These hymns supplied battle-cries for all the scenes of open-air aggression and warfare. When Charles Wesley himself was preaching at Bengeworth, he was beset by a mob. He says, 'Their tongues were set on fire by hell!' One in the crowd proposed to take him away and duck him; he broke out into singing with Thomas Maxfield, and allowed them to carry him whither they would. At the bridge end of the street they relented and left him; there, instead of retreating, he took his stand, and, with an immense congregation about him, sang,—
'Angel of God, whate'er betide,
Thy summons I obey;
Jesus, I take Thee for my guide,
And walk in Thee, my way.'
Innumerable anecdotes might be accumulated touching the glories and triumphs of Methodist song. With all our higher love and admiration for Isaac Watts, and our feeling that, as a sacred poet, he had a more lofty and gorgeous wing, even a far more, tender and touching expression, and that in some of his hymns he speaks in a manner of strength altogether far more wonderful, nevertheless it is true that to Charles Wesley must be given the merit of, perhaps, the most perfect of all hymns, as the expression of Christian experience,—
'Jesus, lover of my soul.'
It is necessary to have some apprehension of the Theology of Methodism, for the spirit of Methodism was in its theology, even as the soul of that theology was in its hymns. It met the heart at that point of experience at which it felt its need of God, a living God: consciousness pervaded it everywhere. This was the central teaching of the great evangelical reaction. How well does it compare and contrast with the contemplations and exercises of Loyola in the solitude of the Manreza; and also with the 'De Imitatione' of à Kempis, against which, large as has been the regard for it, a certain instinct of the Church has always testified. The theology of Methodism was, in one word, Christ for the conscience. Those, happily, were not the days of scientific theology; as a scientific statement the theology of Wesley has justly been regarded as defective, but it is possible to be defective in comprehensive knowledge, and yet to have a sufficiently full and clear understanding for practical uses; even as it is possible to work an engine well, and yet in no sense to be an accomplished engineer. The secret of Wesley's success lay in the fact that his was a theology for the multitude; on the one hand it was not a forensic theory, on the other it was not rationalistic. Both are alike unsatisfactory to the heart. There is a forensic theology, but it is for the schools rather than for the factories or the fields. 'Wesley,' says Alexander Knox, 'regarded justification neither merely nor chiefly as a forensic acquittal in the court of heaven, but as implying also a conscious liberation from moral thraldom.' Indeed this was the important point with him; consciousness, everywhere consciousness. It is in the consciousness faith is to be wrought, as he sings—
'Inspire the living faith,
Which whosoe'er receives,