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CHAPTER XII.

METHODISM SYSTEMATISED.

FUNDS. CLASSES.

ITINERANCY. LAY PREACHING.

WESLEY had at this time some cause for apprehending a disunion which would have grieved him far more than his breach with Whitefield. His brother Charles, who had assisted him so cordially in opposing the errors of Molther, was inclined to side with the Moravians, after those errors had been disowned; and he proceeded so far as to declare, that it was his intention not to preach any more at the Foundery. "The Philistines are upon thee, Sampson," says Wesley in his Journal on this occasion; "but the Lord is not departed from thee. He shall strengthen thee yet again, and thou shalt be avenged of them for the loss of thy eyes." Writing to Charles upon this subject, he says, "O my brother, my soul is grieved for you! the poison is in fair words have stolen away your heart. you; No English man or woman is like the Moravians! So the matter is come to a fair issue. Five of us did still stand together a few months since, but two are gone to the right hand, (Hutchins and Cennick,) and two more to the left (Mr. Hall and you). Lord, if it be thy gospel which I preach, arise and maintain thine own cause!"

Charles, however, soon yielded to the opinions of a brother whom he so entirely respected and loved. A breach between them indeed would have afforded a malignant pleasure to their enemies, which would in no slight degree have aggravated the pain arising from such a disunion; and they had too long been linked together for good and for evil, for honour and dishonour, to be separated by any light difference. Wesley was fully sensible of the value of such a coadjutor, who had one heart, one object with himself; whom he knew so thoroughly, and upon whom he could perfectly rely; and whose life, conversation, talents, and acquirements he could hold up to the world as confidently as his own, defying calumny, and courting investigation. A breach here, though it certainly would not have disheartened, would, for a time, have seriously weakened as well as distressed him, and have left behind it a perpetual regret when the injury should have been overcome; whereas the separation from the Moravians and from Whitefield freed him from all shackles, and made him the sole head and single' mover of the sect which, however much he had once abhorred the thoughts of schism, he had now begun to form and organize. His restless spirit had now found its proper sphere, where it might move uncontrolled, and enjoy a prospect boundless as his desire of doing good, the ambition which possessed him. "I distinctly remember," he says in one of his sermons, "that even in my childhood, even when I was at school, I have often

said,They say the life of a school-boy is the happiest in the world; but I am sure I am not happy, for I am not content, and so cannot be happy.' When I had lived a few years longer, being in the vigour of youth, a stranger to pain and sickness, and particularly to lowness of spirits, (which I do not remember to have felt one quarter of an hour ever since I was born,) having plenty of all things, in the midst of sensible and amiable friends, who loved me, and I loved them, and being in the way of life which of all others suited my inclinations, still I was not happy. I wondered why I was not, and could not imagine what the reason was. Upon the coolest reflection, I knew not one week which I would have thought it worth while to have lived over again, taking it with every inward and outward sensation, without any variation at all. The reason," he adds, he adds, "certainly was, that I did not know God, the source of present as well as eternal happiness." Another reason was, that powers like his produce an inward restlessness, and a perpetual uneasy sense of discontent, till they find or force their way into action: but now when those powers were fully developed, and in full activity, at once excited and exerted to the utmost in the service of that God, whom he surely loved with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength, the world did not contain a happier man than Wesley, nor, in his own eyes, a more important one.

Schism, according to Wesley, has almost always

*

been wrongly defined a separation from a church, instead of a separation in a church. a church. Upon his own definition he himself was more peculiarly guilty of the offence; and however much he contended against those of his followers, who were for separating from the Establishment, it is scarcely possible that he should not have foreseen the separation, to which all his measures tended. Those measures were taken in good faith, and with good intent, most of them indeed arising, unavoidably, from the circumstances in which he found himself; but this was their direct, obvious, inevitable tendency. One step drew on another. Because he preached an enthusiastic and dangerous doctrine, which threw his hearers into convulsions, he was properly, by most clergymen, refused the use of their pulpits; this drove him to field-preaching. But field-preaching is not for all weathers in a climate like ours; prayer-meetings also were a part of his plan; and thus it became expedient to build meeting-houses. Meetinghouses required funds: they required ministers, too, while he was itinerating. Few clergymen could be found to co-operate with him; and though, at first, he abhorred the thought of admitting uneducated laymen to the ministry, lay preachers were soon forced upon him, by their own zeal, which was too strong to be restrained, and by the plain necessity of the case.

The organisation of Methodism, which, at this

* See his Sermon on Schism, in the 9th vol. of his collected works, p. 386., edition 1811.

time, may vie with that of any society that has ever been instituted, for the admirable adaptation of the means to the end proposed, was slowly developed, and assisted in its progress by accidental circumstances. When the meeting-house was built at Bristol, Wesley had made himself responsible for the expenses of the building: subscriptions and public collections had been made at the time, but they fell short. As the building, however, was for their public use, the Methodists at Bristol properly regarded the debt as public also; and Wesley was consulting with them concerning measures for discharging it, when one of the members proposed that every person in the society should contribute a penny a week, till the whole was paid. It was observed that many of them were poor, and could not afford it. "Then,” said the proposer, "put eleven of the poorest with me, and if they can give any thing, well; I will call on them weekly, and if they can give nothing, I will give for them as well as for myself. And each of you call upon eleven of your neighbours weekly, receive what they give, and make up what is wanting." The contribution of class-money thus began, and the same accident led to a perfect system of inspection. In the course of their weekly calls the persons who had undertaken for a class, as these divisions were called, discovered some irregularities among those for whose contributions they were responsible, and reported it to Wesley. Immediately he saw the whole advantage that might be derived from such an arrangement. This was