doing good in the present day? Evil is about us and upon us on every
For another thing, the greater part of the leaders of the revival of English religion last century were University men. Five of them— namely, Wesley, Whitefield, Romaine, Hervey, and Walker—took their degrees at Oxford. Three of them—namely, Grimshaw, Berridge, and Venn—took their degrees at Cambridge. Toplady was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Rowlands and Fletcher alone were at no University at alL Let this fact also be carefully remembered. The common notion that the men who turned England upside down last century were mere common-place, illiterate, ignorant, uneducated fanatics, is a stupid mistake. So far from this being the case, the eleven clergymen described in this volume were in all probability better read and more furnished with knowledge than most ministers of their day.
For another thing, the majority of the eleven clergymen who led the revival of last century were married men. Of the four who never married, three died at a comparatively early age, of consumption, namely, Hervey, Toplady, and Walker. The most eminent one of the eleven who died unmarried was Berridge, and he, we have seen, was so quaint, that he was always unlike other men. This fact is one that ought not to be overlooked. In a day when celibacy is held up to admiration as the grand secret of exalted spirituality, it is worth remembering that devoted servants of God like Grimshaw, Rowlands, Venn, and Romaine, could walk with God like Enoch, and yet, like Enoch, "live according to God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony." The minister who has no sons and daughters of his own, suffers immense loss in the study of human nature.
It only remains for me now to point out a few practical lessons which appear to flow naturally from the biographies which fill the pages of this book. They are lessons which are strongly impressed on my own mind. Thankful should I be if I could impress them on the minds of others!
1. In the first place, would we know the right instrumentality for doing good in the present day? Evil is about us and upon us on every
side, evil from Romanism, evil from infidelity, evil from tractarianism, evil from neologianism, evil amidst the working classes, evil amidst the educated bodies. What is the true remedy for the disease? What is the weapon to be wielded if we would meet the foe? Can anything be done? Is there no hope?
I answer boldly that the true remedy for all the evils of our day is the same remedy that proved effectual a hundred years ago—the same pure unadulterated doctrine that the men of whom I have been writing used to preach, and the same kind of preachers. I am bold to say that we want nothing new—no new systems, no new school of teaching, no new theology, no new ceremonial, no new gospel. We want nothing but the old truths rightly preached and rightly brought home to consciences, minds, and wills. The evangelical system of theology revived England a hundred years ago, and I have faith to believe that it could revive it again.
There never has been good done in the world excepting by the faithful preaching of evangelical truth. From the days of the apostles down to this time, there have been no victories won, no spiritual successes obtained, except by the doctrines which wrought deliverance a hundred years ago. Where are the conquests of neologianism and tractarianism over heathenism, irreligion, immorality? Where are the nations they have Christianized, the parishes they have evangelized, the towns they have turned from darkness to light? You may well ask where? You will get no answer. The good that has been done in the world, however small, has always been done by evangelical doctrines; and if men who are not called "evangelical" have had successes, they have had them by using evangelical weapons. They have ploughed with our heifer, or they would never have had any harvest to show at all.
I repeat it emphatically, for I believe it sincerely. The first want of our day is a return to the old, simple, and sharply-cut doctrines of our fathers in the last century; and the second want is a generation of like-minded and like-gifted men to preach them. Give me in any