Rapidly the fame of the young preacher spread; for in his sermons were found a union of the closest reasoning, glowing imagination, and fervid piety. A wonderful revival of religion soon followed his earnest ministrations, exceeding any thing which had then been known in North America. Edwards wrote an account of the surprising conversions which took place, which narrative was republished in England and in Boston.
Thus the years passed rapidly, prosperously, and happily away, as his powers of eloquence and the productions of his pen extended his fame through Europe and America. But suddenly a bitter controversy arose in the church to which he ministered. The Rev. Mr. Stoddard, a man of mild character and lax discipline, had introduced to the church many who did not profess to be in heart Christians, the subjects of renewing grace. It had been tacitly assumed that the Lord’s Supper was a converting ordinance, and that any person of respectable character might unite with the church, and partake of the Lord’s Supper, as he might attend upon the preaching of the gospel. But Edwards urged that true conversion should precede admission to the communion. In these views Edwards was overborne by the majority of the church, who refused to allow him to deliver a course of lectures upon the subject. Thus, after years of a very unhappy controversy, Mr. Edwards was driven from his parish in the twenty-fourth year of hispastorate. He was drawing near the decline of life, had ten children dependent upon him, and was left without any visible means of support. The magnanimity and firmness which Mr. Edwards displayed has won for him the admiration of posterity.
In the town of Stockbridge, among the mountains of Berkshire, there was a remnant of a band of Indians called Housatonics. A few white settlers had also purchased lands, and reared their farm-houses in that region. A society in London, organized for the purpose of propagating the gospel, appointed him as missionary to these humble people. His income was so small, that it was found necessary to add to it by the handiwork of his wife and daughters, which was sent to Boston for sale.
As Mr. Edwards preached to the Indians extempore, and through an interpreter, he found more leisure for general study than he had ever before enjoyed; and from this retreat in the wilderness, during six years of intense application, he sent forth productions which arrested the attention of the whole thinking world. His renowned dissertations upon “The Freedom of the Will,” upon “God’s Last End in the Creation of the World,” upon “The Nature of True Virtue,” and on “Original Sin,” placed him at once in the highest ranks of theologians and philosophers.
While thus laboring in his humble home in the then inhospitable frontiers of Massachusetts, he was invited to the presidency of Princeton College, one of the most prominent seminaries in the country. The small-pox was raging in the vicinity, and he was inoculated as an act of prevention. The disease assumed a malignant form; and on the 22d of March, 1758, he died at Princeton, N.J., thirty-four days after his installation as president. He had attained the age of fifty-four years. Fully conscious that death was approaching, he sent messages of love to the absent members of his family. His last words were, “Trust in God, and you need not fear.”
There is probably no name in the modern history of Christianity more prominent than that of John Wesley. It iscertain that the denomination of Methodists, of which he is the father and the founder, has exerted an influence in reclaiming lost souls to the Saviour second to that of no other branch of the Church of Christ. In November, 1729,—less than a hundred and fifty years ago,—John Wesley, then a young student but twenty-six years of age in Oxford University, England, with his younger brother Charles and two other students, united in a class for their own spiritual improvement. Their strict habits and methodical improvement of time led their fellow-students to give them, somewhat in derision, the name of Methodists. They accepted the name, and made it honorable.
Such was the origin of a denomination of Christians which has now become one of the largest and most influential in the world. According to the statistics given in the Methodist Almanac for 1872, the denomination now numbers, in the United States alone,—
| 21,086 | Preachers. |
| 1,436,396 | Church-members. |
| 193,979 | Sunday-school teachers. |
| 1,267,742 | Sunday-school scholars. |
| $64,098,104 | Value of church edifices and parsonages.[217] |
John Wesley was the son of a mother alike remarkable for her piety and her intellectual endowments. He was born at Epworth, England, on the 17th of June, 1703. At the age of seventeen, he entered the University at Oxford. Taking his first degree in 1724, he was elected fellow of Lincoln College, and graduated master of arts in 1726. He was at this time quite distinguished for his attainments, particularly in the classics, and for his skill as a logician. Being naturally of a sedate, thoughtful turn of mind, he had from childhood been strongly inclined to the Christian ministry. The teachings ofhis noble mother had inspired him with the intense desire of being useful to his fellow-men. Being ordained to the ministry, he was for a short time his father’s curate. Returning to Oxford still further to prosecute his studies, he expressed strong dissatisfaction at the want of zeal manifested in the Established Church for the conversion of sinners. This led him to consecrate himself with great solemnity to the more strict observance of the duties of religious life.
He formed a society for mutual religious improvement, which consisted at first only of himself, his younger brother Charles, and two others of his fellow-students. The number was, however, soon increased to fifteen. Ten years passed away with their usual vicissitudes, nothing occurring worthy of especial note. In 1735, Mr. Wesley was induced to go to Georgia to preach to the colonists there, and more especially to labor as a missionary among the Indians. The mission proved very unsuccessful. The disturbed state of the colony was such, that he could get no access to the Indians. Though at first he had a large and flourishing congregation of colonists to address in Savannah, there soon sprang up very bitter alienation between him and the people of his charge. They rebelled against the strictness of discipline which he attempted to introduce. He refused to admit dissenters from the Episcopal Church to the communion, unless they were rebaptized; insisted upon immersion as the mode of performing that rite; and became involved in a very serious matrimonial difficulty.