THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE REV. JOHN WESLEY, M.A.*
THREE large volumes are devoted by Mr. Tyerman to a record of John Wesley's life, and if the spirit of the writer had been more genial and his style less rhetorical, the vast bulk of the biography might be forgiven. It is difficult to compress witbin brief com- pass the record of a career like that of Wesley's, and it is only by a variety of details that it is possible to estimate the import- ance of his work. Mr. Tyerman, however, wastes much of his apace in observations that might well be spared, and bad taste is frequently conspicuous in this somewhat pretentious book. Mr. Tyerman says he has written with honesty, and we willingly give him credit for that virtue. He spares nobody, and even John Wesley himself receives not a few smart strokes from his biographer for his High-Church principles.
It is impossible to understand the social life of England and the state of religion and morals in the eighteenth century without some acquaintance with the labours of Whitefield and Wesley. These two men, differing in so many respects, were alike in purity and consistency of purpose, in their intense earnestness, in their untiring activity, in a courage that never seemed to falter, in a spirit of self-sacrifice that was altogether noble. White- field was the more eloquent preacher, but Wesley possessed a variety of intellectual gifts to which Whitefield could make no pretension. He could exercise an irresistible power over men as a Christian orator, but Wesley understood the art of ruling at all
* The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.4., Founder of the Methodists. By the Rev. L. Tyerman. 3 vole. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
times, and could influence large societies as his friend swayed a crowd ; Whitefield's was the sweeter nature, but Wesley's the more powerful intellect, and it is probable, as Southey says, that the founder of the Methodists was the most influential mind of the last century.
It is generally the custom to say, and the statement is repeated in this biography, that the first half of the eighteenth century in England was marked by gross vices, by indifference to religion, by a laxity of morals pervading all classes of the community. There are plenty of facts that can be alleged to sustain this view. We know something of the coarseness of the age from the litera- ture in which so much of it is permanently retained. The nasty ideas of Swift did not even disgust ladies of refinement and good- breeding ; Pope, the first poet of his century, wrote lines which in these days could not be read aloud ; Gay, the pet-poet of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, produced tales in verse as indecent as the tales of La Fontaine; Prior offended in the same manner, and even Defoe, with the avowed intention of depict- ing the evil of vice, has presented so gross a picture of it in his Roxana and Moll Flanders as to find it necessary to make an excuse for the licence he had taken. Coarseness, no doubt, is a question of taste, rather than of morality, and it is quite possible that expressions may be used in the draw- ing-room in one age which fifty years afterwards would not be tolerated in the kitchen. This may be a just excuse for much that repels us in the works of the Queen Anne men ; but after the fullest allowances for the change produced in literature by a change in manners, enough remains to show the corruption of the age, and the tolerance evinced even for open immorality. Poli- tical corruption during the administration of Sir Robert Walpole was at its height; almost every man had his price, and profligacy of a kind now confined to blackguards was unblushingly prac- tised by Cabinet ministers. There are horrible proofs extant of the way in which the vices of the upper classes had infected the lower and although we do not forget the disgraceful Murphy riots, the brutal persecutions endured by Wesley and his fol- lowers would be utterly impossible in the present age. More- over, a religion of the most conventional type was held, we had almost said patronized, by the-more respectable members of society. There was but little spiritual life in the country, either among Churchmen or Dissenters, and it is a significant proof of the apathy that prevailed, that Bishop Burnet, writing a year before the death of Queen Anne, declared that the greater part of the men who applied for ordination were ignorant of the plainest parts of Scripture, and could "give no account, or at least a very imperfect one, of the contents even of the Gospels, or of the Catechism itself."
Towards the end of the century, and when John Wesley was in his eighty-second year, he wrote a wild paragraph with regard to the immorality of Great Britain, which shows that his feelings sometimes overpowered his judgment :—" There is not on the face of the earth another nation so perfectly dissipated and ungodly as England ; not only so totally without God in the world, but so openly setting Him at defiance. There never was an age that we read of in history since Julius Cesar, since Noah, since Adam, wherein dissipation and ungodliness did so generally prevail, both among high and low, rich and poor." This extravagant assertion was made after Methodism had spread over the country, after men like Watts and Doddridge, Newton and Cowper, Fletcher and Toplady, Whitefield and Law had done their uttermost for morality and religion, in an age made famous by the sterling worth of the great moralist, Dr. Johnson, by the singleness of purpose and the majestic intellect which distinguished Burke, by the earnest advo- cacy of Christian truth which came from the lips and pen of William Wilberforce. This strange assertion would, indeed, have been utterly unjustifiable, had it been made at the beginning of the century ; but it sounds ridiculous as uttered at its close, and suggests to the reader that Wesley's statements must be received with caution.
The intense earnestness and the inexhaustible activity of the Wesleys and of Whitefield seem to have aroused all classes of the people. The excesses into which some of the early Methodists fell, and the physical excitement which Wesley, unlike Whitefield, seems rather to have encouraged than opposed, passed gradually out of sight, but the good effected by this second English Refor- mation has lasted to our time. It has been pointed out, and justly, that Methodism was not an intellectual awakening. The literature of Methodism has never had much influence beyond the Methodist circle, and there is not, we believe, a volume pro- duced by Wesley or his followers that can rank with the great works that form our national literature. Whitefield's writings
slumber on our shelves undisturbed, or if his sermons be occa- sionally read, the one feeling they excite is astonishment at the influence they exerted when uttered by the living voice. Charles Wesley is known and honoured by all the Churches as a hymn- writer, but who is there that reads the many volumes of his verse ? James Hervey, one of the " Oxford Methodists," published two or three volumes in a very flowery style which were popular in his day, but notwithstanding Mr. Tyerman's assertion that they are "the most mellifluent compositions in the English language," he must either have a strangely meretricious taste or a small choice of books who can read the Meditations and Theron and Aspasia. John Wesley himself wrote incessantly, and his works fill many volumes. His style is good, his knowledge various, he was a scholar and a well-read gentleman, and yet in the long list of his publications we do not find a single book which holds a popular place in our secular or in our theological literature. Wesley owed the awakening of his spiritual life to the _Holy Living and Dying of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, one of the few works on practical theology which, although written more than two cen- turies ago, still retains an almost measureless popularity. Taylor, the most imaginative prose writer in the language, and at the same time one of the most sagacious, stands apart in our theological literature ; but Methodism has not only not produced a work which deserves to be ranked with the writings of our great Church theologians, it has not even yielded a devotional volume that can be placed with the Saint's Rest of Baxter, or the Rise and Progress of,Doddridge. This want of success was not owing to any lack of the cacoethes scribendi on the part of the Methodist leaders. Publi- cations designed for edification were issued by myriads from their presses, and still continue to be issued, for Mr. Tyerman records the fact that in 1867 " Wesley's book-room in the City Road sold not fewer than one million five hun- dred and seventy thousand tracts, all printed and published by itself, and that the number of its distinct and separate tract publications in 1871 is not less than 1,250." Wesley himself wrote enough, one would have thought, to have occupied the best part of his time, but authorship was but a single phase of his multiform activity. It has been calculated that during "the fifty years of his itinerant ministry he travelled a quarter of a million of miles, and preached more than forty thousand sermons." For eighty-six years, he says, he found none of the infirmities of old age, and from the age of twenty-four, when he applied himself closely to study, up to the age of eighty-eight, when he expressed a hope that he should not live to be useless, Wesley's energy was unbounded. It is curious to observe how it showed itself in little things as well as in great. It was not enough that he undertook the government of many churches, both in England, Ireland, and America ; that he engaged in controversies, and founded societies, and was the arbiter in quarrels ; he found leisure also for a variety of minute arrange- ments, and to attend to many of the trifles which generally interest idle men. Thus, for instance, he had some crotchets about diet and regimen which he endeavoured to urge upon his followers. His preachers were on no account to touch snuff or to taste spirit- uous liquors. Early rising, he said, is better than a thousand medi- cines, early preaching is the glory of Methodism, and both he and Whitefield, as is well known, were in the habit of preaching at five o'clock in the morning. He found that tea disagreed with him, and therefore urged its discontinuance upon the whole body of his followers. More than once he tried a vegetable diet, and what the biographer calls his " High Church- ism," led him to enjoin frequent fasting. He tells those afflicted with low spirits to drink but little tea, and none without sugar and cream, to eat no flesh at supper, to sleep early and rise early. For six or seven and twenty years, he writes, he made anatomy and physic the study of his leisure hours, and he did not hesitate to prescribe for others. Regular physicians, he thought, did very little good ; but why irregular physicians should do more good, and why he averred that he cured diseases of forty years' standing, is not made very clear. Wesley's dear love of work led him to forget that people generally cannot do without recreation. " I would recommend," he said, " very few novels to young persons, for fear they should be desirous of more." The Kingswood school affords a striking proof of Wesley's inability, despite his great power over men, to understand human nature all round. Many of his arrangements in the organization of the society were likely to produce hypocrites ; the management of the Kingswood scholars was calculated to produce hypocrites and scoundrels. Imagine young boys being forced to rise every morn- ing at four o'clock in winter and summer, in order to spend one hour in reading, meditation, and prayer ! imagine, too, a school in which no vacations were permitted, and no time allowed on
any day for play ! Yet these rules, upon being considered' at a conference of Wesley's preachers, were pronounced "agreeable to Scripture and reason !" No wonder that the Kingswood school proved " a source of almost ceaseless trouble" to Wesley, and that after existing for thirty-five years it was " is a worse state than ever."
The copious materials contained in these large volumes suggest a number of interesting topics. We have but glanced at two or three that occurred to us most readily, and have made no attempt to estimate John Wesley's position as the great religious reformer of the eighteenth century. It is, however, but recently that the publication of Miss Wedgwood's admirable monograph received' attention in these columns, and we may conclude by observing that whatever may be the defects of Mr. Tyerman's narrative, and we have already said that we consider it defective both in style and feeling, it is beyond question the most copious biography of Wesley that has hitherto appeared. There is much in the book which will not be found elsewhere, and although the general reader will still turn to Southey's delightful narrative, he will nevertheless find his profit by referring to Mr. Tyerman's work, and will be able, by the help of it, to correct some of the errors into which Southey fell. Mr. Tyerman's taste is questionable, but his persevering labour and accuracy of statement deserve our commendation.
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