The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1903-09-04
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
A BIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE BY
PRES. STRIKER. or HAMILTON.
An Eloquent Tribute 20 John Wesley and
the Influence Of His Preaching Stands
Out Supreme Above All Men OF His
Age ne u Religious Leader.

Ake ne y Asfllkluuh AehheHs
NEW YORK CIrY.-Union services Of
the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian and
Clinton Avenue Congregational churches
began Sunday morning in the edlhce OF the
first named The Rev. Dr. NJ w Stryker,
President OF Hamilton College Clinton, n.
T., spoke on John Wesley but used no
text. As viii be seem be paid an eloquent
tribute to the influence Of his preaching.
Dr. Stryker said;
Upon June II, 1903, that is, 900 years
ago. was born at EpwOrth, Lincolnshire
100 miles from London, and at about the
cast 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, 20 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 sim
gular and recreative 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
10 hundred superficial PHILOSOPHERS and
thousand shallow neglects While Yves.
leyans and Methodists in all lands are recit-
ing that story let US all, with them, who
share a like precious faith recall and re-
loice, 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 1t are the common possession Of
all who hail the kingdom of the Son Of
God.
This man was born into a 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
ceded by the recrudescence of the livid
StuQrts, but, though ignor1 g had not de-
parted, and in him and o. MIN it spoke
again and bore its 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 lie wrought in Geor-
gia, but the Grand Jury Of that colony in
dicted him. Ipege he uttered that notable
word, Il hope to learn the sense of the S6s.
u
touch with Moravians here and in Eu.
rope. Had that little body done nothing
else than directly to deepen and by its re-
action to enlarge, John Wesley, it had done
a mighty work, But their narroHness he
escaped, while retaining their intensity.
Over the deep and critical experiences of
his inner heart, with its unusual combina.
ton of sensitiveness and decision, we will
not pause. They were basal. In them he
z nd AIo tgrk,N h .ll. 4 A. 4 I
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,
he 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 ultra Episcopalans. They were
called the Cody Club"-"Bble Moths"-
"Methodists." ODprl 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. It was a feculent and
rowdy age. Read Thackeray's -Four
Georges read Lecky's ample treatment
reign of George H. must yield in real inn
portance" to Methodism. Hear Bishop
| Butler Q726). cit is come to pass that
many assume Christianity to be purely fcti-
tlous and no longer a subject of inquiry"
! The general sentiment of the church was
benumbed, torpid, stagnant-~drv essay SER
mons were the vogue; .Gnguid and luke
warm moderation held sway, ready to hate
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
! stllled and padded and fostering society
! did not demand the breath of reality! Pub
lie life was debauched by the coarse and
/ frank corruntion of the ministry of Robert
| Walpole. 1t was Wesley more than all
Others who reused public conscience to
| rally about the stern and aggressive hon
! esty of Pitt-Pitt, who rescued India, and
| Germany, and America 1t was Wesley
who under God broke the moral drouth-
struck an artesian well far into the sub
stratum beneath the morass of the desert
lied the great reaction which made posi-.
bic the reform and the power of modern
England; made possible the revival of the
nineteenth century-Heber. and Martyr.
and Keble, and Lddon. He became an in.
huence so intellectually fertile and diffusive
that to no other man of modern times save
Luther, to no other Englishman save wy.
cliff, does the world owe so much. It
pleased Matthew Arnold, with an icy Phi.
istinism, to fleer at Wesley and to dispar.
age him, as "a third-class mind" But by
what token this frosty estimate? In that
drunken, unc.ean, insoent century, Yves.
ley,s is the brightest name, whether his
work is Judged by its width or its depth,
whether by its immediate or its permanent
results.
When conformity aud nonconformity
were alike moribund he renewed the indi-
| NllnAllsrn Of Tho cnrnnl r,,n.-r % r,nu......l