The flowing tide, however, was with the Methodists, and though the fight was long, and the victory was not wholly won in their day, these hymns rendered an inestimable service to the cause of religious freedom. It may be true that they represented Calvin’s teaching one-sidedly, and at times misrepresented it, but it cannot be denied that they pictured current Calvinistic teaching accurately enough. The Wesleys saw clearly that, should belief in a limited redemption spread in their Society, they would but labour in vain and spend their strength for nought. They might have gathered little coteries of devout folk, strongly tinctured with what we now call Plymouth Brethrenism, but they could never have founded a great Church, whose chiefest glory should be its missionary enterprise both at home and in the ends of the earth. The mission of Thomas Coke more than a hundred years ago, the great city missions of our own time, the work of William Booth, of Hugh Price Hughes, and Samuel F. Collier, would have been impossible had they not been able to say anywhere and to all— Sent by my Lord, on you I call; The invitation is to all: Come, all the world; come, sinner, thou; All things in Christ are ready now! The Wesleys reached their doctrine of general redemption by two paths. In the first place, they had been trained in the school of Arminius and of Laud, and had been confirmed in the faith by their own careful study of God’s word. But it is abundantly evident that their own experience had led them to believe in the infinite mercy of God. Charles Wesley, especially, argued with the profound humility of the sincere penitent, that his own salvation, of which he had received the undeniable assurance, ‘the indubitable seal,’ on Whit-Sunday, 1738, was itself convincing evidence of the good tidings he proclaimed. Thy sovereign grace to all extends, Immense and unconfined: From age to age it never ends; It reaches all mankind. Throughout the world its breadth is known, Wide as infinity; So wide, it never passed by one, Or it had passed by me.[138] This is a note which constantly recurs in the _Hymns on God’s Everlasting Love_—sometimes expressed quaintly and unpoetically, sometimes with a pathos truly sublime, as in these verses— O let me kiss Thy bleeding feet, And bathe and wash them with my tears; The story of Thy love repeat In every drooping sinner’s ears, That all may hear the quickening sound, Since I, even I, have mercy found. O let Thy love my heart constrain, Thy love for every sinner free; That every fallen soul of man May taste the grace that found out me; That all mankind, with me, may prove Thy sovereign, everlasting love.[139] In this, as in other respects, the Wesleyan theology was characteristically Pauline. ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all men to be received that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.’