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and Bolingbroke were to be convinced of the truth of Christianity, it must have been by men of very different intellectual calibre from that of George Whitefield.

But Whitefield's intimacy with the great did not in the least detract from his love for the poor; he was just as ready to sympathise with them, and just as anxious to do good to their souls after he had come from Lady Huntingdon's drawing-room, or from a call on Lord Bolingbroke, as he was when he first taught the Kingswood outcasts that there was one large-hearted man at least who cared for their souls.

To the same defects of intellect and education which led Whitefield to flatter the nobility we must attribute other blemishes in his character. He was not only an advocate of slavery, but himself a slave-owner, and he writes about the introduction of slaves and rum into Georgia as if it really were a sort of missionary work.' The arguments by which he justifies slavery are utterly fallacious, but they were no doubt thoroughly convincing to his own mind. As to the lawfulness of keeping slaves,' he writes, I have no doubt, since I hear of some that were bought with Abraham's money, and some that were born in his house. And I cannot help thinking that some of those servants mentioned by the apostles in their epistles were or had been slaves. It is plain that the Gibeonites were doomed to perpetual slavery, and though liberty is a sweet thing to such as are born free, yet to those who never saw the sweets of it slavery perhaps may not be so irksome. However this be, it is plain to demonstration that hot countries cannot be cultivated without negroes.' It is true that the advocacy of slavery did not then imply the same degree of moral insensibility as it would necessarily

of the nobility. In the morning, the Earl of Chesterfield was present. Lord C. thanked me, and said, "Sir, I will not tell you how much I approve of you." In the evening, Lord Bolingbroke was present. All behaved quite well, and were in some degree affected. Lord Bolingbroke was much moved, and desired I would come and see him next morning. I did; and his lordship behaved with great candour and frankness,' &c.-Letters, vol. ii. 170.

1 'I believe God will take Georgia into his own hands. . . . The use of rum was granted, but the use of slaves denied. Let us stand still, be instant in prayer, and we shall certainly see the salvation of God.' Written in March, 1751.-See

Whitefield's Letters, vol. ii. p. 404.

argue at the present day,' but there were many, even in Whitefield's time,2 John Wesley among the number, who thoroughly appreciated the unchristian character of the system. It was no want of benevolence which led Whitefield to sanction the odious custom: he was always kind to his slaves, and anxious to promote their spiritual welfare; as, indeed, he was to promote that of every human being with whom he ever came into contact. His mistake simply arose from a want of delicacy of moral perception. One more specimen of the same sort of obtuseness may be noted. During his last visit to Georgia, he held an anniversary at his Orphan House, for which he himself composed a speech, which was to be recited by one of the orphans. In that speech the boy was instructed to refer to the 'indefatigable industry, unparalleled disinterestedness, and unwearied perseverance of its reverend founder.' A man with any sort of perception of the fitness of things could never have written thus of himself, unless he was inordinately vain. This Whitefield assuredly was not, but he was sadly wanting in intellectual delicacy.

It has been a thankless task to have dwelt so long upon the weaknesses of a thoroughly good man; but it seemed necessary both to vindicate the character of one of the chief leaders of the Evangelical revival from imputations to which the mere enumeration of his errors without explaining also the extenuating circumstances might have justly exposed him; and necessary also in order to do justice to some of his opponents, who were not enemies to Christianity, though

1 Bishop Butler argues with charming simplicity, in a sermon on the anniversary of S.P.G. in 1738-9, If the necessity of the case requires that slaves may be treated with the very utmost rigour that humanity at all permits, as they certainly are; and for our advantage, made as miserable as they well can be in the present world; this surely heightens our obligations to put them into as advantageous a situation as we are able with regard to another.' Even the gentle and humane James Hervey gave to Whitefield, as a parting gift, a slave. When you please to demand,' he wrote, 'my brother will pay you 30l. for the purchase of a negro. And may

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the Lord Jesus Christ give you, or rather take for himself, the precious soul of the poor slave!' The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was itself a slaveholder.

2

* The Trustees of the Georgian Colony interdicted the introduction of slaves. General Oglethorpe said, 'Slavery is against the gospel as well as against the fundamental law of England.'-See Tyerman's Life of Whitefield, i. 14.

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they were enemies to this eloquent and disinterested but somewhat rash and injudicious champion of it. But Whitefield's faults were all faults of his head, not of his heart; considering what his training had been, the only wonder is that he did not fall into more. He would have done, had it not been for the many noble qualities which counterbalanced his errors. He was a true Christian hero, a man of boundless benevolence, a man to whom justice was never done by the great body of his contemporaries. He was worthy of the eulogy which one of his many spiritual sons passed upon him. 'I never,' wrote James Hervey,' 'beheld so fair a copy of our Lord, such a living image of the Saviour, such exalted delight in God, such steady faith in the divine promises, such fervent zeal for the divine glory. And all this without the least moroseness of humour or extravagance of behaviour, but sweetened with most engaging cheerfulness of temper, and regulated by all the sobriety of reason and wisdom of Scripture. Many sons have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.' A still nobler and more enduring monument to the memory of this much maligned spiritual hero was raised by the great Christian poet of the century. Burning with indignation at the treatment which Whitefield had received from his contemporaries, Cowper wrote those famous lines, which, often quoted as they have been, are yet worth quoting once again as a fitting conclusion to the sketch of him who was emphatically the orator of the Evangelical revival :

Leuconomus (beneath well-sounding Greek

I slur a name a poet must not speak)
Stood pilloried on infamy's high stage,
And bore the pelting scorn of half an age;
The very butt of slander, and the blot

For every dart that malice ever shot.

The man that mention'd him at once dismiss'd
All mercy from his lips, and sneer'd and hiss'd.
His crimes were such as Sodom never knew,
And perjury stood up to swear all true;
His aim was mischief, and his zeal pretence,
His speech rebellion against common sense;

Quoted by Mr. Philip, Life of Whitefield, p. 349.

A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule,
And when by that of reason, a mere fool;

The world's best comfort was, his doom was pass'd,
Die when he might, he must be damn'd at last.

Now, Truth, perform thine office; waft aside
The curtain drawn by prejudice and pride,
Reveal (the man is dead) to wondering eyes
This more than monster in his proper guise.
He loved the world that hated him; the tear
That dropp'd upon his Bible was sincere-
Assail'd by scandal and the tongue of strife,
His only answer was a blameless life,
And he that forged and he that threw the dart
Had each a brother's interest in his heart.
Paul's love of Christ, and steadiness unbribed,
Were copied close in him, and well transcribed;
He followed Paul-his zeal a kindred flame,
His apostolic charity the same,

Like him, cross'd cheerfully tempestuous seas,
Forsaking country, kindred, friends, and ease;
Like him he labour'd, and, like him, content
To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went.
Blush, calumny! and write upon his tomb,
If honest eulogy can spare thee room,
Thy deep repentance of thy thousand lies,

Which, aim'd at him, have pierced the offended skies,
And say, Blot out my sin, confess'd, deplored,
Against thine image in thy saint, O Lord.

The individuality of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), the sweet psalmist of Methodism, is perhaps in some danger of being merged in that of his more distinguished brother. And yet he had a very decided character of his own; he would have been singularly unlike the Wesley family if he had not. Charles Wesley was by no means the mere fidus Achates, or man Friday, of his brother John. Quite apart from his poetry, the effects of which upon the early Methodist movement it would be difficult to exaggerate, he played a most important part in the revival. As a preacher, he was almost as energetic as John; and before his marriage he was almost as effective an itinerant. His elder brother always spoke

of the work which was being done as their joint work; 'my brother and I' is the expression he constantly used in describing it.'

As a general rule, the two brothers acted in complete harmony; but differences occurred sometimes, and, when they did, Charles Wesley showed that he had a very decided will of his own, and he could generally make it felt. For instance, in 1744, when the Wesleys were most unreasonably suspected of inclining to Popery, and of favouring the Pretender, John Wesley wrote an address to the king, 'in the name of the Methodists;' but it was laid aside because Charles Wesley objected to any act which would seem to constitute them a sect, or at least would seem to allow that they were a body distinct from the National Church. Again, from the first, Charles Wesley looked with great suspicion on the bodily excitement which attended his brother's preaching, and it is more than probable that he helped to modify John Wesley's opinions on this subject. On the ordination question, Charles Wesley felt very strongly; he never fell in with his brother's views, but vehemently disapproved of his whole conduct in the matter. He would probably have interfered still more actively, but for some years before the ordination question arose he had almost ceased to itinerate, partly, Mr. Tyerman thinks, because he was married, and partly because of the feeling in many societies, and especially among many preachers, against the Church. In 1753, when John Wesley was dangerously ill, Charles Wesley distinctly told the societies that he neither could nor would stand in his brother's place, if it pleased God to take him, for he had neither a body, nor a mind, nor talents, nor grace, for it. In 1779, he wrote to his brother in terms as peremptory as John himself was wont to use, and such as few others would have dared to employ in addressing the founder of Methodism. 'The preachers,' he writes,' 'do not love the Church of England. When we are gone, a separation is inevitable. Do you not wish to keep as many good people in the Church as you can? Something might be done now to save the remainder, if only you had resolution, and would stand by me as firmly as I 1 See Memoirs of the Rev. C. Wesley, by Thomas Jackson, passim. 2 See Tyerman's Life of John Wesley, vol. iii. p. 310.

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