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climaxed in 1739. This sturdy 17

century style of Evangelicalism

had persisted in the 18

century

Church of Scotland; though it was far from numerically dominant, it was capable of both generating the

secession movements which we associate with the names of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine and sustaining

the "popular" party of the Establishment which we associate with the names of John Willson and John

MacLaurin. Skevington Wood pointedly reminds us that "these initial stirrings took place before the

Revival had really got under way in England and prior to the arrival of George Whitefield in Scotland. He

is usually regarded as the harbinger...but the Spirit had already been at work."

There had also been a

remarkable movement of the Spirit at Herrnhut, Saxony among the Moravians on August 13

, 1727.

Two points need to be made.

First we can assert that there is simply no chronological priority to

be found for Evangelical developments in England in these early decades of the 18

century. Pious

Christian observers in that country are consistently the recipients of news of stirring events elsewhere

before events on similar scale occur at home in connection with the early ministries of Whitefield and

Wesley.

Second (and considerably more complex) it is possible to argue that there were persistent strains

of an earlier Evangelical vitality at work in these other regions which maintained both expectant prayer

for divine intervention and fervent gospel proclamation.

And, in very short order, various extensions of these other movements in the outlying portions of

the United Kingdom, in the American colonies and in Saxony were operative in significant ways within

England. We have already noted the influence of the veteran Welsh evangelist, Griffiths Jones, upon the

young George Whitefield in 1739. We may now note the signal influence of Scottish evangelical

schoolmaster, George Conon upon the Anglican minister of Cornwall, Samuel Walker beginning in

1747. Conon had held his educational post in Truro since 1728; he had apparently brought his

evangelical convictions with him from his alma mater, the University of Aberdeen. Walker, the first

Evangelical Anglican clergyman of influence in his region designated this schoolmaster "the father of the

revival in these parts."

The influence of Moravian missionaries upon the Georgia-bound John Wesley

and of the Moravian Fetter Lane Society upon him at his return to London are widely known.

Less well

Wood, p. 118.

Ibid. p.

in G.C.B. Davies, The Early Cornish Evangelicals, (London, S.P.C.K., 1951). p. 218.

V.H.H. Green, John Wesley, (London, Thomas Nelson), 1964. pp. 63ff.