Church History - Part 6

You are listening to David Porson podcasts. This is a series of 11 talks covering church history, part six, 18th century, rationalism, revivalism and Wesley. Now we turn to Acts chapter 17, Acts chapter 17. Typical little slice of evangelism in the days of the New Testament and some of the very mixed reactions that they had when they preached in those days. And it describes the travels of Paul and Silas. And when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in as was his custom and for three weeks he argued with them from the scriptures explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead. And saying, "This Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ." And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews were generous and taking some wicked fellows of the rabble they gathered a crowd set the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason seeking to bring them out to the people. And when they could not find them they dragged Jason and some of the brethren before the city authorities crying, "These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also." Of course you realize that's how it looked to them. But then when you're walking around on your head you don't see things the right way. They were really turning the world right way up. And Jason has received them and they are all acting against the decrease of Caesar saying that there is another king, Jesus. And the people in the city authorities were disturbed when they heard this and when they had taken security from Jason and the rest they let them go. The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica for they received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. What an encouragement it is to a preacher when people go home to check what he says in the Bible. That's what I'd like you to do. And if it's not there don't believe it. Many of them therefore believed with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. But when the Jews of Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also they came there too, staring up and inciting the crowds. Then the brethren immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea. But Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible they departed. Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who chance to be there. Some also of the epicurean and stoic philosophers met him and some said what would this babbler say? Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he preached Jesus and the resurrection. And they took hold of him and brought him to the area of Africa saying may we know what this new teaching is which you present? For you bring some strange things to our ears we wish to know therefore what these things mean. Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So Paul standing in the middle of the area of Africa said many of Athens I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observe the objects of your worship I found also an altar with this inscription to an unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown this I proclaim to you the God who made the world and everything in it being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in shrines made by man. Nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gifts to all men life and breath and everything. And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth having determined a lot of periods and the boundaries of their habitation that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel after him and find him yet he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being as even some of your poets have said for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God's offspring we ought not to think that the deities like gold or silver or stone a representation of the art and the imagination of men. The times of ignorance God overlooked but now he commands all men everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead. Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead some mocked but others said we will hear you again about this so Paul went out from among them but some men joined him and believed. Among them Dionysius the Ariopagite and a woman named Demarys and others with them after this he left Athens and went to Cairo. It was in the month of November 1699 just a few weeks before the 18th century opened that Master Galover was wrecked on the land of Lillepport and Galover's travels was published. It was written by Jonathan Swift and Irishman who tried to settle many times in England failed to do so and finally died insane in Dublin but before his mind left him he wrote Galover's travels and it is a savage attack on English society at the beginning of the 18th century. It's not a children's book and if you want to know what England was like at the beginning of the hundred years we're considering tonight read that book. A few years later Robinson Crusoe found his shipwrecked island or was shipwrecked and found his island and it seems as if there was a craze at that time to get out of England history repeats itself but there was a desire to get away from English society and Robinson Crusoe seems much happier on his desert island than when he comes back to England in the year 1715. These two books introduce the fact that we must talk about before we look at the church and that is that England was going to pieces. Socially England was in a bad way and we must ask why what caused it? Can I sum up what I want to say tonight in a rather simple maybe crude way by saying that man was turning on the cold tap and God was turning on the hot tap through the 18th century and man was turning on the cold tap of what we call rationalism the intellect by itself reason and God was turning on the hot tap of what we call revivalism and calling some great men to preach the gospel and to lift the temperature of English society. Now I want to speak for the first 10 minutes or so about the cold tap and for that reason it's not going to be very lively and not very interesting but if you get this kind of deadness creeping over you by quarter past seven that's precisely what was creeping over English society. People were going spiritually dead and the reason is their beliefs were going in the wrong direction and therefore their behavior went in the wrong direction and one of the lessons we learned from the 18th century is this a man's beliefs affect his behavior what a man thinks in his heart so he will be in his outward life as a man thinketh in his heart so is he and that might be our text for tonight. Well what kind of beliefs were cooling religion what kind of beliefs were killing English society at the beginning of the 18th century well of course it was partly the influence of science there had been many wonderful discoveries Copernicus had discovered or at least had said that the planets revolved around the sun and not the earth and Galileo with his telescope had discovered that this was in fact so Isaac Newton was still discovering things about apples and greater laws illustrated thereby and was propounding the law of gravity but above all a man called Francis Bacon and another man called Descartes was saying this the universe in which we live is governed by laws which can't be broken. In other words if an apple comes off your apple tree it must come down that's a law of gravity it could never be broken and they were saying that these laws are absolutely fixed and you couldn't ever alter them. Now that of course with one blow sweeps out miracle and sweeps out a great deal of the things that happened in the Bible for some of the things that happen in the Bible seem to go right against such natural laws. Furthermore Francis Bacon said this and you'd be amazed when I say this to realize how modern he was and how much we are indebted or influenced by him. He said that the only things that you can say are true are the things that you can prove by observation and that if you can't prove a thing scientifically by observation you mustn't believe it. That you mustn't accept anything on authority you must always test it and if you can't prove it scientifically by observation you needn't believe it. Now that was a tremendous step forward or backward depending which way you look at it but it's astonishing how the sixth former in school today says I can't believe it unless you can prove it. I can't believe in God unless you can demonstrate him unless I can observe him I can't believe in heaven or in a devil. You can't prove these things scientifically. Now they are just echoing what Francis Bacon was saying and frankly that idea kills religion dead. It's bound to because the one thing that you cannot prove by observation is the eternal world to which God belongs and the devil belongs and the angel belongs and all the other things that belong to religion come from. Now where does God fit in then did that mean that they ceased to believe in God in the eighteenth century? No but they switched from a belief that we call theism to a belief that we call deism which is one step on the way to atheism. Now let me tell you what I mean quite simply. Theism is the belief that God created the world and controls it. Deism is the belief that God created it but can't control it and atheism is the belief that he didn't create it either because there isn't a God to create. Now I could find out whether you were a deist or not by asking you whether you would ever pray about the weather. That would tell me straight away whether you believe that God controls the world is made. Now if you believe that God created and controlled your atheists and I'm a theist tonight and the Bible is a theistic book but in the eighteenth century they said this if the universe is governed by these hard laws and you can't break them then God may have made them but there's nothing he can do about it now so there's no point in asking him to change anything and to step in and do something. You can still believe in God but he's a God who mailed it long ago and then just left it running and one of the most popular ideas propounded by a bishop was that the world is like a gigantic clock. Once you've made it there's nothing you can do about it. Once you've made it and wound it up it'll just go on according to its own laws like that clock's rushing by now round and round there's nothing you can do. I can't say to that clock here it's just going to go backwards or stop I'd love to say that but I can't. It's a mechanism governed by its laws and so they said God made the world and he wound it up and then he's just got to sit back there's nothing more he can do about it. There is a God but he can't do anything and that is really a dead sort of God and you wouldn't really pray much to a God who couldn't do anything would you and this was killing prayer and it was killing belief in a living God who was still in control of everything. Now this sort of thinking that God was a long way off and couldn't do much crept right into the churches. It was called by different names in different churches in the Church of England they called it latitude and Aryanism as a wonderful word for you. In the Church of Scotland they called it moderateism that's typically Church of Scotland and in the Baptist they called it unitarianism because one of the beliefs was that God couldn't possibly have come down at Christmas and Jesus must therefore just have been a great man and so the faith watered down began to disappear and all denomination suffered from this some Baptist churches closed down because of this kind of thinking and worship became very formal and very dead you just came to pay respects to the deity who made it all but you mustn't ever expect him to do anything. God couldn't he's outside of what he's made. Not only did they discover as they thought laws of nature there were other writers who discovered as they thought laws of human nature laws of society and if I just mentioned some names you can forget them if you wish or look them up later if you wish. A man called John Locke was one of these men writing about the laws that govern society another man was Voltaire living in the age of Louis the 14th in France another was the Frenchman Russo and his saying man is born free and everywhere he is in chains is a typical Russo saying and then there was the Scotsman Adam Smith who wrote a very big tale about how to balance your imports and exports and division of labor that's very strangely modern too I wonder if the chancellors were seen just now read Adam Smith and then there was Mary Wollstone craft and she was fighting for the divine or rights you might almost put it of women she wrote a long book in which she advocated women voting in which she advocated playing grounds at schools co-education which was revolutionary in those days she advocated division into secondary modern and grammar she was quite a fighter and many of the ideas in her book have come out these were all trying to discover laws of society and trying to discover how society ticks but they were all saying much the same thing that the laws of society don't need God any more than the laws of nature the world of nature runs without God and the world of society of human nature runs without God as well and it was from these ideas that such things as the French Revolution came Russo has been called the father of the French Revolution now the church tried to fight back using the weapons of the intellect two bishops bishops Butler and Bishop Barkley really tried to preach intellectually they really tried to match the evidence against God with evidence for God and made the whole thing a bit of an intellectual argument quite frankly that never yet did much good you can't ever argue a person in this spiritual life you might remove some of their questions and the barriers but you'll never build a church on intellectual argument alone and so the beliefs of the 18th century were somewhat cold and intellectual now this was bound to have a tremendous effect on behavior and the 18th century was a time of turmoil a wind of change when societies were turning upside down in America it was the age of the revolt of the American colonies and the founding of the United States and Jefferson wrote locks philosophy his laws of society into the Declaration of Independence and if you read locks book first and then the Declaration of Independence you'll find where the United States got that declaration from in France in 1789 in July all these new ideas burst up into the French Revolution now reason was going to be the goddess and on the very altar of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris they enthroned the goddess of reason and they said no more God and the reign of terror began later Napoleon was to enter Rome, conversate the papal territories and bring the Pope as a prisoner to France but this was the kind of turmoil now I'm concerned primarily with England in America the revolt of the colonies in the Declaration of Independence in France the French Revolution what happened in England with all this turmoil of ideas and the answer is precious little England just drifted down while everybody else had a revolution again quite typically English perhaps but we just let things slide while other countries are being turned upside down but slide they did in religion there was a hearted dislike of what was called enthusiasm now we would now say emotionalism it's the same word and people went to church and they said no emotionalism in church no enthusiasm no fanaticism just a nice intellectual talk from the vicar but no getting excited no getting worked up no showing any feelings and of course that's not a balanced religion and lethargy and apathy crept into the congregations a century ago they went to fight for religion now they just sat in a pew and yorned religion I'm afraid became very much the religion of the upper class the working man was poor he was ignorant and he was just not welcome Bishop Butler was offered the Archbishop of Canterbury the position of being Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Butler said it's too late for me to save a dying church it will have disappeared in my lifetime that was the state of the church and where the spiritual state is like that the moral state will be worse do you know if you wanted to spend an afternoon out in the 18th century you got your family together and you went up to tie Now known as Hyde Park Corner near Marble Arch. And there, if you look around Marble Arch today, you'll see a triangle in the road embedded, a triangle of stones. And there on that triangle, there was a gallows. And you went there and took a picnic and you watched people being hung, which was great fun. Children, women, men, you could be hung for stealing five shillings with of goods or a shilling in money. And if you wanted amusement, you went to Tyburn and to Hyde Park Corner not to hear the speakers, but to watch the hangings. If you wanted another amusement, you went to a cockpit and you saw the cut fighting. And of course, the quickest way out of London and the other industrial areas was the public house. And drink was cheap. And the advertisements hanging in the lanes of London just simply read, drunk for a penny, dead drunk for toughens, free straw to lie on. Now, I know that a penny was a penny in those days and toughens was toughens. But this, of course, led to the most appalling abuses. Not only was the heavy drinking and heavy gambling, there was heavy fighting. And if you want to study the social life of England as it became during this dead, cold, intellectual, religious period, then read a book like Fielding's Tom Jones. Isn't it interesting that that's just been made into a film again? And the whole story is coming up again in the wheels of turning. But Tom Jones is a typical book of the immorality of those days or study Hogarth's paintings, the cartoons of the race progress you'll see it there. Or read Boswell's Life of Johnson, if you want to see a taste of higher society. But this is the 18th century. One man writing at the time, summed it all up by saying this, decay in religion, lie senselessness in morals, public corruption, and profaneness of language, that was England in the first 30, 40 years of the 18th century. And it's no wonder that a man was busy writing "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Edward Gibbon. I'm surprised he didn't go on to write "Decline and Fall of the English Society," he could easily have done so. Now what stopped England from having a revolution? Why did the poor not rise? Why wasn't there a complete turning upside down of society? What stopped England going through the turmoil that America went through, that France went through? What was the factor here that altered the course of our history? The fact is that during this century, God turned on the hot tap, and I'm finished with all the code stuff and the intellectual stuff now. God turned on the breath of revival. God through his Holy Spirit did the most amazing things in this land of ours, from which we are still benefiting. Now God's method is always this, to choose a personality, and to fill that personality with His Holy Spirit and enable them to do it. This has always been God's method. It's very rarely that God has worked through committees or larger groups of people. His method is always to raise up men to do the job. And it always will be that. And as long as those men remain in the relationship to Christ that they should be, there is no harm in that. But God has chosen to use personalities. And through the 18th century, time and again, God raised up personalities. For those of you from Wales, he raised up Harold Harris and Griffith Jones and Daniel Rowan's during the century. And they changed the course of Welsh history. For those of you from America, it was in this century that he raised up. And I'll let me get it right, Theodore Frallinghäusen. Have I said it rightly? And he in turn influenced the great preacher Jonathan Edwards and that great man, David Brainerd, the great man of prayer who went as a missionary to the Indians and who died after only three years, but who changed American history. These men were raised up. And it is estimated that in the 18th century in America alone, 300,000 people were led to the Lord. And considering the population, then, that's quite a revival with the camp meetings flourishing at the end of the century. But the two countries I want to talk to you about are first of all Germany and then England because they're closely related. And I want to talk to you about a man whom God raised up in Germany called the Count Wunzinsendorf. You've got some of his hymns in this hymbal care. And Count Wunzinsendorf had a huge estate in Saxony called Hanhut. And to that estate, there came one day, some beggars. They were worshippers of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were the remains of the church of John Hus in Bohemia and still centuries after John Hus, they met simply around the Lord Jesus Christ. And they'd been turned out of their country and they came to Wunzinsendorf. And he had been converted a short time before. And he said, "Come on in, you can have my estate and you can build houses here and I'll protect you. And together we'll build up a Christian community." And they did. And they called it the Meravian community. And they were the first real missionary society in Europe. There had been other attempts at missionary work. But that little group of Meravians sent out no less than 25 missionaries in the first few years of their life to take the gospel of Christ to the utmost parts of the earth. They went to America, they came to England. There's a Meravian church just below the Crystal Palace. Sorry, what's the one in North London? Alexandria Palace that I've often visited. I've very glad the Meravian church. You'll find Meravians here and there in this country and in America and throughout the world. But it was Count Wunzinsendorf who started that. And he was to have a profound influence on England through a friend of his, more of that in a moment. Now I come, by the way, if you want to know the hymns of Count Wunzinsendorf, Jesus still lead on till our recipe won. You've sung that. And here's another, Jesus thy blood and righteousness. Count Wunzinsendorf once said this, "I have only one passion. It is Jesus." And that sums up his life. No wonder he was the great man he was. Now I come to England and I beloved land here. And ask, how did God turn the hot tap on here? How did he raise the spiritual temperature here? Well, the answer is he did it through individuals again. The first man he laid his hand on was a young man working his way through Oxford by cleaning the shoes of the students and his name George Whitfield. And God laid his hand on that young man. A young man who was going places, a young man who was a hard worker, a disciplined young man, but God said George Whitfield, "You're a sinner and you need salvation." And through a great spiritual struggle, George Whitfield came to know the Lord Jesus Christ and he began to preach. A year after his conversion, he was preaching, "I forget where, but I know his first text. It was two Corinthians 5, 17. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature." He preached it at Blaster. And when he preached that sermon, he said this, which mortally offended most of his hearers, he said, "I do not care if you've been baptized. I do not care if you've had water on your forehead in the name of the Trinity." He said, "You must be born again." He said, "I've got the new birth and he said, "I want you to have it." And when he finished preaching, 17 people were born again. And that was the beginning. He was soon preaching to 30 and 40,000 people at once. He not only traveled England, he went to Scotland, preached to 40,000 in Edinburgh. And then he crossed the Atlantic 13 times, died in America at the end, but he was preaching everywhere he could go. And George Whitfield was one of the greatest servants of Godding than the scene. The tragedy is that most of his work disappeared after his death because he never organized for follow-up for his convents. The only person who really urged him to start churches in a sense was the Countess of Huntingdon. And if ever you've seen a church with over the door, the Countess of Huntingdon connection, you're going back to the days of that lady who supported George Whitfield. But when he died, he said, "I feel my work has been a rope of sand and will disappear very quickly." And in fact, it has done. And you don't hear of any Whitfield eyes. You don't hear of any groups today, except that Countess of Huntingdon connection church and one or two other smaller groups. But nevertheless, he led thousands to the Lord. I don't mean that they fell away. I mean that they found their way into other churches. Now, the other great man, and here I'm going to turn, and somebody told me they expected to be here two hours tonight because of this next man, well, I assure you, you're not going to be. But I must talk about this man. He's one of my great heroes. And that's the man John Wesley. And more of that in a moment. The story begins in the little village in Lincoln show where my wife and I were married, Epworth. We were married in the Wesley Memorial Church. The minister who conducted the wedding was the warden of the old rectory, which is still there, and which was the home of the Wesley family. And so there in that rectory, something happened and something new was born, a way up in the rather depressing flat country of Lincolnshire on that little island that just rises up for Epworth. Now John Wesley's grandparents had been independence, which explains a great deal, but his parents were both Anglican by conviction. And they were there as the vicarant his wife of that little town of Epworth. Now we need to study the parents. Samuel Wesley was quite an amazing man, a bit of a poet. He spent most of his years writing a poem on Job, which was never really popular, but he passed on to his sons a poetic gift. But the mother was the amazing woman, Old Susanna Wesley. She had 19 children, 12 of whom she read. And she trained them not to cry after they were one year old. And when they were five, she taught them to read until by the end of their first week. They could read Genesis 1. How much they understood I don't know. And how she did it, I don't know. No initial training, I'll prevent none of your modern toys and other things to help them. She gave one hour a week to each child to help them grow spiritually. And when you studied the life of Susanna Wesley, you've studied the beginning of Methodism. For that's what was to come. When John or Jackie, as she called him, was seven years old, the rectory was on fire, and they got all the children out, bar one, Jackie, little John. Because we've seen the film, we'll remember the dramatic moment when they saw him at the upstairs window and how the villagers climbed on each other's backs to rescue him. And she clutched him to her bosom and said you're a brand plucked from the burning. And she believed from them that John would be her greatest son. And so he was. He went to charter her school, then to Oxford, to join his brother Charles. And there they formed what they called the Holy Club. And my it was and it was offensive to everybody else too, as such a name might indicate. They got up at four in the morning to pray. They did their studies as students during the day. And then they visited the jail. And they had a dispensary to give medicine to sick people. And they were trying desperately to save themselves by being good. One member of the Holy Club was George Whitfield. And that's where their paths crossed. And this little group of students were desperately trying to get to heaven by being good. They still hadn't learned how you become a Christian. They were so methodical in the way they got up and went to the jail. And did this that and the other and kept accounts of all that they did. That the students didn't call them the Holy Club, but gave them a nickname, Methodists. They said Methodists. And it was a term of abuse, but the nickname stuck and a stuck to this very day. The time came when John realized that he still felt he wasn't doing enough for God. So he offered for the ministry as his father had before him and as his brother had before him. And John and Charles were ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury. And they were now priests of the Church of England and were still not Christians. And because they knew this in their heart, they felt they weren't doing enough for God. So they volunteered to go out as missionaries to Georgia to the Red Indians. And thought, "Surely, if you go as a missionary, you get saved." And they went out to save their own souls. Now, could you get as far as that without being a Christian? Of course you can. And they did. And they were not only priests, they were missionaries. And they hadn't saved their own souls. They were desperately trying to. On the way out, in the middle of the Atlantic, they struck a storm. And they were all frightened. They panicked and they thought they ended come. And they threw things overboard to lighten the ship, but it looked as if always lost. But there in the middle of the ship were a group of people quiet, calm praying. Meravian refugees. Meravians from Hanhut, who knew Count Funzins and Doff. And John Wesley went up to them afterwards in his clergyman's garden, said, "Why weren't you afraid?" And he said, "Why should we be?" And one of them began to ask him about his soul and said, "Do you know that Jesus is your savior?" And this clergyman John Wesley replied, "I know he is the savior of the world, but do you know that he is your savior?" And John Wesley said, "Yes, but in his diary that night he admitted it was a lie and said, "I go to Georgia to save my own soul. How can I save the souls of the Indians?" He came back to London after three miserable years of failure. And wondered what he should do. His brother came back to an equal failure. But praise God, God had someone waiting in London for them. A man called Peter Burler, another Meravian from Count Funzins and Doff. And Peter Burler got hold of them and talked to them. And one never to be forgotten Sunday. John Wesley went to St. Paul's Cathedral to worship for Sunday morning. And as he read his Bible that morning, he opened his Bible and he read these words, "They are not far from the kingdom of God." And that night he went to a little meeting of the Meravian Germans in Older Skate Street. There's a Barclays Bank there now, but they put a plate on the bank to show where it took place. And in Older Skate Street on May the 24th, 1738, he went to the meeting. And they read aloud Lufthas' commentary on Romans. Wonder how many people would stand much of that in church today, reading a common John Romans aloud for some hours. But when the clock set a quarter to nine at night, John Wesley says this. He said, "I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ that he had saved me from my sins even mine." "Save me from the Lord's sin and death." And an assurance was given him in that moment that he really was a forgiven sinner. Now here he was, a failed missionary, ordained priest in the church of England. He had done all those good things for other people. And yet he didn't know his sins were forgiven. That's what happens when you try to save yourself. Because you're putting your trust in what you do instead of what Christ does. And this was the one thing he couldn't learn. Well, by the way, my little boy is called Richard Wesley because he was born at quarter to nine on Sunday evening. As well as the fact that he was born in England should not far from Epworth. And that is old dead. Thought a lot of John Wesley. But at quarter to nine it started. Now he went almost straight away out to Germany to visit von Zinsendorf and he came back with many of the hymns. And he translated them into English but he came back wanting to preach the gospel and preach it he did. The pulp it's closed to him. Every time he preached in a church of England they told him after the service, "That's your first and last visit here." And so he finally was in a physician where he couldn't preach. And then George Woodfield said to him, "John, will you come and preach in the open air?" And John Wesley thought it was the most dreadful thing in the world for an ordained clergyman not to preach for Epworth. But then he remembered that Christ preached a sermon on the mount. And he said, "Well, if Christ could preach on the mount, then so can I." And he went down to King's Wood, outside Bristol to the miners and he preached. And as he preached he describes in his journal, "How the tears may little white rivers down their black cheeks." And John Wesley realized that God was calling him to the same ministry as George Woodfield who was now leaving from America. And he took up the threads of George Woodfield's preaching. That was on in April 1739 that he began opening our preaching. Mind you, he had opposition. There were times when he was dragged by the hair through the streets as in the Wednesday's right riots. But in 50 years he traveled quarter of a million miles on the horseback. With a Bible in his hand and a horse between his knees, he would ride into a village and preach. And this is how he preached. He would begin by preaching the Ten Commandments. And he would preach the law. The law by which every man and woman will be judged. And he would go on preaching the law for days until people began to look unhappy and until they began to look troubled. Then when he realized that they were beginning to realize they were sinners, he says in his diary, "I began to mix a bit of the love of God with the law of God." And a bit more, a bit more, until finally I was preaching the gospel of the love of God. Now Wesley discovered that you cannot preach the love of God till you preach the law. That there's no point in preaching a savior until you preach sin. What comfort can a savior bring to those who never felt their will? That was written all over his ministry. Mind you, it was an unusual and curious sight to see a church of encledments still with all his vestments, standing in the middle of a village green, preaching like that. They'd never seen anything like it. But he went to the working man. His three centers were London, Bristol, Newcastle. And all over that triangle you'll find places where Wesley preached. His last sermon was preached at Leatherhead in Surrey. And there's a tablet on the town hall now, which I showed my father just a few weeks ago. Not only did he preach everywhere on the principle as he said that the world is my parish. And there may be a little element of truth in that he was helped in his travels by an unhappy marriage. And kept on the move that was the only real shadow over his life. But there are many who felt that found rightful for it that he was traveling, but he traveled and he traveled and he preached and preached seven times a day was normal. Not only did he preach, he wrote, and he published books and pamphlets. He started schools and orphanages. He opened his spencers. He was the first to use electric treatment for rheumatism, with a machine which you can see in city road today in his house. And they've discovered it produces enough electricity to kill a man, but he used it for rheumatism. He was the most varied man, but quite obviously it soon became apparent that he couldn't do all this himself. And the trouble was that he had few clergymen to do it with him. So his mother came up with the idea, she said, "What about unordained preachers? Lay preachers, local preachers who would not go around as you do, but preach locally." And one of the very first team of six was John Paulson. And his wife Francis is one of the leading Methodist women of that day. So I suppose our tribal association goes way back to the beginning. And so with the team, John Wesley's reply to his mother, "Give me 100 such men were setting them on fire and they did. And when he died, there were 80,000 people meeting in fellowship as the result of his travels. Now he did not do what George Woodfield did, or at least he did do what George Woodfield didn't, when they were converted. He built them up into fellowships, largely because the local churches wouldn't have them. And so he would build them into not churches, but he called them societies, Methodist societies. And he gave them class leaders whose job it was to lead them spiritually. And then he had, we'll say, so many societies in a district. And he called that district a circuit because a local preacher could go around the circuit on horseback once a month and preach in every place. So he made the horse circuits around which the local preachers travel. Now this kind of machinery is still used today, though I think it's very ill adapted to the 20th century. For horseback, it's a very good idea. And for the kind of setting in which he was, it was an ideal piece of organization. So he built them into an organization. And that means that of course they kept the Methodists and they still have done them. Now of course bear in mind that all this time John Wesley was a church of England, third German. What did they think about him? Well, I'm afraid they thought very badly about him especially when he ordained ministers for America. And though he never left the church of England, it was quite obvious that as soon as he died, the Methodist societies would become Methodist churches and this they did. And the split came as soon as he died. But I think John Wesley was to blame or at least was the man who did all that needed to be done to separate. And I like the remark of someone who said John Wesley was like a man rowing above. Kept his face towards the church of England but every pull of his all took him further from it. That's precisely what he did. And so we are left at the end of the 18th century with a very large group of Methodists in addition to the Anglicans, in addition to the Presbyterians and the Congregations and the Baptists and the Friends. And by the end of the century Roman Catholics were allowed back in too. So we're beginning to get the kind of picture we live in. Now I must leave John Wesley. Sorry to be so long about him but you can understand why. May I now look at one other great man of this century right at the end of it. In the year 1799 there came a young dissolute student to Cambridge by a name Charles Simion, hunting, shooting, fishing, gay young men. And when he came to Cambridge he came face to face with his own life. And he had a spiritual struggle and out of it he came to a sense of forgiveness as he put it, "I laid my sins on the head of Jesus." He was shortly ordained to the ministry and at the early age of 23 went as vicar to Holy Trinity Church where it was my privilege to preach a month ago. And there in the vestry you can see his teapot, his umbrella, pictures of him, Charles Simion. And Charles Simion preached and the church was thronged. And he had a tremendous influence on the students. It was from his congregation that that young man Henry Martin went out to die in Persia as one of the greatest missionists has ever been. And Charles Simion must be put in the great list of heroes of this century. But now let me finally just list some of the practical things that came out of this. I know it's all very well for people to say this kind of thing and they say it here, they still say, "What's the point of all this gospel preaching and this hymn singing? What we need is people who get on and make the world a better place." And all this hot guspling and all this ranting, it doesn't do anybody any good. May I say the 18th century gives the lie to that? The results of this revival in the 18th century were most practical and I just want to give you five. Very simply, the first is one that the world wouldn't appreciate but which Christians have appreciated ever since. The century burst into song. I have mentioned Isaac Watts. Think of some of his famous hymns. I'll praise my maker. Oh God, I help in ages past. When I survey the wondrous cross, Jesus shall reign where ever the sun come, let us join our cheerful songs. Sweet as the work my God, my King, I'm not ashamed to all my Lord. Give me the wings of face to rise. You've sung those hymns. What about Philip Dodridge? The dark-and-led sound, the saviacums of, oh God, of Bethel by whose hand, oh happy day that fix my choice. What about Calpa? God moves in a mysterious way. There is a fountain filled with blood. Jesus where air lie people meet. Sometimes a light surprises. What about Newton? How sweet the name of Jesus sounds, glorious things of the us spoken. Begone unbelief and the end of that verse with Christ in the vessel we smile at the storm. And above all, Charles Wesley. Back we go to the Wesley family. But Charles Wesley wrote, "Six thousand hymns." And he wrote them for every conceivable occasion. Two that spring to my mind, which are two of the most wonderful are one, when a young person leaves home for the first time he is a hymn for under sing. Another is for a woman in child labor, and it's a most beautiful hymn, centering her thoughts on the Lord for her to sing, while she's bringing forth her children. And these are the hymns who wrote, "Six thousand, he would write them on horseback. He would arrive at a house and say, 'Don't speak to me, give me a pen and paper quick.' And he would write down, 'And I'll become a hymn.' We're going to finish this service with a hymn he wrote when he was one year old, spiritually. And on his first birthday, the anniversary of his conversion, Peter Beller, the Moravian German said to Charles Wesley, 'If I had a thousand tongues, I'd want to sing the praise of Christ, so down it came, over a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise.' And you'll sing it in a moment. Look at some of his others. He servants of God, your master proclaim, 'Hark the herald angels sing, Christ the Lord is risen today. Rejoice the Lord in the King. Come, holy ghost, our hearts inspire, Lord from whom all blessings flow, and can it be that I should gain? Jesus, lover of my soul, a charge to keep I have, soldiers of Christ arise, although who came us from above, love divine or love, Zick Selling, O for a heart to praise my God, gentle Jesus, meek and mild. You'll find in every hymn book, most hymns, more hymns are by Charles Wesley than any other writer, with Isaac Watson Goodsayon. And the last one I want to mention, the hymn writer, was Mount Gummary. And we're going to sing one of his hymns at communion, as one of the devotional hymns. This century was a century of song, and when people get saved, they want to sing. And there's never been a century like it for hymns singing, and our hymns books are full of them. Result number two, Sunday schools. Now if I asked you who started Sunday schools, I wonder who you'd tell me. If you know anything, you'd probably say Robert Rayx. In Gloucester, and I tell you, you're wrong. The schools were started by Hannah Ball in High Wickham, a Methodist lady who lies buried in Stoken Church graveyard, and I took my father to see the grave when he visited us a week or two ago. And Hannah Ball started Sunday schools in a disused furniture factory in High Wickham, and she did so as the result of a correspondence with John Wesley. And it was Hannah Ball who suggested to Robert Rayx, why don't you do the same? The extraordinary thing is that there's a statue of Robert Rayx in Gloucester that says "Founder of Sun Schools." Well he copied the idea from a woman, so they were, that's one for the fairer sex. But Hannah Ball, go and see her grave, round the right hand side of the church as you go into Stoken Church graveyard. She started Sunday schools, and Robert Rayx took them up in 1718 Bluster, but she was doing it some years before that. And I picked up a book the other day on the early Methodist women, and it had next or to each other, "Friends is Paulson and Hannah Ball." And my father went home with that book too. Well now the third thing that happened was social righteousness. When people get converted they put society right, and here are some of the things that followed. Poor relief began. Dispenser is distributing free medicine, began. Orphanages began. Schools began. Prison reform. John Howard's work in prison reform goes directly back to the revival of the 18th century. And above all the outstanding examples, William Wilberforce and his fight with slavery. The last letter that John Wesley wrote was to William Wilberforce, urging him to complete the fight. And if ever you go to Kingston upon Hell. go to the William Wilberforce Museum. That came out of the revival. The fourth thing that came out was a tremendous spread of good literature. The religious track society was a direct result. So was the British and foreign Bible society. So were the commentaries of that great Bible teacher, Thomas Scott. But the final one I want to mention in with this I clones. Missionary societies began. And the influence of Britain on the world for good spread. Now there had been some attempts at missionary work before. But it was at the end of the 18th century as the result of the rise in temperature that it really got going. And it was of course in 17, let me get the date right, 92. I should know that off by heart, but I don't. But the Baptist Missionary Society was formed. It was a Baptist who really said it going. A cobbler from Northampton constructing a globe of the world out of off cuts of leather and praying for that world. And particularly for India. And it was that Northampton cobbler converted encouraged to be a preacher in the Baptist churches of Northampton Church. Who with a group of others met one day in catering in 1792 and took a collection of famous collection of 13 pounds, 2 and 6 pounds, which was quite a lot in those days and started the Baptist Missionary Society. A year later they were on their way to India to begin the great missionary work that followed. That was 1792. Three years later, 1795, the Anglicans, the congregations and the Presbyterians, not to be outdone, got together and started the London Missionary Society, the LMS, which sent out Morrison to China, Livingston to Africa and many another famous missionary. In 1796, not to be left behind the Methodist, founded the General Methodist Missionary Society, whose headquarters are now in Merrill, Berne Road. In 1799, the Anglicans decided to have one of their own and the Church Missionary Society was started. And it was just in this period that the British and foreign Bible society started. Well, at the end of the century. And this was the direct result of the evangelical revival of the 18th century. Who says that hot-gustling has no results? Who says that the world isn't changed because people get excited about the Lord? The 18th century, the one last night, draw out of the whole century for you tonight is this. What a man believes will affect his behaviour, cold intellectualism, bad morals, hot-gustling, and all this follows. And somebody has said that the early Methodists were like a cluster of chased snowdrops growing on a foul rubbish heap. If you want to understand the Methodist emphasis on not drinking or gambling, you must understand that the tradition goes back to reality in the 18th century and that they had to insist on that to get a man anywhere near the Lord. But they fought that and they cleaned England up. And a historian in France has said that if you want to understand why the French Revolution and the enthronement of reason and the anarchy that followed did not spread to England, you must study the life of the Reverend John Wesley. That's an amazing tribute. God had his answer and where man's cold reason saying you've got to prove anything before you believe it was killing religion dead and when you kill religion you kill morals. When people say no, God, they'll say no goodness. God raised up men who pointed to revelation, who pointed to God giving us knowledge that science can neither prove nor disprove and preach the gospel of supernatural miracle and the living God who could step in and change a life and change the society that neither nature nor human nature was governed by laws but that both were governed by God and that God could turn both to his eternal purposes. That's the message I want to bring you tonight and it's a message that we all need to learn. Great men of God got them warmed up again and brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to this land and we still benefit from the effects of that revival 200 and more years ago. Let us pray. Oh God, our Father, there is one prayer in all our hearts. Do it again, Lord. You are still the same God. Your arm is not shortened that you are not able to save today. We pray that in the decline of our society with things on every hand that disturb us with the revival, even of those that immoral literature of the 18th century again on the screen with all this, Lord do it again, raise up men who will be fearless to preach Christ, raise up such an army of evangelists and men and women on fire for the Lord that this country again may resound to the ring of the gospel and we may see again an influence go out from this nation for good in the whole of the rest of the world. Oh God, you have blessed us greatly in the past but we cannot live in the past. We must live now and we pray that in our day and generation we too may discover the forgiveness of sin in Christ Jesus and then go out to tell others of the love that can forgive them. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. You have been listening to David Porson. Other talks by David Porson can be found and downloaded free of charge by visiting www.DavidPorson.co.uk