BY J. CHAMBERLAIN, LATROBE.
The British people are not slow to recognise and honour their leaders. Most of us are hero worshippers. Occasionally mistakes have been made, and we have not known some of our greatest men. Both contemporaries and posterity have failed to value and appreciate them. But let the omission be discovered, and speedily we commence to wipe out the stigma. In our zeal to repair the grievous errors of the past we have sometimes gone to the other extreme without praise and eulogiums. In the warmth of our devotion to the memory of the great and good our forefathers have been severely handled by us for their blindness and stupidity. They ought to have seen our hero's admirable characteristics and correctly appraised his world. Such may be our opinion. But we forget that the fact that they were contemporaries was against them. . .
The England that Wesley was born into was not all England to be proud of. It had very few redeeming features. Judged from our modern standpoint, it was shockingly bad. Society, literature, politics, religion were hopelessly corrupt. All the most eminent writers of the age avow this in unmistakable terms. Some revel in the facts, others mildly resent then. Even the most resolute and enlightened keenly felt their powerlessness to better things. The writings and translations of Dryden, with all their vice and pruriency, were in the hands of the ladies of society; Smollett and Fielding found numerous readers, whilst Richardson was neglected; the licentious humour and ribald burlesque of Swift and Sterne gratified the depraved tastes of the educated classes; and the loose wit of Congreve was the admiration of the theatre-going public. The atmosphere in which such literature thrived was reeking with filth and profligacy. There was an unblushing disregard of honour and virtue. Politicians had their price, and public positions of trust were openly bought and sold. It was "darkest England" with a vengeance, and the blackest feature has yet to be mentioned. The religion of the nation was virtually dead. Its forms and ritual were still in use, but behind them there was no life, no soul. Isaac Taylor, himself a member, described the Church of England as "an ecclesiastical system under which the people of England had lapsed into heathenism, or a state hardly to be distinguished from it." This same critic also wrote of the "languishing Nonconformity" of those days, and he regarded it as having become so enfeebled and reduced as "to be found nowhere but in books." The robust faith and doctrinal steadfastness of the Puritans and Covenanters had not descended to their successors. Voltaire paid a visit to England in 1726, and he wrote as follows:—"The Anglican clergymen frequent the tavern, because custom sanctions it. If they get drunk, they do it seriously, and incur no disgrace." Drunkenness was characteristic of all classes, and the clergyman was often the leading toper. Card playing and fox-hunting were amongst his favourite pursuits. Even in churches, both Anglican and Nonconformist, where there was any serious attempt at preaching and teaching, the pulpit lent itself very largely to the propagation of infidel and semi-infidel tenets. The writings of Hobbes, Tindal, Collins, Shaftesbury, and Chubb had a large circle of readers, and their atheistic and sceptical ideas took hold of the popular mind. The thought of England was large dominated by their views, so that when the highly intellectual and more powerful works of Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon appeared they were hailed with delight. At the same time also the French nation was listening to its most eminent writers, with Voltaire and Rousseau at their head, as they endeavoured to obliterate every trace of Christian truth from the literary and scientific thought of the age. Their influence was felt across the Channel, strengthening the forces already actively engaged in pursuing religion to the death. It was in this chilling, demoralising, anti-Christian atmosphere that the England of that day breathed. It is not forgotten that there were a few men of letters of the highest eminence who deplored the evils and follies of their times. The essays of Steele, Addison, Pope, Berkeley, and Johnson were partially successful in removing some of the most glaring abuses of their day. Their forcible logic, brilliant satire, and finished style gained the ear of the more thoughtful of society's favourites, and a limited reformation was effected. But it was merely superficial at the best. The nation was corrupt to the core. A drastic, deep-reaching remedy only could effect a lasting and permanent cure. Fortunately for England, there were oases in the desert. The darkness was general, but gleams of light were to be found. Just as there were a few individual churches and individual pastors who, amid the declension around them, remained faithful to the evangelical truths of Christianity, so there were some happy homes, even in that darkening social atmosphere, in which the lamps of piety and purity shone brightly and clearly. Into a home of this character John Wesley was born on June 17, 1703, old style.
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When, however, the dangerous tenets and principles of the French revolutionaries were published in England they found no general welcome, for a large proportion of the masses, who in previous years might have imbibed them were members of Methodist class meetings. Lecky, the historian, says: "England in the last century was saved from a political revolution like that of France mainly because of the Methodist revival. England on the whole escaped the contagion of the revolutionary spirit. Many causes conspired to save her, but among them a prominent place must, I believe, be given to the new and vehement religious enthusiasm which was at the very time passing through the middle and lower classes of the people." John Wesley inspired this religious enthusiasm. The British race owes him a debt of profound gratitude for this.
Examiner 29 June 1903,
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