By Fred Howell (Mow Cop, England)
If the England of today no longer resembles the England of the early part of the eighteenth century, it is mainly due to the life and labours of John Wesley –
so said a French observer, Mathew Lelievre, a hundred years after the Wesleyan Revival.
The Methodist Revival in the 18th Century has been aptly described as The Regeneration of England. Historians are agreed that it saved England from a “bloody revolution” like that a few miles away across the English Channel in France.
Similar conditions existed in both countries. In France, the philosopher Voltaire had caught the contagion of infidelity and introduced it into France. In England, too, another Reformation seemed to be necessary. The clergy were corrupt and lazy and often almost as ignorant as those in their congregations. Many were given to fox hunting and drunkenness. The poorer classes were ignorant and irreligious, and morality was at an all time low. In the gin shops it was:
Drunk for a penny, dead drunk and straw to lie on for tuppence [two pence]....
But, even in the darkest periods of history, God never leaves Himself without a witness.
In the Great Methodist Revolution or Revival, a number of things that can sometimes be overlooked may be seen on closer inspection:-
God in His providence is never at a disadvantage! He is always a “jump ahead” of His adversary, the devil. History, both biblical and secular, shows that God always has His man or men; whether it be a Moses, as a baby, rescued from the Nile; or a Wesley, as a child, rescued from a burning rectory in Lincolnshire; or a Gideon hiding behind the winepress, “the least in his father’s house” cf. Judges 6:15. It may be a “stripling”, named David, from the hillsides of Bethlehem keeping sheep, or a miner’s son in Germany, a monk named Martin Luther. God always has His man in preparation, both Jeremiah and Saul of Tarsus could say that “God had called them from the womb” (Jer. 1:5, Gal. 1:15).
God’s sovereignty and providence can be seen in the events of the Protestant Reformation and the Great Evangelical Awakenings that followed, as we view them from the vantage point of history. It seems more than a coincidence that the printing press, the acceleration of literacy, and the first “modern” Bible translators, Tyndale and Coverdale, should emerge at almost the same time as the glorious revelation that “the just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38). It came to a monk with a tortured conscience, seeking to find peace with God through fasting, flagellations, penances and pilgrimages, and by his own righteousness, to gain a place in the Kingdom of God.
God’s Providence and Sovereignty were running parallel with the Industrial Revolution, when the greatest religious revolution that the world had seen since the days of the apostles, began in the early eighteenth century. Surely it was in the economy of God that Britain was then changed from a rural and pastoral community. Thousands moved from hamlets and villages into the new industrial areas, due to the discoveries in steam and iron and the consequent building of railways and canals and the newest discoveries in engineering and science. At the same time, the British Empire expanded until “the sun never set” upon its many colonies. All these things combined to set the stage for the mightiest religious revolution that the world had known since Pentecost. Hardly a village or hamlet in the kingdom did not feel the impact of the Methodist “itinerants” who built their Bethel, Zoar and Ebenezer chapels.
John Wesley (JW), devout churchman that he was, had more than one revolution in his thinking and theology. Number one was his own personal, spiritual revolution when, in a little meeting with some Moravian Christians, he reluctantly went along to Aldersgate Street in London. When listening to the reading – Luther’s preface to the epistle to the Romans – he said,
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given to me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
Whilst no one could accuse him of being a “hot head” there was no doubt about his warmed heart; someone has observed “His heart was strangely warm but his head was strangely cool.”
This came when he was invited by George Whitfield to preach to the colliers at Kingswood in Bristol. High churchman that he was, at that time, to preach outside the established church and its consecrated confines was “unthinkable”. His thinking was changed when he saw rivulets made by tears streaming down the miners’ coal-blackened faces and there and then, “consented to become more vile” by becoming a despised “Field Preacher”. From that moment he became the greatest exponent of open air preaching that the world has ever seen, travelling more than a quarter of a million miles on horseback, preaching on average three times a day, turning untold thousands to Christ and a nation back to God.
Wesley had another radical change in his theology when Thomas Maxfield, a layman started to exhort the new converts in London. When JW heard of it, he came post-haste from Bristol to put a stop to “an unordained” man preaching. In the providence of God, his mother, Susannah, wisely intervened. On his arrival she perceived that “his countenance expressed dissatisfaction and anxiety”.
“Thomas Maxfield has turned preacher, I find”, he said with unusual abruptness.
“John”, she said, “you know what my sentiments have been. I do not favour readily anything of this kind, but take care what you do with respect to that young man for he is as surely called of God to preach as you are.“
JW perceived the reasonableness of that advice and the Local Preachers’ Revolution had begun. “It is the Lord” he said, “let Him do what seems to Him good.” A revolution indeed!!
House or Cell Groups are not quite so modern as some people think. John Wesley introduced them not long after his conversion in 1738 in the form of the Class or Band Meeting. Later it was claimed that the Methodist Class Meetingswere the keystones of Methodism and that they perpetuated the revival. While George Whitfield may have produced more converts, Wesley “conserved the fruit” by placing the converts into the hands of lay under-shepherds in groups of 10-12. JW revolutionised the Church of his day by his “cell group system”, 250 years before Paul Yonggi Cho put it into operation in Korea. We may hear of shepherding, covering, structures and cells etc. – but “there is nothing new under the sun”!
It may be noted, however, that the demise of the Class Meeting came about, in the words of one able commentator by “long prayers and threadbare testimonies”.
With all the new things that did come with the Methodist Revival, there were no new doctrines, only a re-emphasis on old truth. Just as Martin Luther did not originate Justification by Faith but simply uncovered the grand old truth that had always been there, buried away under the ecclesiastical rubble of centuries, so John Wesley came along and pronounced that all men can be saved and “know it”. He called it The Witness of the Spirit or Assurance. (Some of his earliest helpers were actually imprisoned for asserting that their sins were forgiven!) It was not a new doctrine. John, the apostle wrote about it at the start of the Christian era (1 John 5:13). Scriptural Holiness, which JW believed Methodism was raised up to emphasize, was not new, either.
“Methodism was born in song” is a statement found in the Methodist Hymnal. 6,000 hymns composed by JW’s brother, Charles, were filled with sound, theological truth. Every Revival has been accompanied by song. When the organ was a comparatively modern instrument and very few instruments were to found in their first chapels, the strains of music were heard from under the market crosses and village greens, as Wesley and his followers sang of their redemption, in Charles’ wonderful hymn – “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour’s blood”.
The Methodist Revival changed the face of England. Bad people were made good and good people better. It was said of Wesley and his followers that, when their hearers were converted, they put a Book in their hands and they were in the forefront of the educators of their day. Wesley was one of the first to recognize the value of the work of Robert Raikes of Sunday School fame. He spoke out, too, against the Slave Trade. The Trade Union movements came out of the Methodist Revival, and time was when Branch Meetings were opened with prayer. The Primitives added a great chapter, as pages from their history show, following the Lord Jesus in His example of preaching the “gospel to the poor”. The poor heard them gladly. Every revival has started amongst the poor -“not many noble, not many mighty are called cf. 1 Cor. 1:26. When the Church fails to reach the poorer classes it has failed indeed.
Such were some of the revolutions that affected Britain and elsewhere through the great Methodist Revival.
O, Lord, Do it Again! -
About The Author
Fred Howell (FH) is a veteran AoG-UK pastor in his 83rd year“enjoying reasonable health and still calling sinners to repentance at every opportunity.”While retaining a credential in Assemblies of God he strongly disagrees with the present emphasis of their hierarchy. He writes, “Your recent article [AoG & Elim Living in a Fool’s Paradise], with which I agree totally, stimulated me to send you this article, which I wrote some 25 or so years ago, at the time when “House Groups” had just come into vogue in AoG. It was nothing new. John Wesley did it 250 years earlier with his Methodist Class Meetings.” The original article was published in Redemption Tidings when Colin Whittaker was editor. Fred is married to Barbara. Together they have pastored and ministered for many years in the Potteries and other parts of England’s North West. They live in the Primitive Methodist heart land of Great Britain.
