Transcript Slide 1

England
Before and After the
Wesleyan Revival
by James Nickel
B.A., B.Th., B.Miss., M.A.
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Government
What do you think?
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External.
Civil
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Internal.
Self
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Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary definition of
government:
1. Control; restraint. Men are apt to neglect
the government of their temper and passions.
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Government
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The self-governing Christian is a world
changer–salt of the earth; light of the
world.
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No salt?
No light?
World plunged into darkness.
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Government
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Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is
... self-control.”
II Corinthians 3:17, “Where the Spirit of
the Lord is there is liberty.”
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Government
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Self-government is the basis of civil
government.
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Government
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John Adams, second president of the United
States under the Constitution of 1787, “We
have no government armed with power
capable of contending with human passions
unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice,
ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break
the strongest cords of our Constitution as a
whale goes through a net. Our Constitution
was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate for the
government of any other.”
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18th Century England
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Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, “It
was the best of times, it was the worst
of times, it was the age of wisdom, it
was the age of foolishness, it was the
epoch of belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of Light, it
was the season of Darkness, it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair, we had everything before us, we
had nothing before us.”
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18th Century England
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James Viscount Bryce (1838-1922), British
jurist, historian, and politician, “If the spiritual
oxygen which has kept alive the attachment to
Liberty and self-government in the minds of
the people becomes exhausted, will not the
flame burn low and perhaps flicker out? ...
Without Faith nothing is accomplished, and
Hope is the mainspring of Faith. Throughout
the course of history every winter of
despondency has been followed by a joyous
spring time of hope.”
(Modern Democracies, Vol. II, pp. 663 & 670)
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England Before Wesley …
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Purge of Light.
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Persecution of the Puritans (left for
America).
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After the Oliver Cromwell died, Charles II took
the throne and by that time (1660), the mass
Puritan exodus was completed.
Puritans = self-government.
No light, no salt, no prophetic word.
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England Before Wesley …
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Ruling class:
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Many became members of the “Hellfire
Club.”
Systematically destroyed every kind of moral
standard.
Known for their:
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Loose living.
Love of liquor.
Weakness to bribery (special interest groups).
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England Before Wesley …
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Deism.
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God is the “absentee landlord.”
God is the Alpha, but not the Omega or
anywhere inbetween.
Free thinkers.
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Appealed to reason.
Latitudinarianism = “free from any
restraints” of belief.
Soon led to freedom from any restraints on
behavior.
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England Before Wesley …
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Influence of the success of science  no
need for God.
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Absence of dependence upon God for
everything.
The “ball” is in man's court.
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England Before Wesley …
A man with no eternal purpose has no present
purpose.
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Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we
die.
Consumption oriented, not production oriented.
Spend, not save.
John Maynard Keynes (20th century economist), “In
the long run, we are all dead.”
Note the declining purchasing power of the dollar.
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England Before Wesley …
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Slave trading: John Newton (1725-1807).
Labor problems.
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Ruling class despises middle class
merchants.
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Horrors of Industrial revolution statistically
skewed by the Lords to do these people in.
Looked for dirt and reported only dirt.
Lower classes desperately poor; had to rob
in order to eat.
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England Before Wesley …
Criminal laws and barbarous prison system.
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John Wesley's Journal, “I visited one in Marshalsea
prison, a nursery of all manner of wickedness. O
shame to man, that there should be such a place,
such a picture of hell upon earth!”
160 offenses for which you could be hung: picking
pockets, grabbing food or goods and running,
shoplifting, stealing fruit, snaring a rabbit on
someone else’s property.
Common scene: family having a picnic in Hyde Park
watching the “show” at the gallows.
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England Before Wesley …
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Loss of will to live.
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Why? No present purpose.
Average life expectancy: 40 years.
People died, not from lack of medicine, but
from lack of proper care for themselves.
Infant mortality: from 1730-1749, 75% of
the children died (most were fed bottles of
gin).
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England Before Wesley …
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“The Gin Age.”
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Henry Fielding, On the late Increase of
Robbers (1751), “Should the drinking of this
poison (gin) be continued at its present
height during the next twenty years, there
will, by that time, be very few of the
common people left to drink it.”
William Hogarth's paintings. e.g., “Gin Lane.”
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Public Domain
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England Before Wesley …
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Pub (public) house.
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Payday: Sunday in the pub.
Every fourth building was a pub.
“Drunk for 1 penny, dead drunk for 2
pennies and free straw.”
Good places advertised clean straw.
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England Before Wesley …
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Perverted conceptions of sport and
entertainment: dogfights, bull baiting,
cock fights.
Gambling: a national obsession.
In Tom Jones, immorality depicted as
“good sport.”
Decadence of drama and theater.
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England Before Wesley …
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Ignorance, lawlessness, and savagery.
Samuel Johnson, London (1738), “Here
malice, rapine, accident conspire, and
now a rabble rages, now a fire; there
ambush, here relentless ruffians lay, and
here a fell attorney prowls for prey;
there falling houses thunder on your
head, and here a female atheist talks
you dead.”
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England Before Wesley …
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From 1700-1740, England experienced a
slow and certain drift to religious decay,
public corruption, the profaneness [Latin,
pro: before or outside, fanum: temple]
 disrespect for God's authority and
laws.
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England Before Wesley …
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J. C. Ryle, Anglican bishop (1885),
“England seemed barren of all that is
good. How such a state of things could
have arisen in a land of free Bibles and
professing Protestantism is almost past
comprehension. Christianity seemed to
lie as one dead.... Morality, however
much exalted in pulpits, was thoroughly
trampled under foot in the streets.”
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Light
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Isaiah 60:1-3, “Arise, shine, for your light
has come! And the glory of the Lord is
risen upon you. For behold, darkness
shall cover the earth, and deep darkness
the people; but the Lord will rise over
you, and His glory will be seen upon you.
The nations [Gentiles] shall come to your
light, and kings to the brightness of your
rising.”
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John Wesley (1703-1791)
Public Domain
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John Wesley (1703-1791)
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Small of stature (5’3”, 128 lbs).
1738: at Aldersgate, his heart was “strangely
warmed.”
First sermon (April 1739) at a coal mine. “As
they listened to the message of the grace of
God, tears made little white rivers down their
black cheeks.”
In the next 50 years, he preached 40,000
sermons (average of 3/day) and traveled an
estimated 250,000 miles on horseback.
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John Wesley (1703-1791)
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“The world is my parish.”
“Gain all you can, save all you can, give
all you can.”
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John Wesley (1703-1791)
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“Christianity is essentially a social
religion; to turn it into a solitary religion
is indeed to destroy it.”
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Not social gospel absolutized or personal
gospel absolutized.
The gospel reforms man so that he might
reform society.
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John Wesley (1703-1791)
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“Do nothing as a gentleman [wanted to
be served all the time]; ye are the
servants of all.”
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John Wesley (1703-1791)
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“When He first the work began, small
and feeble was His day; Now the word
doth swiftly run, now it winds its
widening way; More and more it spreads
and grows, ever mighty to prevail; sin's
strongholds it now overthrows, shakes
the trembling gates of hell.”
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George Whitefield (1714-1770)
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Between 1736 and 1770, preached
18,000 sermons (mostly open air).
Ben Franklin estimated that he could
speak to 30,000 people in the open air
and be heard clearly.
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George Whitefield (1714-1770)
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Both Whitefield and Wesley, as fellow
Methodists, agreed to disagree amiably
in their doctrinal differences (Wesley was
Arminian Methodist and Whitefield was a
Calvinist Methodist).
There was a country to save.
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George Whitefield (1714-1770)
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Traveled to American thirteen times.
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God used him to unite this nation as one
nation under God.
He influenced the founding of over 50
colleges in America.
He founded many orphanages.
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Restoration of Self-Government
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Sir C. Grant Robertson, England Under
the Hanoverians, “At a time when Bishop
Butler asserted that Christianity was
wearing out the minds of men, Wesley
kept the English people Christian ... It is
certain that into the moral fibre of the
English people, even in the classes most
anxious to repudiate the debt, were
woven new strands by the abiding
influence of Methodism.”
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Restoration of Self-Government
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Another historian noted that the early
Methodists were like “a cluster of chaste
snowdrops growing on a foul rubbish
heap.”
Even secular historians grudgingly admit
that this revival prevented a French
Revolution type blood bath in England.
This revival restored self-government to
England.
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England After Wesley …
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Isaac Watts: 600 hymns (O God, Our Help in
Ages Past, I Sing the Mighty Power of God,
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, At the
Cross, Alas, and Did My Saviour Bleed, Am I a
Soldier of the Cross?, Jesus Shall Reign, Joy to
the World).
Philip Doddridge: 370 hymns (Great God, We
Sing That Mighty Hand).
William Cowper: There is a Fountain Filled with
Blood.
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England After Wesley …
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John Newton, ex-slave trader wrote
many well-known hymns: Glorious
Things of Thee are Spoken, Amazing
Grace.
James Montgomery: Angels from the
Realms of Glory, Go to Dark
Gethsemane.
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England After Wesley …
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John Wesley also wrote many hymns.
Charles Wesley: over 6,500 hymns (Oh
for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, Hark
the Herald Angels Sing, Christ the Lord
Is Risen Today, Rejoice, the Lord is King,
Arise, My Soul, Arise!, Depth of Mercy!
Can There Be, Love Divine, All Loves
Excelling, Jesus, Lover of My Soul …
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England After Wesley …
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… And Can It Be That I Should Gain) – v.
4:
“Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast
bound in sin and nature’s night; Thine
eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke,
the dungeon flamed with light; My
chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose,
went forth and followed Thee.”
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England After Wesley …
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Abolition of slavery peaceably and
lawfully (slave owners reimbursed):
William Wilberforce (1759-1833).
Sunday laws: closed down pubs.
Reform of penal code.
Prison reform: John Howard (17261790).
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England After Wesley …
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Infant mortality.
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1750-1769:
1770-1789:
1790-1809:
1810-1829:
63% died.
51.5% died.
41.3% died.
31.8% died.
No medical changes (will to live
restored).
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England After Wesley …
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Robert Raikes (1735-1811): Sunday
schools (1780).
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England After Wesley …
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From 1780 to 1870, the Church took the
lead in education (most schools
supported by churches and Christian
individuals).
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1811: Anglicans formed the National Society
for Education.
1814: British & Foreign School Society.
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England After Wesley …
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Result?
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,
Education in England (1861), “A striking
tribute to the sterling qualities of selfhelp and religious earnestness which
were so characteristic of the Early
Victorian period ...”
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England After Wesley …
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“In the vast work of social organization
which is one of the dominant
characteristics of nineteenth-century
England, it would be difficult to overestimate the part played by the
Wesleyan revival.”
Elie Halevy, A History of the English People
(1815 vol.), p. 372.
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England After Wesley …
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YMCA (George Williams).
Salvation Army (William Booth).
L.C.M. (London City Mission).
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England After Wesley …
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Animal protection (R.S.P.C.A. The Royal
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals).
Children's orphanages.
Health and sanitation improvement.
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England After Wesley …
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Spread of good, Biblical literature
through “literature societies.”
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The British and Foreign Bible Society.
The Society for the Propagation of Christian
Knowledge (SPCK).
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England After Wesley …
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Labor reform (child labor laws).
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England After Wesley …
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1776: Adam Smith (1723-1790) wrote
Wealth of the Nations.
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Treatise on the outworkings and benefits of
free enterprise economics.
A nation's wealth does not consist merely of
gold and silver, but of the character of its
people: their initiative, inventiveness, and
willingness to work to produce the
necessities of life.
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England After Wesley …
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Free trade movement: in 10 years,
welfare abolished.
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England After Wesley …
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Victorian era:
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England's greatest period of power and
prosperity.
Exporter to the world of quality education,
science, inventions, technology, health,
medicine (e.g., quinine from cinchona bark
for the treatment of malaria), hospitals,
highways, law, order, and, above all, selfgovernment.
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England After Wesley …
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Second Officer Charles Lightoller (1874-1952) of the
Titanic.
Public Domain
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England After Wesley …
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Senator Smith to Lightoller: “From what
you have said, you discriminated entirely
in the interest of the passengers–first
women and children–in filling these
lifeboats?”
Mr. Lightoller: “Yes, sir.”
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England After Wesley …
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Senator Smith: “Why did you do that? Because
of the captain's orders, or because of the rule
of the sea?”
Mr. Lightoller: “The rule of human nature ...
had no difficulty in filling the boat. The people
were perfectly ready and quiet. There was no
jostling or pushing or crowding whatever. The
men all refrained from asserting their strength
and from crowding back the women and
children. They could not have stood quieter if
they had been in church.”
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England After Wesley …
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Colonel Archibald Gracie, survivor of the
Titanic, “ ... There was no man who asked to
get in a boat with the single exception that I
have already mentioned (Col. Astor's request
to go aboard to protect his wife). No women
even sobbed or wrung their hands, and
everything appeared perfectly orderly.
Lightoller was splendid in his conduct with the
crew, and the crew did their duty.”
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England After Wesley …
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Captain James Cook (1728-1779
explored the Pacific: his accounts of his
voyages spurred the desire of William
Carey (1761-1834) to do all he could to
take the gospel around the world.
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Public Domain
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England After Wesley …
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William Carey founded The Baptist
Missionary Society (BMS) in 1792.
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Wrote An Enquiry into the Obligation of
Christians to Use Means for the Conversion
of the Heathens.
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“Expect great things from God, attempt
great things for God.”
Took the Gospel to India.
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England After Wesley …
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LMS: London Missionary Society (1795).
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Robert Morrison: to China.
David Livingston: to Africa.
GMMS: General Methodist Missionary
Society (1796).
CMS: Church Missionary Society
[Anglican] (1799).
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England After Wesley …
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The Great Century of Foreign Missions
(1790-1914).
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From 1790-1850, 19 out of every 20
missionaries to Africa died within two years
of reaching the field.
The early missionaries to Africa packed their
belongings in a coffin.
David Livingston, “You can bury my body in
England, but bury my heart in Africa.”
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England After Wesley …
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Greatest age of expansion of Christian belief
since the first century.
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Conclusions
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The self-governing Christian is a world
changer: salt of the earth; light of the
world.”
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No salt?
No light?
World plunged into darkness.
Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is
... self-control.”
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Conclusions
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What do we learn from history?
Never give up; arise and shine.
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Conclusions
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Robert E. Lee, “The truth is this. The
march of providence is so slow and our
desires so impatient, the work of
progress is so immense and our means
of aiding is so feeble, the life of
humanity is so long, that of the
individual so brief, that we often tend to
see only the ebb of the advancing wave
and are discouraged. It is history that
teaches us to hope.”
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Conclusions
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In a letter written shortly before his
death, a Confederate soldier wrote, “Men
who saw night coming down about them
could somehow act as if they stood on
the edge of dawn.”
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Conclusions
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Yes, it is a time of turmoil, war, economic
catastrophe, cynicism, lawlessness, and
distress.
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Conclusions
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But, it is also a time of heightened
challenge and creativity, and of intense
vitality.
Because of the intensification of the
issues, and their worldwide scope, never
has an era faced a more demanding and
exciting crisis.
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Conclusions
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This then above all else is:
a great a glorious era to live in,
a time of opportunity,
one requiring fresh and vigorous
thinking,
indeed a glorious time to be alive.
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