inasermon preached in 1775 for the benefit of the widows and orphans of the soldiers "'who lately fell near Boston, in New England," Wesley painted with only a little stronger colors than in other denunciations of war, although here his zeal was fed by his Tory sentiments: "But who can describe the complicated misery which is contained in this [the fell monster, war]? Hark! the cannon's roar! A pitchy cloud covers the face of the sky. Noise, confusion, terror, reign over all! Dying groans are on every side. The bodies of men are pierced, torn,
Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion hewed in pieces; their blood is poured on the earth like water! Their souls take their flight into the eternal world; perhaps into everlasting misery. The ministers of grace turn away from the horrid scene; the ministers of vengeance triumph." "But which of these warriors all the while considered the wife of his youth, that is now left a disconsolate widow,—perhaps with none that careth for her; perhaps, deprived of her only comfort and support, and not having where to lay her head? Who considered his helpless children, now desolate orphans,—it may be crying for bread, while their mother has nothing left to give them but her sorrows and her tears?" *° Hogarth depicted the horrors of Gin Lane; Wesley described the houses of the distillers. These distillers were murderers '"'of His Majesty's subjects by wholesale, neither does their eye pity or spare." And what is their gain? "Is it not the blood of these men?
Who then would envy their large estates and sumptuous palaces? A curse is in the midst of them: the curse of God cleaves to the stones, the timber, the furniture of them! The curse of God is in their gardens, their walks, their groves; a fire that burns to the nethermost hell! Blood, blood is there: the foundation, the floor, the walls, the roof, are stained with blood!" 7° Wesley, with his constant journeying, demanded much of his horse as well as of himself; but he was careful to admonish his preachers to care for the beasts that bore them, even entering such advice into the Minutes of the Conference of 1765. There are not many passages in Wesley's writings about cruelty
John Wesley and Modern Religion to animals, although in several places he speculates about their souls, their state in the time of man's innocence, and the possibility of their moving up the Chain of Being in some future time. But in his
Journal for 1756 he printed in full a long letter about kindness to animals which breathes the spirit of romantic sympathy. "Is it not unnatural and inhuman," asks the writer of the letter, "to put them to more pain than is necessary for the service of man?
. . « May not the great law of equity, doing as we would be done to, be extended even to them? May we not suppose ourselves in their place, and thence determine what they may fairly expect from us?
. . . If tenderness, mercy, and compassion to the brute creatures were impressed on the infant breast, and conducted into action according to its little power, would it not be confirmed in the human heart?
And might not this early prepossession be for ever established there, and through a happy bias extend its benevolence to the whole creation? Does not experience show the sad effects of a contrary education?
While children, instead of being taught benevolence to irrationals, are suffered to torment first poor little insects and then every helpless creature that comes in their way, can it be expected that, being thus inured to cruelty and oppression even in their tender years, they should relent when they come to age and be susceptible of compassion even to rationals? .. .
I am persuaded you are not insensible of the pain given to every Christian, every humane heart, by those savage diversions, bull-baiting, cock-fighting, horse-racing, and hunting? Can any of these irrational and Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion unnatural sports appear otherwise than cruel, unless through early prejudice or entire want of consideration and reflection? And if a man is void of these, does he deserve the name of man?" 77
There is no question that Wesley approved the sentiments of this letter, but one would hesitate to say that he would have gone as far as the evangelical
I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
In his sermon before the ""Humane Society," 3 an organization to revive those apparently struck with sudden death, Wesley appealed to the sensibilities of both
Christian and non-Christian. To those who did not believe in "that Revelation which breathes nothing but benevolence," he said: '""Yet even to you I would address a few words; for, if you are not Christians, you are men. You too are susceptible of kind impressions: You have the feelings of humanity. Has not your heart too glowed at that noble sentiment; worthy the heart and the lips of the highest Christian,—
Homo sum: Humanus nihil a me alienum puto?
Have you not also sympathized with the afflicted?
How many times have you been pained at human misery? When you have beheld a scene of deep distress, has not your soul melted within you?
"'And now and then a sigh you stole, And tears began to flow." 7° John Wesley and Modern Religion To the Christian, Wesley plead that the language of their heart might be:
Thy mind throughout my life be shown, While list'ning to the wretches' cry, The widows and the orphans' groan, On mercy's wings I swiftly fly, The poor and helpless to relieve, My life, my all, for them to give!
So much space has been given to the emotional basis of Wesley's humanitarianism because it has not always been understood that, in stirring the hearts of his hearers, he laid a deep foundation for the humanitarian passion of early Methodists and contributed to the reform movements of the nineteenth century.
Giving to the people a release for their emotions in religion, Wesley also directed them to new objects for their sympathies: the poor, the slaves, the victims of predatory society, even the animals themselves. But in this Wesley avoided that evil which has been charged against some of the romantic tendencies of the period. Professor Babbitt quotes from Burke a cutting criticism: '""The greatest crimes do not arise so. much from a want of feeling for others as from an over-sensibility for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires... . They [he refers to the French
'philosophes'] explode or render odious or contemptible that class of virtues which restrain the appetite.
These are at least nine out of ten of the virtues. In the place of all this they substitute a virtue which they call humanity or benevolence. ... When their disciples are thus left free and guided only by present feeling,
Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion they are no longer to be depended on for good or evile Whatever may have been true of the "philosophes,"
Wesley cannot be charged with having reduced morality to present feeling. Throughout his life he had 'no patience with the doctrine that one is to do good only when feeling free to do it.°? Wesley once remarked that his mother did not feel for others nearly so much as did his father, but she did ten times more; and he advised his correspondent to labor to do, leaving God to supply the feeling.** In the light of what has been said in previous chapters, there is no need to labor this point; but it should be kept in mind by all who attempt to estimate the emotional content of Wesley's teaching. After all, he had said that sensibility could not be too great wmless it interfered with one's duty. Duty is the word which distinguishes
Wesley from the natural romanticists: for duty with him implied a higher reference, the will of God. Wesley's grand motive for humanitarian work was the imitation of Christ.
There is no need to say anything further in regard to Wesley's doctrine of variability. Certainly he did not believe in or encourage a mechanical uniformity _ in the religious life. But contemporary attention was centered too much upon the unusual features in Methodism. The extraordinary scenes which accompanied the first Methodist meetings raised the old fears of popular tumult and forever associated Methodism, in the minds of many, with disorder and distraction. It is untrue to say that Wesley himself preferred the abnormal; but he was interested in it. It should not be
John Wesley and Modern Religion surprising, then, that less-balanced minds should have welcomed the unusual in experience and have made the test of truth the measure of departure from the normal.
One of Wesley's early opponents declared a characteristic of an enthusiast to be a desire to wander and to travel in far countries.**" When Wesley returned from America, one of his attractions for the crowds was that he had been in a strange and romantic land. He had gone there expecting to learn from the simple savage, but in this he had been disillusioned.
Nevertheless, after his "conversion," he had started out for Herrnhut, the abode of the Moravians in Germany, "to see where the Christians live." But if Wesley was undeceived in America and in Germany, he still retained his illusions about other far-off places.
As has been seen, he was quite willing to believe that Negroes dwelt in idyllic peace and innocence in Africa. But whatever may have been true of his successors in the Church of England and out of it, Wesley's romantic interest in far countries—he was continuously reading travel books—had little to do with his missionary interest. Except for America, he was not greatly concerned to establish missions. The main reason, of course, was that Wesley's practical sense forbade his undertaking any enterprise unless he was in condition adequately to support it. But he was also not much taken with the missionary accomplishments of the past. The Jesuits had, he thought, done everything but preach the gospel; and while he was convinced that savages could become Christians— the miners of Kingwood were near enough savages—
Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion Wesley did little himself to establish missions beyond those set up among English colonists.
There was, indeed, a far-off ideal before Wesley's eyes. He desired always to re-establish primitive Christianity. He thought of his work as an attempt to set up a New Testament fellowship. Reverencing as he did the early Fathers of the Church as those nearest to the fountain-head, he kept before himself always the ideal—or what he thought to be the ideal— of the first decades. To his First Appeal he appended a poem, "Primitive Christianity," which is partly as follows:
A little Church in every house, They joyfully conspired to raise Their ceaseless sacrifice of praise.
O What an age of golden days!
O what a choice, peculiar race!
Wash'd in the Lamb's all-cleansing blood, Anointed Kings and priests to God.
Where shall I wander now to find The successors they left behind?
The faithful whom I seek in vain, Are 'minished from the sons of men.
Ye different sects, who all declare, "Lo, here is Christ!" or, ''Christ is there!"
Your stronger proofs divinely give, And shew me where the Christians live.
And Wesley's was undoubtedly the exhortation of the poem:
In them let all mankind behold | How Christians lived in days of old.
John Wesley and Modern Religion In looking back over Wesley's teaching, his individualism, his insistence upon the varieties of Christian experience, upon the place of emotion in the religious life, his laying of an emotional basis for good deeds, and his setting up as an ideal the life of a faroff, partially understood, and much simpler day, it is easy to see that he was opening the way for an intensely individualistic, subjective, and emotional religion.
He intended to do nothing of the sort. His own temperament and training, his own philosophic position and prejudices, all guarded him against the excesses of such a faith. He could no more reduce religion to feeling than to ceremony or dogma. He could not conceive of a religion of the "natural man." Fallen as he is, man must have the workings of divine grace and the constant discipline of a true imitation of Christ and the aid of the Church. The Bible, interpreted usually by the Fathers of the first three Christian centuries, and reason, as well as one's own experience and the experience of one's fellows, must all be called in. These protected Wesley from romantic excesses. He could go far in appreciation of feelings and diversities; but he could only go so far.
Not so with his followers. They lacked his training and prejudices; they also lacked his nature. Only constant effort kept the fanatics weeded out of the societies, and not always before they had done real hurt.
Sometimes, indeed, Wesley, in his kindness—Charles called it credulity—allowed those to remain who were obviously not balanced, emotionally at least.
And in frontier America, there was little Church tradition, little training in self-discipline, little of that Individualism and Emotion in Wesley's Religion experience which usually kept the Oxford scholar neatly within the bounds of common sense. The preacher who came with his stirring message of heart religion appealed to untutored men, and he called them to a religion of the spirit, not of forms and ceremonies and ordinances. The class-meetings did much to offset the pure romanticism of this early Methodism, and the ascetic tradition helped also. But, on the whole, the world has concluded that Methodism was a religion of feeling. But what the Founder of Methodism intended is another matter.
CHAPTER XII JOHN WESLEY AND MODERN RELIGION At the conclusion of this study of Wesley's experience and theology there remains the direct question as to his relation to modern religion. How far did he influence the religion of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? And how far and in what way is his work pertinent to-day? ?
It is beyond disputing that Wesley contributed to the spread of a religion of feeling. An individualistic, emotional religion was inevitably the result of Methodist preaching under the circumstances of their work. In England, the classes to which the Methodists generally appealed were those who were strangers to that Chesterfieldian suppression of feelings which has always been practiced in certain circles. When the miners of Kingswood listened to the eloquence of the preacher, tears made white furrows down their blackened faces. Powerful fears and powerful joys produced scenes which marked Methodist meetings in America and § gave to Wesley'sy followers the nickname of "noisy Methodists." The people of the frontiers had little warmth or color in their lives; dangers and privations left them little time or means for the enjoyment of any but the more primitive emotions. For them the camp meeting with its stirring preaching and singing was an escape from grim everyday realities. orsa e= John Wesley and Modern Religion In both England and America, the appeal of the Methodists to the individual was in perfect accord with the circumstances of the people. It was in the industrial North, not in the agricultural South, of England that the Methodists found their converts.
In the towns springing up around the new industries of the early nineteenth century, the population was cut off from older institutions. The Church did little to care for these new areas of dense population, and the Methodists came to supply the lack. In America, the settlements were isolated by forests and streams from the stable institutions of an older society; and the strongly individualistic tone of American life made the Methodist message especially appealing.
Certainly, it is in the conditions which, both in England and America, favored an emotional, individualistic religion that one must find reasons for the popularity and growth of the Methodists. This is not to forget the self-sacrificing work of the circuit riders in both countries nor the influence of a message which had left off much which common people neither understood nor desired. But the time was propitious: in literature, feeling was a dominant note; in politics, liberty was a slogan.
Historians of theology have long recognized that Wesley and Methodism, taken in its broadest sense, contributed to the breaking up of the old orthodoxy and of eighteenth-century rationalism. In this way, they were important factors in creating the modern age. Interpreters of our "religious situation" are likely to dwell upon the intellectual sources of contemporary religion.' If Christian experience is to John Wesley and Modern Religion the fore in large areas of Western Christendom, Schleiermacher is praised or condemned according to the predilection of the writer." And the strong ethical interest of modern religion is traced back through Ritschl to Kant. There is no thought of denying the importance of these thinkers for theology. But an idea does not usually appear first in formal theology and then later in popular religion. The formulations of the theologians, if not derived at least partly from popular religion, are received by the people because
of previous preparation by circumstances or the emphases of accepted leaders. Certainly, before the work of Schleiermacher had much influence in England and America, the Methodist Revival had prepared millions to minimize orthodoxy and to rely on inner experience rather than upon syllogisms. On the whole, Schleiermacher influenced the theologians;
John Wesley, the preachers.
The contribution of the Methodists to the breakdown of the older orthodoxy and rationalism was in their emphasis upon a milder conception of God, upon Christian experience as taking precedence over dogmas, and in their stress upon feeling. While the Methodist preachers, unlike Wesley, were rather fond of hell in their preaching, they insisted upon the mercy of God offered to all and combatted the ideas of the Calvinists as too harsh to be true to the gospel picture. Frequently, they poured scorn upon the subtleties of the theologians and reduced the gospel to a simplicity that was bare indeed. And as they preached the necessity of conviction and conversion, of assurance, of "heartfelt" religion, the Methodists helped
John Wesley and Modern Religion make the climate impossible for stringent orthodoxies or rationalistic appeals.
It is necessary to say more concerning one of the characteristics of much modern religion, the emphasis upon Christian experience. Schleiermacher gave this respectability in theology, and the idea of the priority of experience became central in much Christian thought in the nineteenth century. The results for theology were, as President McGiffert pointed out several years ago, to change theology from "'a system of metaphysics, or an effort to explain the world of man and nature" to "a formulation of the truth given in the religious experience of the man who theologizes."" Psychology and not philosophy became the characteristic Christian discipline. A religion which exalted experience was for many reasons acceptable in the nineteenth century. Traditional religious authorities were being called into question by natural science and the new historical criticism.
When men were doubtful of the Bible as it had been understood by pre-nineteenth century piety, when their conceptions of the natural world were being dissolved by the new science, they turned gratefully to the inner witness.