In a foreword to Dr. Leli`vre's biography, the illustrious DR. DE PRESSENSE writes:-" Wesley gave the most magnificent start (le plus magnifique élan) to the missionary movement-for it was a true mission which he undertook with Whitefield in so-called Christian lands. I know nothing more admirable than that ardent, tireless propaganda, in both worlds, holding multitudes on the lips of those true apostles, who, to use the expression of William Arthur, bore with them truly a ' Tongue of Fire,' and, in the century of Voltaire and of Bolingbroke, brought back true Pentecosts. They were the initiators of a general awakening, which has been produced in all Protestantism. The dry bones were reanimated by their voice, which has been heard in all the earth."

This pronouncement, by a great church historian, is of special value, as acknowledging, with emphasis, the presence and power of the new dynamic which came into the experience of the Wesleys and their coadjutors at their Pentecost. This was its distinguishing characteristic; this was the secret of the spiritual and moral quickening, cleansing, and renewal of myriads— ultimately of many millions-of men and women, in many lands; this, therefore, is surely a vindication. of the transcendent importance of what came to pass on May 24, 1738. It meant a new, a fuller spiritual life, in more than two continents; it meant a new ethic, constraining to a new devotion to the service of man; it meant the initiation, and the permanent inspiration, of the great philanthropies that are so familiar in our day, but were, till then, so largely unknown. Greek wisdom, Roman law, with their intellectual insight, their practical sagacity, were

powerless to prevent the old, rotting world from going to its doom; a petrified Christianity, in the Middle Ages, and again in later times, served too often as the shelter, if not the sanction, of the grossest vice. It was the Ethic of Salvation, in the days of Paul, of Luther, of Wesley, that held new hope for mankind.

II. THE TESTIMONY CONSEQUENT ON THE GREAT SPIRITUAL CRISIS

Among the consequences of that great experience in Wesley's spiritual history which we have been studying, must be noted first of all his speedy reappearance at Oxford.

1. A NEW Manifesto of THE OXFORD PULPIT.

Wesley was shut out from one London pulpit after another, but he was still Fellow of Lincoln, and was not as yet debarred from delivering his testimony in St. Mary's, the University Church. He preaches there within three weeks of the Pentecostal crisis (June 11), from the text,' By grace are ye saved through faith' (Eph. ii. 8). In his Journal,' he barely mentions the visit, saying nothing about the sermon. But, as the Editor of the Journal' says, "It was his first publication after his conversion "-referring to the sermon as subsequently printed-" and a great manifesto." It stands first among his published Sermons.

'

In his sermon, Wesley asks, What faith it is through which we are saved; what is the salvation which is through faith. After tracing the meaning of the word 'faith' through its various stages, he defines the faith of Christian experience, as, "not only an assent

to the whole Gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ; a trust in the merits of His life, death, and resurrection; a recumbency upon Him as our atonement and our life, as given for us, and living in us; and, in consequence hereof, a closing with Him, and cleaving to Him, as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,' or, in one word, our salvation." Similarly he traces the meaning of the word 'saved,' defining it first as including salvation from the guilt of the past, with its attendant fear; in the one case, through our justification, by reason of the atonement of Christ, and in the other, through our adoption, of which an assurance is borne to our heart by the Spirit. But he is careful to show that this salvation means, equally, our being saved from the power of sin, initially in that new birth which accompanies our adoption, and subsequently in the daily sanctification of all our doings, of all our desires. In this insistence upon the equality of sanctification by faith with justification by faith, Wesley is to some extent in advance of Luther, who does indeed teach the complete, or 'full' salvation, as Wesley was afterwards accustomed to express it, but not with the same clearness of definition.

Wesley was soon in the full stream of his evangelistic work, which went on with accelerating energy for more than fifty years. This work was the practical test of his principles, and, it may be said, their complete vindication.

He preached again at St. Mary's on July 25, 1741 ; and yet once more on Aug. 24, 1744. Under the latter date he writes: "Fri. 24 (St. Bartholomew's Day).—I preached, I suppose the last time, at St.

Mary's. Be it so. I am now clear of the blood of these men. I have fully delivered my own soul."

No

One of the most recent tributes to the value of Wesley's ministry comes from Oxford. In Oman's History of England (Methuen and Co.), the writer of Vol. VI., England under the Hanoverians' (PRINCIPAL C. GRANT ROBERTSON), says: "John Wesley's movement merits the abused epithet of epoch-making. Methodism and the French Revolution are the two most tremendous phenomena of the century. Wesley swept the dead air with an irresistible, cleansing ozone. To thousands of men and women his preaching and gospel revealed a new heaven and a new earth; it brought religion into soulless lives, and reconstituted it as a comforter, an inspiration, and a judge. one was too poor, too humble, too degraded, to be born again, and share in the privilege of divine grace, to serve the one Master Christ, and to attain the blessed fruition of God's peace." The author goes on to say: "Aloof alike from politics and the speculations of the schools, Wesley wrestled with the evils of his day, and proclaimed the infinite power of a Christian faith, based on personal conviction eternally renewed from within, to battle with sin, misery, and vice in all its forms. The social service that he accomplished was not the least of his triumphs. At a time when Bishop Butler asserted that Christianity was wearing out of the minds of men, Wesley kept the English people Christian, and shamed the Church that closed her pulpits to him into imitating his spirit, if not his methods. It is certain that into the moral fibre of the English people, even into the classes most anxious to repudiate the debt, were woven new strands

by the abiding influence of Methodism." Thus does the Oxford Fellow of to-day bear testimony to the spiritual value and ethical result of the teaching and preaching of the one-time Oxford Fellow of two centuries ago.

After the cleansing fires of the Revival had been burning for a year, they broke into a larger blaze with the open-air preaching, into which Wesley was drawn, with many misgivings, but in which he achieved his greatest triumphs. He began at Bristol, in April 1739, and the congregations numbered many thousands. This was too much for Butler (whose 'Sermons on Human Nature' had been published in 1726, and his 'Analogy of Religion' in 1736); and, being at that time Bishop of Bristol, he summoned Wesley to answer for his doings. There was a strange irony in the situation. The greatest English exponent, perhaps, of moral science is face to face with the greatest English shepherd of souls, and endeavours to hush his voice, to stop his regenerating work! They argue with each other, the discussion turning on the reality, the legitimacy, of those great principles which had lately been vindicated in Wesley's experience, and were now being vindicated in the- experience of multitudes. Butler asks, “Sir, what do you mean by faith?" Wesley replies, “My lord, by justifying faith I mean a conviction, wrought in a man by the Holy Ghost, that Christ hath loved him and given Himself for him, and that through Christ his sins are forgiven." Butler: "I believe some good men have this, but not all. But how do you prove this to be the justifying faith taught by our Church?" Wesley: "My lord, from her Homily on Salvation." Wesley quotes from that