A short history of England . customs resulted directlyfrom the exclusion of the Methodistpreachers from the establishedchurches. When Whitefield went toBristol on a missionary visit he couldnot find a single church in which he wasallowed to preach. He heard that notfar from that city there were manythousand coal miners and their fami-lies who had practically no religious teaching whatever. He there-fore went out into their country on a Sunday afternoon, and, takinghis stand on the side of a hill, began preaching. His first con-gregation consisted of about two hundred men, but the fame ofhis el
A short history of England . customs resulted directlyfrom the exclusion of the Methodistpreachers from the establishedchurches. When Whitefield went toBristol on a missionary visit he couldnot find a single church in which he wasallowed to preach. He heard that notfar from that city there were manythousand coal miners and their fami-lies who had practically no religious teaching whatever. He there-fore went out into their country on a Sunday afternoon, and, takinghis stand on the side of a hill, began preaching. His first con-gregation consisted of about two hundred men, but the fame ofhis eloquence spread and he soon preached to thousands. Greatthrongs of the poor miners and of the inhabitants of the neigh-boring city came out to hear him. Trees were crowded with lis-teners, the lanes were, thronged with wagons and carriages of themore wealthy who shared in the general curiosity. He moved thegreat throng with wonderful power. Tears made white streaksdown the coal-blackened faces of miners who had probably never. John and Charles Wesley(from the memorial tab-let in Westminster Abbey) 554 A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND heard preaching before. Then Whitefield did the same thing inMoorfields and Kennington Common, on the outskirts of London. The Wesleys took somewhat reluctantly to field preaching andthe practice soon became common among the Methodists. Thou-sands of converts were made. Whitefield was the greatest pop-ular preacher England ever had. John Wesley was of a somewhatmore formal, calm, and self-possessed nature, but he also couldhold the attention of crowds of ten and even twenty thousandpeople. The total amount of his preaching was almost lived to be eighty-seven years old and retained his vigor to thelast. He spent fifty years in itinerant preaching, and it is com-puted that he traveled a quarter of a million miles and preachedmore than forty thousand sermons. He always rose at four oclockin the morning and frequently preached four or five times
Size: 1535px × 1627px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherbosto, bookyear1904
