Letter from Whitefield to Wesley on Union—Howel Harris—Joseph Williams—Thomas Adams—James Relly—Herbert Jenkins—John Edwards—Persecution at Devizes—Wesley going North—Grace Murray—Jeannie Keith—Methodism’s first “Theological Institution”—Wesley coming South—William Darney’s Societies—Methodism begun in Manchester—John and Alice Crosse—Methodism at Northwich—Rev. R. T. Bateman—Wesley’s “Poor House”—Wesley’s Foundery School—Wesley’s Lending Society—Wesley’s huge Income—Conference of 1747—Wesley in Cornwall—Methodism begun in Ireland—Swaddlers—Poor Lodgings—Irish Hymn-Book—Westley Hall’s Infamy—Wesley’s Publications in 1747 535-564 INTRODUCTION. _METHODISM: ITS GREATNESS._ IS it not a truth that Methodism is the greatest fact in the history of the church of Christ? Methodism has now existed one hundred and thirty years. Is there any other system that has spread itself so widely in an equal period? We doubt it. In the first two centuries of the Christian era, during a great part of which men were blessed with plenary inspiration, and miracles were wrought, the Christian religion sprung up in Judæa, Samaria, and Galilee. Churches were raised at Antioch, in the beautiful isle of Cyprus, in the neighbouring provinces of Pamphylia, and Pisidia, and Lycaonia, and Galatia, and Phrygia, and, in fact, throughout Asia Minor in general. Berea, Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, and other cities in Greece, were visited with the light of truth. Christianity then spread through a large portion of other parts of the Roman empire, and reached as far as even Lyons in France. This was marvellous success; but, as it respects geographical extent, the spread of Methodism is more marvellous. The Roman empire embraced the whole of the places above mentioned. It extended three thousand miles in length and two thousand miles in breadth, and comprised the most fertile and best cultivated part of the known world. Its limits were the Atlantic on the west; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the east; and the deserts of Arabia and Africa on the south. This was a vast area; but, compared with that over which Methodism has spread itself during the last hundred and thirty years, it is insignificantly small. If Methodism does not exist in Palestine, Asia Minor, Arabia, Greece, or Egypt, it exists in Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Africa: and, passing to other regions which the Romans never trod, it has long since entered India and Ceylon; it has already won its triumphs in the flowery land of the Chinese; it has a vast multitude of adherents in Australia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean; in the West Indies its converts are numbered by tens of thousands; while in America it has diffused its blessings from the most remote settlements of Canada in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south, and from Nova Scotia in the east to California in the west.