that of the Wesleys, of Whitefield, and of “the Countess ”* — 
found its field chiefly among miners, ironworkers, handloom 
weavers, upland agriculturists, and northern dalesmen ; among 
certain circles of “ high life,” in fashionable watering-places, 
and in some of the larger towns, especially in the west of 
England; it made scarcely any impression on the southern 
and eastern counties, and, except for the eccentric Mr. 
Berridge’s work in Bedfordshire, took but a feeble hold of 
the midlands south of the Trent. But at length, in its Low 
Church Calvinistic form, Methodism gained a footing in 
Cambridge about fifty years after it had emerged from Ox- 
ford in its High-Church and Arminian form, to receive its 
true baptism of faith and power from Moravian Germany. 
Cambridge was the real source of the Low Church Evangelical 
movement. Whitcfield and “ the Countess ” — for want of a 
University school of the prophets — diffused their influence, 
especially in the later periods of their work, rather beyond 
than within the pale of the Church of England ; but Charles 
Simeon, entering into the field at Cambridge which his erratic 
predecessor, Rowland Hill, had helped to prepare, gave form 
and direction to the Evangelical Low Church movement. In 
this he was greatly aided by the authority and influence of 
Dr. Milner, Dean of Carlisle, and Master of Queen’s College, 
Cambridge. Anthony Milner’s Church History — he was the 
brother of the Dean — Scott’s Commentary, and even the 
Olney Hymns, had furnished a necessary apparatus and basis 
for the work of leavening the Church of England with Evan- 
gelical ideas and lifo which Simeon organized. Earlier still, 
indeed, the preaching of Romaine in London and Venn in 
Yorkshire had also helped to prepare the way for an Evan- 
gelical revival in the Church ; but of the Evangelical move- 
ment in its permanent organization Simeon’spreacliing at Cam- 
bridge and his personal intercourse with the undergraduates 
maintained the central energy and impulse, whilst his un- 
bounded liberality in the use of his private fortune for the plant- 
ing throughout the country of Evangelical clergymen, and the 
foundation of well-guarded trusts in the interests of Evangelical 
orthodoxy, especially in the most influential town centres and 
the most frequented places of fashionable resort, enabled 
him to lay wide and firm the basis of Low Church Evangelical 
revival and extension. IIo died little more than forty years 
ago, just, indeed, as the earlier preludings of the High 
Church revival were beginning to produce a sensible effect, 
not only in Oxford, but through a widening circle. During 
* So Lady Huntingdon was familiarly called throughout all “Methodist” 
circles in her own day. 
