ed
a very great effect. I confess I have not yet overcome the horror I felt
when I saw at the last election how night after night he spoke at
Northampton on behalf of Mr. Bradlaugh's candidature. Surely a
secularist can have no claim as such on the sympathies of a Christian
minister. Yet at Northampton Mr. Applebee laboured as if the success of
Mr. Bradlaugh were the triumph of Gospel truth, and as if in the pages of
the _National Reformer_ the working men, to whom it especially appeals,
might learn the way to life eternal. But Mr. Applebee is by no means
alone. In Stamford Street Chapel and in Islington you have what I
believe the Unitarians would consider still more favourable specimens of
aggressive Unitarianism.

CHAPTER X.
THE WESLEYAN METHODISTS.

Tertullian wrote in his apology, or rather in his appeal, to the heathen
persecutors on behalf of the Christians of his age, "We are but a people
of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belonging to
you--cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camps, your
tribes, companies, palaces, senates, forum. We leave you your temples
only. We can count your armies; our numbers in a single province will be
greater." The language was boastful, but it was founded on fact.
Wesleyan orators might indulge in a similar rhetorical flourish. In 1729
John Wesley returned to Oxford, intending to reside there permanently as
a tutor. He found that his brother Charles, then a student at Christ
Church, had, during his absence, and chiefly through his influence,
acquired views and feelings corresponding with his own, and had prevailed
on two or three young men to unite with him in receiving the Lord's
Supper weekly, and in cultivating strict morality in their conduct, and
regularity in their demeanour. "Here is a new set of Methodists sprung
up," said one. The name took at once, and was thenceforth applied
derisively to the little band. To this company John Wesley united
himself; and of it his ardour and his wonderful talent of organization
and for ruling his fellows soon made him the head. In the world's
history a hundred and thirty years is but a little while; the fathers and
founders of Wesleyan Methodism have as it were but recently passed away.
There may be some living now whose little eyes saw Wesley's body carried
to the grave in 1791, or whose young ears heard the last public
utterances of the dying saint. And now it appears from the
recen