dents went out from Halle to lead Europe in philanthropic and missionary enterprises, whose widespread beneficial results may be seen even today.

The other two important centers of Pietism were in Würtemberg and at Herrnhut, the latter place being the headquarters of the Moravians, who thrived greatly under the strong spiritual leadership of Count Zinzendorf. At each of these centers certain local variations developed, but in general type they were the Owing to the large educational interests at Halle, and the printing press which was established there at an early date, its influence was the predominant one, at least during the first half of the eighteenth century.

We will close this section with a consideration of the religious situation in England in the eighteenth century, and the great evangelical reform movement headed by John Wesley. To appreciate fully what Methodism accomplished, one needs to recall the spiritual condition of the country when the movement began. The eighteenth century has been rightly called an age of spiritual paralysis. Rampant skepticism was fashionable among the upper classes of Europe, and seems to have flourished especially in Great Britain.

Bishop Butler, in his well-known work on "The Analogy of Religion," in which he attempts to prove the truth of the Christian religion by drawing an analogy between it and the works of nature, sadly says in his opening chapter:

"It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at langth discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if in the present age this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world."-"The Analogy of Religion," by Joseph Butler, Advertisement to first edition, 1736.

Among the lower classes, immorality and amusements of the lower type, such as cockfighting, bull and bear baiting, and licentious plays, generally prevailed. Drunkenness was almost universal. Gin had been first introduced in the latter part of the seventeenth century, but it was in the eighteenth century that its use began to be general. Signs hung over the gin shops offering to give customers enough gin to make them "drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and straw to lie. Hogarth's horrible delineations of Gin Lane and Beer Street hardly exaggerate the facts.

The established Church of England was powerless to deal with such a desperate situation. The most earnest and God

fearing of its preachers sadly recognized that it was not beginning to hold its own. Archbishop Leighton called it "a fair carcass without a spirit." Bishop Burnet said he could not look on without the deepest concern when he saw the imminent ruin hanging over the establishment. He deplored the ignorance and indifference of the clergy. Not only the Church of England but the various independent bodies seemed to have lost their hold on the gospel as a living, vitalizing power to change men's lives, and the whole situation called loudly for a leader,- a man strong and resourceful, but with a heart full of pity for, the hungering multitudes.

Such a leader was John Wesley. His parents dedicated him to God in early childhood. After completing his preparatory work, he entered Lincoln College at Oxford University, where he distinguished himself as a student and as an earnest, consistent Christian. He associated with himself for prayer and study of the Word a group of young men whose aims in life were the same as his. The system and regularity with which these young men maintained their daily devotions, led to the term "Methodist " being applied, first to them, afterward to all who followed their example.

But while this band of young men exemplifies one important phase of Methodism, it by no means accounts for the singular power that accompanied that reform movement. The young

leader of the Holy Club, as it was also called in sport by the university students, had yet very much to learn before he could be fitted to fill the responsible place for which God was preparing him. His visit to America, while it resulted in apparent failure, was an important step in the work of preparation. It brought him in touch with the Moravians, who, he was quick to see, had attained a simple trust in God to which he was a stranger. On his return to England, he sought out the Moravians in London, and learned from them the fundamental principles underlying Scriptural sanctification, of which his theological training in the Church of England had left him in complete ignorance. He also paid a visit to Herrnhut to acquaint himself more fully with this remarkable people.

Not only did Wesley obtain a knowledge of Bible teaching in reference to this great truth, but he underwent an experience in the course of which he appropriated it to his own life. Now he had indeed a message from God, and he began to give that message with power. When the churches were closed against him, he took to field preaching, and while his fellow ministers denounced him, the common people heard him gladly. His aim

was very definite,- it was not to raise up a new denomination; it was not primarily to teach a new theology, nor to teach any theory as such. The aim was practical-it was to inculcate Scriptural holiness throughout the land.

To this one aim Wesley dedicated his life, and that with a whole-heartedness almost unequaled. His industry was boundless. Already in young manhood he had written: "Leisure and I have taken leave of one another. I propose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged me." He never once

swerved from the path of arduous labor marked out for himself. Fond as he was of books and keenly interested in the questions of the day, he did nearly all his reading in the saddle. He was continually making his rounds, preaching at five in the morning, and again in the afternoon and evening. Thus it went on from week to week, year in and year out. The books and tracts that came from his pen were written in odd moments. His business always was preaching the gospel.

The preachers that Wesley trained followed in his footsteps. With few exceptions they were men who had not the advantage of a college course; but their great leader taught them habits of industry, and most of them by careful use of their spare

moments added greatly to their educational acquirements. At times he would meet a company of them together, and read with them some work on theology or philosophy, pointing out its merits and its mistakes.

It was Wesley's example, however, rather than his instruction, that strongly influenced the character of his preachers. Had he, as some one has well said, "when his cause was somewhat established, retired from his self-sacrificing labors, and acted the dignified, well-endowed prelate in City Road Parsonage, his whole system would soon have fallen through." But "by traveling more, laboring more, and suffering more than any of his preachers, he kept them all traveling, laboring, suffering." The doctrines of Methodism were not widely different from those of the Church of England. They are contained in Wesley's Notes on the New Testament," avowedly based on Bengel's "Gnomon" and in the official collection of Wesley's sermons. If these works are carefully examined, it will be seen that where Methodism departs from Anglicanism, it is in the direction of a closer following of the Scriptures.

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It was chiefly in its discipline, however, that Methodism occupied advanced ground. Here its masterly organization proved a great help. The individual Baptist churches, for the most part, maintained good discipline, but there being no strong central organization to hold them together, it naturally followed that each was in many things a law unto itself, and the denomination as a whole could not wield the influence it might have wielded had there been stronger bonds of union. The movement headed by Wesley was organized from the start as a unit, and in it we have the first example since apostolic times of a church fully and efficiently manned and supported, and yet wholly independent of the state.

The discipline of the Methodist Church centered in the class meeting. The members of a class were voluntary adherents of a system of belief and a manner of life plainly described in the book of discipline and in the sermons of Wesley, and it was the duty of the class leader to keep careful watch over those intrusted to his care. The instructions were sufficiently explicit. Theater going, horse racing, dancing, and card playing were forbidden. The women were expected to refrain from the wearing of jewelry and superfluous ornaments of all kinds, and to clothe themselves plainly and in quiet colors.

Yet the Methodists were not harsh or censorious, and their efforts in the direction of the utmost simplicity are to be regarded, not in the light of burdensome restrictions on personal

liberty, but rather as a natural outgrowth of the desire to make the life bear witness to the supreme importance of spiritual things. That the Methodists were a cheerful people, is evidenced by their love of song. In some classes the meetings, to begin with, consisted wholly of singing. Wesley encouraged sacred song in every way, and the hymns written by his brother Charles had their part in making the Methodist services the brightest and most joyful religious services of that day.

Such were the Methodists of those early days, a people whose love and zeal for the Master bore fruit in a reform which had a quickening effect upon Christian people throughout the world, and which probably did more than any other one movement to prepare for the great work in missions and other philanthropic efforts of the nineteenth century. Yet these people and their leader were in their own day despised and set at naught by their fellow Christians.

"Wesley died in 1791 [writes R. E. Tefft], generally respected in Great Britain as a sincere Christian, but as the founder of a sect of fanatics, who, ignorant and presumptuous, were supposed to arrogate all earnest Christianity to themselves. This was the general judgment of the intelligent classes, with only occasional individual exceptions, till the opening of the present century. In the halls of the English universities, even those of Oxford, where John Wesley had been a noted fellow of his college, and in those of every literary institution of the country, Methodism was always spoken of as a sorry delusion of a well-read and well-meaning man. This was its established reputation at court, in Parliament, in episcopal palaces, in the manses of charitable clergymen, in every commercial circle, among all the guilds of tradesmen and mechanics, and so down to the common level of the laboring multitude."-" Methodism Successful," chap. 5, p. 236.

The attitude of the better classes in America was not greatly different. When Jesse Lee, after three months of hard labor and continued rebuff, was able to organize his first company in the New World, he says it consisted of three women who " peared willing to bear the cross, and have their names cast out as evil, for the Lord's sake." Books and pamphlets written in opposition to the Methodists run up into the hundreds. A catalogue containing the names of 384 was issued in Philadelphia in 1846, and it was probably far from complete.

But when we remember that Wesley was essentially a reformer, we are prepared to understand the reception given him and his followers by their fellow Christians. It was none other than that accorded Spener and Francke and Zinzendorf on the Continent. All these men were unpopular in their own day because they held and taught unpopular truth. And the measure of their unpopularity with the nominal church goers of that day was the measure of their worth as leaders of Christian