This may be said
with certainty, that other Churches have been greatly enriched
thereby. We may just refer to that remarkable religious movement, the
Salvation Army, of Methodist origin, though working on new lines;
doing such work, social and evangelistic, as Methodism has chosen for
its own, and absorbing into its ranks many of our own trained
workers. "The Salvationists, taught by Wesley," said the late Bishop
of Durham, "have learned and taught to the Church again the lost
secret of the compulsion of human souls to the Saviour."
"The Methodists themselves," says John Richard Green, "are the least
result of the Methodist revival"; the creation of "a large and
powerful and active sect," numbering many millions, extending over
both hemispheres, was, says Lecky, but one consequence of that
revival, which exercised "a large influence upon the Established
Church, upon the amount and distribution of the moral forces of the
nation, and even upon its political history"; an influence which
continues, the sons of Methodism taking their due part in local and
imperial government. Eloquent tributes to the work of Wesley are
frequent to-day, the _Times_, in an article on the centenary of his
death, saying: "The Evangelical movement in the Church of England was
the direct result of his influence and example, and since the
movements and ideas which have moulded the Church of England to-day
could have found no fitting soil for their development if they had
not been preceded by the Evangelical movement, it is no paradox to
say that the Church of England to-day is what it is because John
Wesley lived and taught in the last century.
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