Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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Thus, from the polite circles of London, from the obscure old farm-like vicarage, the rude and rough old English home, events were preparing themselves. John Wesley was born in 1703; the Countess of Huntingdon in 1707: near in their birth time, how far apart the scenery and the circumstances in which their eyes first opened to the light. Whitefield was born later, amidst the still less auspicious scenery of the old Bell Inn, at Gloucester, in 1714. These were undoubtedly among the foremost names in the great palpitation of thought, feeling, and holy action the country was to experience. Future chapters will show a number of other names, which were simultaneously coming forth and educating for the great conflict. So it has always been, and singularly so, as illustrating the order of Providence, and the way in which it gives a new personality to the men whom it designs to aid its purposes. In every part of the country, all unknown to each other, in families separated by position and taste, by birth and circumstances, a band of workers was preparing to produce an entire moral change in the features of the country.