Those Amazing Methodists: A Tribute to the Ministry of John & Charles Wesley

by A.W. Tozer

Introduction (by Bert Warden)

PROBABLY NO MEN SINCE THE DAYS of Martin Luther had a more profound effect upon the history of the Christian church than John Wesley and his brother Charles. Certainly no church leader had a more profound and lasting effect upon the history of a single nation than John Wesley had upon the England of the eighteenth century.

But for the Wesleyan revival, England most surely would have suffered a cataclysm on the pattern of the French Revolution (1789-1799). Conditions were ripe for revolt. George III had ascended the throne in 1750 and was intent on restoring the power of the monarchy, one of the results of which was the loss of the American colonies (the American Revolution, 1775-1783). Parliament was in disarray.

Drunkenness in the House of Commons was so prevalent that sometimes sessions had to be discontinued because there were not enough sober members to conduct business. The established church was corrupt and largely dead. Pastorates were bought and sold to the highest bidder. Drunkenness among the clergy was not uncommon. The slave trade flourished and other abuses of power were rampant: poor houses, debtor’s prisons, child labor.

John Wesley’s life practically spanned the eighteenth century (1707-1788). His itinerant preaching throughout the British Isles was untiring (an average of 5,000 miles a year, mainly on horseback). He preached three to four sermons a day, sometimes outdoors to audiences up to 20,000 (and without a P.A. system!). He offered to all salvation through simple faith in the Lord Jesus and brought back hope to the masses.

It is estimated that only two to three percent of the population of England were converted during this time, but the Wesleyan “methodical” discipling of the new converts produced a quality of believers whose “salt” and “light” permeated the whole of English society and brought about a radical transformation in the life and morals of the nation.

No one has better caught the spirit and power of the early Methodists than A.W. Tozer in this brief, pungent essay. Tozer longed to see happen in his day what had happened in England in the 1700s, a phenomenon which had even leapt the Atlantic Ocean to greatly influence colonial America.

Through Tozer, “Those Amazing Methodists” speak to us today, calling us back to holiness, true discipleship, moral accountability, dedication to Christ, purity of life and thought and faithful tending of the “flock of God.”

Who follows in their train?

The six chapters that follow first appeared as a series in The Alliance Weekly magazine in 1957.

CHAPTER 1: The Wesley Brothers

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO there was born into an English home a baby boy who was to become one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, of all the hymn writers of the ages, the inspired David alone outranking him.

The boy was named Charles, and the home into which he was born was that of Samuel and Susannah Wesley. Charles was the eighteenth child, but not quite the last, for one more came later to make a total of nineteen little Wesleys. John was four years old when his brother Charles was born, and as they played about over the floor no one could have foreseen that the two of them would later team up to shake all England and finally the entire civilized world.

The sovereignty of God (a doctrine the Wesleys did not stress too much) could hardly be better displayed than in this Anglican home. Eight of the children died in infancy, and when some enemies of the straight-preaching Samuel Wesley set the parsonage on fire, the nest burned down, but God preserved the young larks from a fiery death. Later John remembered this terrifying experience and with a characteristically happy turn he applied to himself the words of the Scripture that speaks of a brand “plucked out of the burning.” Such he was in more ways than one, and such were Charles and the rest of the fledglings.

It would be a fascinating if not a particularly edifying exercise in speculation to try to second-guess the history of the Christian Church over the last two centuries if Susannah Wesley had been a feminist or had insisted upon a “career” or had believed in “planned parenthood” and had limited her family to fourteen. This would, of course, have deprived the world of John Wesley. Had she pleaded ill health or hard work and refused to bring an eighteenth child into the world, the church would have been robbed of the treasures of sweet song later to be bestowed upon it by that eighteenth child, Charles Wesley.

The story of the unsuccessful missionary journey of the two consecrated brothers is too well-known to need retelling here. They returned to England self-confessed failures and learned from some Moravian brethren the reason for their failure. For all their self-discipline, their much praying and their hard religious exercises, they had not been truly converted to Christ. Their knowledge of God had been theological, not personal.

First Charles, and a few days later John Wesley, entered into a saving knowledge of God through the new birth, and it may be that since the conversion of Saul on Damascus Road there had not occurred a personal religious experience of greater importance to more people than that of the two Wesley brothers. Out of the fire of their spiritual encounter came not only the Methodist Church, but later the Salvation Army and many Christian societies and institutions with tremendous power to elevate society and to quicken and transform individual men and women morally and spiritually.

Though we do not usually think of him as such, John Wesley was a reformer. For the established church of his day was sterile, and its clergy, with rare exceptions, were almost completely ignorant of the very religion they were being paid to promote. They served a state-controlled church to make a living, as a man today might dig coal or work as a bank teller. Church offices were bought and sold at a profit and shrewd hirelings grew fat on the tithes of the poor.

A corrupt clergy could not but produce a corrupt people. The moral conditions of the masses became so incredibly bad as to stagger the imagination. Drunkenness, brutality, narcotic addiction, obscenity, prostitution and violence filled all the land and there was no one to care. Priest and churchman either joined in the general debauch or coldly withdrew to engage in practices more polite but equally iniquitous.

Into an England such as this the Wesleys were born, and the notion is instantly ruled out that they were the product of their times. Samuel and Susannah Wesley saw to it that they were not. Let everlasting thanks be to God for those serious-minded and high-principled parents who, while they were in the world, were not of the world, and who managed even in the midst of a wicked and adulterous generation to instill the fear of God into their children. England will ever owe them a mighty debt of gratitude, and informed Christians throughout the whole world may well thank them for providing a home morally fitted to nurture two such giants in the faith as John and Charles Wesley.

While both men remained within the fold of the Anglican Church to the last day of their lives, their evangelistic fervor and their burning zeal soon made them too hot for the lukewarm church to handle. John especially was too bold, too articulate and too much given to condemning dead religion; and worst of all, the common people heard him gladly. While the established church never unfrocked him, the local churches took measures just as effective: they simply locked their doors against him and forced him to preach on the streets and in the fields, which he did with such remarkable success that one is tempted to believe that in locking him out they did him and the world a real favor.

With John preaching saving grace to the common man on the street and Charles setting the rediscovered evangelical doctrines to music (though he too was an effective preacher), things began to look up again in England. Thousands of the plain people were converted, many of them from lives of unspeakable wickedness to lives of great purity and moral power. The Wesleys did not try to please the masses; they preached judgment and hell and the need to flee from the wrath to come, and they would not accept any man’s testimony unless he could back it with complete separation from worldly practices and a life lived in conformity with the will of God as revealed in the New Testament.

The converts became so numerous that they created a problem for the fiery evangelists. The established church feared to admit them even if they had desired it, so there was nothing to do but to form them into groups for instruction and worship. These groups came to be called Methodist Societies, and their story is so heartening that all Christians should acquaint themselves with it.

In the following pages I want to touch a few high points of that story, in order that a new generation of Christians might have opportunity to know at least a little bit about those amazing Methodists.

CHAPTER 2: Theirs Was a Costly Treasure


THIS BEING THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of the birth of Charles Wesley (December 18, 1707), a great deal has been appearing in print recently about him and about the early Methodists.

This is as it should be, for God has ordained that His people should receive inspiration and encouragement from the lives of those great and good souls who have walked the Christian way before them. Why otherwise should so much of the Bible be devoted to biography? “The memory of the righteous shall be for a blessing,” says one translation of Proverbs 10:7. Paul reminds the Thessalonians of the power of right influence as an aid to faith, and James exhorts us to take the prophets for an example of suffering and affliction, and points to Job particularly.

I believe we evangelicals have every sufficient reason to meditate upon the lives and testimonies of the early Methodists. They constituted an unusual breed of Christian, so superior to most of us today as to make us wonder whether or not we belong to the same spiritual stock as they.

One thing I have noted, however, is that in the many eulogies that have been written about the Wesleys and about the members of those first “United Societies,” the emphasis has fallen upon their radiant worship and their inspired song. Very little is said about the price they paid or the cross they carried. To emphasize their wondrous moral power and the radiance of their hymnody and overlook the price they paid for it all is to put asunder that which God has joined together. The Scriptures and the chronicles of the saints unite to declare that blessing does not come upon persons or churches by accident. When a wave of spiritual power rolls over a church or a community we may be certain that the members of that church or community have paid a price in sacrifice and suffering before such power could come. The blessings of God cannot be separated from their conditions.

When examining the lives of the saints we are tempted to become engrossed with the fruit and to ignore the tree. We conveniently forget that fruit comes from the trees and that if we destroy the tree or let it die, no panegyric on the fruit will cause the dead tree to blossom again. The vain hope that we may after all succeed in producing fruit without a tree accounts for the recent rash of books in praise of the mystics. Men who deny or at least ignore every basic doctrine of the Christian mystic’s creed and who would never dream of following his way of life yet write nostalgic books about his joyous spiritual experiences and his beautiful religious life.

It may easily be so with our treatment of the early Methodists. We may write enthusiastically about the burning bush but be very careful not to be caught alone in the desert at the going down of the sun. The separation, the stillness, the world renunciation, the sense of being expendable that made the vision possible are too much for us. We will not pay such a harsh price for such a glorious treasure, so we content ourselves with writing such articles as this about such men as Moses or Charles Wesley. They paid the price and we will not; that is why they were the kind of men they were and we are the kind of persons we are.

The glory that crowned the early Methodists can be accounted for by their creed and their conduct. They believed something (or should we say Somebody?) and lived in accord with their belief. To say this is not to oversimplify the fact, but to tell in few words the secret of their greatness. As the Shekinah dwelt between the wings of the cherubim as long as Israel walked in the way of truth, and forsook the temple forever when Israel made her final break with God (Ezekiel 9-11), so the blessing of Christ has through history hovered over churches and denominations that have met God’s conditions and departed when those conditions began to be ignored. This is an unalterable law of God, and none of us can escape it. It has operated since the first man stood up on the earth and operates still toward all of us.

The early Methodists believed in the fall of man, not as religious poetry but as a historical occurrence that alienated man from God and made him the slave of sin and corruption. The Articles of Religion by which Methodist ministers were guided stated: “Original sin standeth not in the following ofAdam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring ofAdam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.”

They also believed that where the grace of Christ truly operated to save a man it would make a radical moral change in the man, resulting in the purity of heart and righteousness of conduct. “In 1729,” wrote the Wesley brothers to the brethren of the United Societies, “two young men in England, reading the Bible, saw that they could not be saved without holiness: followed after it and incited others so to do. In 1737 they saw likewise that men are justified before they are sanctified: but still holiness was their object. God then thrust them out to raise a holy people.” The two young men were, of course, John and Charles Wesley, and the holy people they set out to “raise” came to be called Methodists.

The Methodist Church had its beginnings in very unprepossessing circumstances which nevertheless throbbed with the new life that God was releasing into the world at that time.

In the latter end of the year 1739 eight or ten persons came to Mr. Wesley in London, who appeared to be deeply convicted of sin, and earnestly groaning for redemption. They desired that he would spend some time with them in prayer, and advise them how to flee from the wrath to come; which they saw continually hanging over their heads. That he might have more time for this great work he appointed a day when they might all come together, which from thenceforward they did every week, on Thursday, in the evening. To these and to as many as desired to join them (for their number increased daily) he gave those advices from time to time which he judged most needful for them; and they always concluded their meeting with prayer suited to their several necessities.

This was the rise of the United Society, first in Europe and then in America. Such a society is no other than “a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.”

John Wesley well knew the vital place of repentance in the life of the man “earnestly groaning for salvation” and seeking to escape “the wrath to come.” His sermons were full of it, and repentance became a living part of the Methodist message, as indeed it is a living part of the message of the Bible. Wesley was not afraid to use the word “sinner,” and those to whom the Methodists preached constantly heard themselves so described with great boldness and fullness of detail. And when Methodism leaped across the ocean, such preachers as Strawbridge, Rankin, Coke and Asbury continued to preach the imperative of repentance.
As John preached it, so Charles sang it with a depth and intensity of language scarcely equaled anywhere outside the inspired Scriptures. One edition of the Methodist hymnal, published long after the death of the Wesleys, lists seventy one hymns under the heading “Penitential.” Not only are the hymns of Charles Wesley there, but the great penitential hymns of Watts, Addison, Stennett and others. These hymns express sharp sorrow for sin, much self-loathing and a deep sense of unutterable lostness before the presence of a holy God.

The point I am trying to make is that the radiant joy of those first Methodists had a price attached to it, and part of the price was that they know and feel themselves sinners in the darkest, vilest meaning of the word. “False and full of sin I am,” they sang, and again:

I have long withstood His grace,
Long provoked Him to His face.
My soul lies humbled in the dust,
And owns the dreadful sentence just.
They did not try to spare anyone’s feelings,
but threw false gentility to the winds and sang,
Wretched, helpless, and distressed,
Ah! whither shall I fly?
Ever gasping after rest.
I cannot find it nigh:
Naked, sick, and poor, and blind,
Fast bound in sin and misery,
Friend of sinners, let me find
My help, my all in Thee.

Indeed their whole teaching about the consequences of sin might be summed up in two lines of a hymn of Charles Wesley:

Save, Lord, or I perish, I die;
O save, or I sink into hell.

So sure were those amazing Methodists that effective repentance must be accompanied by a “broken heart and contrite sigh” that if they did not feel sorrow for sin, they asked God for it as a special gift of grace leading to true faith and regeneration. Here is a sample:

Jesus, let Thy pitying eye
Call back a wandering sheep;
False to Thee, like Peter, I
Would fain, like Peter, weep.
Let me be by grace restored:
On me be all long-suffering shown;
Turn, and look upon me, Lord,
And break my heart of stone.

These quotations are from a half dozen of the hymns listed as “Penitential,” and it is more than a coincidence that they are immediately followed in the hymnal by the section marked “Justification by Faith.” It is only after radical repentance and the clear witness of the Spirit to saving faith that the newborn soul can sing Charles Wesley’s buoyant psalm of assurance:

All praise to the Lamb! accepted I am,
Through faith in the Savior’s adorable name:
In Him I confide, His blood is applied;
For me He hath suffered, for me He hath died.
Not a doubt doth arise, to darken my skies,
Or hide for a moment my Lord from mine eyes:
In Him I am blest, I lean on His breast,
And lo! in His wounds I continue to rest.

CHAPTER 3: A Congregation of Faithful Men

BOOKS OF DISCIPLINE and articles of religion are commonly considered to be among the dullest and driest of all earthly things.

A country lane in mid-August after a two-month drought is a messy creek by comparison with such books, so runs the popular legend. They hold the desiccated remains of ideas long dead and, should the reverent man chance to find himself among the flaky headstones of some such ancient volume, he would be wise to bow his head respectfully and tiptoe slowly but determinedly out of the place in search of light, moisture and fresh air.

When a boy tramps on a puff ball everybody knows it is the ball and not the boy that gives off the cloud of dust, but when modern Christians find a book of discipline dusty, it is not so clear just where the dust is coming from. For our soul’s sake we had better be careful before we decide. Perhaps we are dead, and not the book after all.

Anyway, those early Methodists were expected to buy and study the book of discipline prepared by their leaders. “We deem it our duty and privilege most earnestly to recommend to you, as members of our church, our Form of Discipline,” wrote those leaders. “We wish to see this little publication in the house of every Methodist; and the more so, as it contains the articles of religion maintained more or less, in part or in whole, by every reformed church in the world. Far from wishing you to be ignorant of any of our doctrines, or any part of our discipline, we desire you to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, the whole.”

The book referred to was a pocket-sized volume of about 200 pages crammed full of doctrine, which was apparently little more than a restatement of the faith of most Christians, and of rules for the maintenance and direction of the Methodist Societies, which bears the unmistakable print of the mind and heart of John Wesley.

The celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson said he considered John Wesley to be the purest example of elevated moral happiness that he had ever known. His happiness sprang out of his communion with Christ and from the utter freedom that communion brought. He preached continually of mercy and grace and deliverance from moral bondage, while Charles sang of it with a rapture bordering on ecstasy. Yet these two men taught and practiced a rigorous self-discipline which, had they been ignorant of evangelical grace, would have led straight to the severest asceticism.

How a burden feels depends not upon its weight but upon whether it is carried by a free man or a slave. No load is irksome that is voluntarily assumed. It is compulsion that destroys. Had the Wesleys taught discipline as a price to be paid for forgiveness and justification, they would have missed both justification and forgiveness, and they could not have been happy men. Because they took deliverance as a gift, they could carry their self-imposed load and be happy men, happy in their freedom. Wordsworth knew this secret when he wrote of Milton:


Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Protestant Christians today recoil from discipline as from hair shirts and spike beds. They do this not because they are free but because they are in bondage. They know enough about grace as a theory to understand that God does not require us to save our souls by punishing our bodies. But because they have not received free grace as an emancipating agent within their own hearts, they are not free, and because they are not free they flee from the very thought of discipline.

The Methodists were a free people, and being free they could see the value of rules and “methods” in the individual life and in the spiritual community. And since the majority of these rules were actually taken from the New Testament and were understood to be the very commandments of Christ for His redeemed people, the Methodists bowed their necks to the easy yoke and brought their lives under the direction of those over them in the Lord.

All this, of course, conformed to their philosophy of the church. They laid much stress on the local assembly, or “society.” They sought by every means to make each society a spiritual microcosm, containing in itself the very qualities that are found in full perfection in the Holy Church throughout all the world and in heaven above.

Article XIII in the old book of discipline condenses a world of truth into these few words: “The visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, the sacraments duly administered, according to Christ’s ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.”

“A congregation of faithful men,” as was made abundantly plain at all times and in all places in those early days, was composed of persons who had fled from the wrath to come and had taken refuge in the atonement in Jesus’ blood. Such men and women were expected to live in accord with their profession; they were indeed required to do so if they wanted to remain in fellowship with the Christian group. And there was nothing vague about it all. The Scriptures were plain and if there were any doubt about anything, a Preacher or class leader would be glad to expound the text and make the application.

The candor and downrightness of John Wesley’s methods is illustrated by these entries in his journal:

On Wednesday, November 25th, the Stewards met at St. Ives, from the western part of Cornwall. The next day I began examining the Society; but I was soon obliged to stop short.

I found an accursed thing about them: well nigh one and all bought or sold uncustomed goods. I therefore delayed speaking to anymore, till I had met them all together. This I did in the evening, and told them plain, either they must put this abomination away or they would see my face no more.
Friday 27. They severally promised to do so; so I trust this plague is stayed.

CHAPTER 4: Outward Evidence of Inward Grace

JOHN WESLEY WAS REARED an Anglican but when he broke through the forms of religion into the regions of grace and felt his heart “strangely warmed,” his spiritual instincts took him out of the established church in spirit, even though he remained a member formally to the end of his days.

The unmistakable stamp of Anglicanism is upon the creed and forms of Methodism, but the hearts of the new-born Wesleys and of those who gathered around them were obviously searching for something more real and wonderful than any ecclesiastical organization could provide. They sensed how far institutionalized Christianity had departed from the simplicity which is in Christ. While they wanted order and “method” in the new societies, they were at the same time groping back to find the roots from which true Christianity sprang. They longed to see expressed in eighteenth century England the pure spiritual fellowship of apostolic times. In short, they wanted their societies to be true reproductions of the assemblies of the New Testament.

To achieve this they knew they must return not only to simple New Testament truth but to practical righteousness in their relations with their fellow men, and to personal holiness of life as well. “There is only one condition previously required,” says the Book of Rules, “ ‘a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins.’ But wherever this is really fixed in the soul, it will be shown by its fruits. It is therefore expected of all who continue therein, that they should evidence their desire of salvation.”

The practice of “accepting” Jesus as a kind of open sesame to everything spiritual and heavenly appears never to have been known to the early Methodists. They joyfully taught the witness of the Spirit that assured the seeker that God had received him and made him His child, but they well knew that no man can convince another that he has such a witness merely by saying so. That which is inward and personal can be proved only by external conduct which conforms to it. Should a member claim the inward witness but live a careless life, the testimony of his lips was rejected. His conduct furnished the evidence upon which his life was judged.

To get into and remain in a local “society” it was necessary that the seeker “evidence” his desire for salvation; and strange as it may appear to us in this day of confused evangelicalism, that evidence was altogether moral. Inward grace, where it existed, was by its very nature invisible and could validate itself only in external conduct which was open to the eyes of all. Everyone was required to evidence his spiritual yearnings by signs more practical than singing and praying, which Judas himself could do and still be Judas. And how were those first Methodists required to prove their Christian sincerity? First, says the Book of Rules,

By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is generally practiced: such as,
The taking of the name of God in vain.
The profaning the day of the Lord, either by doing ordinary work therein, or by buying or selling.
Drunkenness, buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them (unless in cases o extreme necessity).
The buying and selling of men, women, and children, with an intention to enslave them.
Fighting, quarreling, brawling, brother going to law with brother; returning evil for evil; or railing for railing; the using many words in buying or selling.
The buying or selling goods that have not paid the duty.
The giving or taking things on usury, i.e., unlawful interest.
Uncharitable or unprofitable conversation; particularly speaking evil of magistrates or ministers.
Doing to others as we would not they should do to us.
Doing what we know is not for the glory of God: as
The putting on of gold and costly apparel.
The taking such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus.
The singing those songs, or reading those books, which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God. Softness and needless self-indulgence.
Laying up treasures upon earth.
Borrowing without a probability of paying; or taking up goods without a probability of paying for them.
It is expected of all who continue in these societies that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation,
Secondly, by doing good, by being in every kind merciful after their power, as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all men.
To their bodies, of the abilities to which God giveth, by giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting oo helping them that are sick or in prison.
By doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith, or groaning so to be; employing them preferably to others, buying one of another, helping each other in business.
By all possible diligence and frugality, that the gospel be not blamed.
By running with patience the race set before them, denying themselves, and taking up their cross daily; submitting to bear the reproach of Christ, to be as the filth and offscouring of the world; and looking that men should say all manner of evil of them falsely for the Lord’s sake.
Thirdly, by attending upon all the ordinances of God: such are,
The public worship of God.
The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded.
The supper of the Lord.
Family and private prayer.
Searching the Scriptures, and
Fasting or abstinence.
These are the general rules of our societies: all which we are taught of God to observe, even in His written Word, which is the only rule, and the sufficient rule, both of our faith and practice. And all these we know the Spirit writes on truly awakened hearts.

I have retained the italics exactly as they appear in the Book of Rules because I want my readers to observe where the early Methodists lay the stress. The most prevalent sins as well as the virtues most lacking may easily be detected by noting the stressed words. John Wesley did not try to win people by compromising with them. The darling sins of the people were the very ones the Methodists attacked with greatest vigor and underscored for emphasis.

Those early Methodists believed in the power of the gospel to set men free from sin. Justification, the judicial act of God whereby He remits penalty and declares the believer free, was understood and taught clearly by the Wesleys. Justification by faith was as important in the teaching of the Methodists as it had been in that of the Lutherans. In the 1849 edition of the Methodist hymn book, twenty eight hymns are listed under “Justification by Faith.” Sang Charles Wesley:

Jesus, the Lamb of God, hath bled:
He bore our sins upon the tree;
Beneath our curse He bowed His head—
‘Tis finished! He hath died for me.
See, where before the throne He stands,
And pours the all-prevailing Prayer;
Points to His side and lifts His hands,
And shows that I am graven there.

and again:

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, with all in Him, is mine !
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
And claim the crown through Christ, my own.

These, along with the rhapsodic psalm of faith, “Arise, My Soul, Arise,” and a host of others celebrate the glorious truth of justification by faith. And immediately following these, as we might have guessed, come twenty one hymns marked “Adoption and Assurance.” No legalism do we find here, but abounding confidence in the completed work of Christ on the cross and full and restful trust in His present mediatorial work as our great High Priest.

In this the Wesleys were in lineal descent from the apostles, through the Church Fathers and the Reformers, and in teaching this they taught only what is taught by every evangelical today—yet how great and how wide is the gulf that separates us from them!

To the Wesleys faith was a creative force, and the faith that justified also transformed. The grace that saved also wrought within to make the returning sinner clean. Faith and grace were not merely doctrinal: they were morally potent. They worked.

Here is the breakdown in modern evangelicalism: the tragic failure to close the gap between doctrine and life. The early Methodists were saved by faith that works and we try to be saved by a faith without works. The sanctifying element is missing from our present-day evangel.

Let any man rise to deny this, and I merely point to his own congregation, and to the one up the street, and to the one I call “mine,” and to the one in the next town and in the bordering state. His defense must surely go down before the overwhelming evidence.

CHAPTER 5: “Crows and Methodist Preachers”

IN THE EARLY DAYS OF METHODISM in America the wilderness was yet unconquered; highways were poor and few in the East, and in the West totally unknown.

When a man set out to travel any distance on horseback or afoot in those rough times, he was altogether on his own. He challenged nature in the raw and took on savage Indians, roaring floods, bitter, numbing cold, wild beasts and unknown dangers—with a human dwelling dotting the vastness here or there, it’s true, but perhaps a day’s journey between one habitation and the next.

But throughout the South and Middle West the people lived, the people for whom Christ had died, in isolated towns and tiny villages that somehow grew up amid the towering mountains or on the broad expanse of plains. And where the people were, there the Methodist preachers went.

In those days a proverb was often heard on the lips of the American farmer and woodsman, a proverb that had in it a lot of the salt of derision but a great deal of sly admiration too, and it tells us more than many pages of prose could do. When the weather had closed in to ice-lock the little streams, to drive the beasts to whatever shelter they could find and force even the hardy outdoorsman to sit for a time by his crackling fireplace—then the proverb became a kind of good-natured excuse for staying inside. “The weather isn’t fit for man nor beast,” they said. “There’s nothing stirring out there but crows and Methodist preachers.”

The Methodist preacher for the first 100 or more years from the founding of the United Societies in the middle of the eighteenth century was a phenomenon hardly matched anywhere since the days of the apostles. In his single-minded devotion to Christ, his robust love for humankind, his joy, his lean courage and his willingness to suffer, he stands very much alone in the annals of evangelical endeavor.

In writing of him one is tempted to compare him to religionists of other periods, but always the parallel breaks down. He knew something, for instance, of the poverty of the monastic orders, but his poverty was not the result of an arbitrary vow gratuitously taken. Instead it came naturally as the price he paid for the joy of preaching to the common people who could not afford to pay him enough to enable him to live even reasonably well.

Those who charge that religion is a racket promoted by the clergy for financial gain will have a hard time explaining those Methodist preachers. Says the Book of Discipline published in 1848, “The annual allowance of a married bishop shall be two hundred dollars and his traveling expenses. The annual allowance of an unmarried bishop shall be one hundred dollars and his traveling expenses.” The traveling preacher got the same as the bishop, and as an added emolument he was allowed the sum of sixteen dollars a year for each child up to the age of seven, and after that each one received twenty four dollars until he or she was eighteen. After that, nothing. Of the hundreds of preachers who worked for a living and preached for the joy of it, nothing is said. No, the Methodist preacher was not a beggar, but he would surely have made more money begging than he did preaching.

One is tempted also to compare the early Methodist preacher with the preaching friar or the religious troubadour such as Richard Rolle, but again there is no true comparison. Those men lived extreme, unnatural lives, sworn to celibacy, while the Methodist preacher was usually a family man, more often than not with a large brood of healthy children. Indeed, it is a matter of simple history that many of our greatest leaders in the fields of religion, education and statesmanship came out of the Methodist parsonage.

To become a preacher in the Methodist Societies a man had to run an obstacle course and clear a series of hurdles so high as instantly to disqualify all but the best. Not much was said about educational advantages to begin with, though the minister was required to study and read constantly. “Contract a taste for reading,” said the Rules, “or return to your former employment.” Spiritual qualifications were indispensable. The preacher above all else must know God. Whatever else he might lack, he must be deeply experienced in “personal religion.”

The rules of the Society were few and simple, but they served as a screen to remove the chaff from the wheat. And it should be remembered that it was not enough to nod acquiescence to the questions asked at ordination. Should the preacher neglect his spiritual duties, he answered to his brethren for it, and if his breach of faith was flagrant or long continued he was quietly dismissed from the conference.

Here are the “Rules for a Preacher’s Conduct” which every Methodist preacher had to read and keep or be put out. This list was put together for convenience, though it does not quite cover everything. Other rules are scattered here and there among the general rules and regulations of the Societies.

Be diligent. Never be unemployed: never be triflingly employed. Never trifle away time: neither spend any more time at any place than is strictly necessary.

Be serious. Let your motto be, Holiness to the Lord. Avoid all lightness, jesting, and foolish talking.

Converse sparingly, and conduct yourself prudently with women.

Take no step toward marriage without first consulting your brethren.

Believe evil of no one without good evidence; unless you see it done, take heed how you credit it. Put the best construction on everything. You know the judge is always supposed to be on the prisoner’s side.

Speak evil of no one; because your word especially would eat as doth a canker. Keep your thoughts within your own breast, till you come to the person concerned.

Tell every one under your care what you think wrong with his conduct and temper, and that lovingly and plainly as soon as may be: else it will fester in your heart. Make all haste to cast the fire out of your bosom.

Avoid all affectation. A preacher of the gospel is a servant of all.

Be ashamed of nothing but sin.

Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time. And do not mend our rules, but keep them; not for wrath but for conscience’ sake.

You have nothing to do but to save souls; therefore spend and be spent in this work. Observe! it is not your business only to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society; but to save as many as you can; to bring as many sinners as you can to repentance, and with all your power to build them up in holiness without which they cannot see the Lord. And remember!—a Methodist is to mind every point, great and small, in the Methodist Discipline. Therefore you will need to exercise all the sense and grace you have.

Act in all things not according to your own will, but as a son in the gospel. As such, it is your duty to employ your time in the manner in which we direct: in preaching and visiting from house to house; in reading, meditation and prayer.

Be sure never to disappoint a congregation. Begin at the time appointed. Let your whole deportment be serious, weighty, and solemn. Always suit your subject to your audience. Choose the plainest texts you can. Take care not to ramble, but keep to your text and make out what you take in hand. Take care of anything awkward or affected, either in your gesture, phrase or pronunciation. Do not usually pray extempore above eight or ten minutes (at most) without intermission.

Under another head, “The Duty of Preachers to God, Themselves, and One Another,” further rules are laid down. Here are some:


How shall a preacher be qualified for his charge? By walking closely with God, and having His work greatly at heart: and by understanding and loving discipline, ours in particular. As preachers: have you thoroughly considered your duty? And do you make a conscience of executing every part of it? Do you steadily watch against the world? Yourself? Your besetting sin? Do you deny yourself every useless pleasure of sense? Imagination? Are you temperate in all things! Do you eat more at each meal than is necessary? Are you not heavy or drowsy after dinner? Wherein do you take up your cross daily? Do you cheerfully bear your cross, however grievous to nature, as a gift of God, and labor to profit thereby? Do you endeavor to set God always before you? To see His eye continually fixed upon you? Never can you use these means but a blessing will ensue. And the more you use them, the more you will grow in grace.

Reared as most of us have been in an evangelical freedom that is but another name for license, the rules and exhortations of the old Methodists may appear unnecessarily severe. But good fruit grows only on good trees, and the fruit of early Methodism was good—so good indeed that after the passing of two centuries ministers of every denomination point to it as a worthy example of what Christianity can do for men who take it seriously. We sing the hymns of those Methodist preachers and point up our sermons with anecdotes from their lives, but we are not ready to follow them in practice. We criticize them for their narrowness, but they had power and we do not.

Luxury, languor and levity characterize too many of us evangelical preachers today. The Methodist preacher, for his life of hardness and self-sacrifice, was once likened to the crow. I wonder how many of us preachers today have earned such an honor.

CHAPTER 6: Disciples Indeed

JOHN WESLEY AND HIS METHODISTS understood the meaning of discipleship as we do not today. To be a Christian was to be a disciple of Christ, and a disciple must voluntarily accept discipline.

This was to them a perfectly logical and obvious truth, and the application of that truth caused the early Methodists to stand out from ordinary nominal Christians as bright as stars in a dark sky.
The application of discipline to the Methodist Societies was simple as it was strict. The local church was divided into classes of about twelve members and over each class a leader was appointed whose duty it was

I. To see each person in his class once a week at least; in order

1. To inquire how their souls prosper.
2. To advise, reprove, comfort, or exhort, as occasion may require.

These groups were sometimes broken down into still smaller “bands” which met at intervals to examine their hearts before each other. “To speak freely and plainly, the true state of our souls, with the faults we have committed in tempers, words, or actions.” Among the questions they asked each other were these:

Has no sin, inward or outward, dominion over you? Do you desire to be told of your faults? Do you desire to be told of all your faults, and that plain and home? Is it your desire and design to be on this and all other occasions entirely open, so as to speak without disguise, and without reserve? What known sins have you committed since our last meeting? What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?

In this way they probed to the heart of each professing Christian. “Do you desire that in doing this, we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?”

No one, however, needed to submit himself to such scrutiny, Should a member resent these searching questions he had but to leave the assembly. If it became evident that a member was habitually harboring unconfessed and unforsaken sin he was quietly dismissed. That there were many such is revealed by the “quarterly meeting,” the rules of which provided for the public reading of the names of such as had been dismissed from membership since the last report. “We will admonish him of the error of his ways,” said the Rules; “we will bear with him for a season. But if then he repent not, he hath no more place among us. We have delivered our souls.”

Compare this with the brassy independence and moral license of our present-day evangelical churches and it may become clear why the early Methodists rocked the world and we are too feeble to make our influence felt across the street or even next door.

The general level of the church is so low now that it is impossible for a local church to exercise moral discipline. However deeply the pastor may grieve over the evils practiced by his people, there is not spiritual solidarity enough in the church to enable him to do anything about it. Ties of family and friendship are so strong that were a carnal and self-willed member to be called to account for his deeds, great numbers would quit the church in protest. Personal friendship is more real and more important than the communion of saints.

The result is that we try to do by preaching what the New Testament church and the Methodists did by discipline. We urge our people to pray that “a mighty Holy Ghost revival” may sweep in and correct the abuses within the church, when it is perfectly evident from the Scriptures that these abuses must be corrected before the revival can come.

How did we get into such a fix? Well, there are many causes, but here is an effort to trace some of them in fairly recent history.

A short generation ago there sprang up in fundamentalist and “full gospel” circles a movement which for want of a better name I have called “tabernacleism.” In spite of its having little organization and almost no intellectual content, it had and is still having a powerful influence over the evangelical church in America.

As with almost all religious movements it represented a reaction from empty formalism along with a hunger for a spiritual reality which the drowsy denominational churches were not providing. The springs of the movement were not all pure, for there was discernible more than a little carnal ambition and lust for power among its promoters. It varied from itself almost as much as from the sleepy churches it sought to displace, running the diapason all the way from hyperdispensational believism to an irresponsible, squalling pentecostalism. Tabernacleism, with its questionable morals and its engrossment with carnal religious feelings, bore not remote resemblance to the New Testament church.

There were, nevertheless, certain factors present in it wherever it was found that marked it as being all of one piece. The new barn-type tabernacle that sprang up on the corner in any city was sure to be a revolt from ecclesiastical authority, an effort to escape the multiplying church dues and the multicolored offering envelopes of the old-line denominations. That the new “pastor-evangelist-founder” of the independent tabernacle could extract more legal tender from his congregation in one evening than the old church had been able to do in one year never seemed to occur to anyone. The pastor-evangelist, often a layman as ignorant of church history as of Christian theology, assured everyone that this was indeed a return to the freedom and simplicity of the new Testament church. Other marks of identification were a constant attack upon religious ritual and the substitution of an uncomely and pitifully amateurish “order” of service in its place.

Add to this the long-drawn-out sermon filled with coarse humor, self-centered stories and a meaningless repetition of emotion-triggered words and phrases; add the rapid singing of cheap, fifth-rate songs devoid of musical beauty and theological content to the accompaniment of a converted hand-saw, a saxophone or a one-man band; add dubious financial transactions, a constant denunciation of churches, and worse still, an abysmal ignorance of the New Testament doctrine of the church; add a conceited spirit of independence that must perpetually boast of itself, and you have tabernacleism at its worst.

At its best the movement was, as I have said, a search for spiritual realities, and without doubt many a simple tabernacle group was a true apostolic church in lineal descent from Pentecost.

What I deplore is that the unworthy elements in tabernacleism have managed to perpetuate and extend themselves until they have permanently injured the religious fiber of the evangelical mind.

Without being aware of it we have gone through an experience tantamount to brainwashing. Our spiritual philosophy has become warped, our sense of belonging has gone from us, we recognize no authority, obey no rules, take no vows, are almost altogether undisciplined and feel no sense of loyalty. The idea that a local church could call us to account for our deeds would arouse humor or anger if declared openly before the average congregation today.

One reason for this attitude may be that we pastors have not been able to prove our moral right to command. Our people know us too well; they golf with us, fish with us and exchange humorous (and sometimes soiled) stories with us, but they see no oil on our heads and smell no ointment on our garments. If we then preach in a manner to offend them they simply go six blocks uptown and join another group with no questions asked.

Anyway, it is my sober conviction that ninety five percent of present-day evangelicals would have been rejected if they had applied for membership in the Methodist Society as it existed 150 years ago. We are simply not godly enough. Our brand of Christianity would not have passed the test of simple goodness imposed by those amazing Methodists.

To me this is a tragedy too great to estimate now. Only eternity will reveal how tragic it is.