SECULAR CONTEST BETWEEN CONSCIENCE AND POWER. 135 



In May, 1738, he passed through that spiritual experience 

 which it was his mission to press upon all his hearers from that 

 day forward as a necessity for true salvation. He says in his 

 diary: I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; 

 and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, 

 even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." 



It is interesting to see how the assurance Wesley then and there 

 received of his own pardon produced corresponding feelings 

 towards those who had ill-treated him, for on the next day he 

 records in his diary : "I began to pray with all my might for 

 those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and 

 persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now 

 first felt in my heart." Having regard to the immense results 

 which flowed from Wesley's work, Lecky, the rationalistic 

 historian, describes Wesley's conversion thus recorded as the most 

 important event of the 18th century in Enghsh history. 



Having received this blessing through the Moravian brethren, 

 who had brought over from Germany a more spiritual Gospel than 

 was then current in England, Wesley almost immediately pro- 

 ceeded to Germany, not returning until September, when, as he 

 tells us in his diary, Sunday, the 17th, " I began again to declare 

 in my own country the glad tidings of salvation." 



Within six months of this another crisis occurred in Wesley's 

 life that was fraught with more momentous consequences than 

 even his conversion. This was his decision to preach in the open 

 air, which marked the beginning of that beneficent activity that 

 made him the greatest field preacher that ever was. But we had 

 better have the account in his own words. He records in his 

 diary on March 31st, 1739, a Saturday: " I reached 

 Bristol and met Mr. Whitefield there. 1 could scarce reconcile 

 myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of 

 which he set an example on Sunday [the next day] ; having been 

 all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating 

 to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of 

 souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church." 



On that day, April 1st, he records in his diary how, Whitefield 

 having left him, he expounded to a little society in Nicholas Street 

 the Sermon on the Mount, adding " one pretty remarkable prece- 

 dent of field-preaching, though I suppose there were churches at 

 that time also." 



On the following day, Monday, the decisive moment came, for 

 he records: ** At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more 

 vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, 

 speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city 

 to about three thousand people. The scripture on which I spoke 

 was this : (is it possible anyone should be ignorant, that it is ful- 



