withstood, and it went on with a widening, deepening current till near the middle of the century. Even such a counter influence as the sanctified learning and wit of the great essayists, like Addison and Steele, seems to have effected little toward checking the adverse drift. The clergy as a body were not notoriously corrupt, but instances of scandal were uncomfortably frequent, and non-residence and pluralities were abuses too common to be generally regarded as scandalous. In fashionable and political life there was no small degree of unblushing baseness. The court of the first two Georges was scarcely cleaner than that of Charles II. Richard Walpole, who had a chief control of the administration for a long period, was a statesman of the expediency stripe, whose great object was to keep things quiet by any and every means, who encouraged venality on all sides, and who was withal an adept in foul language, and a devotee of the bottle, the table, and the chase. Bolingbroke, the brilliant orator, filled up his earlier years with licentious excess, and his later with political intrigue,—a man who could loudly champion the cause of the High Church party, and stigmatize freethinkers as pests of society, while yet he was himself one of the most radical and cold-blooded among the free-thinkers of his age. Chesterfield, the ornament of polite society, in his correspondence with his son, made elaborate endeavors to convince him that polish is of more importance than principle, and remorselessly filled out the curriculum of a genteel education by instructing him in the arts of seduction. Such was the example of some of the leaders. Many were the apt pupils. Though moderation was the watchword in

religion, moderation in living was little regarded. Gambling and extravagance were rife. A large proportion of families were disposed to overstep the limits of their incomes. The prisons swarmed with incompetent debtors. With this fashionable extravagance was joined, at least in the early Georgian era, a peculiar vein of coarseness. Walter Scott, in the time of George III., wrote: "We should do great injustice to the present day by comparing our manners with those of the reign of George I. The writings even of the most esteemed poets of that period contain passages which now would be accounted to deserve the pillory. Nor was the tone of conversation more pure than of composition; for the taint of Charles II.'s reign continued to infect society until the present reign, when, if not more moral, we are at least more decent. Commerce, which has its diabolical phases in every age, included in this period some items of peculiar enormity. Up to the middle of the century a flourishing slave-trade went on, with scarcely an opposing voice to challenge the iniquity. "It has been computed that between 1680 and 1700 the English tore from Africa about 300,000 negroes, or about 15,000 every year. In a discussion upon the methods of making the trade more effectual, which took place in the English Parliament in 1750, it was shown that 46,000 negroes were at this time annually sold to the English colonies alone." 1

As respects the mass of the people, they were left to a lamentable degree under the dominion of ignorance and brutality. "The increase of population which

1 Lecky, ii. 13, 14.

followed on the growth of towns and the development of commerce had been met by no effort for their religious or educational improvement. Not a new parish had been created. Hardly a single new church had been built."1 Drunkenness in particular was a source of misery and degradation. A demand for the stronger liquors increased in geometrical ratio. While statistics report British spirits distilled in 1684 at 527,000 gallons, they report for 1735 no less than 5,394,000 gallons. "Physicians declared that in excessive gindrinking a new and terrible source of mortality had been opened for the poor. The grand jury of Middlesex declared that much the greater part of the poverty, the murders, the robberies of London, might be traced to this single cause. Retailers of gin were accustomed to hang out painted boards announcing that their customers could be made drunk for, a penny, and dead drunk for two pence, and should have straw for nothing.'

"2

Evidently there was a profound demand for a new moral and spiritual factor in the Church and society of England. The fulness of time had come for the Great Revival. That revival, if it did not reform all that needed to be reformed, cast nevertheless a new leaven into Church and society, checked an on-going declension, and emancipated a great multitude from a degrading enslavement to vice.

1 Green, History of the English People, iv. 121.

2 Lecky, i. 519.

IV. THE GREAT REVIVAL.

A simultaneous awakening in different quarters was a striking characteristic of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Though the trumpet blast of a Luther reverberated with most far-reaching and startling effect, there were others who, independently of him, sounded the proclamation of religious emancipation. A kindred fire began to burn about the same time in Wittenberg, in Einsiedeln and Zurich, in Paris and Meaux, at Cambridge, and Oxford. Something analogous appeared in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Near the end of 1734 the first stage of the great New England revival was inaugurated, under Jonathan Edwards, at Northampton. A year or two later the spirited preaching of Howell Harris, Daniel Rolands, and Howell Davies started an awakening in different parts of Wales. In the spring of 1742 Cambuslang, Kilsyth, and other Scottish towns witnessed a remarkable outburst of religious interest.1 These movements in different quarters may be taken as indications of the stirrings of a common Spirit, tokens of the march of Divine Providence toward an era of extensive reform. In 1739 a work was set on foot in England which was destined to supplement all the other movements instanced above, and to appear indeed as the grand central factor of the revival era. The more prominent agents of this work were John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, though a

1 Whitefield, it is true, had been to Scotland shortly before; but the local pastors had laid the foundation for the revival, and its beginning occurred under their auspices while Whitefield was in England.

host of others served as the indispensable instruments of its advance.

1. BEGINNINGS OF METHODISM.

John Wesley, the

senior of Charles by about five years, was born at the rectory of Epworth, in 1703. He was one of nineteen children, the majority of whom, however, died in childhood. His parents were both of the stanch independent, conscientious type. The father, Samuel, had secured his education at Oxford by his own industry and energy, and had become a prolific, if not a very successful writer, in addition to his diligent discharge of pastoral duties. The mother, Susanna, the daughter of an eminent Nonconformist minister, was a woman who mingled unusual intellectual alertness and strength with deep piety, who conducted in person the early education of her children, who believed in strict family government, but yet mixed therewith so much of good sense and kindness as to earn the fervent affection and gratitude of her children. John deferred to her judgment even in the maturity of his years, and regarded her as realizing almost the ideal of womanhood.

When between ten and eleven years of age, John was sent to the Charterhouse school in London, where he remained till he was sixteen. From 1720 to 1725 he was connected with Christ Church at Oxford. As a collegian he exhibited, what was a life-long characteristic, a marked ease and readiness of acquisition. Isaac Taylor speaks of him as almost intuitively master of all arts except the highest, by which he means that of the philosopher.1 What he might have accomplished in this art was not fully to appear; for his absorbing 1 Wesley and Methodism.