For a long time intemperance had been steadily on the increase; strong drink had taken the place of beer, and every attempt to restrict the traffic was met at the elections by the popular cry, “No gin, no king.”  The London taverns were thronged day and night, and in the windows of those frequented by the lowest class placards were exhibited with the tempting announcement, “Drunk for a penny; dead drunk for twopence; clean straw for nothing.”  On the straw lay men and women in beastly helplessness.

Among the upper classes matters were hardly better.  It was a common thing for great statesmen to drink at public dinners until one by one they slid out of their seats and disappeared under the table; and Sir Robert Walpole, the late Prime Minister of England (S534, 538), said that when he was a young man his father would say to him as he poured out the wine, “Come, Robert, you shall drink twice while I drink once, for I will not permit the son in his sober senses to be witness of the intoxication of his father."[1]

[1] Coxe’s “Memoirs of Walpole” and Lecky’s “England.”

Such was the condition of England when a great religious revival began, 1738.  Its leader was John Wesley.  A number of years earlier, while a tutor at Oxford, he and his brother Charles, with a few others, were accustomed to meet at certain hours for devotional exercises.  The regularity of their meetings, and of their habits generally, got for them the name of “Methodists,” which, like “Quaker” and many another nickname of the kind, was destined to become a title of respect and honor.

At first Wesley had no intention of separating from the Church of England, but labored only to quicken it to new life; eventually, however, he found it best to begin a more extended and independent movement.  The revival swept over England with its regenerating influence, and was carried by Whitefield, Wesley’s lifelong friend, across the sea to America.  It was especially powerful among those who had hitherto scoffed at both Church and Bible.  Rough and hardened men were touched and melted to tears of repentance by the fervor of this Oxford graduate, whom neither threats nor ridicule could turn aside from his one great purpose of saving souls.

Unlike the Church, Wesley did not ask the multitude to come to him; he went to them.  In this respect his work recalls that of the “Begging Friars” of the thirteenth century (S208), and of Wycliffe’s “Poor Priests” in the fourteenth (S254).  For more than thirty years he rode on horseback from one end of England to the other, making known the glad tidings of Christian hope.  He preached in the fields, under trees which are still known by the expressive name of “Gospel Oaks”; he spoke in the abandoned mining pits of Cornwall, at the corners of the streets in cities, on the docks, in the slums; in fact, wherever he could find listening ears and responsive hearts.