George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

METHODISTS AND THE TOLERATION ACT 303
also declared firmly that it will not return to the ancient fold,
to which it has been invited back. It is thus happening
that Methodism, which never contemplated any severance
from the Church at all, is aiding to bring about the dissolution
of a bond which has existed ever since the Reformation. Its
numbers are multiplied by tens of thousands ; its chapels
throng every town, and stand in every village in England ; its
ministers and lay preachers and helpers are legion ; baptism
and the Lord's Supper are duly administered within its pale ;
its adherents are married and buried by their own spiritual
teachers. A denomination or denominations constituted and
managed in this way are not likely to long for other pastures
and another fold. Nor is their unwillingness to be absorbed,
or appended as an auxiliary, decreased by some petty annoy-
ances, remnants of former days, to which they are subjected.
Their social disadvantages in villages and country districts, the
injustice with which their children are forced into High Church
day schools, and the rudeness which too often shocks and
pains them at the parish churchyard, serve to excite their
anger and hostility. As Englishmen they cannot help asking
themselves what is their fault, what their sin, that they should
be thus treated ; and when they see that it is only their love
of Methodism and their attendance upon its services, they
cleave all the more closely to their denomination. How
distant does all this seem to be from the day when Whitefield
strove to put his new chapel in Tottenham Court Road under
the protection of the Countess of Huntingdon, and thus to
preserve it for the Church ; and when the Countess herself
was annoyed at nothing so much as at the idea of one of her
ministers becoming a Dissenter. Berridge of Everton wrote
to her twenty years after the opening of this chapel, and seven
after the death of Whitefield, in a strain which shows that
even at that time, although she had practically been a Dis-