" As
a rule, the darker and sterner element, that which delighted in
religious terrors and threatenings was Calvinist, the milder and
gentler, that which preached a gospel of love and hope, continued to
look up to Wesley, and to bear with him the reproach of being Arminian,
It is needless to enter into a minute description of Evangelicism and
Methodism; they are not things of the past. If Evangelicism has now
been reduced to a narrow domain by the advancing forces of Ritualism on
one side and of nationalism on the other, Methodism is still the great
Protestant Church, especially beyond the Atlantic. The spiritual fire
which they have kindled, the character which they have produced, the
moral reforms which they have wrought, the works of charity and
philanthropy to which they have given birth, are matters not only of
recent memory, but of present experience. Like the great Protestant
revivals which had preceded them in England, like the Moravian revival
on the Continent, to which they were closely related, they sought to
bring the soul into direct communion with its Maker, rejecting the
intervention of a priesthood or a sacramental system.
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