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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4
crowded. Families were broken up. Many were banished to foreign
lands. Yet God was with his people, and persecution could not pre-
vail to silence their testimony. Many were driven across the ocean to
America, and here laid the foundations of civil and religious liberty
which have been the bulwark and glory of our country.
As in apostolic days, the persecution turned out rather to the
furtherance of the gospel. In a loathsome dungeon crowded with
profligates and felons, John Bunyan breathed the very atmosphere of
Heaven, and there he wrote his wonderful allegory of the pilgrim’s
journey from the land of destruction to the celestial city. For two
hundred years that voice from Bedford jail has spoken with thrilling
power to the hearts of men. Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” and
“Grace Abounding to the Chief Sinners,” have guided many feet into
the path of life.
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Baxter, Flavel, Alleine, and other men of talent, education, and
deep Christian experience, stood up in valiant defense of “the faith
once delivered to the saints.” The work accomplished by these men,
proscribed and outlawed by the rulers of this world, can never per-
ish. Flavel’s “Fountain of Life” and “Method of Grace” have taught
thousands how to commit the keeping of their souls to Christ. Bax-
ter’s “Reformed Pastor” has proved a blessing to many who desire a
revival of the work of God, and his “Saints’ Everlasting Rest” has
done its work in leading souls to the “rest that remaineth for the
people of God.”
A hundred years later, in a day of great spiritual darkness, White-
field and the Wesleys appeared as light-bearers for God. Under the
rule of the established church, the people of England had lapsed
into a state of religious declension hardly to be distinguished from
heathenism. Natural religion was the favorite study of the clergy,
and included most of their theology. The higher classes sneered at
piety, and prided themselves on being above what they called its fa-
naticism. The lower classes were grossly ignorant, and abandoned to
vice, while the church had no courage or faith to any longer support
the downfallen cause of truth.
Whitefield and the Wesleys were prepared for their work by long
and sharp personal convictions of their own lost condition; and that
they might be able to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ, they
were subjected to the fiery ordeal of scorn, derision, and persecution,