ry labor. John Wesley
has left on record, in his journal, his first repugnance to it,
"having," as he says, "been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious
of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought
the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church."
Charles Wesley, on this as on most other occasions, was even more
strongly conservative. The two brothers adopted their usual
superstitious practice of opening their Bibles at random, under the
belief that the texts on which their eyes first fell would guide them in
their decision. The texts were ambiguous and somewhat ominous, relating
for the most part to violent deaths; but on drawing lots the lot
determined them to go. It was on this slender ground that they resolved
to give the weight of their example to this most important development
of the movement. They went to Bristol, from which Whitefield was
speedily called, and continued the work among the Kingswood colliers and
among the people of the city; while Whitefield, after a preaching tour
of some weeks in the country, reproduced on a still larger scale the
triumphs of Kingswood by preaching with marvellous effect to immense
throngs of the London rabble at Moorfields and on Kennington Common.
From this time field-preaching became one of the most conspicuous
features of the revival.

The character and genius of the preacher to whom this most important
development of Methodism was due demand a more extended notice than I
have yet given them. Unlike Wesley, whose strongest enthusiasm was
always curbed by a powerful will, and who manifested at all times and on
all subjects an even exaggerated passion for reasoning, Whitefield was
chiefly a creature of impulse and emotion. He had very little logical
skill, no depth or range of knowledge, not much self-restraint, nothing
of the commanding and organizing talent, and, it must be added, nothing
of the arrogant and imperious spirit so conspicuous in his colleague. At
the same time a more zealous, a more single-minded, a more truly
amiable, a more purely unselfish man it would be difficult to conceive.
He lived perpetually in the sight of eternity, and a desire to save
souls was the single passion of his life. Of his labors it is sufficient
to say that it has been estimated that in the thirty-four years of his
active career he preached eighteen thousand times, or on an average ten
times a week; that these sermons were delivered