LITTLE THINGS BY Charles Robert Morrison

eformation. Looking at him and at his surroundings, one would be a
bold prophet indeed who would have said: "There is the possibility of
great good in this man apparently destitute of the very forces of real
greatness."
So also in the eighteenth century, when vital piety had seemingly died
out from the homes and hearts of our English ancestry, God looked
down into that parsonage home at Epworth, and forthwith the
preliminaries for a mighty revolution in aggressive Church work along
evangelist lines began to arrange themselves, and Methodism is the
result. Men sneered and stormed and defied; but opposition was
overcome, prejudice gave way, and the possibilities of good from such
insignificant sources were at last unquestioned.
Can any good thing come from Wittenberg? Protestantism answers:
"Come and see!" The temporal power of the pope reached its highest
assumption of arrogance in that day, and the tide began to turn when
Luther and his little band stood out in behalf of an open Bible, liberty
of the individual conscience, and the doctrine of justification by faith.
Can any good thing come from Epworth and Oxford? Methodism, in its
extended branches of closely allied fellowship, replies: "Come and see."
Churches in every community; schools and colleges scattered far and
wide; a religious press, with publications singing the truth in every
language; millions of children gathered together week after week for
Bible study, and instruction in active service for Christ--all this, and
more, at home and abroad, tell of results from small beginnings.
So has it been with every movement against iniquity and in behalf of
organized effort for the suppression of vice. Great reforms do not begin
with the masses, but with the individual.
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