Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1887 — The Expansion of Methodism. [ARTICLE]

The Expansion of Methodism.

The wonderful expansion of Methodism during the life of its founder is perhaps without precedent in religious history. In 1730 its only adherents were a handful of Oxford students; twelve years later it numbered 1,100 members in London; long before the end of the century all Great Britain and nearly all the American colonies had rung with the eloquence of Whitefield or with the soberer but hardly less effective appeals of Wesley himself; meeting-houses had sprung up in every important town, an army of missionaries was engaged in itinerating over the country, and partly through Lady Huntingdon’s influence Methodism had found a considerable amount of acceptance even in the higher ranks of society. Franklin’s testimony to the power of Whitefield’s preaching is well known; but Chesterfield, Bolingbroke, and even Hume were also among his hearers.. At the time of Wesley’s death, in 1791, the Methodist Church, or Connection, as it was called, numbered above 300 preachers in Great Britain alone and nearly 200 in the United States, where the success of the revolution had made it necessary for Wesley to establish a separate organization, under a superintendent, whom to the horror of good churchmen he consecrated as all but a Bishop. The number of members ,»n the United Kingdom already exceeded 70,000, and rose to more than 100,000 in the course of the next decade. Considering how carefully Wesley had weeded out backsliders and weak-kneed brethren; considering also that schism had broken out at an early stage and detached a considerable body from the orthodox connection, this aggregate may be taken as representing not merely the nominal but the effective strength of Methodism.— Macmillan’s Magazine.