It was field-preaching, preaching in the open air, which first gave national distinctiveness to the Revival, and constituted it a movement. Assuredly any occasions of excitement we have known, give no idea whatever of the immense agitations which speedily rolled over the country, from one end to the other, when these great revivalists began their work in the fields. And the excitement continued, rolling on through London, and through the counties of England, from the west to the north, not for days, weeks, or months merely, but through long years, until the religious life of the land was entirely rekindled, and its morals and manners re-moulded; and all this, especially in its origination, without money, no large sums being subscribed or guaranteed to sustain the work. The work was done, not only without might or power, but assuredly in the very teeth of the malevolence of might and of power; nor is it too much to say that it probably would not have been done, could not have been done, had the churches, chapels, and great cathedrals been thrown open to the preachers. It seems a singular thing to say, but we should speak of Whitefield as the Luther of this Great Revival, and of Wesley as its Calvin. Both in the quality of their work and in their relation in point of time, this analogy is not so unnatural as it perhaps seems at first. The impetuosity and passion, the vehemence and sleepless vigilance of Whitefield first broke open the way; the calm, cautious, frequently even nervously timid intelligence of Wesley organised the work. How could a writer, in a recent number of the _Edinburgh Review_, say: “It is a great mistake to complain, as so many do, that the Church cast out the Wesleys. We have seen at the beginning how kindly, and even cordially, they were treated by the leading members of the episcopate.” Surely any history of Methodism contradicts this statement. Bishop Benson, indeed, ordained Whitefield, but he bitterly lamented to the Countess of Huntingdon that he had done so, attributing to him what seemed to the Bishop the mischief of the evangelical movement. “My lord,” said the Countess, “mark my words: when you are on your dying bed, that will be one of the few ordinations you will reflect upon with complaisance.”