Catoctin clarion. [volume] (Mechanicstown, Md.) 1871-1940, 1903-07-30
John WESLEY"
An Eloquent Sunday Sermon By Presi'
dent Stryker, Of Hamilton.
tribute TO John Wesley and the Influence OF
ills Preaching-Stanjs O1t Supreme
Above All Men OF His Ag,.

| Y, spoke on "John Wesley" but used no
text. AS will be seen, he paid an eloquent
tribute to the influence of his preaching.
u Upon SsJ June SAY" II, 1903, that is, 200 years
ago, was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire
l6O miles from London, and at about the
east centre of England--a man whose in
fluence stands out supreme above al the
men of his age. Lightweight years old, on
the I'd of March, 1901, he died. Thus his
life compassed nearly the whole. Of the
eighteenth century, and under God it was
the most fertilizng 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
gular and recreatve purpose and achieve
ment. We may well reckon with such
| personality in considering the movement OF
the modern world. Even the barest outline
records a wonder and furnishes 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
share a like precious faith recall and re-
joice, ponder and hope. For the elements
Of it are as deep as the first principles OF
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 recrudcscence of the livid
Stuarts, but, though ignored, it had not de.
parted, and in him and by him it spoke
again and bore its second harvest,
Wesley began his, work in the Estab-
| lished and Episcopal Church, and though
| by it he was soon despised and rejected he
loved it always and cherished it's better
part. For two years he wrought in Geor.
gia, but the Grand Jury OF that colony in.
dicted him. There he uttered that notable
word, 81 hope to learn the sense of the COS
pei by preaching it," He came into close
touch with Moravians here and in Flu.
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 narrowness he
escaped while retaining their intensity.
Over the deep and critical experiences OF
his inner heart, with its unusual comblna.
ton of sensltiveness and decision, we viii
not pause. They were basal. In them he
found the Light he followed to the end,
See him at Oxford. lie was a student
intensely so. Specially and always of logic
and language, He found in these au ample
| discipline; for language is organized
! thought. An abe 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
example of pure life. They served God
by method-all OF them at this time jealous
and even ultra Episcopalians. They were
called the Cody Club''-"Bib,e Moths -
| "Methodists." Oppr, brm easily finds de.
riSivc 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 fecnIent and
rowdy age, Read Thackeray'S "Four
George" read Lecky's ample treatment
who says "all the dazzling episodes OF the
reign of George H. must yield in real i'm.
| portance" to Methodism. Hear Bishop
Butler 07S6). 1T is come to pass that
many assume Christianity to be purely tcti.
| tious and no longer subject of inquiry.
| The general sentiment of the church was
benumbed, torpid, stagnaat-drv essay ser
mons were the vogue. .Gnguid and luke.
warm moderation held sway, ready to hate
whatever mo.ested its sodden Indifferent.
ism. Look into the cartoons of llogarth
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
| frank corruption of the ministry of Robert
Walpo,e. 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. 1t was Wesley
who under God broke the moral drouth-
struck an artesian we'll far into the sub.
stratum beneath the morass of the desert
led the great reaction which made posi-
BILE the reform and the power OF modern
England; made possible the revival of the
nineteenth century-lleber, and Martyr,
and Keble, and Liddon, lie became an in
huence so incidentally fertile and ditfnsive
that to no other man of modern times save
Luther, to no other Englshman save Wy
cliff, does the world owe so much 1t
| pleased Matthew Arnold. with an icy Phi,
istinism, to tleer at Wesley and to dispar
age him as "a third-class mind" But by
what token this frosty estimate? In that
drunken, unclean, inso!ent century, Wes
ley's is the brightest name, whether his
work is judged by it's width or its depth
whether by its immediate or its permanent
results.
When. conformity and nonconformity
were alike moribund, he renewed the indi-
vldualsm 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 college, and lay in the devoted
| nf 20,
men.
The work began in the open air Whit
field, with his lively and unselfsh charac-
ter and that wondrously emotional voice,
led the way among the golfers of Kings
wood in Cornwall. England was full OF pa;
gan poverty, and this new departure to-
ward tie Submerged and the forgotten
neglect and its embitterments, broke once
for all with the traditions of apathy Then
John Wesley stormed Bristol town. Little
did men know, little did these men know,
what a chord they had struck, as their in
domitable fervor and unintermittent ag-
gression hurled out of their way the things
that would have obstructed them and once
more reached after the soul of the common
man. 1t was radical return to the sim.
plicity of Christ, and it had to face the
frown and scoffings of those who do always
resist the spirit of what is real and uncom.
promising. The harvest was white and had
long been uninterrupted The work was
born under the sky. baptized by the tears
of the lowly, hailed by the new songs of
tens of thousands under the dome of God!
1t went with Christ after the lost sheep,
and swept the very dust for the lost jewels.
1t did not reach down from an attitude of
stiff condescension and patronage, but
reached out from the universal level of
human sympathy and childlike love, And
it proved by its errand and result that he
vino wants the souls of men enough to go
/ after them in Christ way can have them.
which the world is aching and starving.
This is the idea of service upon which
alone rests the power of Christ, Friend of
Sinners, and of whom always the common
| neonlc hear GLADLY when He is truly told.