George Whitefield would be something like William Shakspeare improved by Colley Gibber.  But the incident suggests the very different qualities which are required for the preacher and the writer.  What was the character of Law’s preaching we do not know, except from one sermon preached in his youth; but we may safely assume that he could never have produced the effects which Whitefield did.[752] On the other hand, one trembles at the very thought of Whitefield meddling with Law’s masterpiece, for he certainly could not have touched it without spoiling it.

Whitefield’s Orphan House in Georgia was his hobby; it was only one out of a thousand instances of his benevolence; but his enthusiastic efforts in behalf of it hardly form a part of the Evangelical revival, and therefore need not be dwelt upon.

The individuality of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), the sweet psalmist of Methodism, is perhaps in some danger of being merged in that of his more distinguished brother.  And yet he had a very decided character of his own; he would have been singularly unlike the Wesley family if he had not.  Charles Wesley was by no means the mere fidus Achates, or man Friday, of his brother John.  Quite apart from his poetry, the effects of which upon the early Methodist movement it would be difficult to exaggerate, he played a most important part in the revival.  As a preacher, he was almost as energetic as John; and before his marriage he was almost as effective an itinerant.  His elder brother always spoke of the work which was being done as their joint work; ‘my brother and I’ is the expression he constantly used in describing it.[753]

As a general rule, the two brothers acted in complete harmony; but differences occurred sometimes, and, when they did, Charles Wesley showed that he had a very decided will of his own; and he could generally make it felt.  For instance, in 1744, when the Wesleys were most unreasonably suspected of inclining to Popery, and of favouring the Pretender, John Wesley wrote an address to the king, ’in the name of the Methodists;’ but it was laid aside because Charles Wesley objected to any act which would seem to constitute them a sect, or at least would seem to allow that they were a body distinct from the National Church.  Again, from the first, Charles Wesley looked with great suspicion on the bodily excitement which attended his brother’s preaching, and it is more than probable that he helped to modify John Wesley’s opinions on this subject.  On the ordination question, Charles Wesley felt very strongly; he never fell in with his brother’s views, but vehemently disapproved of his whole conduct in the matter.  He would probably have interfered still more actively, but for some years before the ordination question arose he had almost ceased to itinerate, partly, Mr. Tyerman thinks, because he was married, and partly because of the feeling in many societies, and especially among many preachers, against the Church.