What virtue there is in an if. Without going as far back as the Book of Genesis, and thinking what a different thing life would have been if the mother of us all had not plucked and eaten
“The fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe,”
it is very obvious much depends upon the ifs. If Sir Robert Peel had encouraged the advances of Disraeli, how different would have been the state of politics in this country. If Louis Philippe had shot Louis Napoleon when he had the power to do so, the Orleanists might have been the rulers of France. If old George III. had had brains as well as self-esteem and a stubborn will, what untold horrors might have been averted from England and Ireland. If Balthazar Gerard had not fired his pistol at William
the Silent, Belgium at this time would have been as intensely Protestant as it is now intensely Catholic. If John Wesley had perished in the fire at Epworth Parsonage, where would have been the Methodist Revival of the last century? And if Wesley himself had not broken from the little band who met in Fetter Lane, what sect in England would have equalled in numbers or usefulness that of the Moravians? Now, in this teeming London they have but one place of worship, and that but very indifferently filled. It does not even present the usual appearance of a place of worship, and thus attract notice; the stranger passes it by. Yet it is a place of surpassing interest, one of the hallowed spots of London, where sinners have wept, where souls have rejoiced, where the power and presence of God have been marvellously displayed. Let us go there; we pass along a passage till we come into a very old-fashioned meeting-house. There we shall find plenty of room. There are two hundred communicants, and at certain times they are all present, but they are scattered far and wide, and in general the place has a very deserted look. The benches—there are no pews—are most uncommonly hard to sit on. There are galleries, and in one of them there is an
organ. The place is neat and clean. The service itself calls for no especial notice. It is much like that of other denominations. The liturgy is exclusively that of the Moravians. The preaching is such as you may hear elsewhere. Attached to the place is a skeleton Sunday-school. There is light about the place, but it is not very powerful. It suggests more that of the setting than of the rising sun. I confess I see no reason why this should be the case, why the Moravianism, so powerful in many places, so blessed in missionary efforts, should be so powerless here. Moravianism is older than Lutheranism. It has an apostolical descent more genuine than that of the English or the Romish Church. Pre-eminently it may claim to have followed the leadings of Providence. Nowhere is there a trace of the gradual elaboration of any plan dictated by human wisdom. The leading men in the Ancient Unity, the emigrant founders of Herrnhut, Count Zinzendorf himself, and those of his fellow-labourers who were instrumental in introducing the Church into England, were all led gradually and by a way which they knew not to results they had not contemplated. As an anonymous writer, one of their body, remarks, “What a striking proof is here afforded of the
wisdom and faithfulness of God! Surely it well becomes the members of a community which has been so undeservedly favoured to inquire whether they, as individuals and collectively, have faithfully improved the privileges bestowed upon them.”
But about the chapel. Turn to Baxter’s Diary, and we find the place mentioned there. He writes: “On January the 24th, 1672–3, I began a Tuesday Lecture at Mr. Turner’s church in New Street, near Fetter Lane, with great convenience and God’s encouraging blessing.” It is, writes Mr. Orme, that between Nevill’s Court and New Street, now occupied by the Moravians. It appears to have existed, though perhaps in a different form, before the Fire of London. Turner, who was the first minister, was a very active man during the Plague. He was ejected from Sunbury, in Middlesex, and continued to preach in Fetter Lane till towards the end of the reign of Charles II., when he removed to Leather Lane. Baxter carried on the morning week-day lecture till the 24th of August, 1682. The church which then met in it was under the care of Mr. Lobb, whose predecessors had been Dr. Thomas Goodwin and Thankful Owen. This church still exists, but on the opposite side of the way, under the care of
the Rev. J. Spurgeon. The Moravians came into possession of the building in 1740. They had previously met in Fetter Lane, but in a smaller room. The present chapel was then known as the Great Meeting-house, or Bradbury’s Meeting-house. Tradition says that the place was once used as a saw-pit, and as a place of asylum when the State Church was busy at the work in which it has ever been untiring, no matter how remiss in other matters—that of enforcing its rights real or fancied, and disregarding those of other men. Tradition also says that the place was built, for the same reason, with two modes of egress, that the good men in the pulpit might have an additional chance of safety. It was in the meeting that Emmanuel Swedenborg was for a time accustomed to worship. It was in the old place that Whitefield and Wesley attended, and where, as Southey writes, “they encouraged each other in excesses of devotion which, if they found the mind sane, were not likely long to leave it so,” but of which Wesley writes in very different language. Let us hear what he says. “About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the
ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise Thee, O God! we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.’” “It was a Pentecostal season indeed,” wrote Whitefield. Let me add that it was there, and not in the present meeting, that Wesley stood up and read from a written paper such of their doctrines as he contemned, especially that of there being no degrees of faith short of perfect assurance. He had learnt much from the Moravians. They had found him a mere Ritualist, they had left him a converted man, but he had outgrown his teachers, the mild and loving and placid Germans of Fetter Lane. “I have borne with you long,” said he at the end of his discourse, “hoping you would turn; but, as I find you more and more confirmed in the errors of your ways, nothing now remains but that I should give you up to God. You that are of the same judgment, follow me.” When he had thus spoken he withdrew. This breach was never healed, and from that day to this Moravianism has never in this country, and especially in London, recovered from the blow.
It may also be said that the impulse given to the religious life of England by the Moravians has