History of the M.E. Church, Vol. IV - Media Sabda Org

it. At this very period of apparent danger the world was in the travail of a new birth. The American
and French Revolutions were drawing near. The most important phases of the civilized world were
to be transformed. Science, commerce, government, religion were to pass into a new cycle, perhaps
their final cycle. The revolution in religion was to be as conspicuous as any other change in the grand
process. The rights of conscience were to be more fully developed; the separation of the Church from
the State, and the "voluntary principle," were to be introduced. For the first time, in recorded history,
was about to be seen the spectacle of a great nation without a state religion. Medieval dogmatism
was to be more fully thrown into abeyance; ecclesiasticism and hierarchism to receive a shock under
which they might still reel for a while but only to fall, sooner or later, to their proper subordination
or desuetude. The permanent, essential principles, not so much of theology (so called) as of religion,
were to revive with the power of their apostolic promulgation. Missions, Sunday-schools, Bible
societies, popular religious literature, all those powers which I have affirmed to have arisen with
Methodism, were to come into activity in the religious world co-ordinately with the new energies
of the secular world. The Church, in fine, was anew to become a living, working organism, and to
be not only the Church of the present, but, probably, the Church of the future. The old questions of
rationalistic biblical criticism and of ecclesiasticism were not to be immediately laid, but they were
to become only occasional incidents to the Christian movement of the new age. Colenso and the
Essayists, Pusey and the Oxford Papal tendencies, were yet to appear, but not seriously to obstruct
the march of evangelical truth. Methodism had its birth at the date of Rationalism in Germany. The
biblical criticism of Colense and the Essayists was anticipated in the writings of Bolingbroke and
other English authors before Methodism had fairly started. That criticism is much older. Spinoza's
Politico-Theological Treatise is almost entirely made up of it -- in many respects a much abler
discussion than modern English doubt has produced. We know not how far modern critical
skepticism may yet go; we know not what, if any, demonstrations it may reach; but one thing we
absolutely know, that the ethical purity which speaks in the gospel, the spiritual life which filled the
primitive Church with saints, heroes, martyrs, and which is now filling the Christian world with good
works, sanctified homes, and peaceful deathbeds, can never be overthrown; that against a living,
loving, working Church the gates of hell can never prevail; and that the very existence of such a
Church presupposes the coexistence of all essential theology. The production of such a Church was
the special providential appointment of the eighteenth century, a "continuous revival" of spiritual
life, as Wesley was able to say after fifty years, in the old world; a still continued "revival," as we
are able to say today, after a hundred years, in the new world. If we may not venture to affirm that
Methodism, distinctively so called, is this modern development of Christianity, we need not hesitate
to say, with Isaac Taylor, that the religious movement of the eighteenth century, called Methodism
-- Calvinistic and Arminian -- Is its true historical exponent -- "the event whence the religious epoch
now current must date its commencement."
Such was the providential origin of Methodism, such the primary condition of its success. But
what was its other chief; or proximate cause?
The "Holy Club" was founded at Oxford, and the title of Methodism given to it in 1729, ten years
before the recognized epoch of the religious movement which it was to introduce. The Wesleys,
Whitefield, and other mighty men were then or soon after in it; but they had no notable success, for
they had not yet received "power from on high." The Wesleys came to America, and labored
faithfully here, but still without success, and they returned home defeated. something was yet needed.