John Wesley

In the Great East Window of Liverpool Cathedral, Protestantism's "modern" cathedral par excellence, one panel, as is meet in a Te Deum window, is devoted to the Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets. Isaiah and Elijah are there, as are also St. Bernard and St. Francis; and the prophetic succession is continued in Cranmer, Butler , Keble, and Westcott. In this latter group, standing a little back as if doubtful whether the Anglican authorities really meant to include him, is John Wesley, father of the people called Methodists. The visitor in Liverpool who recalls Wesley's struggle with the Church of England in the eighteenth century may ask why the Establishment has now put John Wesley among the prophets. Cynics will quote old lines about the cities which claimed Homer dead, but more thoughtful men will take the appraisal seriously and will seek the reasons therefor both in John Wesley and in his times.

An obvious reason for setting John Wesley in "the goodly fellowship" is that his is one of the most numerous and influential movements inaugurated in Protestantism in modern times. One must, of course, remember, in making such a statement, that "modern times" do not really go back beyond the seventeenth century. While history must not be divided into neat chronological bundles, it was from the seventeenth century that the western world began to manifest the characteristics of the present era. In order to make clear the argument of this book, it will be well to look at this statement a little more closely.

The point is that the world of science, of the Industrial Revolution, and of the Romantic Movement is the modern world; and John Wesley's life and work lie within the boundaries of this period. That his movement is one of the largest arising in Protestantism in the modern era needs little proof. Statistics of Methodism show this, but they do not tell the whole of Methodist influence. To a large extent, evangelical Christianity has been moved, if not directly by Wesley or Methodism, at least by tendencies which owe much to him.

But mere contemporaneousness, although it may explain why John Wesley is modern, hardly justifies including him among the prophets. The latter term implies that he had a word for the modern world. And, indeed, the historian has before him the problem of the success of Methodism. Why did John Wesley's revival appeal to so large a number of people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? And why did Methodist theology come to be so widely adopted in English-speaking Christendom? These questions can only be answered by a study of the congruities of Methodism and the modern world. That is to say, Methodism cannot be understood merely by a study of its ancestry.

In the case of John Wesley another consideration must be given weight. It is unnecessary, at this late date, to insist upon his keenness of mind or upon the variety of his interests. But Wesley was a genius, and sometimes a genius is not best understood by those who stand closest to him. Frequently it requires the perspective of time for a right appreciation of a great man's mind. That Wesley was not entirely understood in his own day is evidenced by the opposition he met from some who, all agree now, were both wise and good. And even John Wesley's closest friends disagreed in their interpretations of his motives.

Yet the majority of Methodist preachers were equally positive that Wesley deliberately sought to set up, both in England and America , a Methodist Church . That such disagreements occurred can be no surprise to those who remember that John Wesley's mind had been open, for more than threescore years, to more diverse influences than that of any other Churchman in England .