ABSTRACT
The party within the Church of England which seemed in 1815 to offer the greatest promise of inspiring a religious revival was that of the Evangelicals. The difference the Evangelicals made can be seen from remarks by John Newton, the converted slave-trader, about the sermons of one of the first of the Evangelicals, William Grimshaw, who was Vicar of Haworth in Yorkshire from 1742 to 1763. The zeal with which the Evangelicals sought to spread their message and win converts by the distribution of tracts, the organization of meetings and, above all, the preaching of sermons, won them much dislike and contempt. Evangelicalism had brought into palpable existence and operation in Melby society that idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, which is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.
