The hand of Providence

by J. H. Ward

With the revolution of 1688, a new spirit appears in England. Hitherto English philosophy and literature were almost unknown upon the continent. It was only after the revolution that we hear of foreigners visiting England, learning English and seeking to understand English life and character. Thus on the eve of the eighteenth century English ideas took a great stride forward. The people instead of the king became the virtual rulers of the nation.

The preceding age had done its work. It had given to the world the philosophy of Newton, the literature of Shakspeare, and Addison, Pope and Swift, the political agitation of Cromwell, and the colonization of America. The avenues of knowledge were thus opened to the masses. Even the dullest and most backward minds began to have notions of literature and the discoveries of science. The ancient forms of royalty and chivalry had lost their prestige and stood in the shady background of the past. A new world of citizens henceforth occupies the ground, attracts the gaze, imposes its ideas on the public manners and stamps its image on the minds of men. In 1709 appeared the first newspaper, a sheet as big as a man's hand which the editor did not know how to fill. At the present time there are more than 1,000,000,000 copies of newspapers published in the English language annually, many of which contain more reading matter in a single number than the whole New Testament scriptures. With the increase of intelligence the power of the people began to be felt.

Increased intelligence brought political reforms, and these in turn were followed by a reform in morals and manners. During the reign of the Stuarts the morals of the people had been extremely low. As an illustration might be mentioned the disrespect shown to the clergy. A parish priest was only permitted to dine at the second table, after his superiors (?) had been served. He might fill himself with the beef and cabbage, but did not dare to touch the better dishes until invited to do so by the hostess. A law had been passed during the reign of Charles II., that no clergyman should marry a servant-girl without the consent of her mistress. Most of the prominent statesmen during the previous half century were unbelievers in any form of religion. Such were the irreligious tendencies of the age, that drunkenness and foul talk were considered no reproach to Robert Walpole, prime minister of England. Purity of life was sneered at by the nobility as "out of fashion." For example, Lord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son (which were designed for publication), instructs him in the art of seduction, as part of a polite education.

At the lower end of the social scale lay the masses of the extremely poor. They were ignorant and brutal to a degree which it is hard to conceive. The manufacture of gin and rum had been discovered in 1684; and intemperance overran the nation as a plague. Tavern-keepers, on their sign-boards, invited the people to come and get drunk for a penny. For two pence they might get dead drunk, and have "a place to lie down with no charge for straw." Much of this social degradation was due, without doubt, to the apathy and sloth of the religious teachers.

Such was the condition of society when a remarkable religious revival began in a small knot of Oxford students whose revolt against the wickedness of the times expressed itself in enthusiastic religious worship and an austere and methodical regularity of life, that gave them the nickname of "Methodists."

Of these students, three soon attracted special attention by their religious fervor and even extravagance. One of these, George Whitfield, became the greatest orator. His voice was soon heard in the wildest and most barbarous corners of the land, among the bleak moors of Northumberland, in the dens of London, and in the dark and gloomy mines of Cornwall. Whitfield's preaching was such as England had never heard before, theatrical, extravagant, sometimes common-place, but winning favor by its earnestness and deep tremulous sympathy for the sins and sorrows of mankind.

He was no common enthusiast who could so eloquently plead the cause of the erring and unfortunate as to draw out the last cent from the cool and calculating Franklin, and command admiration from the fastidious and skeptical Horace Walpole; or who could look down, from the top of a green knoll at Kingswood, on twenty thousand colliers, grimy from the Bristol coal-pits, and see as he preached, the tears making white channels down their blackened cheeks.

On the rough and ignorant masses to whom they spoke, the effects of Whitfield and his co-workers were mighty both for good and ill. Their preaching stirred a passionate hatred in the hearts of their opponents. Their lives were often in danger; they were mobbed, ducked, stoned and smothered with filth; but the enthusiasm they aroused among their followers was equally intense.

Very important to the cause was Charles Wesley, a student at Oxford, who came as the sweet singer of the movement. His hymns expressed the fiery zeal of its converts, in lines so chaste and beautiful that many of the cultured classes were numbered among the adherents of the movement.

But most important of all was the elder brother, John Wesley, an ordained minister of the Church of England, who by his learning, energy and power of organization gave stability to the movement. No man of that age surpassed him in self-denial and trust in God. With all his extravagance and superstition, Wesley's mind was essentially practical and orderly. He, beyond most men of his age, saw that he lacked divine authority to found a church. Hence to the last he clung passionately to the Church of England, and looked upon the sect he had formed as only a lay society or branch in full communication with the parent church.