In 1799 the Church Missionary Society came into existence. “What!” said the passionate and earnest Rev. Melville Horne, in attempting to arouse the clergy to missionary enthusiasm; “have Carey and the Baptists had more forgiven than we, that they should love more? Have the fervent Methodists and patient Moravians been extortionate publicans, that they should expend their all in a cause which we decline? Have our Independent brethren persecuted the Church more, that they should now be more zealous in propagating the faith which it once destroyed?” And so the Church Missionary Society arose;[[18]] and in 1804, the Bible Society; in 1805, the British and Foreign School Society; in 1799, the Religious Tract Society, which, since its foundation, has probably circulated not less than five hundred millions of publications. The Wesleyan Missionary Society—which claims in date to take precedence of all in its foundation in the year 1769—was not formally constituted till 1817.[[19]]
[18]. See [Appendix]
[19]. (The great missionary organizations of America belong to the early part of this century. The First day or Sunday-school Society was formed in 1791; the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810; the American Baptist Missionary Union in 1814; Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society in 1819; the Philadelphia Adult and Sunday-school Union (which, in 1824, was merged in the American Sunday-school Union) in 1817; the Protestant Episcopal Board of Missions in 1821. Of Continental Societies, the Moravian Missionary Society was formed in 1732; the Netherlands Missionary Society in 1797; the Basle Evangelical Mission in 1816. Appendix.—Ed.)
Every one of these, and many other such associations, alike show the vivid and vigorous spirit which was abroad seeking to secure the empire of the world to the cause of Divine truth and love.
And, meantime, what works were going on at home? Education and intelligence were widely spreading; simple academies were forming, like that founded by the Countess of Huntingdon at Trevecca, where the minds of young men were being moulded and informed to become the intelligent vehicles of the Gospel message—eminently that of the great and good Cornelius Winter, in Gloucestershire; and that of David Bogue at Gosport; while, in the north of England, arose the small but very effective colleges of Bradford and Rotherham; and the now handsome Lancashire Independent College had its origin in the vestry of Mosley Street Chapel, where the sainted William Roby, as tutor, gathered around him a number of young men, and armed them with intellectual appliances for the work of the ministry.
Some of the earliest efforts of Methodism, and some of the most successful, had been in the gaols, and among the malefactors of the country—notably in the wonderful labours of Silas Told, whose extraordinary story has been recited in these pages. Silas passed away, but an angel of light moved through the cells of Newgate in the person of Elizabeth Fry, as beautiful and commanding in her presence as she was holy in her sweet and fervid zeal. Now began thoughts too about the waifs and strays of the population—the helpless and forgotten; and John Townshend, an Independent minister, laid the foundation of the first Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the noble institution of London.
In the world of politics, also, the men of the Revival were exercising their influence, and procuring charters of freedom for the mind of the nation. Has it not been ever true that civil and religious liberty have flourished side by side? A blight cannot pass over one without withering the other. The honour of the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts is due to the Great Revival: the Toleration Act of those days was really more oppressive on pious members of the Church of England than on Dissenters; they could not obtain, as Dissenters could, a licence for holding religious services in their houses, because they were members of the Church of England.
William Wilberforce owed his first religious impressions to the preaching of Whitefield; with all his fine liberality of heart, he became an ardent member of the communion of the Church of England. It seems incredible to us now that he lived constantly in the expectation—we will not say fear—of indictments against him, for holding prayer-meetings and religious services at his house in Kensington Gore. Lord Barham, the father of the late amiable and excellent Baptist Noel, was fined forty pounds, on two informations of his neighbour, the Earl of Romney, for a breach of the statute in like services. That such a state of things as this was changed to the free and happy ordinances now in force, was owing to the spirit which was abroad, giving not only freedom to the soul of the man, but dignity and independence to the social life of the citizen. Everywhere, and in every department of life, the spirit of the Revival moved over the face of the waters, dividing the light from the darkness, and thus God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”