Theological Essays and Other Papers, vol 2 | Page 8

may seem unaccountable to many, that the same state of things should have spread in those days to Scotland; but this is no more than the analogies of all experience entitled us to expect. Thus we know that the instincts of religious reformation ripened everywhere at the same period of the sixteenth century from one end of Europe to the other; although between most of the European kingdoms there was nothing like so much intercourse as between England and Scotland in the eighteenth century. In both countries, a cold and lifeless state of public religion prevailed up to the American and French Revolutions. These great events gave a shock everywhere to the meditative, and, consequently to the religious impulses of men. And, in the mean time, an irregular channel had been already opened to these impulses by the two founders of Methodism. A century has now passed since Wesley and Whitefield organized a more spiritual machinery of preaching than could then be found in England, for the benefit of the poor and laboring classes. These Methodist institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing, amongst the poor and the neglected at any time, much more when contrasted with the deep slumbers of the Established Church. And another ground of prosperity soon arose out of the now expanding manufacturing system. Vast multitudes of men grew up under that system--humble enough by the quality of their education to accept with thankfulness the ministrations of Methodism, and rich enough to react, upon that beneficent institution, by continued endowments in money. Gradually, even the church herself, that mighty establishment, under the cold shade of which Methodism had grown up as a neglected weed, began to acknowledge the power of an extending Methodistic influence, which originally she had haughtily despised. First, she murmured; then she grew anxious or fearful; and finally, she began to find herself invaded or modified from within, by influences springing up from Methodism. This last effect became more conspicuously evident after the French Revolution. The church of Scotland, which, as a whole, had exhibited, with much unobtrusive piety, the same outward torpor as the church of England during the eighteenth century, betrayed a corresponding resuscitation about the same time. At the opening of this present century, both of these national churches began to show a marked rekindling of religious fervor. In what extent this change in the Scottish church had been due, mediately or immediately, to Methodism, we do not pretend to calculate; that is, we do not pretend to settle the proportions. But mediately the Scottish church must have been affected, because she was greatly affected by her intercourse with the English church (as, _e.g._, in Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.); and the English church had been previously affected by Methodism. Immediately she must also have been affected by Methodism, because Whitefield had been invited to preach in Scotland, and did preach in Scotland. But, whatever may have been the cause of this awakening from slumber in the two established churches of this island, the fact is so little to be denied, that, in both its aspects, it is acknowledged by those most interested in denying it. The two churches slept the sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century; so much of the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two churches awoke, as from a trance, in or just before the dawning of the nineteenth century; this second half of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The Wesleyan Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales, who once reviled the Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for many years hailed a very large section in that establishment--viz., the section technically known by the name of the Evangelical clergy--as brothers after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own strictest model of a spiritual clergy. That section again, the Evangelical section, in the English church, as men more highly educated, took a direct interest in the Scottish clergy, upon general principles of liberal interest in all that could affect religion, beyond what could be expected from the Methodists. And in this way grew up a considerable action and reaction between the two classical churches of the British soil. Such was the varying condition, when sketched in outline, of the Scottish and English churches. Two centuries ago, and for half a century beyond that, we find both churches in a state of trial, of turbulent agitation, and of sacrifices for conscience, which involved every fifth or sixth beneficiary. Then came a century of languor and the carelessness which belongs to settled prosperity. And finally, for both has arisen a half century of new light--new zeal--and, spiritually speaking, of new prosperity. This deduction it was necessary to bring down, in order to explain the new power which arose