p. 57 | ORIGIN OF METHODISM

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 3, 1881

ORIGIN OF METHODISM.

It is strange, and yet it is true, that out of the classic cloisters of Oxford, out of the conservative and consecrated shades of the English church, came this rough, fervent, urgent child of religion. In the year 1729 existed there the "Holy Club," composed of John and Charles Wesley—then twenty-six and twenty-one years of age—Morton, an Irish commoner, and Kirkham of Merton College. They read together, walked together, prayed together. They fasted twice a week, and received the communion once. They were a sort of monks, and in danger of becoming sick, and morbid, and foolish, and useless. But Morton inspired them to visit the sick, to go to the prison, to teach poor children, and thus laid the beginning of an active piety which never tired, and never ended, and never will end, we may hope.—Selected.