WESLEYandWOOLMAN 
 
 MEWTON 
 
 MODERN MESSAGES 
 
BX 8495 .W5 N48 
 Newton, Joseph Fort, 
 1950. 
 
 Wesley and Woolman 
 
 1876- 
 
WESLEY AND 
 WOOLMAN 
 
 AN APPRAISAL AND 
 COMPARISON 
 
 ( MAY 
 JOSEPH FORT NEWTON 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
Copyright. 1914, by 
 JOSEPH FORT NEWTON 
 
TO 
 
 DR. E. J. LOCKWOOD-REMEMBERING 
 HIS FIFTEEN YEARS OF FRUITFUL 
 MINISTRY IN CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA 
 —WITH FRATERNAL REGARD AND 
 JOYOUS GOOD WILL. : : : : : 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 John Wesley, the Methodist 9 
 
 John Woolman, the Quaker. ....... 34 
 
 Wesley and Woolman 55 
 
 5 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/wesleywoolmanappOOnewt 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Of the three addresses which here ap- 
 pear as chapters, the last was suggested 
 by the first two, and they are sent forth 
 with the hope that they may do what they 
 were sincerely meant to do — recall the 
 church to the faith and vision of two of 
 its noble leaders. If in the last chapter 
 more emphasis is laid on Woolman than 
 on Wesley, it is because the former is less 
 widely known, and because he deserves to 
 be reclaimed to the grateful and venera- 
 tive memory of men of all faiths. Let us 
 hope that, in an age of reasonless ration- 
 alism, the light from these high towers 
 may serve to restore us to a religion 
 which is a reasonable service, assured 
 that if our age is to have a Burke or a 
 Lincoln for the service of the state, it will 
 7 
 
8 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 be wingless and alien to the sky if it does 
 not also give us a Wesley or a Woolman 
 for the life of the church. 
 
 J. r. N. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 JOHN WESLEY, THE METHODIST 
 
 On February 23, 1791, John Wesley 
 preached his last sermon at Leatherhead. 
 He took for his text the words: "Seek 
 ye the Lord while he may be found; call 
 upon him while he is near." Thus a great 
 voice was hushed — a voice which they 
 who heard entreated that it might speak 
 to them forever. The next day he wrote 
 his last letter, denouncing "the execrable 
 villainy of slavery" ; and on March 2 he 
 died. 
 
 What a grand, shining, solitary figure ! 
 He was eighty-eight, and his long life, 
 with its toils, its homelessness, its fatigues, 
 its constant triumph in Christ, was fin- 
 ished. For many years he had lived in 
 the second rest — that rest wherein the 
 yoke of Christ is easy and his burden is 
 9 
 
10 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 light. All spiritual pangs, all earthly 
 cares were far in the past, and there was 
 with him, as with his friend Fletcher, "a 
 tranquillity in the blood of Christ which 
 keeps the soul in its last hour, even as a 
 garrison keeps a city." So he went home 
 from a great life which he himself had 
 described as "a few days in a strange 
 land." 
 
 I 
 
 One can touch upon but a few aspects 
 of that remarkable career in one hour. 
 Much has been written about Wesley, and 
 yet it cannot be said that we have a really 
 great or satisfying book about him and 
 his work. Somehow, the man is too big 
 for any book. Time has tried Wesley 
 severely, but its terrible testing has only 
 made him a more towering figure, and 
 to-day he is as worthy of the title of Saint 
 as anyone who has been crowned with that 
 distinction. During their life together, 
 or at least the larger part of it, Charles 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 11 
 
 Wesley outtopped his brother, but in the 
 perspective of the years it is not so. In- 
 deed, the last years of the poet were dis- 
 appointing and obstructed, contrasting 
 painfully with the glory of his earlier 
 years. 
 
 There was, in fact, a marked difference 
 between the two men in temperament as 
 well as in religious outlook. It has never 
 been expounded at length, but it may be 
 indicated in this way. In his hymn for 
 midnight Charles Wesley describes him- 
 self as 
 
 Doubtful and insecure of bliss 
 Since death alone confirms me His; 
 
 and this note recurs in his song. Most of 
 the great hymn writers, and especially 
 those of the Middle Ages, were homesick 
 for heaven. But Charles Wesle}- goes 
 beyond any of them. There was, as 
 Adam Clarke detected, a morbid element 
 in his genius. For example, in his diary 
 for August 13, 1744, he writes of a fu- 
 
12 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 ncral : "We were all in tears. Mine, I 
 fear, flowqd from envy and impatience of 
 life. I felt throughout my soul that I 
 would rather be in his condition than 
 enjoy the whole of created good. The 
 spirit at its departure had left marks of 
 happiness upon the clay. No sight upon 
 earth in my eyes is half so lovely." 
 
 Charles Wesley was an extraordinary 
 genius. He was one of the greatest, if 
 not the very greatest, of hymn writers ; 
 but his temperament was gloomy, and 
 there were elements of danger in his expe- 
 rience. This morbid love of death dic- 
 tated many of his lines, and while they 
 have a certain fascination, they are not 
 wholesome. It is a painful, indeed a 
 perilous, attitude of soul. If you will 
 alter one word in the lines just quoted, 
 you will have the difference between 
 Charles and John Wesley : 
 
 Doubtful and insecure ot bliss 
 Since faith alone confirms me His. 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 13 
 
 This change, I believe, has been made 
 in the hj'mn book, and it sets the music 
 to a finer, firmer key. B}' contrast, the 
 soul of John Wesley was singularly 
 serene, almost unpliable indeed, and un- 
 clouded by fogs of the spirit. He went 
 through the world a pilgrim, for whom 
 the only permanent realities were the 
 divine life and the awakening of that life 
 in the souls of men. These realities suf- 
 ficed him. He knew what he was talking 
 about when he spoke of God and the soul 
 — knew the deep things, the strange 
 paths, and the floods of great waters. 
 In journeyings many, in labors abun- 
 dant, in perils oft, he carried about with 
 him everywhere the white rose of a blame- 
 less life and the pearl of peace. No leg- 
 end of the old-time saints surpasses the 
 heroism, the wonder, or the fruitful- 
 ness of his magnificent and ceaseless 
 evangel. 
 
14. WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 II 
 
 On his personal side, John Wesley was 
 a most fascinating man. Whether in a 
 small company or a vast audience, he 
 ruled men because he charmed them. He 
 was born with "a tendency to God" and 
 would have been a priest of faith, no 
 doubt, had he lived in India — born to the 
 love of God as to the love of his wonder- 
 ful mother. From his father he inherited 
 a restless activity, a poetic sensibility, 
 and a gift of expression very rare. 
 "Mind is from the mother," says Isaac 
 Taylor; and from his mother Wesley re- 
 ceived a firm will, a vivid apprehension of 
 truth, a rich fund of common sense, a 
 genius for command, a touch of humor — 
 and a nameless grace of soul. All the 
 children of the Epworth parsonage were 
 very clever, but John was the son of his 
 mother — who belongs with Monica and 
 Matilda in the calendar of the saints. 
 
 He was a small man, standing only five 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 15 
 
 feet six inches in height, and slight of 
 figure. Yet his muscles were as whip- 
 cords, his bones of steel, his nerves firm, 
 without an ounce of useless flesh on his 
 frame. As a human machine his body was 
 well-nigh perfect, and he held it in com- 
 plete command. He could go to sleep at 
 will and wake up at the moment desired. 
 Of iron endurance, his habits were simple 
 to austerity, almost ascetic in fact, and 
 he wasted no energy in worry, working 
 with an industry which was half his 
 genius. He tells us that he was never de- 
 pressed for an hour in his life. Such a 
 physique, always in working trim, is an 
 object of envy, and without it he could 
 not have done his work. He rode all over 
 England, traveling in all almost a quarter 
 of a million miles, mostly on horseback, 
 speaking sometimes fifteen times a week. 
 
 Not less finely trained was his intellect. 
 Neither subtle nor profound, his mind was 
 acute, candid, comprehensive, at once 
 
16 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 inquisitive and acquisitive. An adept in 
 logical dexterity, keen in wit, swift in 
 irony, he loved to argue. He was a pro- 
 digious student, reading books of all 
 kinds, walking and riding — -his saddle his 
 study chair. He was a remarkable lin- 
 guist. With his Moravian friends he 
 talked German, to the Spanish Jews in 
 Georgia he spoke Spanish, and to the 
 prisoners at Knowle he talked French. 
 Indeed, he may be said to have been a 
 pioneer in the study of German in Eng- 
 land. He read also Greek and Hebrew. 
 An expert in philosophy, he was equally 
 familiar with classical lore. Shakespeare 
 he read and annotated. He studied the 
 church Fathers, the Mystics, the Saints 
 of the church universal, and edited edi- 
 tions of Thomas a Kempis, Bunyan, 
 Baxter, Edwards, Rutherford, and Law. 
 Minds as far apart as Swift and Milton 
 won his love, though his literary estimates 
 were often awry. He admired every kind 
 
WESLEY, THE METHOt)IST 17 
 
 of ability, including that of Gar rick, the 
 actor. Always practical, no truth held 
 his interest unless it could be applied. At 
 Oxford, when the university was indiffer- 
 ent to science, he was making experi- 
 ments in optics and devouring the writ- 
 ings of Franklin. He was a great talker, 
 though Dr. Johnson grumbled that he was 
 always too busy to stay and have the talk 
 out. 
 
 As with body and mind, so with the 
 inner life of the soul — Wesley was ever 
 a Methodist. That is, he had a method of 
 spiritual culture which he practiced faith- 
 fully, even rigidly, from the first. Hence 
 the group of students at Oxford who fol- 
 lowed his lead and became known as 
 Methodists, and by some as the Holy 
 Club. Their method included reading the 
 Bible and books of divinity, meditation, 
 prayer, fasting, visiting the sick, the 
 poor, and those in prison. These things 
 became fixed habits with Wesley. After 
 
18 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 his conversion, and to the end, he kept up 
 his austere discipline of soul, finding it 
 useful in "the practice of salvation." He 
 fasted every Friday all the year round, 
 not that he attached any merit or magic 
 to the habit, but because he found it an 
 aid to the spiritual life. Here, as every- 
 Avhere, he has much to teach us for the 
 health of our spirits in an age self-indul- 
 gent and given to the worship of ease. 
 
 There are those who say that Wesley 
 was not a genius, but they err. He had 
 the three qualities which Emerson said 
 are the tokens of supreme greatness — dis- 
 interestedness, courage, and practical 
 capacity. There was in him, besides, a 
 power of personality possessed by no one 
 else known to me save Julius Caesar and 
 Napoleon. Quiet, soft-spoken, gentle in 
 manner, he could overawe a ruffian. Time 
 and time again he was assailed by angry 
 mobs, seeking his life. Always he would 
 walk out to meet the mob, shake hands 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 19 
 
 with its leader, and speak a few words to 
 him. That was enough. The leader be- 
 came his friend, and sometimes his fol- 
 lower, on the spot, and defied the mob to 
 touch Wesley. Many such instances are 
 recorded in his Journal, which, from be- 
 ing "a religious time-table, gradually 
 broadens into a detailed, life-long auto- 
 biography." No one has ever explained 
 this power. No one can. We may say 
 that it was the charm of a great soul 
 made effective by an iron will and a cool 
 courage; but that is as far as we can go. 
 It gave an almost uncanny power to his 
 preaching. Men who came to mock at 
 him were often seen falling as if smitten 
 by an unseen hand. He spoke simply, 
 calmly, plainly, without appeal to the 
 emotions, and yet his audience would be 
 wrought to frenzy. So much so that 
 Whitefield chided him for it. Yet, try 
 as he did, he could not prevent such 
 things. 
 
20 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 If we turn to the sermons of Wesley as 
 delivered, they leave us perplexed as to 
 the secret of his great influence over men. 
 Lucid, logical, direct, always earnest, 
 often eloquent, at once lofty and familiar, 
 it must be said that they furnish us no 
 key to his power. As William Watson 
 said, there is nothing imaginative in their 
 style, nothing to move the passions 
 through the fancy, nothing gorgeous, 
 nothing mystic. He might have added 
 that they have little or nothing that could 
 be called popular either in manner or in 
 matter. How such sermons took such a 
 hold upon the audiences of which we read 
 in the Journal is a marvel. Put the 
 famous sermon preached first at Saint 
 Mary's, Oxford, and often afterward, 
 alongside the sermon of Spurgeon on the 
 same text, and the contrast is striking. 
 As we read the two, Spurgeon has a rich- 
 ness and fullness of power to which 
 Wesley does not come near. And yet 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 21 
 
 Wesley swayed men as Spurgeon never 
 did — even as the winds sway the clouds. 
 How explain it? There remains only the 
 motto : "According to this time it shall be 
 said, 'What hath God wrought !' " 
 
 Such was the man who rode to and fro 
 over England in the days of Walpole, 
 preaching forty-two thousand sermons, 
 organizing a religious rapture into a 
 great reformation. He breathed upon 
 the evils of his time with a fiery breath of 
 purification. With the green grass for 
 his pulpit and the blue sky for his sound- 
 ing board, he seemed always in front of 
 whatever was making for righteousness. 
 So the mighty gospel won its way— among 
 the tinners in Cornwall, the colliers in 
 Kingswood, the drunkards of Moorfields, 
 and the harlots of Drury Lane. What 
 hath God not wrought! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Lord Macaulay says that Wesley saved 
 
22 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 England from something like a French 
 Revolution by winning to Christ the men 
 who would have led such a revolt. Reli- 
 gion seemed dying, or dead. The churches 
 were empty, dirty, neglected, and falling 
 into disrepair. If anyone mentioned reli- 
 gion, men laughed. So profound was the 
 stupor that godly men openly despaired, 
 and to many it seemed as if Christianity 
 had waxed old, and was ready to perish. 
 Bishop Butler, the one great thinker of 
 that day, sat oppressed in his castle, with 
 not a hope of surviving. He did not know 
 that "there was a man sent from God, 
 whose name was John," a mighty leader, 
 aglow with white light, magnetic with 
 moral sincerity, raised up for that hour. 
 
 When Butler died Wesley had finished 
 fourteen years of his unparalleled apos- 
 tolate, and within earshot of the Bishop's 
 castle the Methodist colliers were singing 
 their songs of joy. The sleep had been 
 broken. The sun was up and the dew was 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 23 
 
 on the grass. But, alas ! Butler, like 
 Sidney Smith, was blind to the extraor- 
 dinary visitation and work of God before 
 his eyes. Sir Walter Scott saw, under- 
 stood, and rejoiced. But Wesley was 
 more than a great evangelist. He was 
 a sagacious and skilled organizer for the 
 practice of the religious life. No one 
 denounced more fervently than he the en- 
 thusiasm which dies away in gray ashes, 
 unapplied. After evangelization he knew 
 there must be instruction, or all is in 
 vain. Great as a kindler of the white 
 flame, no one has ever planned more wisely 
 to conserve and utilize it. 
 
 The machinery of Methodism was not 
 made to order. It grew. Wesley ruled 
 firmly, and his fine intelligence directed 
 each movement and method to a definite 
 end. For this task he was well equipped 
 with rare executive abilities and an invin- 
 cible will. He was, moreover, a great 
 teacher of men, alike in theology and eth- 
 
24 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 ics, and his instruction was rich and full. 
 He insisted on the possibility of Christian 
 perfection. He held the Sermon on the 
 Mount to be gospel law, to be obeyed and 
 lived. His teaching, for example, about 
 money and its uses is sorely in need of 
 emphasis in our day. He was not rich 
 himself, but he gave away a fortune and 
 died, as he had lived, Avithout a purse. 
 Thus, to his gospel of free grace he joined 
 a high and stern morality, and, what is 
 equally vital, a method of inner culture 
 whereby men grew in grace. This last 
 we have neglected too much and too long, 
 and the results are visible all about us. 
 
 No sketch of Wesley must fail to take 
 account of his labors as an adjuster of 
 the intolerable destinies of the poor. He 
 was a great democrat — despite his Tory 
 proclivities in politics. While he revered 
 intellect and character, purple and fine 
 linen awed him not at all. He saw the 
 human soul beneath the garb of a convict, 
 
WESLEY, THE IMETHODIST 25 
 
 the rags of a beggar, the fustian of the 
 laborer, and it was the souls of men that 
 he sought as other men seek dollars. He 
 applied the white light of the gospel to 
 the slave trade, to the treatment of pris- 
 oners and of paupers, to the care of 
 orphans and the abolition of vice. He 
 would like, he said, "to join hands with 
 God to help the poor man live." He stood 
 forth a helper of the struggling, a 
 champion of the Aveak, and an educator 
 of the people in righteousness and well- 
 being. 
 
 IV 
 
 If we would know the secret of all this 
 tireless and benign industry, we must go 
 back to May 24, 1738. "In the evening," 
 writes Wesley, "I went very unwillingly 
 to a society in Aldersgate Street, where 
 one was reading Luther's preface to the 
 Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter 
 before nine, while he was describing the 
 change which God works in the heart 
 
26 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 througli faith in Christ, / felt my heart 
 strangely warmed. I felt that I did now 
 trust Christ alone — that he had taken 
 away my sins, even mine." That is the 
 secret; and that night is a great date in 
 the story of England and of the world — 
 for the most far-reaching issues are de- 
 termined, not on red fields, but in the 
 solitary places of the spirit. 
 
 Yet we must not misunderstand that 
 strange warming of the heart which 
 changed Wesley from a seeker to a finder, 
 from a struggler to victor. It was less 
 a conversion than a transfiguration. He 
 was not a sinner turned into a good man, 
 as has many times been the case. Far 
 from it. He was a minister who had been 
 a missionary — exact in morals, punctil- 
 ious in ritual, rigid in self-denial, help- 
 ful to the needy, eager to serve God and 
 "do a little good in the world." But he 
 had never found peace, and no man can 
 do a great work without peace in his 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 27 
 
 heart. What, then, was the change 
 wrought in Wesley? He tells us that he 
 had been a slave; and now he was a son. 
 He discovered the greatest of all truths — 
 that God l.oved him, and the feeling of 
 love cast out fear and filled his soul with 
 a song of gladness. "Then I was some- 
 times, if not often, conquered. Now I 
 am always conqueror." From a timid 
 servant he had become a son of the Most 
 High — set free from bondage into the 
 light and joy of a victorious life. 
 
 As he said in a letter: "If it were pos- 
 sible to shake the traditional evidence of 
 Christianity ; still he hath the Eternal 
 Evidence — and every true believer has 
 the witness in himself — which stands 
 firm and unshaken." In that sentence we 
 have the key to the life of Wesley, and 
 how he came to be so great a power in the 
 world. Once hesitating, and morbidly 
 afraid of death, there came a day when 
 he attained to that sure knowledge of 
 
28 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 which his father spoke so frequently on 
 his deathbed: "The inward witness, son, 
 the inward witness, this is the strongest 
 proof of Christianity." When he arrived 
 at this assurance his fears fled, his whole 
 life took on a new aspect, and he became 
 a mighty soldier for social righteousness 
 — one of that worshiping and toiling 
 host whose music is the joy and hope of 
 the race. 
 
 Thereafter he judged men by this inner 
 experience of the liberty of the gospel, 
 and made it the test of fellowship. To 
 me, this is his great meaning to the his- 
 tory of the church, and the wisest insight 
 of his whole life. It is the secret too of 
 his beautiful catholicity of soul, espe- 
 cially in his later years, which is a trea- 
 sure forever. If men love God and serve 
 him as sons, they may be friends and 
 fellow workers, no matter how far apart 
 they may be in theological point of view. 
 Wesley saw that at last. He saw that 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 29 
 
 Whitefield and William Law — two shining 
 souls — with whom he had differed, were 
 one with him in the thing most worth 
 while. Indeed, he made the great words 
 of William Law his own : "Perhaps what 
 the best heathens called Reason ; and 
 Solomon, Wisdom; Saint Paul, Grace in 
 general ; Saint John, Righteousness or 
 Love ; Luther, Faith ; Fenelon, Virtue may 
 be only different expressions for one and 
 the same blessing — the light of Christ 
 shining in. different degrees under differ- 
 ent dispensations. Why, then, so many 
 words, and so little charity exercised 
 among Christians about the particular 
 term of a blessing experienced more or less 
 by all righteous men !" 
 
 That is the true liberalism, and the only 
 kind worthy of the name. "If thy heart 
 is as my heart, give me thy hand" — that 
 is the ground of Christian union. We do 
 not want uniformity of opinion. It would 
 be a curse. We want a unity of inner 
 
30 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 experience of things immortal, and a 
 variety of thought like the variety of a 
 flower garden. Forever memorable was 
 the letter of Wesley to the Bishop of 
 Lincoln. What golden words are these! 
 "Alas! my Lord, is this any time to per- 
 secute a man for the sake of conscience.'' 
 I beseech you do as you would be done to. 
 You are a man of sense; you are a man 
 of learning; nay, I verilj^ believe — what 
 is of infinitely more value — you are a 
 man of piety. Then think and let think." 
 
 If the church had been willing to think 
 and let think, what unspeakable woes 
 would have been avoided! As Wesley 
 said, "If we could once bring all our 
 preachers to insist on these two points — 
 Christ dying for us, and Christ reigning 
 in us — we should shake the trembling gates 
 of hell." Let the church return to this 
 great Teacher and it will return to influ- 
 ence and power. With a rich, warm, 
 mystical experience as the basis of its 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 31 
 
 fellowship and the center of its thought, 
 allowing and inspiring the widest liberty 
 of thought and inquiry, let it bring its 
 light and power to the service of the great 
 common people, as Wesley did — and a 
 new day will dawn ! May it come quickly 
 and not too long delay ! 
 
 V 
 
 How beautiful was the old age of Wes- 
 le^-^ ! It was a great sunset, full of peace 
 and prophecy, aglow with that mellow 
 "old experience" of things eternal — like 
 the oncoming evening and the star- 
 crowned night. To be sure, he had been 
 robbed of domestic happiness, partly by 
 the action of others, and partly by his 
 own unwisdom. But he was never sour, 
 nor melancholy, nor envious. There too 
 he was conqueror. He was never deeply 
 rooted to the earth. He lived for the im- 
 perishable, not for the things that death 
 makes valueless and which exist by pass- 
 
32 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 ing away. He dreaded not pain, nor ill- 
 ness, nor death. The more one reads hid 
 life the more one is impressed with his 
 detachment. At a great price he achieved 
 his spiritual freedom, but his victory was 
 complete. 
 
 What a picture was that at Kingswood 
 when, at the age of eighty-one, he 
 preached under the shade of great trees 
 which he himself had planted, to the chil- 
 dren and grandchildren of his old dis- 
 ciples, who had long passed away. Of 
 like kind was that scene at Bolton, after 
 the death of Charles Wesley, when the old 
 man gave out the hymn, "Come, O Thou 
 Traveler Unknown." When he tried to 
 read the lines. 
 
 My company before is gone. 
 And I am left alone with Thee, 
 
 his voice broke, and he sat down, hid his 
 face in his hands, and wept. Shortly after- 
 ward he visited his friend, the widow of 
 Fletcher, and she wrote that his soul was 
 
WESLEY, THE METHODIST 33 
 
 "far more sunk in God, and such an unc- 
 tion attends his words that each sermon 
 was indeed spirit and life." His last 
 uttered desire was that his friends should 
 scatter broadcast a sermon he had just 
 written on the Love of God! Such lives 
 make our earth a sacred place. They 
 touch one to wistfulness, and set one 
 thinking as to the investment of his own 
 power of light and leading here among 
 men. 
 
 In the solemn aisle of Westminster 
 Abbey — that great temple of Silence and 
 Reconciliation — you will find the busts of 
 John and Charles Wesley, near that of 
 Isaac Watts. Three great sayings of 
 the evangelist, statesman, reformer, and 
 saint are there — one, full of breadth, "I 
 look on all the world as my parish" ; one, 
 full of death-defying hope, "God buries 
 his workmen, but continues his work" ; an- 
 other, the last words of his life, "The best 
 of all is, God is with us !" 
 
CHAPTER II 
 JOHN WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 
 I 
 
 If one wishes to take a long journey 
 into a quaint and strange place, let him 
 dip into the Journal of George Fox. It 
 is like a little rusty gate which opens 
 right into the heart of the seventeenth 
 century, so that when we go in by it we 
 find ourselves pilgrims with the quiet old 
 Quaker in the oddest kind of England. 
 What an England it was ! — hot-blooded, 
 undignified, fantastic, and in many ways 
 inconsequent. 
 
 Ecclesiastically the country was in 
 chaos. The pulpits of the Episcopacy 
 were filled with Puritan preachers. All 
 sorts of queer sects flourished, some of 
 them small enough to be called insects. A 
 kind of nominal toleration was in vogue, 
 34 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 35 
 
 and all the land, good, bad, and indiffer- 
 ent, was eager for religious argument. 
 Everywhere, in church, in market place, 
 and in courthouse, the wordy warfare 
 went on. Men used Bible texts as clubs 
 wherewith to belabor each other, which is 
 ever a sure sign that religious life is at a 
 low ebb. 
 
 George Fox, born eight years after 
 the death of Shakespeare, was the son of 
 a weaver, and early apprenticed as a 
 shoemaker. Unlearned in the schools, 
 he was a man of great ability, "religious, 
 inward, still, and keenly observing." 
 Brooding much over the state of religion 
 in his day, he felt the stirrings of . the 
 Spirit of God within him to proclaim the 
 gospel of the Inner Light as superior, 
 though not necessarily opposed, to the' 
 authority of church and Bible. In 1643 
 he set forth on his great black horse "to 
 declare the day of the Lord," and many 
 adventures befell him. Truly, he was an 
 
36 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 arresting figure, and his service to the 
 liberty of faith and the reality of the inner 
 life of the Spirit entitled him to high 
 honor. 
 
 Now, that immovable old Friend said 
 some keen things about our religious an- 
 cestors, but, like the soldier who saw him 
 assailed by a mob, we are ready to say, 
 "Sir, I see you are a man." He never 
 took the bark off his words, and they 
 were sometimes a bit rough. He called 
 all churches steeple-houses, and all 
 preachers priests and hirelings. Natu- 
 rally, this did not add to his popularity 
 among the clergy, and, as he insisted on 
 speaking out in meeting, he spent much 
 time in jail. When he appeared in a 
 village the clergy would assemble with 
 their Bibles and attack him with argu- 
 ments. He never lost his temper; he left 
 that to his opponents; and when he got 
 the best of the argument — as he usually 
 did — they would pound him first with their 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 37 
 
 Bibles, and then with fists and sticks. 
 Next day he would appear in the village 
 again, to the amazement of all, who there- 
 upon gave him respectful attention. 
 
 After that there was nothing to do but 
 to bring him up before the magistrate, 
 Avhere another argument usually took 
 place. Fox outwitted the bench as well 
 as the pulpit, and it was in one of these 
 parleys with Justice Bennett, when he 
 "bid the judge tremble at the word of the 
 Lord," that he was first called, in mock- 
 ery, a Quaker. What a scene was that 
 before Judge Glynne, then Chief Justice 
 of England ! Fox was brought in and 
 uttered his usual gentle blessing, "Peace 
 be among you." 
 
 "What be these you have brought into 
 the Court?" asked the Judge of the jailer. 
 Then turning to the prisoners he said, 
 "Why do you not put off your hats ?" 
 
 "Where did any magistrate, king, or 
 judge, from Moses to Daniel, command 
 
38 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 any to put off their hats? Where does 
 the law of England command any such 
 thing? Show me that law," asked Fox 
 with that imperturbable serenity so exas- 
 perating to his foes. 
 
 "Take him away, prevaricator, I'll ferk 
 him," cried the Judge, hot with anger, 
 his face as red as a berry in a bush. So 
 Fox went away to jail. After a while the 
 Judge thought he had an argument that 
 would silence the prisoner, and had Fox 
 brought into court again. 
 
 "Come," said the Judge to the prisoner, 
 "where had they hats from Moses to 
 Daniel; come, answer me: I have you 
 fast now." 
 
 "Thou mayest read in the third of 
 Daniel that the three children were put 
 into the fiery furnace with their coats, 
 their hose, and their hats on," said Fox, 
 quietly. 
 
 "Take him away. Jailer!" cried the 
 Judge, more angry than ever. Fox was 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 39 
 
 led away and thrust among thieves, where 
 he was kept a great while. 
 
 None the less, between spells in jail the 
 old Friend went about his mission and 
 won many followers, who were filled with 
 an ardent zeal to convert others. Some 
 of them went to the West Indies, to 
 America, to Jerusalem, to Malta; and 
 Mary Fisher — for women were also among 
 their preachers — went to Sm3'rna and 
 Greece, and even sought audience with the 
 Sultan. Everywhere they suffered bitter 
 persecution. Not until 1689, the year be- 
 fore Fox died, did England grant them 
 toleration. Carlyle has left us unforget- 
 able pictures of the interviews between 
 Fox and Cromwell, and how each strong 
 man hailed the other instantly. Fox had 
 no notion of forming a separate sect, be- 
 lieving that his truth would conquer the 
 church, as it seems well-nigh to have done. 
 Yet his followers naturally drew together 
 and formed a church in 1666. 
 
40 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 "I was sent," said the gentle Quaker, 
 "by the divine Power and Spirit of God 
 to bring people off from their own ways 
 to Christ, the new and living way, and 
 from their churches, which men had made 
 and gathered to the Church of God, the 
 General Assembly written in heaven. . . . 
 And I was to bring the people that they 
 might know the pure religion, might visit 
 the fatherless, the widows, and strangers, 
 and keep themselves from the spots of 
 the world." 
 
 Happily, such teaching is now far 
 wider than the Society of Friends; in 
 the heart of it, it is as wide as the 
 world. The England of George Fox 
 has passed away, and much that was dis- 
 tinctive of early Quakerism has passed 
 away also. For us, the name "Quaker" 
 evokes visions of drab cloth, silver-gray 
 heads, and old-fashioned speech, of fra- 
 grant lives and sweet deeds of charity, 
 and faces benign in their serenity and 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 41 
 
 goodness. In their revolt from external 
 form and their plea for more inwardness, 
 and therefore for more realit}^ in the reli- 
 gious life, Fox and his followers helped 
 forward the cause of faith and the higher 
 life. 
 
 II 
 
 Quakers came early to our shores, but 
 even here they were not very kindly re- 
 ceived. So dense was the cloud of prej- 
 udice in those "good old days" that these 
 gentle folk were held to be dangerous. 
 Four of them, Mary Dyer being one, were 
 hanged on Boston Common — think of it ! 
 They settled in West Jersey under Fen- 
 wick, and in Pennsylvania under Penn, 
 and no influence has been a greater bless- 
 ing to our national life. When the old 
 Quaker laid off his drab coat and picked 
 up his ax, he laid the foundation of some 
 of the best things among us. A quietist in 
 faith, he has been nobly active in all good 
 things, from the days of Penn to Lundy 
 
42 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 and Lincoln, and from the songs of Whit- 
 tier to the service of Jane Addams. 
 
 Into this tradition of sweet piety and 
 earnest endeavor John Woolman was 
 ^^orn in West Jersey, in 1720, and the 
 record of his beautiful life, as he has left 
 it in his Journal, is a precious legacy. 
 / "Get the writings of John Woolman by 
 v heart," said Charles Lamb, who more than 
 once in his essays speaks in praise of this 
 saintly man. There is, in truth, a rare 
 beauty in the writings of Woolman, an 
 exquisite sweetness and purity of spirit. 
 He was no master of high literary art, 
 and his Journal, like that of Wesley, 
 makes such use of Bible words and phrases 
 as to blur, at times, his own individuality 
 of style. Yet it is a golden book, and 
 style was the last thing he thought of. 
 No one can read it without feeling that 
 here was a citizen of the kingdom of 
 heaven, a man whose only ambition was 
 to know the will of God and to do it. 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 43 
 
 Only a humble tailor, as Jacob Behman 
 was a cobbler, yet he was a man mighty in 
 gentleness, and if some unseen hand were 
 to write the history of his influence, what 
 a testimony it would be! 
 
 "I have often felt a motion of love to 
 leave some hints in writing of my expe- 
 riences of the goodness of God," runs the 
 first line of his Journal. That was the 
 keynote of his life of benign industry in 
 the cause of liberty, righteousness, sim- 
 plicity, and peace. His religion, which 
 was his life, may be summed up in the 
 word "love." He held the faith, so little 
 acted upon, that God is Love, and that to 
 live with him in "inward stillness of heart 
 and happy humility," working out his 
 loving Spirit in our lives, is the whole 
 duty of man and the highest wisdom. He 
 thought of humanity as a pantheist thinks 
 of God, identifying himself with his fel- 
 lows in their sorrows, and, vicariously, in 
 their sins. He had the humanistic temper- 
 
44 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 ament which made him an heir to all the 
 woes of man and beast. His pity was a 
 spring always flowing. Like Francis of 
 Assisi, he felt a kinship with all breath- 
 ing things, and his charity knew no limits. 
 Only rarely do such men appear upon 
 earth, and surely no purer or sweeter soul 
 ^ has walked in this New World. 
 
 With what artless grace of simple 
 words Woolman tells the story of his life, 
 leaving out many things lest he too much 
 exalt himself! Here are brief pictures 
 of Quaker life in the old Jersey home, with 
 its dignity, its simplicity, its refinement 
 alike of habit and of fa:ith. As a boy he 
 \/ once killed a mother-robin by accident, 
 and the horror of it haunted him for days, 
 sending him to his knees to beg the for- 
 giveness of God. A discourtesy to his 
 mother cast a shadow over him for weeks, 
 afflicting him sorely. Delightful it is to 
 read of his religious experiences in those 
 early years, particularly at the time of his 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 45 
 
 adolescence. Here is a passage to ponder, 
 if so that we may feel a like regret when 
 we say more than is required of us : "One 
 day, being under a strong exercise of 
 spirit, I stood up and said some words in 
 meeting; but not keeping close to the 
 divine opening, I said more than Avas 
 required of me. Being soon sensible of 
 my error, I was afflicted in mind some 
 weeks, without any light or comfort, even 
 to that degree that I could not take satis- 
 faction in anj'thing." 
 
 Woolman was one of the first to see and 
 feel the horror of slavery, and much of his 
 life was spent in inducing the Quakers to 
 abjure it. So we find him journeying to 
 and fro, working at his trade as a tailor 
 to pay his way, from one Yearly Meeting 
 of Friends to another, all the way from 
 New England to the Carolinas. He had 
 not the vehemence of an agitator, but 
 spoke, rather, in sorrowful remonstrance 
 against an evil which weighed heavily upon 
 
46 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 his soul by night and day. He moved 
 among men as an embodied conscience. 
 Yet he was so gentle, so gracious, so lov- 
 ingly wise withal that men could not be 
 offended even when he probed them most 
 deeply. It was largely through his influ- 
 ence and labors that the Friends repu- 
 diated slavery. Once at least it was 
 granted him to see, in a rapt and pro- 
 phetic vision, the fulfillment of his dream. 
 Toward the end of his life he saw "The 
 day of the Lord approaching when the 
 man who is most wise in human policy 
 shall be the greatest fool; and the arm 
 that is mighty to support injustice shall be 
 broken in pieces ; the enemies of the right- 
 eous shall make a terrible rattle, and shall 
 mightily torment one another ; for He that 
 is omnipotent is rising up to judgment, 
 and will plead the cause of the oppressed ; 
 and He commanded me to open the 
 vision." 
 
 Whittier, in a note on this passage. 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 47 
 
 says that some may regard these as the 
 words of a distempered imagination, but 
 that those who have eyes will see their 
 explanation in the Civil War. At times 
 the simple words of the simple Woolman 
 took on a lofty and stately demeanor, and 
 marched with majestic tread. Take these 
 lines, which are the noblest in the Journal, 
 written shortly after his vision of victory : 
 "The place of prayer is a precious habita- 
 tion; for I now saw that the prayers of 
 the saints were precious incense; and a 
 trumpet was given me that I might sound 
 forth this language; that the children 
 might hear it and be invited together to 
 this precious habitation, where the prayers 
 of the saints, as sweet incense, arise before 
 the throne of God and the Lamb. I saw 
 this habitation to be safe — to be inwardly 
 quiet when there were great stirrings and 
 commotions in the world. Prayer, at this 
 day, in pure resignation, is a precious 
 place; the trumpet is sounded; the call 
 
48 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 goes forth to the church that she gather 
 to the place of pure inward prayer; and 
 her habitation is safe." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Woolman took to wife Sarah Ellis, a 
 sweet girl who was at once devoted and 
 devout, and lived in a tiny whitewashed 
 cottage on Rancocas Creek in West 
 Jersey. There, amid his apple trees which 
 he planted and cultivated, he was most 
 happy, what time he was not going to and 
 fro spreading his gospel of purity and 
 pity. It was an humble abode, but he was 
 content. He regarded agriculture as the 
 business most conducive to moral and 
 physical health, and was wont to say that 
 >*if the leadings of the Spirit were more 
 attended to, more people would be engaged 
 in the sweet employment of husbandry, 
 where labor is agreeable and healthful." 
 He did not condemn honest wealth, but saw 
 /^that luxury rots men and deforms women. 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 49 
 
 From his little farm he looked out with 
 a mingled feeling of wonder and sorrow 
 upon the fret and unrest of the world, and 
 especially was he grieved to see luxury 
 overgrowing the early simplicity of his 
 own religious society. He regarded the 
 merely rich man with unfeigned pity. 
 With none of his scorn, he yet had all 
 the feeling of Thoreau for men who went 
 about bowed down with the weight of 
 broad acres and great houses on their 
 backs. Near the end of his life he went 
 to England on a religious errand, travel- 
 ing in steerage, despite the protest of his 
 friends, rather than endure the luxury of 
 the cabin. There he saw the hardship of 
 the life of the sailor, and it haunted him 
 to the end. A storm came up raidsea, and 
 for a time all seemed lost, but Woolman, 
 inwardly still, went about among the 
 panic-stricken company giving words of 
 cheer. It reminds one of a like day in 
 the life of Fox when his ship was pursued 
 
50 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 by pirates, "but there was a spirit in her 
 that could not be taken." 
 
 Arriving in England almost ill, Wool- 
 man was coolly received at first, but later 
 was given warm welcome among Friends. 
 During the four months of his stay he 
 went to many places, wrote several essays, 
 and labored abundantly but somewhat sor- 
 rowfully. On all sides he saw the intimate 
 connection between luxury and oppres- 
 sion, and the burden of the laboring poor 
 lay dark upon his sensitive spirit. He 
 would not ride on stagecoaches because 
 of the harsh treatment of the horses. In 
 his lonely wanderings in the rural districts 
 and in the manufacturing towns he saw 
 one class eager and greedy for gain, while 
 the many were ph^'sically and morally de- 
 graded. It broke his heart, and his health 
 and vitality failed. At York he fell ill 
 with smallpox, and after a few days' suf- 
 fering died in 1772. 
 
 His death was beautiful with "inward 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 51 
 
 stillness," as befitted his life. Words of 
 prayer and praise and resignation to the 
 will of God were always on his lips. Never 
 in his life did he offer prayers for special 
 personal favors, but always for the uni- 
 versal well-being. He was, to use his own 
 words, so mixed with his fellows in their 
 misery that he did not consider himself a 
 separate being. In his last prayer, beau- 
 tiful beyond any words save his own, he 
 remembered "my fellow creatures sepa- 
 rated from the divine harmony." It closed 
 with the words, "Thy will, O Father, be 
 done." His last words, written down with 
 great difficulty, were : "I believe my being 
 here is in the wisdom of Christ ; I know not 
 as to life or death." That was all, and 
 that was enough both for wisdom and for 
 faith. 
 
 IV 
 
 Of the Quakers we may say in the 
 words of Woolman: "I found no narrow- 
 ness respecting sects and opinions, but 
 
52 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 believed that sincere, upright-hearted 
 people, in^ every society, who truly love 
 God, were accepted of him." So we find 
 him writing of Thomas a Kempis and 
 John Huss as friends and fellow lovers of 
 one God and Father. He made his own 
 the great saying of Penn, so dear to the 
 heart of Lincoln, that the meek, the just, 
 the pious, the devout, are everywhere of 
 one religion, and that when death hath 
 taken off the masks of flesh they will know 
 and love one another. Of that invisible 
 church of the Spirit, to which all good 
 men belong, and wliich overarches all 
 sects, Woolman, like Fox and Whittier, 
 was a God-illumined prophet. 
 
 Indeed, if one would know the genius of 
 the Quaker, and the depth of his "silent 
 worship," one must go far back and high 
 up. Quietism has been the quest of the 
 greatest souls of the Christian centuries, 
 and the achievement of a few. That pas- 
 sage is the Confessions of Saint Augustine 
 
WOOLMAN, THE QUAKER 53 
 
 — perhaps the greatest passage outside 
 the Bible — in which he describes his "one 
 moment of knowledge," is a perfect de- 
 scription of the vision of Fox and the 
 Quakers. All down the ages one can trace 
 this quest, now through Teresa and 
 Molinos, now through Fox and Fenelon — a 
 stream of sweetness and earnestness, of 
 quietness and confidence, flowing down to 
 our own Emerson, whose secret was "a 
 holy and wise silence in which God dwells." 
 When Emerson was last in England, the 
 author of "Mark Rutherford" asked him 
 who were his chief friends in America. 
 He replied, "I find many among the 
 Quakers." 
 
 There is nothing in this faith akin to 
 such benumbing quietism as we find in the 
 Bhagavad Gita, which describes the ideal 
 man as one who lives quiet-eyed and serene, 
 passionless and unperplexed, too high for 
 gladness, grief, or fear. God forbid ! That 
 is not victory ; it is indifference. Had 
 
54 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 Lincoln attained to such stainless, un- 
 troubled calm, would slavery have been 
 destroyed? Never! Nor would the 
 Quakers have been among his most loyal 
 and heroic helpers. No ; it does not take 
 refuge in indifference, but, rather, in the 
 holy habitation of prayer, where, as Wool- 
 man said, there is safety, consolation, and 
 conquest, and where we may learn the 
 meaning of the words spoken of old: "Be 
 still and know that I am God." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 There are classic men as there are 
 classic books. A classic man is one who, 
 though deeply rooted in the soil of his age 
 and speaking to its problems, has, never- 
 theless, by virtue of the depth and clarity 
 of his insight, a message to the times fol- 
 lowing. Wesley and Woolman are classic 
 men, examples alike of saintliness of char- 
 acter and fruitfulness in social service; 
 and it is believed that they have somewhat 
 to say to the sorely tried church of to- 
 day. 
 
 Such men form a part of that perpet- 
 ual revelation which the Eternal is mak- 
 ing of Himself to humanity; and it be- 
 hooves us who are ill at ease in our low 
 estate of spiritual power to study their 
 high, heroic lives. Their value to us in 
 these days is the testimony they make 
 55 
 
56 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 clear and persuasive of the reality of the 
 living Christ, and his power to revive the 
 church and lead it to victorious achieve- 
 ment. Change has come over the world 
 since the time when Wesley and Woolman 
 labored, the meaning and direction of 
 which, even still, are hard to know — a 
 change from era to era. The paths 
 trodden by the footsteps of centuries have 
 been broken up; old things have passed 
 away, and our imagination can but feebly 
 penetrate to their vanished woi'ld. Never- 
 theless, because they had to do with things 
 timeless and eternal, they may have speech 
 with us. 
 
 I 
 
 There are men still young, as we now 
 reckon age, whose lives have covered the 
 whole period of the advent and advance 
 of the science of sociology. Comte coined 
 the word in 1857, and ten years later 
 Karl Marx sent forth his volume. Das 
 Capital, which has become the sacred book 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 57 
 
 of Socialism — though perhaps the mem- 
 bers of that cult read their scriptures as 
 little as the followers of other faiths read 
 theirs. At the same time science was 
 winning its way, flushed with power, rad- 
 ical, irreverent, unveiling the lucid and 
 wise order of the world under the sway of 
 law; and the personal God of our fathers 
 seemed to fade into a vast, vague, 
 impersonal Power. Democracy too made 
 itself felt, leveling down while lifting 
 up, declaring the voice of the people 
 to be the voice of God, proclaiming the 
 end of the Rule of Force and the com- 
 ing of the Rule of Numbers. Life became 
 every year more intricate, as men were 
 drawn closer together under the gray 
 smoke-cloud of industrialism, and were 
 more and more moved as one man by com- 
 mon impulses and aims. 
 
 Forces such as these, and others of a 
 sort similar, have made this the Age of the 
 Crowd. Never were human bodies so 
 
58 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 jostled and jammed; never were human 
 souls so much alone. We are in the midst 
 of the collective despotism predicted forty 
 years ago. Reliance is being increasingly 
 put upon coercion of the will by external 
 pressure, as if public opinion, law, or the 
 tyranny of the Many had become the 
 modern evangel. Men move in masses. 
 Often they huddle together in a way to 
 suggest weakness rather than strength, 
 for not all of the spirit of fraternity in 
 our day is born of faith in a Divine 
 Father. Some of it, strangely enough, 
 is due to a loss of faith in the highest 
 appeals. Unable or unwilling to be alone, 
 men crowd together, seeking escape in 
 fellowship — and naturally so, if God be 
 only a cold, bare Infinitude ! There is an- 
 other side to modern life — its passion for 
 reality, its humane pity, its fruitful ideal- 
 ism ; but it has a dual aspect. 
 
 At any rate, the word "social," whether 
 we attach an "ism" to it or not, is tlie 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 59 
 
 great word of our time. We think in 
 terms of the mass, under the sense of a 
 vast solidarity, and "loyalty to the be- 
 loved community" was recently declared 
 by Josiah Royce to be the essence and 
 aspiration of religion. As men are 
 crowded together they more and more 
 realize that together they must reach the 
 heights or sink to the depths. Such is the 
 trend of the age, and its results not only 
 upon our ways of thinking, but upon faith 
 and character as well, are obvious to any 
 student of modern life. 
 
 Once religion was all a personal matter. 
 "The simple question is," cried Newman 
 in his agony at Littlemore, "can I be 
 saved in the English Church.'' Am I in 
 safety were I to die to-night.''" With 
 the old Puritan it was the same — is my 
 calling and election sure? How strange 
 and far off those fears seem to men who 
 live in a universe where not even an atom 
 is ever lost ! Such questions are now herd 
 
60 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 to betray a selfish, if not morbid, concern 
 for personal safety. No; the point of 
 view has shifted from the old emphasis 
 upon personal piety to a demand for 
 social justice and service. The Christian 
 of to-day, instead of fleeing from the City 
 of Destruction, like the Bunyan pilgrim, 
 is called upon to save the city. Our theo- 
 logians, once so talkative about abstract 
 propositions, are now busy trying to 
 divine how the "social mind" acts, and 
 what it thinks — though it is not yet clear 
 that the social mind is anything more than 
 a metaphor. Surely, he is a poor prophet, 
 and no poet at all, who does not feel the 
 thrill and promise of this social mysticism 
 in its eager, aspiring quest for right. Yet 
 it must be plain that such a tendency may 
 easily sweep us too far into another ex- 
 treme, if, indeed, it has not already done 
 so. 
 
 With all this passion for humanit}'-, this 
 demand for social salvation, every live 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 61 
 
 man must be in deep sympathy. It is 
 magnificent — this call to clean up the 
 world and set the social order right. It 
 is heroic — this faith that ills long held to 
 be necessary evils, if not inevitable parts 
 of the human order, need not and must 
 not continue to be. It is prophetic — this 
 sense of human society as a family, and 
 the effort to apply the truths of the 
 Sermon on the Mount to political and 
 economic relations. The heaven possible 
 to men here, and the hells of vice and 
 misery that burn around us, these occupy 
 the thoughts of men to-day, as they come 
 to think in terms of social duty and hope. 
 And yet, with no desire to cool this social 
 ardor, but with a wish to conserve it, 
 deepen it, and direct it, we must keep our 
 poise between the peril of extremes, and 
 lay equal emphasis upon the quality of 
 the units of the social order. 
 
62 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 II 
 
 Notwithstanding the current stress 
 upon things social, it is still true that reli- 
 gion is the most intimate and personal of 
 all human concerns. God does not call 
 men en masse, or by groups, but, in the 
 ancient word of Isaiah, "/ have called thee 
 by thy name," — not that we may render 
 less social service, but vastly more. In- 
 deed, the crowning glory of man, and the 
 basis of all valid social idealism, is that 
 we are not numbered prisoners in the end- 
 less lockstep march of blind Fate. Unless 
 this truth be kept vividly in mind, the 
 worth of the soul and the sanctity of 
 human difference will be erased in the gen- 
 eral blur. Admit that the old individual- 
 ism was imperfect, it could not have been 
 so bad as it would be for all to be reduced 
 to the dead level of a herd. 
 
 Obeisance to the divinity of mere num- 
 bers is a superstition. Massed ignorance 
 never yet has made wisdom. Crowds with- 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 63 
 
 out vision, throngs without the leadership 
 of spiritual faith, multitudes without 
 character are a terror and a plague. An 
 assembly of idiots is depressing ; its size is 
 its shame. No doubt a remedy for many of 
 the ills of democracy is more democracy, 
 but democracy itself must be saved from 
 itself. Have we not heard of late that 
 "our whole life and mind to-day is satu- 
 rated with the slow, upward infiltration of 
 a new spirit — that of an emancipated, 
 atheistic democracy.'*" ^ Obviously, the 
 shifting of the accent of religion from per- 
 sonal piety to social activity, in so far 
 as it results in what Harnack calls "an 
 acute secularizing of Christianity," can- 
 not cope with the new spirit. Only a saint 
 with the blended qualities of a Cromwell 
 and a Francis of Assisi can stem such a 
 tide. 
 
 Moreover, no man has ever rendered 
 any vital service to his kind, social or 
 
 'Winds of Doctrine, by Santayana. 
 
64 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 otherwise, who was not able, if need be, to 
 stand ajone against the mass. Call the 
 names of the great soldiers of social right- 
 eousness, from Luther to Lincoln, and it 
 will be found that they were "friends of 
 God," drawing their strength and valor 
 from hidden springs. Of this truth 
 Wesley and Woolman were shining wit- 
 nesses. If they were crusaders in action, 
 they were first quietists in faith and expe- 
 rience. The "place of prayer," as Wool- 
 man called it, was ever for them what the 
 Joyous Gard in the Morte d' Arthur was 
 to Sir Lancelot — a stronghold of quiet 
 whence they issued forth to rescue those 
 that were oppressed, and to do knightly 
 deeds. They were still, strong men who 
 lived in the faith that they were "never 
 less alone than when alone," and by that 
 power they wrought heroically and hope- 
 fully. 
 
 There are none to deny that we must 
 press forward toward righteousness — that 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 65 
 
 we must hunger and thirst after a collec- 
 tive life that is just and merciful and 
 pure; but it becomes clearer every year 
 that the ideal state cannot be approached, 
 much less reached, save through the help 
 of Another than ourselves. Even so rad- 
 ical a thinker as H. G. Wells — and he is 
 a thinker of no common order — restless, 
 penetrating, subtle, forecasting, full of 
 self-questionings, and, at times, of all- 
 questionings, seems to be finding his way 
 to the fact that it is not enough to "rally 
 the good in the depth of thyself," but that 
 we need God — even if we cannot realize 
 his presence. Hear him, in The Passion- 
 ate Friends: "There are no valid argu- 
 ments against a great-spirited Socialism 
 but this, that people will not. Indolence, 
 greed, meanness of spirit, the aggressive- 
 ness of- authority, and, above all, jeal- 
 ousy — these are the real obstacles to those 
 brave, large reconstructions, those profit- 
 able abnegations and brotherly feats of 
 
66 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 generosity that will yet turn human life — 
 of which our individual lives are but 
 momentary parts — into a glad, beautiful, 
 and triumphant cooperation all around 
 this sunlit world." 
 
 Just so ; but are the^e not other things 
 than those named that stand in the way? 
 What is it that so tragically delays the 
 march of man toward that better social 
 order whereof our poets dream and our 
 young men see visions? Our age is full 
 of schemes of every kind for the reform 
 and betterment of mankind. Why do they 
 not succeed? Some of them may fail 
 because they are ill-considered, in that 
 they expect too much of human nature 
 and do not take due account of the stub- 
 born facts of life. But even the wisest 
 plan fails to accomplish a tithe of what 
 its advocates labor artd pray to bring 
 about. Why is it so? Because there are 
 not enough men fine enough of soul, large 
 enough of sympathy, and pure enough of 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 67 
 
 heart to make the dream come true ! One 
 reads the words of Wells, so vivid with 
 prophetic idealism, and the saying of 
 Christ comes to mind: '^Ye must be born 
 again." 
 
 Ill 
 
 The problem of our day, as of every 
 other day since tlie church began her 
 morning march in the world- — only it is 
 felt to be more pressing in our time — is 
 the problem of the church and the street. 
 When the church forgets the street, or 
 neglects it, religion becomes a hollow 
 formalism or a dead respectability, and 
 life in the street becomes a hideous 
 scramble where heart treads on heart. 
 By the same token, every revival of faith, 
 every return of Pentecostal vision and 
 power, has witnessed a return of the 
 church to the street. There is not an ex- 
 ception — unless it be the Oxford Move- 
 ment under Newman, wliich was more a 
 reaction than a revival. Indeed, the secret 
 
68 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 of the early church, as Delssmann has so 
 clearly shown, was that it came down to 
 the man in the street, offering him hope. 
 Its appeal was hardly heard in high 
 places, but it was gladly heard in the 
 mean streets. It was so in the days of 
 Francis of Assisi in "the Galilee of Italy." 
 It was so under Eckliart and Tauler, 
 under Luther and Fox. What means the 
 cry for social service to-day, if it be not 
 that the church is aware that she has lived 
 too far from the street where the feet of 
 men are often weary, and where traps are 
 set to catch the loose steps of the wander- 
 ing.'' Have not Wesley and Woolman 
 somewhat to teach us here? They too led 
 a smug and indolent church out of doors 
 into the street, even into the byways 
 and hedges, as ever the Mystics have 
 done. 
 
 For they were mystics, albeit Wesley 
 was slow to admit his affinity with mysti- 
 cism, and at times was wont to be a keen 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 69 
 
 critic of its excesses. At one time he was 
 intolerant of Quietism, from which his 
 movement was, on one side, lineally de- 
 scended. Yet we find him editing the writ- 
 ings of Madame Guyon, who was a fol- 
 lower of Molinos, and in turn a teacher 
 of Fenelon ; and he was right in saying 
 that his break with Zinzendorf was largely 
 a dispute about words. As for Woolman, 
 he was of the company of those who are 
 led by the Shepherd of Souls, and who 
 partake of the Sacrament of Sorrow from 
 the hand of the Master himself. More is 
 unuttered than uttered in his simple writ- 
 ings — he so feared the fluency that goes 
 beyond fact — yet underneath the austere 
 restraint of his style one may read an 
 inner experience akin to that of Bunyan 
 or Pascal. In the phrase of the Friends 
 after his death, he "underwent many deep 
 baptisms" ; how deep, his Journal shows. 
 Daringly radical, he was divinely gentle. 
 Grown gray with grief for the woes of 
 
70 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 mankind, he yet kept always "an inward 
 stillness afid happy humility of heart." 
 
 William James would have classed 
 Wesley with the "tough-minded" perhaps, 
 and Woolman with the "tender-minded." 
 No matter; they were both practical 
 mystics, and their vision led them into the 
 places of need, into the haunts of the loAvly 
 and the lonely, in heroic and dedicated 
 service. The issues they confronted were 
 surprisingly modern, and they saw them 
 — especially Woolman saw them — with a 
 lucidity which allowed no evasions. Per- 
 haps, as is now the fashion to say, their 
 method was too individualistic — though 
 the evil which Woolman fought all his life 
 was the social horror of slavery, and he 
 set the society of Friends against it. This 
 is true: their sense of human solidarity, 
 and their feeling of complicity in the com- 
 mon social guilt, were profound. At least 
 it must be said that they opened the door 
 of the church leading into the street ; and 
 
WESLEY AND W00L:\IAN 71 
 
 if Wesley redeemed England from im- 
 pending revolution, Woolman liberated a 
 spirit which overthrew slavery in America. 
 
 IV 
 
 Of their social teaching we cannot study 
 here in detail. Economic analysis of the 
 modern sort we do not expect in their 
 writings ; and yet, as enemies of slavery, 
 they saw through that evil to the larger 
 question beA^ond— the degradation and ex- 
 ploitation of labor. Greed and the wish 
 for ease seemed to them roots of all evil. 
 Woolman in his little essays on Labor and 
 Caution to the Rich, and Wesley in his 
 exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 utter with equal eloquence the same solemn 
 warning. At eighty-seven Wesley was 
 still burdened with the fear that money 
 was corrupting his people. How his 
 words flash before us to-day: "How is 
 it possible for a rich man to grow richer 
 without denying the Lord that bought 
 
72 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 him? Yet how can any man who has 
 already the necessaries of life gain or aim 
 at more and be guiltless? 'Lay not up,' 
 saith our Lord, 'treasures upon earth.' 
 If, in spite of this, you do and will lay 
 up money or things which moth or rust 
 may corrupt, or thieves break through 
 and steal; if you will add house to house 
 or field to field — why do you call yourself 
 a Christian? You do not obey Jesus 
 Christ. Why do you name yourself by 
 his name? 'Why call ye me Lord, Lord,' 
 saith he himself, 'and do not the things 
 that I say?' " 
 
 There are many passages to the same 
 import in the pages of Woolman, only he 
 wrote with a sense of deep compassion 
 toward his fellow-creatures "involved in 
 customs, grown up in the wisdom of this 
 world, which is foolishness with God." 
 In his social insight and passion he was a 
 precursor of Ruskin and Tolstoy, and in 
 his sympathy too, as when he cried: "0, 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 73 
 
 may the wealthy consider the poor ! May 
 those who have plenty lay these things to 
 heart !" Dear John Woolman ! the weight 
 of human misery and "the evil custom of 
 the world" lay upon him at times like the 
 millions of tons of water on a diver in the 
 sea who is climbing to the surface, which 
 he despairs of reaching with brain and 
 body intact ! Yet was he a forerunner of 
 that social imagination which will at last 
 make the Golden Rule not a dream but a 
 necessity ; of the woi'ld now filling up with 
 men who cannot be happy while others are 
 miserable, and who are haunted by the 
 shivering shapes of the poor when they sit 
 down to feast ! His life was founded upon 
 Love. That love made him suffer, as love 
 always does, and it was therefore that 
 "he was as a nerve o'er which do creep 
 the else unfelt oppressions of the earth." 
 Still, he knew deep joy also, as all must 
 who, like him, "live under the cross and 
 simply follow the operations of truth" — 
 
74 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 for there may be peace where there is little 
 ease. 
 
 Indeed, the whole life of Woolman was 
 a struggle for personal piety against a 
 sense of social sin. Often it carried him 
 to strange extremes, and all his sagacity 
 was needed to save him from fanaticism. 
 Tainted money he would not take. Food 
 cooked by the hands of slaves he could not 
 eat. He could not sit still and ride when 
 the horses were lashed by brutal drivers. 
 Any form of cruelty or injustice afflicted 
 him with "bowedness of spirit," and often 
 made him ill of body. He could not bear 
 to profit, or to see others profit, by the 
 painful or degrading labor of his fellows. 
 More than once he touches on the problem 
 of dangerous trades, and he clearly saw 
 the fallacy of the old idea that the pro- 
 duction of luxuries relieves economic dis- 
 tress. So one might go on through his 
 pages, including his essays on wealth and 
 wages, and the fifth chapter of his Word 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 75 
 
 of Remembrance, in which he gave beauti- 
 ful prophecy of the principle of social 
 settlement. A man of divine pit}', he fore- 
 felt the fashion of things to be, prophetic 
 in his sorrow not less than in his vision. 
 
 Though less sensitive of heart, Wesle}' 
 was of like spirit, and the impetus of his 
 labors ramified everywhither. As Isaac 
 Taylor said, he furnished "the starting 
 point of our modern religious history in 
 all that is characteristic of the present 
 time." Fruitful was the impulse he gave 
 to education, both national and technical 
 — and religious too, for he extended the 
 work of Robert Raikes. In starting the 
 work of Silas Todd, the Foundry teacher, 
 he anticipated the holy labor of John 
 Pounds, the Portsmouth cobbler. He vis- 
 ited prisons and ameliorated the lot of 
 prisoners before John Howard; and his 
 work among the miners bears fruit even 
 to this day. And yet, in this long list, the 
 greatest labor of his life was that through 
 
76 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 him the gospel was once more preached 
 to the poor ! 
 
 V 
 
 What is sainthood? It is spiritual 
 health, humane sympathy, and moral 
 thoughtfulness. As Arnold of "Rugby 
 said, "It is the inquiring love of truth 
 sustained by devoted love of goodness." 
 It is wholesome, because it is holy. It is 
 practice, not theory; consecration, not 
 perfection; a condition of character, not 
 a theological definition. It is the kinship 
 in willing and feeling of the spirit of man 
 with the spirit of Christ, who was the will 
 and heart of God made flesh. Now as of 
 old, the hope of the church lies in her 
 saints. When all apologetics fail to halt 
 the proud concourse of the world, it 
 is the saints who heal the wounds of 
 humanity and turn the wandering multi- 
 tudes from fruitless quest to the abiding 
 realities. 
 
 Newman reflected upon the church of 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 77 
 
 his birth that she had failed to produce 
 saints. Capable of much, she was want- 
 ing here. Bishops, theologians, exegists, 
 ecclesiastics she could and did afford; but 
 saints, no. The challenge which Newman 
 flung down, however far from true in 
 respect of the English Church, we are 
 bound to take up for ourselves. If the 
 church of to-day cannot grow saints, she 
 will be helpless against the incoming tide 
 of "an emancipated, atheistic, interna- 
 tional democracy." Nor can she do much 
 to help forward the race toward those 
 profitable social abnegations, those broth- 
 erly feats of generosity and fellowship 
 that will turn human life into a glad co- 
 operation all round this sunlit world. 
 
 Wesley and Woolman were saints of 
 the most high God. If they were with us 
 to-day, no doubt the form of their lives 
 would be different, but their faith and 
 spirit would be the same. They would not 
 expect from sociology what no sociology. 
 
78 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 however scientific, can ever give. Their 
 first concern would be for a vivid and pro- 
 found personal relation to God. De- 
 tached from minor entanglements, they 
 would prove, with the pure of all ages, 
 that the frontiers of the life of man are 
 not the stronghold. But they would 
 know that from the Mount of Vision to 
 the multitude in need is but a step, and 
 they would continually take it, mediating 
 between the vigil of the night and the 
 burden of the day, knowing that vision 
 and service are partners. As of old, they 
 would see the sins of society in the light 
 of the cross, and discern in the turbid 
 ebb and flow of misery about them the 
 sinful soul, not only of society, but of 
 each of us — Christ crucified afresh, and 
 Ave assisting in his impalement; we press- 
 ing the thorns upon his brow. Woolman, 
 especially, would feel, to the piercing of 
 brain and nerve, the injustice, the suffer- 
 ing, the separation which our social con- 
 
WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 79 
 
 ditions impose. But his hope of healing 
 would be in Christ as mediated through a 
 tender, tactful, compelling human min- 
 istry. 
 
 When the power of reclaiming the lost 
 dies within the church it ceases to be the 
 church. It may remain a useful insti- 
 tution, though it may ver}' easily become a 
 mischievous one. When that power re- 
 mains, whatever else may be wanting, it 
 may still be said that the tabernacle of 
 God is with men. By devoting her power 
 to reclaiming and nurturing the souls of 
 men, and by refining and exalting their 
 social relations, the church is doing fun- 
 damental work in behalf of all high en- 
 terprises — a work without which no cause, 
 however holy, can win. B}' as much as 
 she succeeds, every noble cause succeeds. 
 If she fails.-* Often the church has failed, 
 by folly or default, and then her Master 
 has come again — as he has been coming 
 all down the centuries — giving a new date 
 
80 WESLEY AND WOOLMAN 
 
 to history and a new impetus to humanity' . 
 In the furnace fires of every revolution 
 there has been seen a form like unto the 
 Son of man ! He is with us to-day in these 
 new and changed times, as he was with 
 Wesley and Woolman — nearer, it often 
 seems, than he has ever been since he 
 walked in Galilee. 
 
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