The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1903-08-06
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
A BIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE BY
PRES. STRIKER. OF HAMILTON.


PRES. STRIKER. OF HAMILTON.
An Eloquent Tribute to John Wesley and
the Influence of His Preaching Stands
Out Supreme Above All Men of His
Age ms a Religious Leader.
New YORK CITY-Union services of
the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian and
Clinton Avenue Congregational churches
began Sunday morning in the edfice of the
ilrst named. The Rev. DR.. M. w. Stryker,
President OF Hamilton College, Clinton, n.
T., spoke on John Wesley" but used no
text. AS will be seen, he paid an eloquent
tribute to the influence of his preaching.
DIR. Stryker said:
ago, was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire
100 miles from London, and at about the
east centre of England man whose in
Huence stands out supreme above all the
men of his age. Eighty-eight years old, on
the I'd of March, 1871, he died. Thus his
life comprised nearly the whole of the
eighteenth century, and under God it was
the most fertilizing and redeeming agency
toward the moral forces and accomplish
ments of the nineteenth. And still the
world is debtor, and will ever be, to the
convictions and CONSIDERATIONS, the energies
and the efficiency of that one man-John
Wesley. A mighty impulse and potent
organization attested and attests his sin
guar and recreatlve purpose and achieve
ment. We may well reckon with such a
personality in considering the movement of
the modern world. Even the barest outline
records wonder and furnishes a corrective
to hundred superficial PHILOSOPHERS and
thousand shallow neglects. While Wes-
leyans and Methodists in all lands are recit-
ing that story, let us all, with them, who
oh l. G..
joice, ponder and hope. For the elements
Of it are as deep as the first principles of
the Christian religion, and the fame and
forces of it are the common possession of
all who hail the kingdom Of the Son of
God.
This man was born into home when
life in an age that hated anything more
than formal religion was exceptional The
mother that nurtured him was that Susan
nah Wesley of whom Adam Clark said that
he never saw her equal. His ancestry was
of that Puritan stock and stuff whose fiber
of conscience had affirmed the real Eng
land; its vigors and rigors had been super
coded by the. recrudescence of the livid
Stuarts, but, though ignored, it had not de-
again and bore it's second harvest
Wesley began his work in the Estab-
lished, and Episcopal Church, and though
by 1T he was soon despised and rejected he
loved it always and cherished its better
part; For two years he wrought in Geor-
gia, but the Grand Jury of that colony in
dlcted him. There he uttered that notable
word, L hope to learn the sense of the Cos
pei by preaching it, He came into close
touch with Moravians here and in Eu-
rope. Had that little body done nothing
else than directly to deepen and by it's re-
action to enlarge, John Wesley, it had done
mighty work But their narrowness he
escaped, while retaining their intensity.
Over the deep and critical experiences of
his inner heart, with its unusual combina-
ton OF sensitlveness and decision, we will
not pause. They were basal. In them he
found the Light he followed to the end.
See him at Oxford. He was a. student
intensely so. Specially and always of logic
and language. He found in these an ample
discipline; for language is organized
thought. An able master of five tongues,
ne learned compass and discrimination. In
his life he wrote or edited $50 volumes
At Oxford he was the centre of little
group Of which his brother Charles, and
soon Whitfield, were Others They began
to live by rule and made their protest and
example of pure life. They served God
by method--all of them at this time Jealous
and even th Ultra Ga Eplse9paliaps They
"Methodists." .Oppr. br..m easily finds de-
risive names. A hundred years, and more.
earlier this same devotion had been called
Puritan"
Consider that eighteenth century into
which they came. 1t was a feculent and
rrowdy age. Read Thackeray's ''Four
GeorgesD1read Lecky's! ample treatment
reign of ,Gleorge. II. must yield in real i'm
portance" to Methodism Hear Bishop
Butler Q736). ut is come to pass that
many assume Christianity to be purely ficti-
tIous and no longer a subject of inquiry
The general sentiment of the church was
benumbed, torpid, stagnant-dry essay ser
mons were the vogue; a languid and luke
Whatever molested it's sodden Indifferent
ism. Look into the cartoons of Hogarth
and see If the times he pictured did not
need the winds of God! Consider the We
neers OF Chesterfield and reckon if that
stilled and padded and fostering society
did not demand the breath of reality! Pub
lie life was debauched by the coarse and
rank corruption of the ministry of Robert
Walpole. 1t was Wesley more than all
others who reused a public conscience to
rally about the stern and aggressive hon
esty of Pitt-Pitt, who rescued India. and
Germany, and America. It was Wesley
who under God broke the moral drouth-
struck an artesian well far into the sub
stratum beneath the morass of the desert
BILE the reform and the power of modern
England; made possible the revival of the
nineteenth century-Heber, and Martyr.
and Keble, and Liddon. He became an in
fiuence SO incalculably fertile and diffusive
that to no other man of modern times save
Luther, to no other Englishman save Wv
elf, does the world owe SO much. It
pleased Matthew Arnold, with an icy Phil
istinism, to feer at Wesley and to dispar-
age him as "a third-class mind" But by
what token this frosty estimate? In that
drunken, unclean, insolent century, Wes-
ley's is the brightest name, whether his
work is Judged by it's width or it's depth,
whether by its immediate or its permanent
results.
When conformity and nonconformity
were alike moribund, he renewed the indi-
vldualism of the gospel message, personal
lied its appeal and rediscovered mankind
Do not forget that this starting point of
modern. religious history was within the
walls of a college, and lay in the devoted
ness and relentless aggressiyeness of few
men.
The work began in the open air. Whit
field, with his lively and unselfsh charac-
ter and that wondrousiy emotional voice.
led the way among the golfers of Kings
wood in Cornwall. England was full of pa