The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1870-09-30
II II It PR ESS
Friday Morning, September 80. 1870.


of Whiteield for the thirty years preceding
his death. The first founder of what is now
a mighty sect, was John Wesley, then fel-
low of Lincoln College at Oxford University,
who in 1929, became impressed with the fact
that the religion of the times had degenerated
from heart felt belief into a cold Journalism,
as would be the natural consequence OF an
established church supported by the law and
tthe-rates instead of the hearts and free-will
offerings of its members. Accordingly he
and his brother Charles and two other cole
gans organized evening prayer meetings to
which others were from time TO time admit
ted, being Joined in two or three years by
George Whitefjeld, then near his majority. In
1850 they numbered fourteen. They were
called Methodists. not as a term of rcproach,
hut on account Of their methodical arrange
l1ent and improvement OF their time. This
small gathering was broken up by the de-
parture Of the Wesleys for Georgia, but they
renewed their labors on their return to Lon
don in 1873, and as before, evidenced the sin
certify Of their faith by the purity of their
lives, and by their works, visiting and minis
terng unto those who were sick or in prison
or afflicted. Driven from the pulpits of me-
troeoltan churches the Wesleys preached in
the open spaces of the city, in its cemeteries,
and the fields OF lis suburbs, SO that every
where the gospel was preached. The imme-
date result Of their faithful admonitions was
great awakening" upon the subject of re-
lgion, and the adhesion of thousands of fol-
lowers whom in the next year they began 10
erect into local associations or societies, the
only condition of admission being "a desire
to flee from the wrath to come and be saved
from SIM" Rules of conduct were drawn up
by the Wesleys prohibiting profanity, drunk
enness, litigious spirit and other prevalent
vices, and enjoning ''the doing good of every
possible sort as lar as possible to all men,"
enumerating some of the more prominent,
c,mmon, yet different obligations. Encour.
rlged by their success the " esleys went every
where throughout the kingdom preaching the
glad tidinss of great joy and were every
where favorably received. 5-
But the great apostle of religious liberty
was Whiteiie!d, whose eloquence has found no
parallel. In this country where the people
were growing FESTIVE under the power of the
English crown their attachment for the es-
tablished church, so closely connected with
the State and devoted to royalty, was proper.
tionately weakened and they were prepared
to receive favora5ly the doctrines of preachers
who were not imposed upon them against
their will. Here Whitefcld passed nearly
half of his mature lie and here are seen the
greatest fruits of his labors and those of his
coadjutors. From the three or four who first
gathered in the Wesley's room in Oxford,
there are now over million Methodists in
the British Dominions and Including every
shade of opinion of COLOR nearly three times
that number in the United States. Those
few young, ardent English students were the
germ of mighty growth; they were the
handful of corn in the earth on the top of
the mountain, and lo the fruit of it shakes
like Lebanon" Tracing back this impulse a
step father, however, we find that John
Wesley was led to devote himself to his work
by perusal of claws "Cal to Holy Life !"
then just published; SO that Methodsm found
its origin in the closet ofthe student before it
did its champion in the pulpit The vast
consequences, so directly traceable to this es-
say of Laws, reminds US of Miton's language
in his plea for freedom of the press "Books
are not absolutely dead things but do contain
progeny Of lille in them to be as active as
that soul was whose progeny they are; nay,
they do preserve as ina vial the purest effica-
cy and extraction of that lively intellect that
bred them. l know they are as live
ly and as vigorously productive as
those fabulous dragons teeth ard,
being sown up and down, may chance to
spring up armed men. AS good almost
kill a man as kill good book; who kills a
man kills reasonable creature, Gods image:
but he who destroys good book kills reason
itself, kills the image Of God, as it were, in the
eye. Many man lives a burden to the
earth; but good book, the precious life blood
of master spirit, embalmed and treasured
up on purpose to a life beyond life. 1t is true,
no age can restore life, whereof, perhaps,
there is no great loss; and resolutions of ages
do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth,
for the want of which whole nations fare the
worse. We should be wary, therefore, what
prosecutions we raise against the living labors
ofpublic men; how we spill that seasoned life
OF mar, preserved and stored up in books !;
since we see kind OF homicide may be thus
committed, sometimes martyrdon; and if it
extend to the whole impression, kind of
massacre, whereof the execution ends not in
the Staying an elemental life, but strikes at
the ETHEREAL and fifth essence, theIreath of
reason itself; "slays an Immortality rather
than a lifep When we reflect that, but for
Millions labors, public censor, a beneficiary
of the established Church, might have existed
to prohibit the publication of Laws book we
think we shall be pardoned for the length of
the extract we have made. To have destroy
Ell the manuscript of the "Cal to a Holy Life,''
would have indeed been to "slay an immor-
tality"-the immortal life of many precious
souls. Like a good soldier dying upon the
field of battle while the shouts of victory ring
in his ears, who desires to be buried upon the
spot his valor has immortalized, Whitefed
requested that his body might repose beneath
the pulpit of the old Federal street church in
Newburyport, whose sounding board and
walls had so often re-echoed the matchless
C ldences of his imprisoned eloquence. His
quest was complied with, and doubtless the
vivid recollection Of his life and labors has
thu, rar been preserved, and rendered
more beneficial than it otherwise would
have been, which is probably what he con-
templated when he made this UNUSUAL dispo-
siton of his remains. His last public address
was to the citizens of Newburyport on the ev-
cning of the twenty ninth day Of September,
ITO, and on the following day he died in that
city. A century later that event is to be to-
day commemorated by the children and the
children of those whose hearts he
liindled with holy love and zeal; and while,
with a joy and pride that is pure and dsinter-
ested, they can look back over these interven-
ing years as marked by a UNCONVENTIONAL
progression at least commensurate with the
national growth, we trust that the dry bones
of their old prophet will appear 10 them to be
again breathed upon by the Heavenly Spirit
and live for all the spiritual purposes to which
they were formerly devoted in urging on the
cause of religious liberty of thought and free
1om of action which found its most earnest
and efficient advocate in the eighteenth cen
,ury in him whose departure is this Cay re-
nembered in the church where his bones lie
.t,o ,Dot,,ra Of fboir orioin and tho