people. This
condition of things was further strengthened by the unavoidable
interweaving at that time of politics with religion. They could not be
kept separate; and the favour shown even by religious people to such
partisan zealots as Dr Sacheverell, evidenced, and at the same time
promoted, the public irreligion. This was the period in which the clergy
thought too little of their duties, but too much of their professional
rights; and if we may credit the indirect report of the contemporary
literature, all apostolic or missionary zeal for the extension of religion,
was in those days a thing unknown. It may seem unaccountable to many, that
the same state of things should have spread in those days to Scotland; but
this is no more than the analogies of all experience entitled us to expect.
Thus we know that the instincts of religious reformation ripened every
where at the same period of the sixteenth century from one end of Europe
to the other; although between most of the European kingdoms there was
nothing like so much intercourse as between England and Scotland in the
eighteenth century. In both countries, a cold and lifeless state of public
religion prevailed up to the American and French Revolutions. These great
events gave a shock every where to the meditative, and, consequently, to
the religious impulses of men. And, in the mean time, an irregular channel
had been already opened to these impulses by the two founders of Methodism.
A century has now passed since Wesley and Whitfield organized a more
spiritual machinery of preaching than could then be found in England, for
the benefit of the poor and labouring classes. These Methodist
institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing, amongst the poor and
the neglected at any time, much more when contrasted with the deep
slumbers of the Established church. And another ground of prosperity soon
arose out of the now expanding manufacturing system. Vast multitudes of
men grew up under that system--humble enough by the quality of their
education to accept with thankfulness the ministrations of Methodism, and
rich enough to react, upon that beneficent institution, by continued
endowments in money. Gradually, even the church herself, that mighty
establishment, under the cold shade of which Methodism had grown up as a
neglected weed, began to acknowledge the power of an extending Methodistic
influence, which originally she had haughtily despised. First, she
murmured; then sh