It is true that female preaching was never sanctioned by the Wesleyan Conference, but it was substantially practiced to the end of Wesley's life. He broke the bands which had bound women, and which in many Churches bind them still, and allowed her to be a public advocate of spiritual religion—to tell what great things God had done for the soul.
Speaking of Susannah Wesley, a recent writer of the Congregational Church says: "The Methodist Church owes its system of doctrine quite as much, I think, to Susannah Wesley as to her illustrious son. To the instruction of a woman she added the logic of a gownsman and the love of a saint. Finer letters were never written. It is not to be wondered at that Methodists have been pioneers in the enfranchisement of female speech, that they have believed in it and practiced it from the first. They would have disgraced their origin otherwise."
It will be seen that Methodism has inaugurated, really, all the great moral reforms of the last hundred and fifty years. The great missionary movement, which has sent evangelistic agencies into all the earth, had little or no life when Methodism was born. Since that time, what hath God wrought!
CHAPTER XV.
WESLEY AND AMERICAN METHODISM PRIOR TO 1766.
The real advent of Methodism into America is a subject demanding special consideration. It has been generally supposed that its first introduction was in 1766 by Barbara Heck and Philip Embury, who inaugurated religious services at that time in the city of New York. But it has always seemed to us that Methodism was introduced much earlier.
There had been no less than five members of the "Holy Club"—the Oxford Methodists' fraternity—preaching in America prior to 1766, namely, John and Charles Wesley, Benjamin Ingham, Charles Delamot, and George Whitefield. Whatever may be said of the four former, it is certain that George Whitefield was here, from 1740, preaching as a flaming Methodist evangelist from Maine to Georgia. These men all accepted Wesley as their leader, and looked to him for counsel.