were doing in their respective parishes.  He bitterly regretted that Fletcher would persist in wasting his sweetness on the desert air of Madeley.  He had little faith in the permanency of the good which the apostolic Walker was doing at Truro.  Much as he esteemed Venn of Huddersfield, he could not be content to leave the parish in his hands.  He expressed himself very strongly to Adam of Winteringham on the futility of his work in his parish.  He utterly rejected Walker’s advice that he should induce some of his itinerant preachers to be ordained and to settle in country parishes.  He thought that this would not only narrow their sphere of usefulness, but also cripple their energies even in that contracted sphere.  Mistaken as we may believe him to have been in these opinions, we cannot doubt his thorough sincerity.  In the slight collision into which he was necessarily brought with the Evangelical clergy by acting upon these views he was actuated by no vulgar desire to make himself a name by encroaching upon other men’s labours, but solely by the conviction that he must do the work of God in the best way he could, no matter whom he might offend or alienate by so doing.  Order and regularity were good things in their way, but better do the work of God irregularly than let it be half-done or undone in the regular way.[725] He predicted that even the earnest parochial clergy of his day would prove a mere rope of sand—­a prophecy which subsequent events will scarcely endorse.

Not that John Wesley ever desired to upset the parochial system.  From first to last he consistently maintained his position that his work was not to supplant but to supplement the ordinary work of the Church.  This supplementary agency formed so important a factor in the Evangelical revival, and its arrangement was so characteristic of John Wesley, that a few words on the subject seem necessary.  It would fill too much space to describe in detail the constitution of the first Methodist societies.  It is now purposed to consider them simply in their relation to their founder.  The most superficial sketch of the life and character of John Wesley would be imperfect if it did not touch upon this subject; for, after all, it is as the founder, and organiser, and ruler of these societies that John Wesley is best known.  There were connected with the Evangelical revival other writers as able, other preachers as effective, other workers as indefatigable, as he was; but there were none who displayed anything like the administrative talent that he did.  From first to last Wesley held over this large and ever-increasing agency an absolute supremacy.  His word was literally law, and that law extended not only to strictly religious matters, but to the minutest details of daily life.  It is most amusing to read his letters to his itinerant preachers, whom he addresses in the most familiar terms.  ‘Dear Tommy’ is told that he is never to sit up later than ten.  In general he (Mr.