Thus, from the polite circles of London, from the obscure old farm-like vicarage, the rude and rough old English home, events were preparing themselves. John Wesley was born in 1703; the Countess of Huntingdon in 1707: near in their birth time, how far apart the scenery and the circumstances in which their eyes first opened to the light. Whitefield was born later, amidst the still less auspicious scenery of the old Bell Inn, at Gloucester, in 1714. These were undoubtedly among the foremost names in the great palpitation of thought, feeling, and holy action the country was to experience. Future chapters will show a number of other names, which were simultaneously coming forth and educating for the great conflict. So it has always been, and singularly so, as illustrating the order of Providence, and the way in which it gives a new personality to the men whom it designs to aid its purposes. In every part of the country, all unknown to each other, in families separated by position and taste, by birth and circumstances, a band of workers was preparing to produce an entire moral change in the features of the country.
CHAPTER III
OXFORD: NEW LIGHTS AND OLD LANTERNS.
It is remarkable that one of the very earliest movements of the new evangelical succession should manifest itself in Oxford—many minded Oxford—whose distant spires and antique towers have looked down through so many ages upon the varying opinions which have surged up around and within her walls. Lord Bacon has somewhere said that the opinions, feelings, and thoughts of the young men of any present generation forecast the whole popular mind of the future age. No remark can be more true, as exhibited generally in fact. Thus it is not too much to say that Oxford has usually been a barometer of coming opinions: either by her adhesion or antagonism to them, she has indicated the pathway of the nearing weather, either for calm or storm. It was so in the dark ages, with the old scholastic philosophy; it was so in the times immediately succeeding them: in our own day, the great Tractarian movement, with all its influences Rome-ward, arose in Oxford; later still, the strong tendencies of high intellectual infidelity, and denial of the sacred prerogatives and rights of the Holy Scriptures, sent forth some of their earliest notes from Oxford. Oxford has been likened to the magnificent conservatory at Chatsworth, where art combines with nature, and achieves all that wealth and taste could command; but the air is heavy and close, and rich as the forms and colours are around the spectator, there is depression and repression, even a sense of oppression, upon the spirits, and we are glad to escape into the breezy chase, and among the old trees again. This is hardly true of Oxford; no doubt the air is hushed, and the influences combine to weigh down the mere visitor by a sense of the hoariness of the past, and the black antiquity and frost of ages; but somehow there is a mind in Oxford which is always alive—not merely a scholarly knowledge, but a subtle apprehension of the coming winds—even as certain creatures forebode and know the coming storm before the rain falls or the thunder rolls.
We may presume that most of our readers are acquainted with the designation, “the Oxford Methodists;” but, perhaps, some are not aware that the term was applied to a cluster of young students, who, in a time when the university was delivered over to the usual dissoluteness and godless indifference of the age, met together in each other’s rooms for the purpose of sustaining each other in the determination to live a holy life, and to bring their mutual help to the reading and opening of the Word of God. From different parts of the country they met together there; when they went forth, their works, their spheres were different; but the power and the beauty of the old college days seem to have accompanied them through life; they realised the Divine life as a real power from that commencement to the close of their career, although it is equally interesting to notice how the framework of their opinions changed. Some of their names are comparatively unknown now, but John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and James Hervey, are well known; nor is John Gambold unknown, nor Benjamin Ingham, who married into the family of the Countess of Huntingdon, of whom we will speak a little more particularly when we visit the wild Yorkshire of those days; nor Morgan of Christ Church, whose influence is described as the most beautiful of all, a young man of delicate constitution and intense enthusiasm, who visited and talked with the prisoners in the neighbourhood, visited the cottages around to read and pray, left his memory as a blessing upon his companions, and was very early called away to his reward. This obscure life seems to have been one most honoured in that which came to be called by the wits of Oxford, “The Holy Club.”
It was just about this time that Voltaire was predicting that, in the next generation, Christianity would be overthrown and unknown throughout the whole civilised world. Christianity has lived through, and long outlived many such predictions. Voltaire had said, “It took twelve men to set up Christianity; it would only take one” (conceitedly referring to himself) “to overthrow it;” but the work of those whom he called the “twelve men” is still of some account in the world—their words are still of some authority, and there are very few people on the face of the earth at this moment who know much of, and fewer still who care much for the wit of the vain old infidel. That Voltaire’s prediction was not fulfilled, under the Providential influence of that Divine Spirit who never leaves us in our low estate, was greatly owing to this obscure and despised “Holy Club” of Oxford. These young men were feeling their way, groping, as they afterwards admitted, and somewhat in the dark, after those experiences, which, as they were to be assurances to themselves, should be also their most certain means of usefulness to others.
They were also called Methodists. It is singular, but neither the precise etymology nor the first appropriation of the term Methodist has, we believe, ever been distinctly or satisfactorily settled. Some have derived it from an allusion in Juvenal to a quack physician, some to a passage from the writings of Chrysostom, who says, “to be a methodist is to be beguiled,” and which was employed in a pamphlet against Mr. Whitefield. Like some other phrases, it is not easy to settle its first import or importation into our language. Certainly it is much older than the times to which this book especially refers. It seems to be even contemporary with the term Puritan, since we find Spencer, the librarian of Sion College under Cromwell, writing, “Where are now our Anabaptists and plain pack-staff Methodists, who esteem all flowers of rhetoric in sermons no better than stinking weeds?” A writer in the British Quarterly tells a curious story how once in a parish church in Huntingdonshire, he was listening to a clergyman, notorious alike by his private character and vehement intolerance, who was entertaining his audience, on a week evening, by a discourse from the text, Ephesians iv. 14, “Whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” He said to his people, “Now, you do not know Greek; I know Greek, and I am going to tell you what this text really says; it says, ‘they lie in wait to make you Methodists.’ The word used here is Methodeian, that is really the word that is used, and that is really what Paul said, ‘They lie in wait to make you Methodists’—a Methodist means a deceiver, and one who deludes, cheats, and beguiles.” The Grecian scholar was a little at fault in his next allusion, for he proceeded to quote that other text, “We are not ignorant of his devices,” and seemed to be under the impression that “device” was the same word as that on which he had expended his criticism. “Now,” said he, “you may be ignorant, because you do not know Greek, but we are not ignorant of his devices, that is, of his methods, his deceivers, that is, his Methodists.” In such empty wit and ignorant punning it is very likely that the term had its origin.
John Wesley passed through a long, singular, and what we may call a parti-coloured experience, before his mind came out into the light. In those days his mind was a singular combination of High Churchism, amounting to what we should call Ritualism now, and mysticism, both of which influences he brought from Epworth: the first from his father, the second from the strong fascination of the writings of William Law. He found, however, in the “Holy Club” that which helped him. He tells us how, when at Epworth, he travelled many miles to see a “serious man,” and to take counsel from him. “Sir,” said this person, as if the right word were given to him at the right moment, exactly meeting the necessities of the man standing before him, “Sir, you wish to serve God and to go to heaven: remember you cannot serve Him alone; you must therefore find companions, or make them. The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.” It must be admitted that the enthusiasm of the mystics has always been rather personal than social; but the society at Oxford was almost monastic, nor is it wonderful that, with the spectacle of the dissolute life around them, these earnest men adopted rules of the severest self-denial and asceticism. John Wesley arrived in Oxford first in 1720; he left for some time. Returning home to assist his father, he became, as we know, to his father’s immense exultation, Fellow of Lincoln College.
In 1733 George Whitefield arrived at Oxford, then in his nineteenth year. Like most of this band, Whitefield was, if not really, comparatively poor, and dependent upon help to enable him to pursue his studies; not so poor, perhaps, as an illustrious predecessor in the same college (Pembroke), who had left only the year before, one Samuel Johnson, the state of whose shoes excited so much commiseration in some benevolent heart, that a pair of new ones was placed outside his rooms, only, however, creating surprise in the morning, when he was seen indignantly kicking them up and down the passage. Whitefield was not troubled by such over-sensitive and delicate feelings; men are made differently. Johnson’s rugged independence did its work; and the easy facility and amiable disposition, which could receive favours without a sense of degradation, were very essential to what Whitefield was to be. He, however, when he came to Oxford, was caught in the same glamour of mysticism as John Wesley. But in this case it was Thomas à-Kempis who had besieged the soul of the young enthusiast; he was miserable, his life, his heart and mind were crushed beneath this altogether inhuman and unattainable standard for salvation. He was a Quietist—what a paradox!—Whitefield a Quietist! He was seeking salvation by works of righteousness which he could do. He was practising the severest austerities and renouncing the claims of an external world; he was living an internal life which God did not intend should bring to him either rest or calm; for, in that case, how could he ever have stirred the deep foundations of universal sympathy?
But that heart, whose very mould was tenderness, was easily called aside by the sight of suffering; and there is an interesting story, how, at this time, in one of his walks by the banks of the river, in such a frame of mind as we have described, he met a poor woman whose appearance was discomposed. Naturally enough, he talked with her, and found that her husband was in the gaol in Oxford, that she had run away from home, unable to endure any longer the crying of her children from hunger, and that she even then meditated drowning herself. He gave her immediate relief, but arranged with her to meet him, and see her husband together in the evening at the prison. He appears to have done them both good, ministering to their temporal necessities; he prayed with them, brought them to the knowledge of the grace which saves, and late on in life he says, “They are both now living, and I trust will be my joy and crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Happy is the man to whose life such an incident as this is given; it calls life away from its dreary introspections, and sets it upon a trail of outwardness, which is spiritual health; no one can attain to much religious happiness until he knows that he has been the means of good to some suffering soul. Faith grows in us by the revelation that we have been used to do good to others.