A Sermon Preached by the Rev. C. E. Darwent in Union Church, Tientsin, on Sunday evening, August 27
Text: Romans 1, 16.
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God to salvation to every one that believeth; tp the Jew first and also to the Greek."
We shall all agree that Mr. Lloyd George is the most important man alive. He is easily the first man in the greatest empire in the world. Never in the history of the world have 400,000,000 people of every race under the sun been under one rule. And he is the first of the rulers of that huge agglomeration of peoples. The still more remarkable thing is that he started life wearing clogs, a warm and serviceable, but humble foot covering, a sign of his having begun This is 2 most remarkably original statement. It is a wonder that more attention has not been called to it. It means that the whole moral attitude to great questions is entirely different on the Continent of Europe from what it is in Britain. They say we are hypocrites; that we didn't go to war for the purpose of Keeping our word and freezing the worl from a threatened tyranny; that we Went to war for our own interests only. And, no doubt, they say the down below stairs.
Yet same of America. We, on our side, now he has no seyous rival.' they mean, are all humbugs and How his constitution stood, Pecksniffs in our profession of dis-the Was, the strikes, the con-interestedness. Such being the case, ferences, the endless things of} nu wonder the conferences have the greatest moment that he has mostly failed. We and the peoples had to deal with, noone knows. on the Continent, according to Mr. By all the rules that affect people Lloyd George, live in entirely dif-like us, he.ought to have broken ferent moral atmospheres. down, but he has not. He is still "Wherein, then, lies the differ-the most important man alive. ence between England and the Con-When, therefore, a man like this tinent?"" asked Mr. Lloyd George. gives a most deliberate and strik-"I say the difference was in John ing opinion on the matter of re-Wesley" was his reply. That was ligion and the life of the nations, a profound saying, and it is true. it deserves our most earnest attention.
In the XVIII Century, the Continent of Europe had Voltaires and On June 21, Mr. Lloyd George was invited to a luncheon in aid of Rousseaus and suchlike, but it had no John Wesley, whose life, as Mr. the fund for repairing City Road Augustine Birrell says, just about Chapel, London, the' shrine of covered the XVTIT Century, from Methodism, for it was the chapel 1703 to 1791. The XVIII Century of the great John Wesley himself. was @ very wonderful one in many It is easy to understand how pil-ways. It was a curious mixture of grimaces to sacred places originate intellectual enlightenment and ed in early ages, for here is a place brutality. What we call humani-of Protestant pilgrimage, like the ash tree at old Winchelsea, under tananism was hardly born. It started then. But punishments were which Wesley preached his last awful; the Jaw was_ ferocious. outdoor sermon. The papers say that Mr. George made a most strik-Sports were coarse. Religion was just about dead; the clergy were ing and original speech after he worldly. The thing most ridiculed had climbed into the fine old mahogany pulpit which was presented to was "enthusiasm." that is any-Wesley himself. He named one thing approaching religious feryour and earnestness. Church ser-great difficulty that had occurred at j Vices were mechanical.
There were al! the international conferences that he has attended—and no man great writers, statesmen and artists -—Pope, Sheridan. Johnson, Ad-lias attended more. Here is a redison, Reynolds—while the British port of his speech. He said, "You cannot get Continental leaders and Empire extended itself mightily. statesmen to believe in the dis-Ts was a century in which revolution was brewing. The rights of interestedness of England preachman were to the fore. And, as we ing peace." "You cannot get know, the Revolution broke out in them to understand," he said, speaking with the greatest earnest-prance in 1789 in violence and ness, "the motive which sent hundreds of thousands of young men There were sympathizers with re-to face death and mutilation in the volutionary ideas, of course, in great war. They (that is, the Con-England. Why, then, did not a tinental) are always seeking for bloody Revolution break out in material reasons—commercia] supre-Britain, as it did in France? No macy, fears for our coasts. But doubt the French revolutionaries you cannot get any man on the were bitterly disappointed that it Continent to realize that the appeal did not. Why, then, did it not? was not a commercial and material Because John Wesley, by the grace one." of God, created a revolution in the religious life of Britain and America. Wesley for 60 years went riding through the length and breadth of the British Isles, especially England, the -south of Scotland and Wales, preaching. He was once asked how it was he was never' ill. His answer was that, if you want to keep well, you must ride 5,000 miles a year on horseback as he had done. He was worth more to our country than all her statesmen, painters and literary lights. Why? because he created an atmosphere of religion, a new spirit of faith in God in the British Isles that all the cleverness of the Voltaires never could. The result was that the Revolution was headed_off in a religious direction. There was a great deal of political discontent, but it never broke out into a bloody revolution, because this devoted man had put the fear of God into our people. Under God he created a great religious revival. He got down into the roots and soul of our national life, and, as a weekly paper hag said, "Tt was due to the great religious revival of the XVIII Century that there is always a response whenever an idealistic appeal is made in England or America." Just 80. The appeal to the people to send missionaries abroad to preach Christ, the appeal to print the Scriptures in every tongue, and all such altruistic enterprises found a response in the British Isles and in the United States that they found nowhere else. Mr. Lloyd George says he has found it actually so yet.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.