Methodism Through Victorian Eyes. Volume 1

Between 1876 and 1903, the English intellectual historian Leslie Stephen, the Irish historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky, and the American historian and educator (not yet turned politician) Thomas Woodrow Wilson, fixed their separate attentions upon John Wesley and eighteenth-century Methodism, each for a different purpose and each achieving a different conclusion. However, a number of common threads wove themselves among each writer. None embraced Methodism: Stephen confessed to no denomination; Lecky paid proper but minimal service to the established Churches of England and Ireland; Wilson wrapped himself firmly within the mantle of nineteenth-century American Calvinist Presbyterianism. Each recognized Wesley as a significant contributor to the history of his times; each viewed Wesley’s evangelical organization as one means of raising the spiritual and moral values of the British nation; each identified significant weaknesses in the man, in his organization, in his overall accomplishments.