" This is his theological version of the
case; the rationalistic version immediately follows: "I began to
dislike my solitary situation, and to fear I should never be able to
weather out the winter in so lonely a dwelling." No man could be less
fitted to bear a lonely life; persistence in the attempt would soon
have brought back his madness. He was longing for a home; and a home
was at hand to receive him. It was not perhaps one of the happiest
kind; but the influence which detracted from its advantages was the one
which rendered it hospitable to the wanderer. If Christian piety was
carried to a morbid excess beneath its roof, Christian charity opened
its door.
The religious revival was now in full career, with Wesley for its chief
apostle, organizer, and dictator, Whitefield for its great preacher,
Fletcher of Madeley for its typical saint, Lady Huntingdon for its
patroness among the aristocracy and the chief of its "devout women."
From the pulpit, but still more from the stand of the field-preacher
and through a well-trained army of social propagandists, it was
assailing the scepticism, the coldness, the frivolity, the vices of the
age.
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