WESLEY, THE REFORMER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 121, 25 May 1938, Page 8

WESLEY, THE REFORMER

METHODIST 81-CENTENARY LAST EVENING’S SERVICE ADDRESS BY REV. DUDLEY “The Great Awakener” was the title of a sermon delivered by the Rev. R. Dudley, M.A., at the Wesley bi-centenary commemoration service at the Opera House last evening. The text taken by the speaker was: “There was a man sent from Goa, whose name was John.” “Have you ever thought of the illustrious Johns of religious history?” asked the Rev. Dudley—John Bunyan, the dreamer; John Knox, the reformer; John Wycliffe, the translator, John Calvin, the theologian; John Huss, the martyr; John Darby, the teacher; John Newton, the hymn writer, and John Wesley, the revivalist. Writers of church history de-, clare that there are to be seen down the centuries five outstanding figures towering above their contemporaries —the Apostle Paul, of the Early Church; Augustine, the saint; S».

Francis, the little poor man; Martin Luther, the reformer, and John Wesley. of the 18th. century. “It was a great century into which Wesley was born: a century of golden names: of Isaac Newton in science, and Burke and the two Pitts in statesmanship; of Defoe and Addison; Switt and Steele; Gibbon and Goldsmith; Johnson and Pope; Burns and Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth in literature. At its beginning, Marlborough was fighting his country’s battles or. land, while decades later Nelson did likewise upon the sea. Wolfe was planting the flag in Canada. Clive in India, and Captain Cook in the Southern Seas, while at Home, England. Scotland and Ireland became a United Kingdom. Into such a century thei> was a man sent from God whose name was John Wesley. He came as a man with a mission to a decadent world. A Decadent World “Tn spGe of the cavalcade of illustrious 18th. century figures that htovk before our eyes, the England of Wesley's day was dark and unhappy. The rich flaunted lheir wealth and unashamedly indulged every fleshly appetite. Parents openly encouraged their children to immorality and purity and goodness were sneered out fashion. “It was a wild and degraded land: a land where women could be flogged in public or burned at the stake: where schools were lew and ignorance rife: where drunkenness and foul speech despoiled the life of high and low and multitudes revelled in the debasing sport of bear baiting and cock fighting. “In the England of the 18th. century it was a common sight to see the crowds gathering to behold the iniquitous spectacle of a public hanging or the open display of human heads dripping with blood. And this England of Wesley’s day: of gambling: of political corruption: of South Sea bubbles was also a land where the Candle of the Lord had almost gone out. For the most part the Bible was a forgotten book: ihe clergy wicked, drunkards and immoral: the Church unmindful of its responsibility, and persona] religion but the possession of a faithful few. Then into the darkness and squalor of such a world there came a man sent from God whose name was John Wesley. “He Brought a New Gospel” “He brought to men not a new gospel but a new emphasis. He diet not proclaim a distinctive message about God, but he thundered out Divine truths that for centuries had been forgotten. He did not discarci or minimise the religious value of the Bible as we moderns do, but he brought men back to its illumined pages. His flaming voice proclaimed for great truths which are the rudiments of Scriptural Christianity. “(1) The depravity of men and their utter inability to deliver themselves: he preached from bitter experience. For 13 years he haa preached and taught Holy Truths: for 13 years he had neglected no occasion for doing good, but at the end of it all. he lay a beaten and a pathetic figure. And when on that day 200 years ago to-day he went to that service in St. Paul's Cathedral in the late afternoon and heard the choir singing, “Out of the deep have I called Thee, O Lord,” it was but thu cry of his own desolate and unhappy human heart. But a few hours later it happened as someone was reading In a meeting and with ecstatic joy ho later describes it: ‘I felt my heari strongly warmed . . . . ’ “(2) The unshakable assurance which he possessea he conceived as the work of God and so he proclaimea his second groat doctrine—the doctrine of the Spirit. ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirits that wo are the children of God.’ This early message of Methodism rang out from the hearts of men and women as from their inexpressible gladness they cried, ‘What we have felt and seen With confidence we tell And publish to the sons of men The signs infallible.’ “(3) Again John Wesley taught the universal sovereignty of a God. «Even as Jesus the Savious called to all men and women irrespective of their culture or social standing, so John Wesley called the people of his age.

“The Puritan theology of that day so Calvinistic in its essence, limited Divine Grace to those whom God had foreordained to be saved. But Wesley, with overwhelming passion and love, regarding such a narrow view as unscriptura], called to all men to repent and be saved. “(4) Wesley taught the necessity ot a personal faith in Christ as Saviour. Read those personal pronouns in that familiar passage of the journal describing his evangelical conversion, listen to him calling to men to a saving faith in Christ; hear the triumphant voices of the redeemed of his century singing out of their incredulous joy and faith. “That was the message that reverberated throughout the kingdom ana brought men to their knees to Chris:, that was responsible for the most outstanding epoch in the history of ths eighteenth century: that brought into being one of the greatest modern churches of the world and yet Methodist Church is the least result of John Wesley’s work. The far greater achievement was the evangelical revival which spread throughout the land like a flaming fire, which

set in motion The New Philanthropy of slave emancipation, prison reform ' and social and industrial amelioration. Men and women learned again to worship in Christ and in the words of J. R. Green, the historian, ‘were delivered not only from the horrors of a revolution but became the people of a Book—the Bible.’ “Individually and not only socially did the work of grace proceed. Conversion was seen to be not as adolescent phenomena or mob psychology or mental suggestion but the daily overwhelming experience of men and women who flocked in their thousands to confess their sins and turn to their Saviour.”