interest. It was an age whose
want of faith, coarseness, and brutality were well protrayed by
Hogarth's pencil and Fielding's pen.

For a long time intemperance had been steadily on the increase; strong
drink had taken the place of beer, and every attempt to restrict the
traffic was met at the elections by the popular cry, "No gin, no
king." The London taverns were thronged day and night, and in the
windows of those frequented by the lowest class placards were
exhibited with the tempting announcement, "Drunk for a penny; dead
drunk for twopence; clean straw for nothing." On the straw lay men and
women in beastly helplessness.

Among the upper classes matters were hardly better. It was a common
thing for great statesmen to drink at public dinners until one by one
they slid out of their seats and disappeared under the table; and Sir
Robert Walpole, the late Prime Minister of England (S534, 538), said
that when he was a young man his father would say to him as he poured
out the wine, "Come, Robert, you shall drink twice while I drink once,
for I will not permit the son in his sober senses to be witness of the
intoxication of his father."[1]

[1] Coxe's "Memoirs of Walpole" and Lecky's "England."

Such was the condition of England when a great religious revival
began, 1738. Its leader was John Wesley. A number of years earlier,
while a tutor at Oxford, he and his brother Charles, with a few
others, were accustomed to meet at certain hours for devotional
exercises. The regularity of their meetings, and of their habits
generally, got for them the name of "Methodists," which, like "Quaker"
and many another nickname of the kind, was destined to become a title
of respect and honor.

At first Wesley had no intention of separating from the Church of
England, but labored only to quicken it to new life; eventually,
however, he found it best to begin a more extended and independent
movement. The revival swept over England with its regenerating
influence, and was carried by Whitefield, Wesley's lifelong friend,
across the sea to America. It was especially powerful among those who
had hitherto scoffed at both Church and Bible. Rough and hardened men
were touched and melted to tears of repentance by the fervor of this
Oxford graduate, whom neither threats nor ridicule could turn aside
from his one great purpose of saving souls.

Unlike the Church, Wesley did not ask the multitude to come to him; he
went to them. In this