keep the Methodist movement within the borders of the Established
Church, he was to find that his personal view, if enforced, would hinder
the work which was so manifestly of God, and with his clear common sense
he at once gave way. During 1739 Lady Huntingdon had frequently heard
Thomas Maxfield pray, and, according to her biographer, it was at her
suggestion that he began to expound the Scriptures. Wesley had been
summoned from London, and no clergyman being available at that moment,
he left Maxfield in charge, to pray with the members of the society and
to give them such helpful advice as he could. In a letter to Wesley,
written either at the close of 1739 or the beginning of 1740, Lady
Huntingdon writes of Maxfield: "He is one of the greatest instances of
God's peculiar favour that I know: he is raised from the stones to sit
amongst the princes of His people. The first time I made him expound,
expecting little from him, I sat over against him and thought what a
power of God must be with him to make _me_ give any attention to him.
But before he had gone over one-fifth part, any one that had seen me
would have thought I had been made of wood or stone; so quite immovable
I both felt and looked. His power in prayer is quite extraordinary."

The border line between such expounding and preaching is very narrow,
and it is hardly to be wondered at that Maxfield soon found that he was
not only preaching, but doing so with the most true and certain warrant
of fitness for the office--souls were being born again under his
ministrations. On hearing such unexpected tidings, Wesley hurried back
to London, and entering his house next door to the Foundry with clouded
face, replied to his mother's question as to the cause, "Thomas Maxfield
has turned preacher, I find." Great was his surprise to receive the
rejoinder, "Take care what you do with respect to that young man, for he
is as surely called of God to preach as you are." Such testimony from
such a source could not fail to move John Wesley. He wisely heard for
himself, and expressed his judgment in the words of Scripture--"It is
the Lord: let Him do what seemeth Him good."

Thus Methodism passed through what might have been its first great
crisis. Thus it equipped itself to keep pace with the ever-increasing
claims of its work. The quick spiritual insight of Lady Huntingdon
recognised both the need and the fitness of the hitherto
unrecognised worker.

One of the first members