swood which burnt long and fiercely, and was destined
in a few years to overspread the land.

But for the simultaneous appearance of a great orator and a great
statesman, Methodism would probably have smouldered and at last perished
like the very similar religious societies of the preceding century.
Whitefield was utterly destitute of the organizing skill which could
alone give a permanence to the movement, and no talent is naturally more
ephemeral than popular oratory; while Wesley, though a great and
impressive preacher, could scarcely have kindled a general enthusiasm
had he not been assisted by an orator who had an unrivaled power of
moving the passions of the ignorant. The institution of field-preaching
by Whitefield in the February of 1739 carried the impulse through the
great masses of the poor, while the foundation by Wesley, in the May of
the same year, of the first Methodist chapel was the beginning of an
organized body capable of securing and perpetuating the results that had
been achieved.

From the time of the institution of lay preachers Methodism became in a
great degree independent of the Established Church. Its chapels
multiplied in the great towns, and its itinerant missionaries penetrated
to the most secluded districts. They were accustomed to preach in fields
and gardens, in streets and lecture-rooms, in market places and
churchyards. On one occasion we find Whitefield at a fair mounting a
stage which had been erected for some wrestlers, and there denouncing
the pleasures of the world; on another, preaching among the mountebanks
at Moorfields; on a third, attracting around his pulpit ten thousand of
the spectators at a race course; on a fourth, standing beside the
gallows at an execution to speak of death and of eternity. Wesley, when
excluded from the pulpit of Epworth, delivered some of his most
impressive sermons in the churchyard, standing on his father's tomb.
Howell Harris, the apostle of Wales, encountering a party of
mountebanks, sprang into their midst exclaiming, in a solemn voice, "Let
us pray," and then proceeded to thunder forth the judgments of the Lord.
Rowland Hill was accustomed to visit the great towns on market day in
order that he might address the people in the market place, and to go
from fair to fair preaching among the revelers from his favorite text,
"Come out from among them." In this manner the Methodist preachers came
in contact with the most savage elements of the popula