n his own political
career, the upholding of his friends if they stood fast by him, and the
downfall of his enemies. Chesterfield was not exactly the sort of man
to be stirred into spiritual life. Morals were getting out of fashion
as much as religion. Society had all the grossness without much of the
wit which belonged to the days of the Restoration. Yet the mere fact
that the Wesleyan movement made such sudden way among the poor and the
lowly shows beyond question that the heart of the English people had
not been corrupted. Conscience was asleep, but it was not dead. The
first words of Wesley seemed to quicken it into a new life.

We have somewhat anticipated the actual course of events in order to
show at once what the Wesleyan movement came to. During the lifetime
of its founder it had grown into a great national and international
institution. Since his time it has been spreading and growing all over
the world where Christianity grows. It is the severest in {144} its
discipline of all the Protestant churches, and yet it exercises a charm
even over gentle and tender natures, and makes them its willing
servants, while it teaches the wilder and fiercer spirits to bend their
natures and tame their wild passions down. [Sidenote: 1738--The
Wesleyan work] In the United States of America Wesleyanism is now one
of the most popular and powerful of all the denominations of
Christianity. It has since been divided up into many sections, both
here and there, on questions of discipline, and even on questions of
belief; but in its leading characteristics it has been faithful to the
main purpose of its founder. Its success did not consist mainly in
what it accomplished for its own people; it achieved a great work also
by the impulse it gave to the Church of England. That Church for a
while seemed to be filled with a reviving spiritual and ministerial
activity. It appeared to take shame to itself that it had remained so
long apathetic and perfunctory, and it flung itself into competition
with the younger and more energetic mission. The English Church did
not indeed retain this mood of ardor and of eagerness very long. After
a time it relapsed into comparative inactivity; and a new and very
different movement was needed at a period much nearer to our own to
make it once again a ministering power to the people--to the poor. But
for the time the revival of the Church was genuine and was beneficent.
With the quickened re